Chapter VI: Early Essays in Authorship

It has been a common delusion, not yet quite faded away, that the chief Transcendentalists were but echoes of each other,--that Emerson imitated Carlyle, Thoreau and Alcott imitated Emerson, and so on to the end of the chapter. No doubt that the atmosphere of each of these men affected the others, nor that they shared a common impulse communicated by what Matthew Arnold likes to call the _Zeitgeist_,--the ever-felt spirit of the time. In the most admirable of the group, who is called by preëminence "the Sage of Concord,"--the poet Emerson,--there has been an out-breathing inspiration as profound as that of the _Zeitgeist_ himself; so that even Hawthorne, the least susceptible of men, found himself affected as he says, "after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like Emerson's." But, in fact, Thoreau brought to his intellectual tasks an originality as marked as Emerson's, if not so brilliant and star-like--a patience far greater than his, and a proud independence that makes him the most solitary of modern thinkers. I have been struck by these qualities in reading his yet unknown first essays in authorship, the juvenile papers he wrote while in college, from the age of seventeen to that of twenty, before Emerson had published anything except his first little volume, "Nature," and while Thoreau, like other young men, was reading Johnson and Goldsmith, Addison and the earlier English classics, from Milton backward to Chaucer. Let me therefore quote from these papers, carefully preserved by him, with their dates, and sometimes with the marks of the rhetorical professor on their margins. Along with these may be cited some of his earlier verses, in which a sentiment more purely human and almost amatory appears, than in the later and colder, if higher flights of his song.

The earliest writings of Thoreau, placed in my hands by his literary executor, Mr. Harrison Blake of Worcester, are the first of his Cambridge essays, technically called "themes" and "forensics." These began several years before his daily journals were kept, namely, in 1834; and it is curious that one of them, dated January 17, 1835, but written in 1834, recommends "keeping a private journal or record of our thoughts, feelings, studies, and daily experience." This is precisely what Thoreau did from 1837 till his death; and it may be interesting to see what reasons the boy of seventeen advanced for the practice. He says:--

"As those pieces which the painter sketches for his own
amusement, in his leisure hours, are often superior to
his most elaborate productions, so it is that ideas often
suggest themselves to us spontaneously, as it were, far
surpassing in beauty those which arise in the mind upon
applying ourselves to any particular subject. Hence,
could a machine be invented which would instantaneously
arrange upon paper each idea as it occurs to us, without
any exertion on our part, how extremely useful would it be
considered! The relation between this and the practice of
keeping a journal is obvious.... If each one would employ
a certain portion of each day in looking back upon the
time which has passed, and in writing down his thoughts
and feelings, in reckoning up his daily gains, that he may
be able to detect whatever false coins may have crept into
his coffers, and, as it were, in settling accounts with
his mind,--not only would his daily experience be greatly
increased, since his feelings and ideas would thus be more
clearly defined,--but he would be ready to turn over a
new leaf (having carefully perused the preceding one) and
would not continue to glance carelessly over the same page,
without being able to distinguish it from a new one."

This is ingenious, quaint, and mercantile, bespeaking the hereditary bent of his family to trade and orderly accounts; but what follows in the same essay is more to the purpose, as striking the key-note of Thoreau's whole after-life. He adds:--

"Most of us are apt to neglect the study of our own
characters, thoughts, and feelings, and, for the purpose
of forming our own minds, look to others, _who should
merely be considered as different editions of the same
great work_. To be sure, it would be well for us to examine
the various copies, that we might detect any errors; yet
it would be foolish for one _to borrow a work which he
possessed himself, but had not perused_."

