Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/149



Page 5, note 1. Thoreau writes in his journal: “We linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they are half forgotten ere we acquire the faculty of expressing them.” Page 9, note 1. Lowell never had any but the slightest acquaintance with Thoreau. During his rustication in Concord he had probably been prejudiced by village criticism of Thoreau's independent ways. Lowell also was distinctly a “society man” and would have been unsympathetic with this rustic oddity. In the Fable for Critics he ridicules Thoreau as an imitator. Years later, in his essay, he treats with a superior levity, through more than half of his pages, this brave and serious man. In two or three pages at the end he gives praise which should make all the previous criticism dust in the balance. Unhappily the neutral public will be prepossessed by the wit and have formed their opinions on the first portion. But Lowell's Essay, like Stevenson's, written on imperfect knowledge, remains, and has influenced many people. There is good reason to think that his opinion in later years changed.

But Lowell must be credited with this high