Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/369

Rh which contains so many clever half-truths and has, unwittingly, caused much injustice to the memory of Thoreau; after his caustic witticisms, Lowell's sense of critical justice comes to redeem his omissions and he says of Thoreau's writings,—"His better style as a writer is in keeping with the simplicity and purity of his life He had caught his English at its living source, among the poets and prose-writers of its best days; his literature was extensive and recondite; his quotations are always nuggets of the purest ore; there are sentences of his as perfect as anything in the language, and thoughts as clearly crystallized; his images and metaphors are always fresh from the soil." Sure it is, that few American authors, upon such simple themes often called commonplace or abstract, can equal the romantic and brilliant word-sketches, the detailed yet interesting facts in nature and life, and the eloquent, vital urgence upon themes of deep import, which are so fully exampled in Thoreau's style.

In his writings, as in his life, he must be regarded from two view-points. He lived a secluded life yet he was en rapport with the best intellectuality and ideals of his age. His was not the stellar existence so often pictured, nor yet did he urge any to adopt the restricted program of activity, which was his