".... Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the Platos and Spinozas… — Essays
SAPIR 861
".... Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the Platos and Spinozas, not with the Swifts and Voltaires, not with the Montaignes and Addisons, can we rank Emerson. No man could see this clearer than Emerson himself. 'Alas, my friend,' he writes in reply to Carlyle, who had exhorted him to creative work,--'Alas, my friend, I can do no such gay thing as you say. I do not belong to the poets, but only to a low department of literature,--the reporters; suburban men.' He deprecated his friend's praise; praise 'generous to a fault' he calls it; praise 'generous to the shaming of me,--cold, fastidious, ebbing person that I am.'"
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