the Thoreau Log.
30 November 1841. Cambridge, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  When looking over the dry and dusty volumes of the English poets, I cannot believe that those fresh and fair creations I had imagined are contained in them . . . I can hardly be serious with myself when I remember that I have come to Cambridge after poetry; and while I am running over the catalogue and collating and selecting, I think if it would not be a shorter way to a complete volume to step at once into the field or wood, with a very low reverence to students and librarians . . . On running over the titles of these books, looking from time to time at their first pages or farther, I am oppressed by an inevitable sadness.
(Journal, 1:288-292)

Thoreau checks out The history of English Poetry by Thomas Warton, volumes 1-4, and The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, volume 1, from Harvard Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 288).

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