THOREAU. 145 



him. He lacked that generosity of &quot; communication &quot; which 

 Johnson admired in Burke. De Quincy tells us that 

 Wordsworth was impatient when any one else spoke of 

 mountains, as if he had a peculiar property in them. And 

 we can readily understand why it should be so ; no one is 

 satisfied with another s appreciation of his mistress. But 

 Thoreau seems to have prized a lofty way of thinking (often 

 we should be inclined to call it a remote one) not so much 

 because it was good in itself as because he wished few to 

 share it with him. It seems now and then as if he did not 

 seek to lure others up &quot; above our lower region of turmoil,&quot; 

 but to leave his own name cut on the mountain peak as the 

 first climber. This itch of originality infects his thought 

 and style. To be misty is not to be mystic. He turns 

 commonplaces end for end, and fancies it makes something 

 new of them. As we walk down Park Street, our eye is 

 caught by Dr. Windship s dumb-bells, one of which bears 

 an inscription testifying that it is the heaviest ever put up 

 at arm s length by any athlete ; and in reading Mr. 

 Thoreau s books we cannot help feeling as if he sometimes 

 invited our attention to a particular sophism or paradox, 

 as the biggest yet maintained by any single writer. He 

 seeks, at all risks, for perversity of thought, and revives the 

 age of concetti while he fancies himself going back to a pre- 

 classical nature. &quot; A day,&quot; he says, &quot; passed in the society 

 of those Greek sages, such as described in the Banquet of 

 Xenophon, would not be comparable with the dry wit of 

 decayed cranberry-vines and the fresh Attic salt of the 

 moss-beds.&quot; It is not so much the True that he loves as the 

 Out-of-the-way. As the Brazen Age shows itself in other 

 men by exaggeration of phrase, so in him by extravagance 

 of statement. He wishes always to trump your suit and to 

 ruff when you least expect it. Do you love Nature because 

 she is beautiful 1 He will find a better argument in her 

 ugliness. Are you tired of the artificial man 1 ? He 

 instantly dresses you up an ideal in a Penobscot Indian, 

 and attributes to this creature of his otherwise-mindedness 

 as peculiarities things that are common to all woodsmen, 



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