Chapter III: The Writer

Thoreau was a painstaking student of the art of expression, but never for its own sake, always as a means to an end. One may conclude that it was not mere author’s vanity which led him to resent editorial tampering with his manuscript. He had good reasons for believing that neither Curtis of ‘Putnam’s’ nor Lowell of ‘The Atlantic’ could change his text to advantage. The question was not one of mere nicety of phrase, but of that subtile quality of style due to the inextricable interweaving of the thought and the language in which the thought is expressed.

An out-of-doors writer, Thoreau’s power to produce was in direct ratio of his intercourse with Nature. If shut up in the house he could not write at all. When he walked he stored up literary virtue. He believed that nothing was so good for the man of letters as work with the hands. It cleared the style of ‘palaver and sentimentality.’

The fresh wild beauty of Thoreau’s style (when he is at his best) may be praised without reserve. There is no danger of exaggerating its perfect novelty and attractiveness; the danger is that we may take the hint of these qualities for the reality. Thoreau could be commonplace when he chose.