Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/364

328 this trait in Thoreau "a loving precision of touch." Allied with humor, force, and sincerity, as literary attributes, was a scholarship at once unique and pervasive, adapted to a vast array of themes. His learning was deep rather than broad, but it was noted for aptness. From boyhood he read with care, always supplied with "fact-books." While classics of all literatures were familiar to him, and modern authors found, in comparison, scanty favor, yet it is a mistake to assume that he was not acquainted with current writers. His references show knowledge of Wordsworth, Tennyson, Landor, Darwin, Dickens, De Quincey, Longfellow and others. He recommends Coventry Patmore's poem, "The Angel in the House," then attracting current attention in England. He found Ruskin, whom he read extensively, "good and encouraging though not without crudeness and bigotry." His rare knowledge of the greater and lesser poets of Rome, Greece and early England, his intimacy with the naturalists and travelers of authority, merited the tribute of George William Curtis,—"he added to knowledge of nature the wisdom of the most ancient times and the best literatures." Many of his thoughts on reading are as pertinent and quotable as those of Emerson,—"Read the best