and unimportant when they are set beside his surprising
merits. I had written another paper full of gratitude for
the help that had been given me in my life, full of
enthusiasm for the intrinsic merit of the poems, and
conceived in the noisiest extreme of youthful eloquence. The
present study was a rifacimento. From it, with the design
already mentioned, and in a fit of horror at my old excess,
the big words and emphatic passages were ruthlessly excised.
But this sort of prudence is frequently its own punishment;
along with the exaggeration, some of the truth is sacrificed;
and the result is cold, constrained, and grudging. In short,
I might almost everywhere have spoken more strongly than I
did.

THOREAU. - Here is an admirable instance of the "point of
view" forced throughout, and of too earnest reflection on
imperfect facts. Upon me this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic
Thoreau had exercised a great charm. I have scarce written
ten sentences since I was introduced to him, but his
influence might be somewhere detected by a close observer.
Still it was as a writer that I had made his acquaintance; I
took him on his own explicit terms; and when I learned
details of his life, they were, by the nature of the case and
my own PARTI-PRIS, read even with a certain violence in terms
of his writings. There could scarce be a perversion more
justifiable than that; yet it was still a perversion. The
study indeed, raised so much ire in the breast of Dr. Japp
(H. A. Page), Thoreau's sincere and learned disciple, that
had either of us been men, I please myself with thinking, of
less temper and justice, the difference might have made us