Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/134

 a star." "A recluse in life, he overflows to the readers. He does not tell very much, but apparently he tells everything." "Instead of reading he reflected—'brooded' perhaps, in his pythian character. But he had very little to brood over. Hence the unsubstantial character of his fanciful progeny." Of Emerson: "Communication was manifestly the last concern of the lecturer. "When he left his church he took his pulpit with him." "He was not so much a delegate of the divine as a part of it." Concerning Poe's Tales this question: "Finally of what value after all is goose-flesh as a guide to correct estimates of art?" Of Lowell: "He had a 'genius' for being perfunctory and genuine at the same time." "He beamed and expanded in a confidence free from the fear of confutation or even contradiction." A consolatory thought in Criticism: "It seems unlikely that the unreal will ever regain the empire it once possessed. Its loss, at all events, is not ours, since it leaves us the universe." I have italicized: the wit in the original context depends upon the fact that this really stupendous consolation steals in like a mouse. Revival of animal worship, with denominational cleavage, noted in Standards: "Two distinct and interhostile sects of secular schismatics, one adoring the golden calf and the other incensing the under dog." A suggestion to the New Barbarians, who constitute the left wing of the Party of Nature: "In the realm of intelligence sincerity is but an elementary virtue. It is often the hardest thing to