SOURCE: “‘What poems are many private lives’: Emerson Writing the American Plutarch,” in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 27, No. 1, Spring, 1994, pp. 103-29.

In the following essay, Bosco examines Emerson's views on the link between biography and history in the context of his two biographical works, Representative Men and Lectures and Biographical Sketches.

The world looks poor & mean so long as I think only of its great men; most of them of spotted reputation. But when I remember how many obscure persons I myself have seen possessing gifts that excited wonder, speculation, & delight in me … when I consider the absolute boundlessness of our capacity … [when] I recollect the charms of certain women, what poems are many private lives, each of which can fill our eye if we so will … then I feel the riches of my inheritance in being set down in this world gifted with organs of...