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[169] Emerson. once went without the second volume of a book because his aunt had convinced him that his mother could not afford to pay six cents upon it at the Circulating Library. At college he was younger than most of his classmates, but was apt to be successful in competition for the few literary prizes then offered by the college. His classmate Josiah Quincy, who gained the first prize in one case where Emerson got the second, on an ethical subject, remarked in his diary that “the dissertation on ethics was dull and dry;” and as he also regarded Emerson's Class Day poem as “rather poor,” it is worth while to remember that there is no known criticism quite so merciless as that of college boys upon one another. It was with these credentials, at any rate, that Emerson went forth into the world in 1821 and became himself a clergyman. Ten years later he had retired from the pulpit and was on his way to Europe, where he stayed nearly a year. It was during this visit that he made the acquaintance of Landor and Wordsworth, as described in English traits. He also went to Craigenputtock to see Carlyle, who long afterwards, talking
Boston, New York and Chicago. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903.
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