… The heart in [Emerson's] poetry is less than the head, and this causes a deficiency for which nothing else can fully atone. Only a transcendent splendor and wealth of intellect could redeem many of his pieces from condemnation and forgetfulness, as being frigid and unfeeling. These are sad flaws in such noble workmanship. Did a fellow-feeling for human nature in all its varieties equal and fill out his other traits, we might think the great poet of America had been born, to bring on our flourishing Augustan age. But, as yet, our hearts acknowledge a more genial and enlivening influence from several of our other native bards. Would that one whom we unfeignedly respect might not only show his power of soaring to the empyrean, but hover with a more wide and loving interest over the lot of his fellow-men! It may be for want of this all-embracing sympathy that his flights are so infrequent, and that he can but seldom continue long on the wing. If he could but kindle his soul with some great conception of human fortunes, and write a generous epic of this our human life, including its great trials and accomplishments, its sublimer aspirations and hopes, we hazard little in predicting that it would be a production to mark the age.

And yet we hardly know how he could have the kind of human sympathy which we most value forthe inspiration of such an undertaking, with his present views of religion. There is no recognition in his pages of the Christian faith, according to any, however catholic, idea of it which we are able to form. He seems to have no preference of Jesus over any other great and good man. He either does not accept the evidences authenticating a divine revelation, or they press with but little interest upon his preoccupied mind. But what we must regard as his religious unsoundness strikes still deeper. He does not even appear to own any distinction between man and Deity. He talks of "the gods" as an old Roman would do. One personal Creator is not present to his thought. He does not go for the signs of such a Being into the broad circumference of his works, but confines himself within the little rim of his own individual consciousness. He puts aside Bible and ritual, and all human speech and outward light, for the "super-solar beam." In religion he fills the whole space of thought with that mystic element, which we must perhaps admit, but should confine in a corner. He does not, with a plain trust, examine the world which God has made, but curiously inspects the inverted image of it upon his own mental retina. He does not pay to the instincts of mankind or of society the respect he would render to the peculiar instincts of the animal, the bee or the beaver. And not taking cordially to his heart the Christian doctrines of a Father and a particular Providence, how can he strongly embrace the dependent doctrine of human brotherhood, or feel the unlimited sympathy which this doctrine inspires? We speak here, of course, of his system. We doubt not the kindness of his actual relations with men. We believe a hearty historical faith in Christianity would add greatly to the power of his genius. The views we have alluded to so underlie and run through his writings, as almost to amount to the proposal of a new religious faith,—a presumption which of course astounds us, simple believers in the New Testament on what we deem irrefragable grounds. His ideas carry him wide of the humility of the Gospel,—though they give rise in his own mind not so much to personal pride as to an immense self-respect and an enormous self-reliance. He is willing to trust to or lean upon nothing but himself;—a wonderful state of feeling, when we consider our real condition of dependence in all our powers,—our bodies resting on the attractions of material nature, every vital organ in us doing its part involuntarily, and only a single silvery thread branching into various filaments of the nerves of motion being held by our own will,—our intelligence but the shadowy reflex of Divine wisdom, like the light from distant worlds in the focus of the astronomer's telescope,—and even our moral nature roused not by an internal force of conscience alone, but quickened and kept alive so greatly by instruction and example. We are made to lean, and are stronger when we lean; and, if we do not lean, we fall. Our poet is dragged by his philosophy to a lower, or at least less commanding, height than, with a better understanding on this point, he might well attain.

We ought, however, to say, that the noblest principles of conduct are often asserted in his pages. We rejoice to find instances of a truly grand morality, and surpassing expressions of a pure and beautiful spirit; but are suddenly perplexed, as we proceed, by an optimism confounding all moral distinctions. He seems, in some places, to know no difference between light and darkness, sweet and bitter. Some revelations, hinted at in one of these poems, respecting a moral indifference in all things, are represented as made by "Uriel," and as causing the older deities, who had been in the secret, to blush. Alphonso of Castile, who is said to have thought he could improve upon the world as described in the Ptolemaic system, makes a bold figure, as the protégé of our author's pen, entering in heaven's court a general and unqualified complaint about all things under the sun.

There is an undertone of sadness running through these rhymes, sometimes harsh and scornful, and sometimes tender and refined, like angelic melancholy. We fancy this, too, may proceed from the peculiarity of the writer's belief. Seldom do we hear from him the truly cheerful strain which an earnest faith in Christianity would prompt. In that marvelously beautiful "Threnody," near the close of the book, the sorrow at the commencement is out of all proportion to the comfort at the end. It is the song of a stricken and struggling stoicism. The note falls irresistibly into the minor key. The very voice of consolation dies away in a wail. Alas! it is a poor application here made to the heart's wounds. They still bleed into the very ointment and balm. Every stroke of genius seems but to sharpen the regret. We remember in all our reading nothing more cheerless. It is a picture we would not hang in our heart's chambers. Every touch of the pencil draws a tear. As a painting of grief it is unrivaled,—but it is of grief alone. His hand proves false to him, when he undertakes to draw the form of the angel of peace. But that the soul of the poet might be deaf to our entreaty, we would implore him to turn his eye to those fountains of comfort which God has opened in the Gospel of his Son. For nothing can be more manly than an humble reliance on the means of revival and support, in our distress, which our Father has provided. Let him in lowliness receive these, and then, for the "Threnody," and the "Dirge" which precedes it, we should hope to receive lines as highly adorned with the lights of a creative fancy, but gilded from above also by the beams of heaven. There would at least be nothing in them of the "grief whose balsam never grew."

But we must pause. The analysis of Emerson's writings is no short or easy task. We would not pretend to oversee his summit, but only to note our impressions as we stand and contemplate it. His works, on account of their peculiarity, if nothing else, will probably be among the most enduring of the present time. There is much in them to admire and be improved by. And while we must think there is much also that is unsound and must be injurious to any mind imbibing it, we intend no personal commendation in expressing our conviction that he is a true-minded and righteous man, raised above every thing unworthy, and living a blameless life according to the monitions of his own conscience. Our calling is not to speak of the man, but of the author. We think the intellectual states and tendencies which we have noted chill and cripple his genius. He would make better poetry under the sway of views and opinions which he rejects or holds slightly. Were we writing with a different design, we might state other reasons for our regret at some of the sentiments which he expresses. We have now only to say, that they have injured his book, and must restrict the width and impair the quality of its influence. Would he fetch an echo from the universal heart, as it beats in the breasts of men from generation to generation, he must add to his style a faith and fervor as signal as its brilliancy and force.