It was a private bravado of
my own, which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits,
that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended
by setting it down as a contribution to the theory of life.
So with the more icy parts of this philosophy of Thoreau's.
He was affecting the Spartanism he had not; and the old
sentimental wound still bled afresh, while he deceived
himself with reasons.
Thoreau's theory, in short, was one thing and himself
another: of the first, the reader will find what I believe to
be a pretty faithful statement and a fairly just criticism in
the study; of the second he will find but a contorted shadow.
So much of the man as fitted nicely with his doctrines, in
the photographer's phrase, came out. But that large part
which lay outside and beyond, for which he had found or
sought no formula, on which perhaps his philosophy even
looked askance, is wanting in my study, as it was wanting in
the guide I followed. In some ways a less serious writer, in
all ways a nobler man, the true Thoreau still remains to be
depicted.
VILLON. - I am tempted to regret that I ever wrote on this
subject, not merely because the paper strikes me as too
picturesque by half, but because I regarded Villon as a bad
fellow. Others still think well of him, and can find
beautiful and human traits where I saw nothing but artistic
evil; and by the principle of the art, those should have
written of the man, and not I.
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