The earliest record of the day's observations which I find is dated a few months later than this (April 20, 1835), when Henry Thoreau was not quite eighteen, and relates to the beauties of nature. The first passage describes a Sunday prospect from the garret window of his father's house, (afterwards the residence of Mr. William Munroe, the benefactor of the Concord Library), on the main street of the village. He writes:--

"'Twas always my delight to monopolize the little Gothic
window which overlooked the kitchen-garden, particularly of
a Sabbath afternoon; when all around was quiet, and Nature
herself was taking her afternoon nap,--when the last peal
of the bell in the neighboring steeple,

'Swinging slow with sullen roar,'

had 'left the vale to _solitude_ and _me_,' and the very
air scarcely dared breathe, lest it should disturb the
universal calm. Then did I use, with eyes upturned, to gaze
upon the clouds, and, allowing my imagination to wander,
search for flaws in their rich drapery, that I might get
a peep at that world beyond, which they seem intended to
veil from our view. Now is my attention engaged by a truant
hawk, as, like a messenger from those ethereal regions,
he issues from the bosom of a cloud, and, at first a mere
speck in the distance, comes circling onward, exploring
every seeming creek, and rounding every jutting precipice.
And now, his mission ended, what can be more majestic than
his stately flight, as he wheels around some towering pine,
enveloped in a cloud of smaller birds that have united to
expel him from their premises."

The second passage, under the same date, seems to describe earlier and repeated visits, made by his elder brother John and himself, to a hill which was always a favorite resort of Thoreau's, Fairhaven Cliffs, overlooking the river-bay, known as "Fairhaven," a mile or two up the river from Concord village toward Sudbury:--

"In the freshness of the dawn my brother and I were ever
ready to enjoy a stroll to a certain cliff, distant a
mile or more, where we were wont to climb to the highest
peak, and seating ourselves on some rocky platform, catch
the first ray of the morning sun, as it gleamed upon the
smooth, still river, wandering in sullen silence far below.
The approach to the precipice is by no means calculated
to prepare one for the glorious _dénouement_ at hand.
After following for some time a delightful path that winds
through the woods, occasionally crossing a rippling brook,
and not forgetting to visit a sylvan dell, whose solitude
is made audible by the unwearied tinkling of a crystal
spring,--you suddenly emerge from the trees upon a flat
and mossy rock, which forms the summit of a beetling crag.
The feelings which come over one on first beholding this
freak of nature are indescribable. The giddy height, the
iron-bound rock, the boundless horizon open around, and the
beautiful river at your feet, with its green and sloping
banks, fringed with trees and shrubs of every description,
are calculated to excite in the beholder emotions of no
common occurrence,--to inspire him with noble and sublime
emotions. The eye wanders over the broad and seemingly
compact surface of the slumbering forest on the opposite
side of the stream, and catches an occasional glimpse of a
little farm-house, 'resting in a green hollow, and lapped
in the bosom of plenty;' while a gentle swell of the river,
a rustic, and fortunately rather old-looking bridge on the
right, with the cloudlike Wachusett in the distance, give
a finish and beauty to the landscape, that is rarely to be
met with even in our own fair land. This interesting spot,
if we may believe tradition, was the favorite haunt of the
red man, before the axe of his pale-faced visitor had laid
low its loftier honors, or his 'strong water' had wasted
the energies of the race."

Here we have a touch of fine writing, natural in a boy who had read Irving and Goldsmith, and exaggerating a little the dimensions of the rocks and rills of which he wrote. But how smooth the flow of description, how well-placed the words, how sure and keen the eye of the young observer! To this mount of vision did Thoreau and his friends constantly resort in after years, and it was on the plateau beneath that Mr. Alcott, in 1843, was about to cut down the woods and build his Paradise, when a less inviting fate, as he thought, beckoned his English friend Lane and himself to "Fruitlands," in the distant town of Harvard. At some time after this, perhaps while Thoreau was encamped at Walden with his books and his flute, Mr. Emerson sent him the following note, which gives us now a glimpse into that Arcadia:--

"Will you not come up to the Cliff this P. M., at any
hour convenient to you, where our ladies will be greatly
gratified to see you? and the more, they say, if you will
bring your flute for the echo's sake, though now the wind
blows.

"R. W. E.

"Monday, 1 o'clock P. M."

It does not appear that Thoreau wrote verses at this time, though he was a great reader of the best poetry,--of Milton very early, and with constant admiration and quotation. Thus, in a college essay of 1835, on "Simplicity of Style," he has this passage concerning the Bible and Milton:--

"The most sublime and noblest precepts may be conveyed in
a plain and simple strain. The Scriptures afford abundant
proof of this. What images can be more natural, what
sentiments of greater weight and at the same time more
noble and exalted than those with which they abound? They
possess no local or relative ornament which may be lost in
a translation; clothed in whatever dress, they still retain
their peculiar beauties. Here is simplicity itself. Every
one allows this, every one admires it, yet how few attain
to it! The union of wisdom and simplicity is plainly hinted
at in the following lines of Milton:--

"Suspicion sleeps
At Wisdom's gate, and to _Simplicity_
Resigns her charge.'"

