... The gentle deities Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds, The innumerable tenements of beauty, The miracle of generative force, Far-reaching concords of astronomy Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds; Better, the linked purpose of the whole, And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave. The polite found me impolite; the great Would mortify me, but in vain; for still I am a willow of the wilderness, Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk, A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, A wild rose, or rock-loving columbine, Salve my worst wounds. For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear: ‘Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie? Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass Into the winter night’s extinguished mood? Canst thou shine now, then darkle, And being latent feel thyself no less? As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye, The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure; Yet envies none, none are unenviable.’” I know of but one subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his books—shall I say his conversation?—gives me, his pains to be impersonal or discrete, as if he feared any the least intrusion of himself were an offence offered to self-respect the courtesy due to intercourse and authorship; thus depriving his page, his company, of attractions the great masters of both knew how to insinuate into their text and talk, without overstepping the bounds of social or literary decorum. What is more delightful than personal magnetism? ’Tis the charm of good fellowship as of good writing. To get and to give the largest measures of satisfaction, to fill ourselves with the nectar of select experiences, not without some intertinctures of egotism so charming in a companion, is what we seek in books of the class of his, as in their authors. We associate diffidence properly with learning, frankness with fellowship, and owe a certain blushing reverence to both. For though our companion be a bashful man,—and he is the worse if wanting this grace,—we yet wish him to be an enthusiast behind all reserves, and capable of abandonment sometimes in his books. I know how rare this genial humor is, this frankness of the blood, and how surpassing is the gift of good spirits, especially here in cold New England, where, for the most part, “Our virtues grow Beneath our humors, and at seasons show.”