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be added, of a sort of moral-Oriental, or Puritan Pagan temperament.
With a literary feeling even stronger than his feeling for nature,--the proof of this being that he could not, like many men, enjoy nature in silence,--he put his observations always on the level of literature, while
Mr. Burroughs, for instance, remains more upon the level of journalism.
It is to be doubted whether any author under such circumstances would have been received favorably in
England; just as the poems of
Emily Dickinson, which have shafts of profound scrutiny that often suggest
Thoreau, had an extraordinary success at home, but fell hopelessly dead in
England, so that the second volume was never even published.
Lowell speaks of Thoreau as “indolent” ; but this is, as has been said, like speaking of the indolence of a self-registering thermometer.
Lowell objects to him as pursuing “a seclusion that keeps him in the public eye” ; whereas it was the public eye which sought him; it was almost as hard to persuade him to lecture (crede experto) as it was to get an audience for him when he had consented.
He never proclaimed the intrinsic superiority of the wilderness, as has been charged, but pointed out better than any one else has done its undesirableness as a residence, ranking it only as “a resource and ”
