re
unlike _Tom Jones_ than is _Lavengro_ unlike _Robinson Crusoe_.

It is idle to seek for the literary parentage of this Vagabond. Better
far to accept him as he is, a wanderer, a rover, a curious taster of
life, at once a mystic and a realist. He may have qualities that repel;
but so full is he of contradictions that no sooner has the frown settled
on the brow than it gives place to a smile. We may not always like him;
never can we ignore him. Provocative, unsatisfying, fascinating--such is
George Borrow. And most fascinating of all is his love of night, day,
sun, moon, and stars, "all sweet things." Cribbed in the close and dusty
purlieus of the city, wearied by the mechanical monotony of the latest
fashionable novel, we respond gladly to the spacious freshness of
_Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_. Herein lies the spell of Borrow; for in
his company there is always "a wind on the heath."

IV
HENRY D. THOREAU

"Enter these enchanted woods
You who dare."

GEORGE MEREDITH.

I

Thoreau has suffered badly at the hands of the critics. By some he has
been regarded as a poser, and the Walden episode has been spoken of as a
mere theatrical trick. By others he has been derided as a cold-blooded
hermit, who fled from civilization and the intercourse of his fellows.
Even Mr. Watts-Dunton, the eloquent friend of the Children of the Open
Air, quite recently in his introduction to an edition of _Walden_ has
impugned his sincerity, and leaves the impression that Thoreau was an
uncomfortable kind of egotist. He has not lacked friends, but his
friends have not always written discreetly about him, thus giving the
enemy opportunity to blaspheme. And while not unmindful of Mr. H. S.
Salt's sympathetic biography, nor the admirable monograph by Mr. "H. A.
Page," there is no denying the fact that the trend of modern criticism
has been against him. The sarcastic comments of J. R. Lowell, and the
banter of R. L. Stevenson, however we may disagree with them, are not to
be lightly ignored, coming from critics usually so sane and discerning.

Since it is the Walden episode, the two years' sojourn in the woods near
Concord, that has provoked the scornful ire of the critics, it may be
well to re-examine that incident.

From his earliest years Thoreau was a lover of the open air. It was not
merely a poetic appreciation such as Emerson had of the bea