charges him only with
having revived the age of _concetti_ while he fancied himself going
back to a preclassical nature, basing the charge on such a far-fetched
comparison as that in which Thoreau declares his preference for "the
dry wit of decayed cranberry-vines and the fresh Attic salt of the
moss-beds" over the wit of the Greek sages as it comes to us in the
"Banquet" of Xenophon--a kind of perversity of comparison all too
frequent with Thoreau.

But though Lowell lets Thoreau off easily on these specific counts, he
more than makes up by his sweeping criticism, on more general grounds,
of his life and character. Here one feels that he overdoes the matter.

It is not true, in the sense which Lowell implies, that Thoreau's
whole life was a search for the doctor. It was such a search in no
other sense than that we are all in search of the doctor when we take
a walk, or flee to the mountains or to the seashore, or seek to bring
our minds and spirits in contact with "Nature's primal sanities." His
search for the doctor turns out to be an escape from the conditions
that make a doctor necessary. His wonderful activity, those long walks
in all weathers, in all seasons, by night as well as by day, drenched
by rain and chilled by frost, suggest a reckless kind of health. A
doctor might wisely have cautioned him against such exposures. Nor was
Thoreau a valetudinarian in his physical, moral, or intellectual
fiber.

It is not true, as Lowell charges, that it was his indolence that
stood in the way of his taking part in the industrial activities in
which his friends and neighbors engaged, or that it was his lack of
persistence and purpose that hindered him. It is not true that he was
poor because he looked upon money as an unmixed evil. Thoreau's
purpose was like adamant, and his industry in his own proper pursuits
was tireless. He knew the true value of money, and he knew also that
the best things in life are to be had without money and without price.
When he had need of money, he earned it. He turned his hand to many
things--land-surveying, lecturing, magazine-writing, growing white
beans, doing odd jobs at carpentering, whitewashing, fence-building,
plastering, and brick-laying.

Lowell's criticism amounts almost to a diatribe. He was naturally
antagonistic to the Thoreau type of mind. Coming from a man near his
own age, and a neighbor, Thoreau's criticism of life was an affront to
the smug respectability and scholarly a