He said: "The great Hindoo,
Hatim Tayi, was nothing by the side of such hospitality as hers. Hatim
Tayi would soon lose his reputation." His appreciation of the poems of
H. H. was often expressed. He made her the keynote of a talk one day
upon the poetry of women. The poems entitled "Joy," "Thought,"
"Ariadne," he liked especially. Of Mrs. Hemans he found many poems
which still survive, and he believed must always live.
Matthew Arnold was one of the minds and men to whom he constantly
reverted with pleasure. Every traveler was asked for the last news of
him; and when an English professor connected with the same university
as Arnold, whom Emerson had been invited to meet, was asked the
inevitable question, and found to know nothing, Emerson turned away
from him, and lost all interest in his conversation. A few days
afterward some one was heard to say, "Mr. Emerson, how did you like
Professor ----?"
"Let me see," he replied; "is not he the man who was at the same
university with Matthew Arnold, and who could tell us nothing of him?"
"How about Matthew Arnold?" he said to B---- on his return from
England.
"I did not see him," was the somewhat cool reply.
"Yes! but he is one of the men one wishes not to lose sight of," said
Emerson.
"Arnold has written a few good essays," rejoined the other, "but his
talk about Homer is all nonsense."
"No, no, no!" said Emerson; "it is good, every word of it!"
When the lecture on Brook Farm really came, it was full of wit and
charm, as well as of the truth he so seriously desired to convey.
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