Early in 1837 Thoreau wrote an elaborate paper, though of no great length, on Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," with many quotations, in course of which he said:--

"These poems place Milton in an entirely new and extremely
pleasing light to the reader, who was previously familiar
with him as the author of 'Paradise Lost' alone. If before
he venerated, he may now admire and love him. The immortal
Milton seems for a space to have put on mortality,--to
have snatched a moment from the weightier cares of Heaven
and Hell, to wander for a while among the sons of men....
I have dwelt upon the poet's beauties and not so much as
glanced at his blemishes. A pleasing image, or a fine
sentiment loses none of its charms, though Burton, or
Beaumont and Fletcher, or Marlowe, or Sir Walter Raleigh,
may have written something very similar,--or even in
another connection, may have used the identical word, whose
aptness we so much admire. That always appeared to me a
contemptible kind of criticism which, deliberately and in
cold blood, can dissect the sublimest passage, and take
pleasure in the detection of slight verbal incongruities;
when applied to Milton, it is little better than sacrilege."

The moral view taken by the young collegian in these essays is quite as interesting as the literary opinions, or the ease of his style. In September, 1835, discussing punishments, he says:--

"Certainty is more effectual than severity of punishment.
No man will deliberately cut his own fingers. Some have
asked, 'Cannot reward be substituted for punishment?
Is hope a less powerful incentive to action than fear?
When a political pharmacopoeia has the command of both
ingredients, wherefore employ the bitter instead of the
sweet?' This reasoning is absurd. Does a man deserve to
be rewarded for refraining from murder? Is the greatest
virtue merely negative? or does it rather consist in the
performance of a thousand every-day duties, hidden from the
eye of the world?"

In an essay on the effect of story-telling, written in 1836, he says:--

"The story of the world never ceases to interest. The child
enchanted by the melodies of Mother Goose, the scholar
pondering 'the tale of Troy divine,' and the historian
breathing the atmosphere of past ages,--all manifest the
same passion, are alike the creatures of curiosity. The
same passion for the novel (somewhat modified, to be
sure), that is manifested in our early days, leads us, in
after-life, when the sprightliness and credulity of youth
have given way to the reserve and skepticism of manhood,
to the more serious, though scarcely less wonderful annals
of the world. The love of stories and of story-telling
cherishes a purity of heart, a frankness and candor of
disposition, a respect for what is generous and elevated,
a contempt for what is mean and dishonorable, and tends to
multiply merry companions and never-failing friends."

In March, 1837, in an essay on the source of our feeling of the sublime, Thoreau says:--

"The emotion excited by the sublime is the most unearthly
and god-like we mortals experience. It depends for the
peculiar strength with which it takes hold on and occupies
the mind, upon a principle which lies at the foundation
of that worship which we pay to the Creator himself.
And is fear the foundation of that worship? Is fear the
ruling principle of our religion? Is it not rather the
mother of superstition? Yes, that principle which prompts
us to pay an involuntary homage to the infinite, the
incomprehensible, the sublime, forms the very basis of our
religion. It is a principle implanted in us by our Maker, a
part of our very selves; we cannot eradicate it, we cannot
resist it; fear may be overcome, death may be despised; but
the infinite, the sublime seize upon the soul and disarm
it. We may overlook them, or rather fall short of them;
we may pass them by, but, so sure as we meet them face to
face, we yield."

Speaking of national characteristics, he says:--

"It is not a little curious to observe how man, the boasted
lord of creation, is the slave of a name, a mere sound. How
much mischief have those magical words, North, South, East,
and West caused! Could we rest satisfied with one mighty,
all-embracing West, leaving the other three cardinal points
to the Old World, methinks we should not have cause for so
much apprehension about the preservation of the Union."

