William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) was the author of the first biog-raphy of Thoreau, Thoreau: The Poet-Naturalist (1873). Channing is usu-ally described as the father of Unitarianism, a new denomination
that emerged in the 1820s from splits within New England Calvinism.
Unitarians criticized Calvinism for its belief in the innate depravity of man and the predestination to God’s grace. Against these somber doctrines, Unitarians described spiritual life as a process of strengthening the spiritual potentialities of the self. Unitarians did not take for granted sal-vation and sainthood, on the contrary, they stressed the importance of pursuing spiritual perfection. Such perfection was, however, attainable, because of the inherent likeness of the human soul with God. Channing was the most prominent leader of Unitarianism and was, for almost forty years, the minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston, the most prominent Unitarian congregation in America.
Channing was also well known in New England transcendentalist circles. Although the relationship between transcendentalism and Unitarianism was a complex one and transcendentalists at times criticized the new religious denomination, they both shared a fundamental faith in the potentialities of the self.
Channing studied theology in Newport and Harvard and became an inspirational preacher in and around Boston. Because of his unorthodox Calvinism, he was attacked as a “Unitarian,” a negative label that he adopted for his new denomination. At first Channing did not wish to found a new church, claiming that he did not want to replace Calvinism with another orthodoxy and, in 1820, he simply formed a conference of liberal congregational ministers. Five years later, this was reorganized as the American Unitarian Association. During his life, Channing also took part in the many reform movements of his age, and, with the treatise Negro Slavery (1835), he took a firm stance against slavery. This position was rooted in his religious beliefs that individuals should have the opportunity to develop to their fullest capability. Slavery obviously thwarted such possibility.
Channing was the first to address explicitly the dichotomy in Thoreau’s writings between objective reporting and subjective interpretation. He describes the author of Walden as a “poet-naturalist,” a definition that tries to bridge the two poles usually detected in Thoreau’s writings. Channing finds that Thoreau’s style combines detailed observations of nature with a deep awareness of literary heritage. For example, commenting on A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Channing writes that the book is “a faithful record of the scenery” observed by the author and that, at the same time, the volume is also of great literary merit with its “treasury of citations from other authors.”
QQQ
one of the objects of our poet-naturalist was to acquire the art of writing a good english style. So Goethe, that slow and artful formalist, spent himself in acquiring a good German style. and what Thoreau thought of this matter of writing may be learned from many passages in this sketch, and from this among the rest: “it is the fault of some excellent writers, and de Quincey’s first impressions on seeing London suggest it to me, that they express themselves with too great fulness and detail. They give the most faithful, natural, and lifelike account of their sensations, mental and physical, but they lack moderation and sententiousness. they do not affect us as an ineffectual earnest, and a reserve of meaning, like a stutterer: they say all they mean. Their sentences are not concentrated and nutty,—sentences which suggest far more than they say, which have an atmosphere about them, which do not report an old, but make a new impression; sentences which suggest on many things, and are as durable as a roman aqueduct: to frame these,—that is the art of writing. Sentences which are expressive, towards which so many volumes, so much life, went; which lie like boulders on the page up and down, or across;
which contain the seed of other sentences, not mere repetition, but creation;
and which a man might sell his ground or cattle to build. de Quincey’s style is nowhere kinked or knotted up into something hard and significant, which you could swallow like a diamond, without digesting.”
as in the story, “and that’s Peg Woffington’s notion of an actress! Better it, Cibber and Bracegirdle, if you can!” This moderation does, for the most part, characterize his works, both of prose and verse. They have their stoical merits, their uncomfortableness! it is one result to be lean and sacrificial; yet a balance of comfort and a house of freestone on the sunny side of Beacon Street can be endured, in a manner, by weak nerves. But the fact that our author lived for a while alone in a shanty near a pond or stagnum, and named one of his books after the place where it stood, has led some to say he was a barbarian or a misanthrope. it was a writing-case:—
This, as an amber drop enwraps a bee, Covering discovers your quick soul, that we
May in your through-shine front your heart’s thoughts see.
(donne)
here, in this wooden inkstand, he wrote a good part of his famous Walden;
and this solitary woodland pool was more to his muse than all oceans of the planet, by the force of that faculty on which he was never weary of descanting,—imagination. Without this, he says, human life, dressed in its Jewish or other gaberdine, would be a kind of lunatic’s hospital,—insane with
the prose of it, mad with the drouth of society’s remainder-biscuits; but add the phantasy, that glorious, that divine gift, and then—
The earth, the air, and seas i know, and all The joys and horrors of their peace and wars;
and now will view the gods’ state and the stars.
