SOURCE: Lowell, James Russell. “James Russell Lowell on Henry David Thoreau.” In A Century of Early Ecocriticism, edited by David Mazel, pp. 26‐32. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001.

In the following excerpt, originally published in The North American Review in 1865, Lowell presents a generally negative appraisal of Henry David Thoreau's character, powers of observation, abilities as a naturalist, and romantic view of nature.

Among the pistillate plants kindled to fruitage by the Emersonian pollen, Thoreau is thus far the most remarkable; and it is something eminently fitting that his posthumous works should be offered us by Emerson, for they are strawberries from his own garden. A singular mixture of varieties, indeed, there is;—alpine, some of them, with the flavor of rare mountain air; others wood, tasting of sunny roadside banks or shy openings in the forest; and not a few seedlings swollen hugely by culture, but lacking the...