(This was written in February, 1837.) Before he had reached the age of nineteen he thus declared his independence of foreign opinion, while asserting its general sway over American literature, in 1836:--

"We are, as it were, but colonies. True, we have declared
our independence, and gained our liberty, but we have
dissolved only the political bands which connected us with
Great Britain; though we have rejected her tea, she still
supplies us with food for the mind. The aspirant to fame
must breathe the atmosphere of foreign parts, and learn
to talk about things which the homebred student never
dreamed of, if he would have his talents appreciated or
his opinion regarded by his countrymen. Ours are authors
of the day, they bid fair to outlive their works; they
are too fashionable to write for posterity. True, there
are some amongst us, who can contemplate the babbling
brook, without, in imagination, polluting its waters with
a mill-wheel; but even they are prone to sing of skylarks
and nightingales perched on hedges, to the neglect of the
homely robin-redbreast and the straggling rail-fences of
their own native land."

So early did he take this position, from which he never varied.

In May, 1837, we find another note of his opening life, in an essay on Paley's "Common Reasons." He says:--

"Man does not wantonly rend the meanest tie that binds
him to his fellows; he would not stand aloof, even in his
prejudices, did not the stern demands of truth require it.
He is ready enough to float with the tide, and when he does
stem the current of popular opinion, sincerity, at least,
must nerve his arm. He has not only the burden of proof,
but that of reproof to support. We may call him a fanatic,
an enthusiast; but these are titles of honor; they signify
the devotion and entire surrendering of himself to his
cause. So far as my experience goes, man _never_ seriously
maintained an objectionable principle, doctrine, or theory;
error _never_ had a sincere defender; her disciples were
_never_ enthusiasts. This is strong language, I confess,
but I do not rashly make use of it. We are told that 'to
err is human,' but I would rather call it inhuman, if I may
use the word in this sense. I speak not of those errors
that have to do with facts and occurrences, but rather,
errors of judgment."

Here we have that bold generalization and that calm love of paradox which mark his later style. The lofty imagination was always his, too, as where this youth of nineteen says in the same essay:--

"Mystery is yet afar off,--it is but a cloud in the
distance, whose shadow, as it flits across the landscape,
gives a pleasing variety to the scene. But as the perfect
day approaches, its morning light discovers the dark and
straggling clouds, which at first skirted the horizon,
assembling as at a signal, and as they expand and multiply,
rolling slowly onward to the zenith, till, at last, the
whole heavens, if we except a faint glimmering in the East,
are overshadowed."

What a confident and flowing movement of thought is here! like the prose of Milton or Jeremy Taylor, but with a more restrained energy.

"Duty," writes the young moralist in another essay
of 1837, "is one and invariable; it requires no
impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with
impunity; so far as it exists, it is binding; and, if all
duties are binding, so as on no account to be neglected,
how can one bind stronger than another?" "None but the
highest minds can attain to moral excellence. With by far
the greater part of mankind religion is a habit; or rather
habit is religion. However paradoxical it may seem, it
appears to me that to reject _religion_ is the first step
towards moral excellence; at least no man ever attained to
the highest degree of the latter by any other road. Could
infidels live double the number of years allotted to other
mortals, they would become patterns of excellence. So, too,
of all true poets,--they would neglect the beautiful for
the true."

I suspect that Thoreau's first poems date from the year 1836-37, since the "big red journal," in which they were copied, was begun in October, 1837. The verses entitled, "To the Maiden in the East," were by no means among the first, which date from 1836 or earlier; but near these in time was that poem called "Sympathy," which was the first of his writings to appear in Mr. Emerson's "Dial." These last were addressed, we are told, to Ellen Sewall, with whom, the legend says, both Henry and John Thoreau were in love. Few of these poems show any imitation of Mr. Emerson, whose own verses at that time were mostly unpublished, though he sometimes read them in private to his friends. But like most of Thoreau's verses, these indicate a close familiarity with the Elizabethan literature, and what directly followed it, in the time of the Stuarts. The measure of "Sympathy" was that of Davenant's "Gondibert," which Thoreau, almost alone of his contemporaries, had read; the thought was above Davenant, and ranged with Raleigh and Spenser. These verses will not soon be forgotten:--

"Lately, alas! I knew a gentle boy,
Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mould,
As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,
But after manned him for her own stronghold.

