What a noble specimen of its kind, and how free from any verbal tricks or admixture of literary sauce, is Thoreau’s “Maine Woods”!  And what a marked specimen of the opposite style is a certain other book I could mention in which these wild and grand scenes serve but as a medium to advertise the author’s fund of classic lore!

Can there be any doubt about the traits and outward signs of a noble character, and is not the style of an author the manners of his soul?

Is there a lyceum lecturer in the country who is above manoeuvring for the applause of his audience? or a writer who is willing to make himself of no account for the sake of what he has to say?  Even in the best there is something of the air and manners of a performer on exhibition.  The newspaper, or magazine, or book is a sort of raised platform upon which the advertiser advances before a gaping and expectant crowd.  Truly, how well he handles his subject!  He turns it over, and around, and inside out, and top-side down.  He tosses it about; he twirls it; he takes it apart and puts it together again, and knows well beforehand where the applause will come in.  Any reader, in taking up the antique authors, must be struck by the contrast.

“In Aeschylus,” says Landor, “there is no trickery, no trifling, no delay, no exposition, no garrulity, no dogmatism, no declamation, no prosing, . . . but the loud, clear challenge, the firm, unstealthy step, of an erect, broad-breasted soldier.”

On the whole, the old authors are better than the new.  The real question of literature is not simplified by culture or a multiplication of books, as the conditions of life are always the same, and are not made one whit easier by all the myriads of men and women who have lived upon the globe.  The standing want is never for more skill, but for newer, fresher power,—­a more plentiful supply of arterial blood.  The discoverer, or the historian, or the man of science, may begin where his predecessor left off, but the poet or any artist must go back for a fresh start.  With him it is always the first day of creation, and he must begin at the stump or nowhere.

VIII BEFORE BEAUTY

I

Before genius is manliness, and before beauty is power.  The Russian novelist and poet, Turgenieff, scattered all through whose works you will find unmistakable traits of greatness, makes one of his characters say, speaking of beauty, “The old masters,—­they never hunted after it; it comes of itself into their compositions, God knows whence, from heaven or elsewhere.  The whole world belonged to them, but we are unable to clasp its broad spaces; our arms are too short.”

>From the same depth of insight come these lines from “Leaves of Grass,” apropos of true poems:—­

“They do not seek beauty—­they are sought;
Forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing,
   fain, love-sick.”