Page:The writings of Henry David Thoreau, v1.djvu/23

Rh re-formed his appreciation. But, after all, no judgment of an author is quite so interesting as that which the author himself passes, even though one has to correct this estimate by other observations on the author and his work. At any rate, Thoreau shall be the last here to comment on this book-: —

"I thought that one peculiarity of my 'Week' was its hypæthral character, to use an epithet applied to those Egyptian temples which are open to the heavens above, under the ether. I thought that it had little of the atmosphere of the house about it, but it might have been written wholly, as in fact it was to a great extent, out of doors. It was only at a late period in writing it, as it happened, that I used any phrases implying that I lived in a house or led a domestic life. I trust it does not smell so much of the study and library, even of the poet's attic, as of the fields and woods, that it is a hypæthral or unroofed book, lying open under the ether, and permeated by it, open to all weathers, not easy to be kept on a shelf."