of the three. To hear a strain of music to see a beautiful
woman, a river, a great city, or a starry night, is to make a

man despair of his Lilliputian arts in language. Now, to
gain that emphasis which seems denied to us by the very

nature of the medium, the proper method of literature is by
selection, which is a kind of negativeexaggeration. It is

the right of the literary artist, as Thoreau was on the point
of seeing, to leave out whatever does not suit his purpose.

Thus we extract the pure gold; and thus the well-written
story of a noble life becomes, by its very omissions, more

thrilling to the reader. But to go beyond this, like
Thoreau, and to exaggerate directly, is to leave the saner

classical tradition, and to put the reader on his guard. And
when you write the whole for the half, you do not express

your thought more forcibly, but only express a different
thought which is not yours.

Thoreau's true subject was the pursuit of self-improvement
combined with an unfriendly criticism of life as it goes on

in our societies; it is there that he best displays the
freshness and surprising trenchancy of his intellect; it is

there that his style becomes plain and vigorous, and
therefore, according to his own formula, ornamental. Yet he

did not care to follow this vein singly, but must drop into
it by the way in books of a different purport. WALDEN, OR

LIFE IN THE WOODS, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK
RIVERS, THE MAINE WOODS, - such are the titles he affects.

He was probably reminded by his delicatecritical perception
that the true business of literature is with narrative; in

reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its
advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept

and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with
an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly

complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in
literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it

cannot tell its whole story to the reader. Hence the effect
of anecdote on simple minds; and hence good biographies and

works of high, imaginative art, are not only far more
entertaining, but far more edifying, than books of theory or

precept. Now Thoreau could not clothe his opinions in the
garment of art, for that was not his talent; but he sought to

gain the same elbow-room for himself, and to afford a similar
relief to his readers, by mingling his thoughts with a record

of experience.
Again, he was a lover of nature. The quality which we should

call mystery in a painting, and which belongs so particularly
to the aspect of the external world and to its influence upon

our feelings, was one which he was never weary of attempting
to reproduce in his books. The seemingsignificance of

nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the
senses, and the thrilling response which they waken in the

mind of man, continued to surprise and stimulate his spirits.
It appeared to him, I think, that if we could only write near

enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but
ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct

upon our pages; and that, if it were once thus captured and
expressed, a new and instructive relation might appear

between men's thoughts and the phenomena of nature. This was
the eagle that he pursued all his life long, like a schoolboy

with a butterfly net. Hear him to a friend: "Let me suggest
a theme for you - to state to yourself precisely and

completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for
you, returning to this essay again and again until you are

satisfied that all that was important in your experience is
in it. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the

first dozen times you try, but at 'em again; especially when,
after a sufficient pause you suspect that you are touching

the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows
there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that

the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make
it short." Such was the method, not consistent for a man

whose meanings were to "drop from him as a stone falls to the
ground." Perhaps the most successful work that Thoreau ever

accomplished in this direction is to be found in the passages
relating to fish in the WEEK. These are remarkable for a

vivid truth of impression and a happy suitability of
language, not frequently surpassed.

Whatever Thoreau tried to do was tried in fair, square prose,
with sentences solidly built, and no help from bastard

rhythms. Moreover, there is a progression - I cannot call it
a progress - in his work towards a more and more strictly

prosaic level, until at last he sinks into the bathos of the
prosy. Emerson mentions having once remarked to Thoreau:

"Who would not like to write something which all can read,
like ROBINSON CRUSOE? and who does not see with regret that

his page is not solid with a right materialistic treatment
which delights everybody?" I must say in passing that it is

not the right materialistic treatment which delights the
world in ROBINSON, but the romantic and philosophic interest

of the fable. The same treatment does quite the reverse of
delighting us when it is applied, in COLONEL JACK, to the

management of a plantation. But I cannot help suspecting
Thoreau to have been influenced either by this identical

remark or by some other closely similar in meaning. He began
to fall more and more into a detailed materialistic

treatment; he went into the business doggedly, as one who
should make a guide-book; he not only chronicled what had

been important in his own experience, but whatever might have
been important in the experience of anybody else; not only

what had affected him, but all that he saw or heard. His
ardour had grown less, or perhaps it was inconsistent with a

right materialistic treatment to display such emotions as he
felt; and, to complete the eventful change, he chose, from a

sense of moral dignity, to gut these later works of the
saving quality of humour. He was not one of those authors

who have learned, in his own words, "to leave out their
dulness." He inflicts his full quantity upon the reader in

such books as CAPE COD, or THE YANKEE IN CANADA. Of the
latter he confessed that he had not managed to get much of

himself into it. Heaven knows he had not, nor yet much of
Canada, we may hope. "Nothing," he says somewhere, "can

shock a brave man but dulness." Well, there are few spots
more shocking to the brave than the pages of YANKEE IN

CANADA.
There are but three books of his that will be read with much

pleasure: the WEEK, WALDEN, and the collected letters. As to
his poetry, Emerson's word shall suffice for us, it is so

accurate and so prettily said: "The thyme and majoram are not
yet honey." In this, as in his prose, he relied greatly on

the goodwill of the reader, and wrote throughout in faith.
It was an exercise of faith to suppose that many would

understand the sense of his best work, or that any could be
exhilarated by the dreary chronicling of his worst. "But,"

as he says, "the gods do not hear any rude or discordant
sound, as we learn from the echo; and I know that the nature

towards which I launch these sounds is so rich that it will
modulate anew and wonderfully improve my rudest strain."

IV.
"What means the fact," he cries, "that a soul which has lost

all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul
such an infinite confidence in it, even while it is

expressing its despair?" The question is an echo and an
illustration of the words last quoted; and it forms the key-

note of his thoughts on friendship. No one else, to my
knowledge, has spoken in so high and just a spirit of the

kindly relations; and I doubt whether it be a drawback that
these lessons should come from one in many ways so unfitted

to be a teacher in this branch. The very coldness and egoism
of his own intercourse gave him a clearer insight into the

intellectual basis of our warm, mutual tolerations; and
testimony to their worth comes with added force from one who