Private skirmishes ...

... with the Universal Genius: Hints, fragments & scintillations. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Emerson’s colossal self-confidence, the glossy carapace of his self-importance, looms large on every page: his egotism is Jovian and unignorable. How he would have taken to the internet! He would have been splendidly at home today, a blogger extraordinaire, oracle to the nation if not to humankind at large, nay, to the universe itself—a hortatory, haranguing, hectoring presence, seductive and repellent in well-nigh equal measure.