HENRY THOREAU
his study, day by day, would tell his children his joyful surprise in the merit and the beauty which he found everywhere in those daily chronicles of Nature and of thought.
The virtue of Thoreau has always
commanded respect; of his knowledge of
Natural History, Lowell alone, as far as
I know, has spoken slightingly. But his
views of life, — when these are referred
to, how often it is with a superior smile.
True the fault lies partly with Thoreau,
that his Scotch pugnacity sometimes
betrayed him into rhetorical over-statement
and he would not stoop to qualify:
thought a maximum dose of bitter-tonic,
in the condition of society in his day,
would do it no harm. But let us also
bethink ourselves before we give final
judgment. Might not modesty whisper
that some of us, the critics, live on a
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