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THOREAU'S SERVICE AND RANK
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tinct mind-images, like the sublime tribute to the mountains or the gentle love-poem, already cited.

Thoreau's initial volume cannot be accounted a failure as literature because seven hundred copies of the edition were returned unsold. Like many another book, unappreciated by the public, it won for its author the respectful interest of a few men of poetic and critical minds. Though distinctly immature in parts, it suggested the plenteous harvest of thoughts on nature and life possible to one who had scattered thus widely seeds of poetry and philosophy. Reread to-day with the memories of his later work, the book still seems fertile in descriptions, ideals, poetry, despite much abstruseness and detachment. Among the letters which came to Thoreau in honor of his venture in authorship was one from Froude which, for some reason, probably modesty and reserve, was not shown by Thoreau and is not included in the "Familiar Letters." It is in a collection of "Unpublished Letters of Henry and Sophia Thoreau," edited and privately printed by Dr. Jones in 1899. Thoreau had read Froude's "Nemesis of Faith," perhaps Emerson's copy, and, in expressing his interest in this somewhat anarchical book, he had forwarded to its author a copy of "A Week," recently published. In a letter from Manchester. September 3, 1849, the English critic