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

This friend, the late Ellery Channing, was a man of wayward genius, and of voluntary self-withdrawal from the world. Both he in his memoir and Lowell in his well-known criticism, have brought the eccentricities of Thoreau into undue prominence, and have placed too little stress on the vigor, the good sense, the clear perceptions, of the man. One who has himself walked, talked, corresponded with him, can testify that the impression given by both these writers is far removed from that ordinarily made by Thoreau himself. While tinged here and there, like most American thinkers of his time, with the manner of Emerson, he was yet, as a companion, essentially original, wholesome, and enjoyable. Though more or less of a humorist, nursing his own whims, and capable of being tiresome when they came uppermost, he was easily led away from them to the vast domains of literature and nature, and then poured forth endless streams of the most interesting talk. He taxed the patience of his companions, but not more so, on the whole, than is the case with most eminent talkers when launched upon their favorite themes.