"Say not that Cæsar was victorious,
With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame;
In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came.

* * * * *

"Eternity may not the chance repeat,
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
And know that bliss irrevocably gone.

"The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,
For elegy has other subject none;
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
Knell of departure from that other one.

* * * * *

"Is't then too late the damage to repair?
Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.

"If I but love that virtue which he is,
Though it be scented in the morning air,
Still shall we be dearest acquaintances,
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare."

The other poem seems to have been written later than the separation of which that one so loftily speaks; and it vibrates with a tenderer chord than sympathy. It begins,--

"Low in the eastern sky
Is set thy glancing eye,"

and then it goes on with the picture of lover-like things,--the thrushes and the flowers, until, he says,

"The trees a welcome waved,
And lakes their margin laved,
When thy free mind
To my retreat did wind."

Then comes the Persian dialect of high love:--

"It was a summer eve,--
The air did gently heave,
While yet a low-hung cloud
Thy eastern skies did shroud;
The lightning's silent gleam
Startling my drowsy dream,
_Seemed like the flash
Under thy dark eyelash_.

* * * * *

"I'll be thy Mercury,
Thou, Cytherea to me,--
_Distinguished by thy face
The earth shall learn my place_.
As near beneath thy light
Will I outwear the night,
With mingled ray
Leading the westward way."

"Let us," said Hafiz, "break up the tiresome roof of heaven into new forms,"--and with as bold a flight did this young poet pass to his "stellar duties." Then dropping to the Concord meadow again, like the tuneful lark, he chose a less celestial path

"Of gentle slope and wide,
As thou wert by my side;
I'll walk with gentle pace,
And choose the smoothest place,
And careful dip the oar,
And shun the winding shore,
And gently steer my boat
Where water-lilies float,
And cardinal flowers
Stand in their sylvan bowers."

A frivolous question has sometimes been raised whether the young Thoreau knew what love was, like the Sicilian shepherd, who found him a native of the rocks, a lion's whelp. With his poet-nature, he early gathered this experience, and passed on; praising afterwards the lion's nature in the universal god:--

"Implacable is Love,--
Foes may be bought or teased
From their hostile intent,--
But he goes unappeased
Who is on kindness bent.

"There's nothing in the world, I know,
That can escape from Love,
For every depth it goes below,
And every height above."

The Red Journal of five hundred and ninety-six long pages, in which the early verses occur, was the first collection of Thoreau's systematic diarizing. It ran on from October, 1837, to June, 1840, and was succeeded by another journal of three hundred and ninety-six pages, which was finished early in 1841. He wrote his first lecture (on Society) in March, 1838, and read it before the Concord Lyceum in the Freemasons' Hall, April 11, 1838. In the December following he wrote a memorable essay on "Sound and Silence," and in February, 1840, wrote his "first printed paper of consequence," as he says, on "Aulus Persius Flaccus." The best of the early verses seem to have been written in 1836-41. His contributions to the "Dial," which he helped edit, were taken from his journals, and ran through nearly every number from July, 1840, to April, 1844, when that magazine ceased.

For these papers he received nothing but the thanks of Emerson and the praise of a few readers. Miss Elizabeth Peabody, in February, 1843, wrote to Thoreau, that "the regular income of the 'Dial' does not pay the cost of its printing and paper; yet there are readers enough to support it, if they would only subscribe; and they will subscribe, if they are convinced that only by doing so can they secure its continuance." They did not subscribe, and in the spring of 1844 it came to an end.

In 1842 Thoreau took a walk to Wachusett, his nearest mountain, and the journal of this excursion was printed in the "Boston Miscellany" of 1843. In it occurred the verses, written at least as early as 1841, in which he addresses the mountains of his horizon, Monadnoc, Wachusett, and the Peterborough Hills of New Hampshire. These verses were for some time in the hands of Margaret Fuller, for publication in the "Dial," if she saw fit, but she returned them with the following characteristic letter,--the first addressed by her to Thoreau:--

"[CONCORD] _18th October, 1841_.

