Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/101

 J3T.25.] TO RICHARD F. FULLER. 11

student, having done there a bold reading in English poetry, even to some portions or the whole of Davenant s &amp;lt; Gondibert. &quot; This, Tho- reau does not mention in his letter, but it was one of the things that attracted Emerson s no tice, since he also had the same taste for the Elizabethan and Jacobean English poets. An English youth, Henry Headley, pupil of Dr. Parr, .and graduate of Oxford in 1786, had pre ceded Thoreau in this study of poets that had become obsolete ; and it was perhaps Headley s volume, &quot; Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry, with Remarks by the late Henry Head- ley,&quot; published long after his death, 1 that served Thoreau as a guide to Quarles and the Fletch ers, Daniel, Drummond, Dray ton, Habington, and Raleigh, poets that few Americans had heard of in 1833.

TO RICHARD F. FULLER (AT CAMBRIDGE).

CONCORD, April 2, 1843.

DEAR RICHARD, I was glad to receive a letter from you so bright and cheery. You speak of not having made any conquests with your own spear or quill as yet ; but if you are tempering your spear-head during these days,

1 Headley died at the age of twenty-three, in 1788. His posthumous book was edited in 1810 by Rev. Henry Kett, and published in London by John Sharp.