One significant thing I remember: I was always on the lookout for
books of essays. It was at this time that I took my first bite
into Emerson, and it was like tasting a green apple--not that he
was unripe, but I wasn't ripe for him. But a year later I tasted
him again, and said, "Why, this tastes good"; and took a bigger
bite; then soon devoured everything of his I could find.
I say I was early on the lockout for books of essays, and I wanted
the essay to begin, not in a casual way by some remark in the first
person, but by the annunciation of some general truth, as most of
Dr. Johnson's did. I think I bought Dick's works on the strength
of his opening sentence--"Man is a compound being."
As one's mind develops, how many changes in taste he passes
through! About the time of which I am now writing, Pope was my
favorite poet. His wit and common sense appealed to me. Young's
"Night Thoughts" also struck me as very grand. Whipple seemed to
me a much greater writer than Emerson. Shakespeare I did not come
to appreciate till years later, and Chaucer and Spenser I have
never learned to care for.
I am sure the growth of my literary taste has been along the right
lines--from the formal and the complex, to the simple and direct.
Now, the less the page seems written, that is, the more natural and
instinctive it is, other things being equal, the more it pleases
me.
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