le any
more than Walden Pond itself grows stale. He is an obstinate fact
there in New England life and literature, and at the end of his first
centennial his fame is more alive than ever.

Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, July, 1817, and passed
most of his life of forty-five years in his native town, minding his
own business, as he would say, which consisted, for the most part, in
spending at least the half of each day in the open air, winter and
summer, rain and shine, and in keeping tab upon all the doings of wild
nature about him and recording his observations in his Journal.

The two race strains that met in Thoreau, the Scottish and the French,
come out strongly in his life and character. To the French he owes his
vivacity, his lucidity, his sense of style, and his passion for the
wild; for the French, with all their urbanity and love of art, turn to
nature very easily. To the Scot he is indebted more for his character
than for his intellect. From this source come his contrariness, his
combativeness, his grudging acquiescence, and his pronounced
mysticism. Thence also comes his genius for solitude. The man who in
his cabin in the woods has a good deal of company "especially the
mornings when nobody calls," is French only in the felicity of his
expression. But there is much in Thoreau that is neither Gallic nor
Scottish, but pure Thoreau.

The most point-blank and authoritative criticism within my knowledge
that Thoreau has received at the hands of his countrymen came from the
pen of Lowell about 1864, and was included in "My Study Windows." It
has all the professional smartness and scholarly qualities which
usually characterize Lowell's critical essays. Thoreau was vulnerable,
both as an observer and as a literary craftsman, and Lowell lets him
off pretty easily--too easily--on both counts.

The flaws he found in his nature lore were very inconsiderable: "Till
he built his Walden shack he did not know that the hickory grew near
Concord. Till he went to Maine he had never seen phosphorescent
wood--a phenomenon early familiar to most country boys. At forty he
spoke of the seeding [_i. e._, flowering][3] of the pine as a new
discovery, though one should have thought that its gold-dust of
blowing pollen might have earlier caught his eye."

[Footnote 3: See "Walking" in _Excursions_. He was under thirty-three
when he made these observations (June, 1850).]

As regards his literary craftsmanship, Lowell