each day, from piscatory facts to Indian history, Buddhism, friendship, and poetry, affords an impressionist picture of Thoreau during these years of developing manhood which culminated at Walden. Many of the most pithy thoughts quoted by Mr. Blake, in his volume of epigrams, are traced to this first book. It was essentially a literary promise,—appropriate is the buoyant stanza of greeting,—
"Ply the oars! away! away!
In each dewdrop of the morning
Lies the promise of a day."
The quotations, which introduce the several sections, index the young scholar's devotion to all the best poets of the past and to Tennyson, Emerson, and Channing of his own time. One of the most significant reviews of this book was by Lowell in The Massachusetts Quarterly, for December, 1849. Regarding the volume as a record of travel, Lowell praised the author as a modern disciple of the leisurely, old-time traveler-poet, who is "both wise man and poet,—the true cosmopolitan and citizen of the beautiful." He appreciated the literary flavor no less than the "fresh smell of the woods." With enthusiastic comments, the critic also refers to the poems, melodious and distinct, which form the interludes to the prose narration. Here are those tender stanzas "To the Maiden in
