In his last volume of poems Lowell also speaks of
Emerson in a way which indicates rather a diminished respect for him.
It is true that Thoreau imitated Emerson's manner of speech a good
deal--and it was often difficult to avoid doing this while in Emerson's
company--but Lowell also in his younger days affected a grave and
reserved demeanor which he afterwards became tired of and threw entirely
aside. About the time of which we speak Emerson complained that he saw
too little of Thoreau, and was afraid that he avoided him. The man was
sufficiently original. He did not pretend to be a poet, and his prose
writing is not at all like Emerson. In point of style it is purer and
more classic than either Emerson's or Lowell's; and these two lines of
his,
"In the good then who can trust.
Only the wise are just,"
certainly deserve to be set up somewhere in letters of gold.
He had a strong dislike of matrimony. Once while walking across a field
with David A. Wasson he kicked a skunk-cabbage with his boot and said,
"There, marriage is like that." Lowell was without doubt right about him
in this respect. Thoreau's notions of life, like the socialistic
theories of Henry George, would if generally adopted put an end to
civilization. He wanted like the French theorists of the last century to
separate himself from the history of his race; a most dangerous attempt.
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