without being a cynic.

James Russell Lowell (as he himself tells us) was sent to Concord to
rusticate while he was at college, and conceived at that time an
aversion for Thoreau which never left him. In his celebrated "Fable for
Critics" he satirized him as an imitator of Emerson, and so plainly that
there was no mistaking the portrait. This could not have troubled
Thoreau much for he was a perfect stoic, and cared little for the
opinions of others so long as he satisfied his own conscience. Emerson,
however, felt it keenly, for it was equally a reflection on his friend
and his own sagacity. In his last volume of poems Lowell also speaks of
Emerson in a way which indicates rather a diminished respect for him.

It is true that Thoreau imitated Emerson's manner of speech a good
deal--and it was often difficult to avoid doing this while in Emerson's
company--but Lowell also in his younger days affected a grave and
reserved demeanor which he afterwards became tired of and threw entirely
aside. About the time of which we speak Emerson complained that he saw
too little of Thoreau, and was afraid that he avoided him. The man was
sufficiently original. He did not pretend to be a poet, and his prose
writing is not at all like Emerson. In point of style it is purer and
more classic than either Emerson's or Lowell's; and these two lines of
his,

"In the good then who can trust.
Only the wise are just,"

certainly deserve to be set up somewhere in letters of gold.

He had a strong dislike of matrimony. Once while walking across a field