(Chapman)
out of this faculty was his written experience chiefly constructed,—upon this he lived; not upon the cracked wheats and bread-fruits of an outward platter. his essays, those masterful creations, taking up the commonest topics; a sour apple, an autumn leaf, are features of this wondrous imagination of his; and, as it was his very life-blood, he, least of all, sets it forth in labored description. he did not bring forward his means, or unlock the closet of his Maelzel’s automaton chess-player. The reader cares not that the writer of a novel, with two lovers in hand, should walk out in the fool’s-cap, and begin balancing some peacock’s feather on his nose.
Begin, murderer,—leave thy damnable faces, and begin!
he loved antithesis in verse. it could pass for paradox,—something subtractive and unsatisfactory, as the four herrings provided by Caleb Balderstone for ravenswood’s dinner: come, he says, let us see how miserably uncomfortable we can feel. hawthorne, too, enjoyed a grave, and a pocket full of miseries to nibble upon.
There was a lurking humor in almost all that he said,—a dry wit, often expressed. he used to laugh heartily and many times in all the interviews i had, when anything in that direction was needed. Certainly he has left some exquisitely humorous pieces, showing his nice discernment; and he has narrated an encounter truly curious and wonderful,—the story of a snapping-turtle swallowing a horn-pout. in the latest pieces on which he worked he showed an anxiety to correct them by leaving out the few innuendoes, sallies, or puns, that formerly luxuriated amid the serious pages. no one more quickly entertained the apprehension of a jest; and his replies often came with a startling promptness, as well as perfection,—as if premeditated. This offhand talent lay in his habit of deep thought and mature reflection; in the great treasury of his wit he had weapons ready furnished for nearly all occasions.
of his own works, the Week was at his death for the most part still in the sheets, unbound; a small edition of Walden was sold in some seven years after its publishing. his dealings with publishers (who dealt with him in the
most mean and niggardly style) affected him with a shyness of that class. it was with the utmost difficulty he was paid for what he wrote by the persons who bought his wares; for one of his printed articles the note of the publishers was put by him in the bank for collection. of the non-sale of the Week he said, “i believe that this result is more inspiring and better for me than if a thousand had bought my wares. it affects my privacy less, and leaves me freer.”
Some cultivated minds place Walden in the front rank; but both his books are so good they will stand on their own merits. his latest-written work (the Excursions—a collection of lectures, mainly) is a great favorite with his friends.
his works are household words to those who have long known them; and the larger circle he is sure, with time, to address will follow in our footsteps. Such a treasure as the Week,—so filled with images from nature,—such a faithful record of the scenery and the people on the banks,—could not fail to make a deep impression. its literary merit is also great; as a treasury of citations from other authors, it gives a favorable view of his widely extended reading. Few books in this respect can be found to surpass it.
in his discourse of Friendship, Thoreau starts with the idea of
“underpropping his love by such pure hate, that it would end in sympathy,”
like sweet butter from sour cream. and in this:—
two solitary stars,—
unmeasured systems far Between us roll;
getting off into the agonies of space, where everything freezes, yet he adds as inducement,—
But by our conscious light we are determined to one pole.
in other words, there was a pole apiece. he continues the antithesis, and says there is ‘’no more use in friendship than in the tints of flowers” (the chief use in them); “pathless the gulf of feeling yawns,” and the reader yawns, too, at the idea of tumbling into it. and so he packs up in his mind “all the clothes which outward nature wears,” like a young lady’s trunk going to Mount desert.
We must not expect literature, in such case, to run its hands round the dial-plate of style with cuckoo repetition: the snarls he criticises de Quincey for not getting into are the places where his bundles of sweetmeats untie. as in the vendidad, “hail to thee, o man! who art come from the transitory place to the imperishable”:—
in nature’s nothing, be not nature’s toy.
This feature in his style is by no means so much bestowed upon his prose as his poetry. in his verse he more than once attained to beauty, more often to quaintness. he did not court admiration, though he admired fame; and he might have said to his reader,—
Whoe’er thou beest who read’st this sullen writ, Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it.
—William ellery Channing, Thoreau:
The Poet-Naturalist, 1873, ed.
F.B. Sanborn, 1902, pp. 229–234