ABSTRACT
Henry David Thoreau contributed "a poem, and an essay on the Roman poet Aulus Persius Flaccus" to the first number of the Dial, while earning his keep in the Emerson household by "attending to Emerson's garden and woodpile." One may call Thoreau a naturalist and be right enough, but it does not describe him completely. He added little or nothing to factual knowledge of nature, or its scientific analysis. For Thoreau was capable of sophistry. He fell into it in a greater matter, with his glorification of John Brown as a hero; his choice of phrases showed a dangerous aptitude in that dubious art. Thoreau had taken pains to acquire a working knowledge of the elements of advanced technology, with mathematics and mechanics. A truant schoolboy could have mumbled a better excuse, or at least something less self-righteous; Thoreau squirmed himself out of the responsibility.
