[285]
nullius addicta jurare in verba magistri. This showed not merely a strong nature — for strength alone does not secure independence — but a rich and wise one.
In regard to unintelligibleness, she also shared the charge with others; and I do not know that she especially deserved it. She may be confused, rambling, sometimes high-flown, but she offers no paradoxes so startling as some of Emerson's, and is incomparably smoother and clearer than Alcott.
Nor is her obscurity ever wanton or whimsical, but is rather of that kind which, as Coleridge has said, is a compliment to the reader.
Note also that she is merciful to her public, and if she has a thought with which she struggles so that she can hardly get it into every day words, it is to be found in her letters, not in her publications.
Such a statement as this, for instance, she would hardly have put into print; because it is not worked out so clearly that he who runs may read.
Yet it is full of suggestion.
She is speaking of what she calls “The Third thought.”
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Hougton, Mifflin and Company, 1890.
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