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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors 48 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 1, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature: Early National Literature: Part I (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 20 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Irene E. Jerome., In a fair country 16 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays 14 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life 12 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oldport days, with ten heliotype illustrations from views taken in Newport, R. I., expressly for this work. 10 0 Browse Search
Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches 10 0 Browse Search
James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen 4 0 Browse Search
The Daily Dispatch: November 28, 1861., [Electronic resource] 2 0 Browse Search
Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 18. 2 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays. You can also browse the collection for Thoreau or search for Thoreau in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A plea for culture. (search)
go to sleep; he must write clearly, or they will cease to follow him; must keep clear of pedantry and unknown tongues, or they will turn to some one who can address them in English. On the other hand, these same conditions tempt one to accept a low standard of execution, to substitute artifice for art, and to disregard the more permanent verdict of more fastidious tribunals. The richest thought and the finest literary handling which America has yet produced — as of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau — reached at first but a small audience, and are but very gradually attaining a wider hold. Renan has said that every man's work is superficial, until he has learned to content himself with the approbation of a few. This is only one half the truth; but it is the half which Americans find hardest to remember. Yet American literature, though its full harvest be postponed for another hundred years, is sure to come to ripeness at last. Our national development in this direction, though sl
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Literature as an art. (search)
cal obstacles for it, like Prescott or Parkman; to live and die only to transfuse external nature into human words, like Thoreau; to chase dreams for a lifetime, like Hawthorne; to labor tranquilly and see a nation imbued with one's thoughts, like Eture, of what perfection in detail. It is a remarkable fact, that the most penetrating and fearless of all our writers, Thoreau, -he who made Nature his sole mistress, and shook himself utterly free from human tradition,--yet clung to Greek literatin proportion to his thoughts, and great ideas strain language more than small ones. We cannot say of either Emerson or Thoreau, for instance, that his style is adequate to his needs, because the needs are immense, and Thoreau, at least, sometimes Thoreau, at least, sometimes disdains effort. But the only American authors, perhaps, whose style is an elastic garment that fits all the uses of the body, are Irving and Hawthorne. This has no reference to the quality of their thought, as to which in Irving we feel a sligh
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Americanism in literature. (search)
to hear his voice grow faint. He usually began to lose his faith, his courage, his toleration,--in short, his Americanism,--when he left the ranks of the uninstructed. That time is past; and the literary class has now come more into sympathy with the popular heart. It is perhaps fortunate that there is as yet but little esprit de corps among our writers, so that they receive their best sympathy, not from each other, but from the people. Even the memory of our most original authors, as Thoreau, or Margaret Fuller Ossoli, is apt to receive its sharpest stabs from those of the same guild. When we American writers find grace to do our best, it is not so much because we are sustained by each other, as that we are conscious of a deep popular heart, slowly but surely answering back to ours, and offering a worthier stimulus than the applause of a coterie. If we once lose faith in our audience, the muse grows silent. Even the apparent indifference of this audience to culture and high
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Fayal and the Portuguese. (search)
of us, of Pico itself, seven thousand feet from the level of the sea, our starting-point. We camped half-way up, and watched the sunset over the lower peaks of Fayal; we kindled fires of faya-bushes on the lonely mountainsides, a beacon for the world; we slept in the loft of a little cattle-shed, with the calves below us, the cows' sons, as our Portuguese attendant courteously called them; we waked next morning above the clouds, with one vast floor of white level vapor beneath us, such as Thoreau alone has described, with here and there an open glimpse of the sea far below, yet lifted up to an apparent level with the clouds, so as to seem like an Arctic scene, with patches of open water. Then we climbed through endless sheep-pastures and over great slabs of lava, growing steeper and steeper; we entered the crater at last, walled with snows of which portions might be of untold ages, for it is never, I believe, wholly empty; we climbed, in such a gale of wind that the guides would no