THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 1918 PREFACE This study is practically identical with the dissertation which I submitted at the University of Illinois in 1918 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctorate in English. In an embryonic state, it was looked over and kindly criticised by Professor Mervin James Curl and Professor Stuart Pratt Sherman. I am most grateful for the encouragement which they gave me to develop the subject more fully. To Professor Jacob Zeitlin, under whose direction the thesis was brought to completion, I am conscious of the highest obligations. His wise overseership, product of sound sense and catholic learning, heartened me to give of my best to the undertaking, and at the same time was never of so intrusive a character as to have offended the most sensitive believer in Emersonian self-reliance. Though the matter is most personal, I cannot resist referring here to the genesis of the book. My sponsors in baptism, who gave me the name of Emerson, are of course initially responsible. And who shall measure the influence of the copy of Representative Men, given to me on my first Christmas by another name-father and another participant in the christening above-mentioned, the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant? The extended extracts from the Journals and the Works in what follows are printed with the generous permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers of Emerson's writings. University of Minnesota, August, 1922. |