"I do not find the poem on the mountains improved by mere
compression, though it might be by fusion and glow. Its
merits to me are, a noble recognition of Nature, two or
three manly thoughts, and, in one place, a plaintive music.
The image of the ships does not please me originally. It
illustrates the greater by the less, and affects me as when
Byron compares the light on Jura to that of the dark eye of
woman. I cannot define my position here, and a large class
of readers would differ from me. As the poet goes on to--

"Unhewn primeval timber,
For knees so stiff, for masts so limber."

he seems to chase an image, already rather forced, into
conceits.

"Yet, now that I have some knowledge of the man, it seems
there is no objection I could make to his lines (with the
exception of such offenses against taste as the lines about
the humors of the eye, as to which we are already agreed),
which I would not make to himself. He is healthful, rare,
of open eye, ready hand, and noble scope. He sets no limits
to his life, nor to the invasions of nature; he is not
willfully pragmatical, cautious, ascetic, or fantastical.
But he is as yet a somewhat bare hill, which the warm gales
of Spring have not visited. Thought lies too detached,
truth is seen too much in detail; we can number and mark
the substances imbedded in the rock. Thus his verses are
startling as much as stern; the thought does not excuse its
conscious existence by letting us see its relation with
life; there is a want of fluent music. Yet what could a
companion do at present, unless to tame the guardian of the
Alps too early? Leave him at peace amid his native snows.
He is friendly; he will find the generous office that shall
educate him. It is not a soil for the citron and the rose,
but for the whortleberry, the pine, or the heather.

"The unfolding of affections, a wider and deeper human
experience, the harmonizing influences of other natures,
will mould the man and melt his verse. He will seek thought
less and find knowledge the more. I can have no advice
or criticism for a person so sincere; but, if I give my
impression of him, I will say, 'He says too constantly of
Nature, she is mine.' She is not yours till you have been
more hers. Seek the lotus, and take a draught of rapture.
Say not so confidently, all places, all occasions are
alike. This will never come true till you have found it
false.

"I do not know that I have more to say now; perhaps these
words will say nothing to you. If intercourse should
continue, perhaps a bridge may be made between two minds
so widely apart; for I apprehended you in spirit, and you
did not seem to mistake me so widely as most of your kind
do. If you should find yourself inclined to write to me, as
you thought you might, I dare say, many thoughts would be
suggested to me; many have already, by seeing you from day
to day. Will you finish the poem in your own way, and send
it for the 'Dial'? Leave out

"And seem to milk the sky."

The image is too low; Mr. Emerson thought so too.

"Farewell! May truth be irradiated by Beauty! Let me know
whether you go to the lonely hut,[8] and write to me about
Shakespeare, if you read him there. I have many thoughts
about him, which I have never yet been led to express.

"MARGARET F.

"The penciled paper Mr. E. put into my hands. I have taken
the liberty to copy it. You expressed one day my own
opinion,--that the moment such a crisis is passed, we may
speak of it. There is no need of artificial delicacy, of
secrecy; it keeps its own secrets; it cannot be made false.
Thus you will not be sorry that I have seen the paper. Will
you not send me some other records of the _good week_?"

"Faithful are the wounds of a friend." This searching criticism would not offend Thoreau; nor yet the plainness with which the same tongue told the faults of a prose paper--perhaps "The Service,"--which Margaret rejected in this note:--

"[CONCORD] _1st December (1841)_.

"I am to blame for so long detaining your manuscript. But
my thoughts have been so engaged that I have not found a
suitable hour to reread it as I wished, till last night.
This second reading only confirms my impression from the
first. The essay is rich in thoughts, and I should be
_pained_ not to meet it again. But then, the thoughts seem
to me so out of their natural order, that I cannot read
it through without _pain_. I never once feel myself in a
stream of thought, but seem to hear the grating of tools on
the mosaic. It is true, as Mr. Emerson says, that essays
not to be compared with this have found their way into the
'Dial.' But then, these are more unassuming in their tone,
and have an air of quiet good-breeding, which induces us to
permit their presence. Yours is so rugged that it ought to
be commanding."

These were the years of Thoreau's apprenticeship in literature, and many were the tasks and mortifications he must endure before he became a master of the writer's art.