Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/99

 8S A nti- Slavery and Reform Papers.

rhetoric, who can write so well ? He wrote iu prison, not a History of the World_, like Raleigh, but au American book which I think will live longer than that.

I do not know of suck words, uttered under suck cir- cumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or Euglisli or any history. What a variety of themes he touched on in that short space ! There are words in that letter to his wife_, respecting the education of his daugkters_, which deserve to be framed and hung over every mantel-piece in the land. Compare this earnest wisdom witk that of Poor Richard.

The death of Irving, whick at any otker time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved.

I shall have to read of it in tke biography of authors.

Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics, think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric ; but they are egregiously mis- taken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them. This unlettered man's speaking and writing are standard English. Some words and phrases deemed vulgarisms and Americanisms before, he has made standard Ameri- can ; such as " It will paij.^' It suggests that the one great rule of composition — and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this — is, to speak the truth. This first, this second, this third ; pebbles in your moutk or not. This demands earnestness and manhood chiefly.

We seem to have forgotten that the expression, a liberal education, originally meant among the Romans