He sauntered in books as
he sauntered by Walden Pond, in quest of what interested him; he
"fished in Montaigne," he said, as he fished in Plato and Goethe.
He basketed the day's luck, good or bad as it might be, into the
pages of his private "Journal," which he called his savings-bank,
because from this source he drew most of the material for his
books. The "Journal" has recently been printed, in ten volumes.
No American writing rewards the reader more richly. It must be
remembered that Emerson's "Essays," the first volume of which
appeared in 1841, and the last volumes after his death in 1882,
represent practically three stages of composition: first the
detached thoughts of the "Journal;" second, the rearrangement of
this material for use upon the lecture platform; and finally, the
essays in their present form. The oral method thus predominates:
a series of oracular thoughts has been shaped for oratorical
utterance, not oratorical in the bombastic, popular American
sense, but cunningly designed, by a master of rhetoric, to
capture the ear and then the mind of the auditor.
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