Thoreau

THE LIFE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU. By H. S. Salt. London: Richard Bentley & Sons, 1890.
ANTI-SLAVERY AND REFORM PAPERS. By Henry D. Thoreau. Selected and Edited by H. S. Salt. London; Swan Sonnenschein. 1890.

WHEN it was announced that Mr. H. S. Salt had a “Life of Thoreau” in the press we were much interested, anticipating not unreasonably that the writer of another biography of the “Poet-Naturalist” should have something fresh to communicate with regard to the life-history of his subject. Thoreau cannot be called a popular author—an author whose very popularity demands a multiplicity of “lives” and “memoirs.” His story has already been more or less adequately told by his friends Emerson, Ellery, Channing, and F. B. Sanborn in America, and by H. A. Page (Dr. A. H. Japp) in this country; and it therefore immediately suggested itself that the writer of a new life of Thoreau must have some fresh materials to further interest those already interested in his subject, or he must have hit upon a method of writing the life of an unpopular author in a manner specially calculated to recommend it to the mass of readers. Mr. H. S. Salt has done neither of these things. Probably all that there is to tell of Thoreau’s uneventful life has been told; while of his works, and of what manner of man he was, it is scarcely necessary to say much—for there are his works themselves; and we have always held that Thoreau will be more easily and better understood by the extended publication of his work here than by the multiplication of any number of “lives,” and expositions of his “aims.” Indeed, we have no hesitation in hazarding the suggestion that where Mr. Salt’s “Life” will gain one admirer for Thoreau, a book such as the one noticed below will win half a dozen. Such persons as have Sanborn’s “Life of Thoreau” (‘American Men of Letters Series”) already on their shelves, will have but little reason for adding this new volume to their library, while anyone purchasing a life of the Hermit of Walden for the first time would, we think, if given an opportunity of comparing the works beforehand, unhesitatingly purchase the earlier and (for such considerations will creep in) far cheaper one.

Not often, perhaps, has an author been so widely, so persistently, and so ridiculously misunderstood as has Thoreau. Here was a man who not only had an ideal, which is perhaps a sufficiently common phenomenon, but who steadfastly attempted so far as his own life was concerned to live up to that ideal. We hear a great deal said in favour of plain living and high thinking, yet when a man makes that rule the leading article of his creed and acts up to it, hard words are hurled at him—he is a “skulker” (vide Robert Louis Stevenson), a “cynic,” a “man without a healthy mind” (vide James Russell Lowell); he is, forsooth, a “stoico-epicurean-adiaphorist” (vide Professor Nichol). Such and similar are the expressions levelled at this man—one of the most original geniuses that America has produced—levelled at him, too, by men whose position in the literary world clothes their words with some authority, and whose obiter dicta are accepted as final by many persons too lazy to form opinions for themselves. Mr. Salt, as has been said, gives us little that is new with regard to Thoreau’s life and ethical teaching; his book is largely made up of passages from Thoreau’s works and letters, and from other letters which throw more or less light on the life and work of Thoreau; though he is an appreciative student of the poet-naturalist, he maintains a fairly judicial attitude, and we welcome his book as we should always welcome any work that tends to set right a sadly mistaken view of any man, such as is that which obtains with regard to Thoreau. Mr. Salt has certainly added to the value of his book by an extremely useful bibliography.

The Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers of Thoreau form one of the latest volumes of Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein’s useful “Social Science Series.” The volume contains five papers, on ‘“Civil Disobedience,” two upon Captain John Brown, “Paradise (to be) Regained,” “Life without Principle,” and an introduction by Mr. Salt. Readers who know Thoreau only by such of his writings as “Walden” and “The Week” will meet him here, if not in a new light, at any rate amplifying on practical questions that are but casually touched upon in the books named. The paper on “Civil Disobedience” is mainly an attempt at justifying a man in refusing to support a Government (even to the extent of being imprisoned by it!) whose actions he cannot but condemn. “I think,” he says—and surely, well says—“that we should be men first, and subjects afterwards.” On hearing of the arrest of Captain John Brown (of Harper’s Ferry fame) Thoreau sent round among the inhabitants of Concord saying that he would speak on the subject on the following Sunday. The Abolition Committee intimated that it would be ill-timed and unadvisable. “I did not send to you for advice,” he characteristically replied, “but to announce that I am to speak.” The result was the “Plea for John Brown,” the most eloquent and impassioned of Thoreau’s works. The last essay in this volume—that on “Life without Principle”—immediately brings to mind, as indeed does any consideration of Thoreau’s life and work, that beautiful sonnet of Wordsworth’s:—

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
. . . . . .
. . . Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn,
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.”

The Speaker, Vol. 2, November 8, 1890, pp. 529-530