Small 8vo, cloth gilt, 68. THOREAU: HIS LIFE AND AIMS. BY H. A. PAGE. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "THE sketch of Thoreau's life is very interesting and graphic, and brings the whole figure before us with vivid and also pathetic effect. We should only be forestalling the enjoyment which readers will derive from this study by attempting to give any account of it in detail; it must be enough to recommend it to attention. Its moderate compass is also one of its merits."-Saturday Review. "Mr. Page has done a good deed in making the Poet-Naturalist' known to English readers. Thoreau's story is one of the most attractive stories of our time, and we have to thank Mr. Page for reproducing it for us. The New-England Hermit' ought, one would think, to be almost as great a favourite with English boys of this generation as Robinson Crusoe. Mr. Page's study has, besides other merits, that of brevity, so rare in these days; and we rose from the book with a strong desire for more, a feeling that we had only had half a meal."-Spectator. "We believe that many besides ourselves will be thankful to Mr. Page for having given us the best picture of the man which we have hitherto met with. . . . He is greatly attracted by Thoreau's sympathy with Nature and his strangely intimate relations with the animal creation, and gives many delightful illustrations of it." -Academy. "Mr. Page has produced an interesting study. Thoreau's character is well worth the labour bestowed upon it, and the author deserves credit for the skill with which he has brought out and illustrated whatever was robust and self-reliant and noble in this strangely constituted man".-Pall Mall Gazette. "This every way delicious and most artistic study. Such a man ought to have had something to say to his generation. He had, and he said something, but all too little. What he said, and the manner of his speech and of his life, Mr. Page now tells us.... We do not like to tell too much of this rare and singular character. The reader should go to Mr. Page's story for it."-Nonconformist. "Mr. Page has done his work well. His keen insight and just and delicate critical judgment peculiarly qualify him for appraising a mind so complex and subtle as Thoreau's. He exhibits his salient characteristics with just sufficient of critical indication to enable the reader to see what Thoreau was. He will have done no small service if he lead Englishmen to seek further acquaintance with a man whose original and kindly genius, and whose delightful descriptions of Nature and men, and whose really tender and noble yearnings for his kind, place him among the select few of the age destined to grow in the esteem of the ages to come."-British Quarterly Review, Jan. 1878. "A very striking contribution to what De Quincey called the literature of knowledge, and also, in some sense, to the literature of power. The charm of the life is twofold. . . . By his careful and minute labour Mr. Page has given us a book to dip into the pages of which is to find oneself in a new world full of tranquil charm.”— The World. "Mr. Page's book forms one of the most interesting studies in biography that has recently appeared. . . . Such a man as Thoreau is no common character, and is well worthy to have found a biographer like Mr. Page, and publishers like Messrs. Chatto & Windus, who have together given us a volume so charming that we are persuaded it only requires to become better known amongst the masses to enjoy the popularity it so richly deserves."-Edinburgh Courant. "After reading this book it seems wonderful how the man could have been so misunderstood. Mr. Page has the spirit to penetrate Thoreau's character, and exhibits it with fine understanding and deft grasp. . . . This book comes like a breath from the forest (Urwalde) on our over-refinement and devotion to the Real."-Berlin Magazin für Literatur des Auslandes. "Mr. Page's sketch is by far the best thing which has yet appeared in connection with that singular man of genius, Henry David Thoreau. . . . We rise from a perusal of Mr. Page's work with our admiration for Thoreau considerably heightened. This little work is full of interest, and deserves to be most cordially welcomed." -International Review for January 1878. "When we last heard from England concerning Thoreau the critics were calling him an American Rousseau,' a phrase which describes him as clumsily as any that could be invented. But Mr. Page has read his author, and is capable of understanding him, and has made a very good and readable book about him. His own work is done well, Few of those who have undertaken to write about Thoreau have comprehended him better than this Englishman, who never saw him, and who does not seem to have known those who did see him. If some of his comparisons-as, for example, that between Thoreau and St. Francis d'Assisi-appear fanciful, it may be that this is partly because nobody ever thought of making such a comparison before. The more one attends to the points of resemblance the less is he disposed to smile at the parallel. The garb and the dialect were not the same; but the cowl does not make the monk, and Mr. Page may have looked deeper and with a clearer eye than those who saw Thoreau in his every-day walk. . . . Many of Mr. Page's remarks show that he has, made himself familiar with his subject, though at arm's length and under many disadvantages."-Atlantic Monthly, May 1878. "The whole work is a delight from beginning to end."-New York Christian at Work. "An intensely interesting volume."-New York Journal of Education. "Mr. Page has here given us a consistent and comprehensive account of Thoreau's complex character."-Boston Courier. "A rarely interesting and comprehensive study."-New York Evening Post. CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY, W. |