Henry David Thoreau

Familiar Letters Henry David Thoreau

For this purpose I have chosen many letters and mere notes, illustrating his domestic and gossipymoods, -for that element was in his mixed nature, inherited from the lively maternal side, -andeven the colloquial vulgarity (using the word in the strict sense of "popular speech") that hesometimes allowed himself. In his last years he revolted a little at this turn of his thoughts, and, asChanning relates, "rubbed out the more humorous parts of his essays, originally a relief to theirsterner features, saying, 'I cannot bear the levity I find;'" to which Channing replied that he ought tospare it, even to the puns, in which he abounded almost as much as Shakespeare. His friend wasright, -the obvious incongruity was as natural to Thoreau as the grace and French elegance of hisbest sentences. In the dozen letters newly added to this edition, these contrasted qualities hardlyappear so striking as in the longer, earlier ones; but they all illustrate events of his life or points in hischaracter which are essential for fully understanding this most original of all American authors. Thepresent volume is enlarged by some thirty pages, chiefly by additional letters to Ricketson, and allthose to C. H. Greene. The modesty and self-deprecation in the Michigan correspondence willattract noti