Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[191] bore poverty without a murmur,--for what right has a literary man, who can command his time and his art, to sigh after wealth?but that he went on doing work of such a quality for an audience so small or so indifferent.

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Henry David Thoreau.

We pass now to the youngest of the wellknown Concord authors of that circle, and one who, unlike the others, practically failed to win high appreciation during life, and passed into the other world apparently unsuccessful. There is no fame really more permanent than that which begins its actual growth after the death of an author; and such is the fame of Thoreau. Before his death he had published but two books, A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers and Walden. Nine more have since been printed, besides two volumes of selected extracts and two biographies, making fifteen in all. Such things are not accidental or the result of whim, and they indicate that the literary fame of Thoreau is secure. Indeed, it has already survived two of the greatest dangers that can beset reputation,--a brilliant satirist for a critic, and an injudicious friend for a biographer.