In fact, Emerson has never in his life felt the normal appeal of any
painting, or any sculpture, or any architecture, or any music. These
things, of which he does not know the meaning in real life, he yet uses,
and uses constantly, as symbols to convey ethical truths. The result is
that his books are full of blind places, like the notes which will not
strike on a sick piano.

It is interesting to find that the one art of which Emerson did have a
direct understanding, the art of poetry, gave him some insight into the
relation of the artist to his vehicle. In his essay on Shakespeare there
is a full recognition of the debt of Shakespeare to his times. This
essay is filled with the historic sense. We ought not to accuse Emerson
because he lacked appreciation of the fine arts, but rather admire the
truly Goethean spirit in which he insisted upon the reality of arts of
which he had no understanding. This is the same spirit which led him to
insist on the value of the Eastern poets. Perhaps there exist a few
scholars who can tell us how far Emerson understood or misunderstood
Saadi and Firdusi and the Koran. But we need not be disturbed for his
learning. It is enough that he makes us recognize that these men were
men too, and that their writings mean something not unknowable to us.
The East added nothing to Emerson, but gave him a few trappings of
speech. The whole of his mysticism is to be found in Nature, written
before he knew the sages of the Orient, and it is not improbable that
there is some real connection between his own mysticism and the
mysticism of the Eastern poets.

Emerson's criticism on men and books is like the test of a great chemist
who seeks one or two elements. He burns a bit of the stuff in his
incandescent light, shows the lines of it in his spectrum, and there an
end.