No More Learning

Sanborn, in his volume on Thoreau, prints a very interesting letter
written by Margaret Fuller in 1841, in criticism of the verses which
stand near the beginning of the paper, offered at that time for
publication in _The Dial_. "The Landlord" was printed in _The
Democratic Review_ for October, 1843. "A Winter Walk" appeared in _The
Dial_ in the same month and year. Emerson in a letter to Thoreau,
September 8, 1843, says: "I mean to send the 'Winter's Walk' to the
printer to-morrow for _The Dial_. I had some hesitation about it,
notwithstanding its faithful observation and its fine sketches of the
pickerel-fisher and of the woodchopper, on account of _mannerism_, an
old charge of mine,--as if, by attention, one could get the trick of
the rhetoric; for example, to call a cold place sultry, a solitude
public, a wilderness _domestic_ (a favorite word), and in the woods to
insult over cities, armies, etc. By pretty free omissions, however, I
have removed my principal objections. " The address "The Succession of
Forest Trees" was printed first in _The New York Tribune_, October 6,
1860, and was perhaps the latest of his writings which Thoreau saw in
print.

After his death the interest which had already been growing was
quickened by the successive publication in _The Atlantic Monthly_ of
"Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples" in October and November, 1862, and
"Night and Moonlight" November, 1863. The last named appeared just
before the publication of the volume "Excursions," which collected the
several papers.

"May Days" and "Days and Nights in Concord," which were printed in the
Riverside Edition, are now omitted as consisting merely of extracts
from Thoreau's Journal and therefore superseded by the publication of
the latter in its complete form.

* * * * *

A few of Thoreau's poems, taken from the "Week" and elsewhere, were
added by Mr. Emerson to the volume entitled "Letters to Various
Persons" which he brought out in 1865, but it was not till the volume
of "Miscellanies" was issued in the Riverside Edition that the
otherwise unpublished verse of his that had appeared in _The Dial_ was
gathered into a single volume. Besides the _Dial_ contributions, the
Riverside "Miscellanies" contained a few poems that first found
publication in Mr. Sanborn's Life of Thoreau. But the collection was
not intended to be complete.
Many of Thoreau's poems, including his translations from the
Anacreontics, are imbedded in the "Week," "Walden," and "Excursions,"
and it seemed best not to reproduce them in another volume. In 1895,
shortly after the publication of the Riverside Thoreau, Mr. Henry S.
Salt and Mr. Frank B. Sanborn brought out a book entitled "Poems of
Nature by Henry David Thoreau," in which were collected "perhaps two
thirds of [the poems] which Thoreau preserved. " "Many of them," says
the Introduction to that volume, "were printed by him, in whole or in
part, among his early contributions to Emerson's _Dial_, or in his own
two volumes, the _Week_ and _Walden_. . . . Others were given to Mr.
Sanborn for publication, by Sophia Thoreau, the year after her
brother's death (several appeared in the _Boston Commonwealth_ in
1863); or have been furnished from time to time by Mr. Blake, his
literary executor. " This volume contained a number of poems which had
not before appeared in any of Thoreau's published books. Such poems
are now added to those of the Riverside Edition. The present
collection, however, no more than its predecessors pretends to
completeness.