p.

OverviewTranscribeVersionsHelp

Facsimile

Transcription

Status: Complete

[copy]
CONCORD, MASS., August 12, 1901.

My Dear Harris;

I wrote you from Greenacre to Glenmore, five weeks ago, but
fear you never got the letter/- in which I promised to send you my lit-
tle Emerson book, as soon as I knew it would reach you there. Not hearing
from you I have held it back; but will now send it to your Washington ad-
dress. It has been well received, so far as I know; and so has Mr. Albee's
'Remembrance of Emerson' which I greatly liked. I sent Albee another lit-
tle book, now going thro' the press,- 'The Personality of Thoreau' - that is,
the MS. of it, and he writes me this about it:

"It brough Thoreau nearer
and more vivid than anything I have ever read about him, - the man, I mean,
or, as you have more closely put it, his personality. Your life with him
gives you a right to your knowledge, and I am thankful you have put it on
record.

Unless we are very fallible, all that concerns the Concord men will
become more and more valuable. You had a freer hand than in your Emerson,
and what you have set down is newer and fresher, and I feel sure your book
will have a wide circulation. It is a comforting fact that Thoreau is in-
creasing in fame, -has, it would appear, almost caught up with Emerson's
splendid chariot. It is due (in part, at least I think so), to the present
popular enthusiasm for Nature and nature-studies; also to his practical
solution of the way to live in the world, and yet above it. Emerson's ide-
as led the same way; but Thoreau's practice impresses more a certain
class of minds. I think your book will set Thoreau on a higher pedestal
than before, -especially in your proof of his uprightness in the common
affairs of life.

It is so much to be regretted that Thoreau destroyed any
of his verses. There must have been something in them; and in time he might
have beaten the music into them. For there is music in some that are prin-
ted; but then, again, he perversely scorns it; he must have known better.

His
reference and comparison of Emerson with Sir Thomas Browne interested
me much; for I am a great lover of Browne, and know no writing that bears
such repeated reading. Emerson has not his easy eloquence and subtile
phrase, weird metaphor, etc. "Be substantially great in thyself, and more
than thou appearest to others; and let the world be deceived in thee, as
they are in the lights of heaven". I know of no English superior or equal
to that, -the easy naturalness of the comparison, and the grandeur of it.
And consider the depth of meaning and the happy phrase of a sentence I
quote in my Emerson book, -"thoughts of things that thoughts but tenderly
touch".

I do not quite agree with A. and with Thoreau in putting Browne on
a level with Emerson; the rich quaintness of his style does not embody so
much deep thought.

I hope I shall see the report of the Davidson day at
Glenmore, and am

Yours ever,
F. B. Sanborn

Dr. W. T. Harris, Washington, D. C.

Notes and Questions

Nobody has written a note for this page yet

Please sign in to write a note for this page