of the extraordinary precision and vigor of Emerson’s single strokes.
The “Dial” expired after four years of precarious life. Perhaps those who best recognized its power were not those who created it, and who, as parents, recognized with anxious eyes the defects of their child, — but rather those who, like myself, came too late upon the scene to do more than have some boyish copy of verses judiciously rejected from the last numbers, and who yet drew from the earlier volumes a real and permanent impulse. When one considers the part since played in American literature and life by those whose youthful enthusiasm created this periodical, it is needless to say that their words kindled much life in the hearts of those still younger. It is a sufficient proof of the advantage of this potent influence that it worked itself clear, at last; and those who were reared on the “Dial” felt the impulse of its thought without borrowing its alleged vagueness. Nor was this influence limited to America, for on visiting England in 1846 Margaret Fuller had the pleasure of writing to Emerson, “On my first arrival I encountered at Liverpool and Manchester a set of devout readers of the ‘Dial,’ and still more of Emerson.”[1]
- ↑ Fuller MSS. i, 209.
