Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/13

2 citizenship have not been rightly apprehended by him. Such is the common charge against Thoreau, who, as Professor Nichol had explained to us in his "American Literature," was "lethargic, self-complacently defiant, and too nearly a stoico-epicurean adiaphorist to discompose himself in party or even in national strifes." Thoreau was a "stoico-epicurean adiaphorist," or nearly so: such is the critical verdict on him. These are hard words (in more senses than one), and before acquiescing in them, it may be well to test their accuracy by reference to the life and writings of him to whom they are applied. On what social subjects was Thoreau an indifferentist, and on what was he not so? A study of his "Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers" will perhaps show him in a new light to those who know him only by Walden or the Diaries.

The facts of Thoreau's life can here be only summarized. He was born at Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1817, being the third child of a worthy but unimaginative pencil-maker, of French extraction, whose father had emigrated from the Channel Islands to New England in 1773. Henry Thoreau was educated at Harvard University, where, though known as a sound classical scholar, he was looked upon by his class-mates as dull, phlegmatic, and unimpressionable. But after his return to Concord in 1838, there was a remarkable awakening of the energies that lay dormant and unsuspected in his mind, the immediate cause of this change being the quickening influence of Emerson and the rise of the transcendental school of thought. The presence of Emerson at Concord (he settled there in 1834) had the effect of transforming that quiet village into the centre