HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR EVENTS OF 8TH STANZA The 9th Stanza in the Life of Henry Thoreau FALL 1825 JULY 1825 AUGUST SEPTEMBER WINTER 1825/1826 OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER 1825 SPRING 1826 JANUARY 1826 FEBRUARY MARCH SUMMER 1826 APRIL MAY JUNE 1826 Following the death of Jesus Christ there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years. –Kurt Vonnegut, THE SIRENS OF TITAN 1825 Warren Colburn’s AN INTRODUCTION TO ALGEBRA UPON THE INDUCTIVE METHOD OF INSTRUCTION (Boston: Hilliard, Gary, Little, and Wilkins). A copy of the 1826 republication of this, stereotyped at the Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry late of T.H. Carter and Co., would make its way into the personal library of mathematics student David Henry Thoreau. COLBURN’S ALGEBRA EVENTS OF 10TH STANZA HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA Georg Heinrich Bode’s ORPHIC POETRY was reviewed by Professor Edward Everett in the North American Review. E. EVERETT ON BODE (It has seemed plausible to suppose that this review may well have, in a later year, come to the attention of Henry Thoreau.) George Henry Bode would be teaching classical languages at George Bancroft’s and Joseph Cogswell’s Round Hill Academy in Northampton for three school years. Nicholas Marcellus Hentz’s A CLASSICAL FRENCH READER: SELECTED FROM THE BEST WRITERS OF THAT LANGUAGE, IN PROSE AND POETRY: PRECEDED BY AN INTRODUCTION DESIGNED TO FACILITATE THE STUDY OF THE RUDIMENTS OF THE FRENCH, AND ATTENDED WITH NOTES EXPLANATORY OF IDIOMS, ETC. THROUGHOUT THE WORK: COMPILED FOR THE USE OF THE ROUND HILL SCHOOL (Boston: Published by Richardson & Lord; H. Ferry, printer, Northampton). Also, his TADEUSKUND, THE LAST KING OF THE LENAPE. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR AN HISTORICAL TALE (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, & Co.; Printed by Hilliard and Metcalf), a fictionalized account of the Paxton massacres on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1763. Hentz’s “Some observations on the Anatomy and Physiology of the Alligator of North America” appeared in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA Publication in Philadelphia by the firm of A. Finley of a book that Henry Thoreau would own and would rely upon, Professor Richard Harlan’s FAUNA AMERICANA; BEING A DESCRIPTION OF THE MAMMIFEROUS ANIMALS INHABITING NORTH AMERICA, a catalogue of American mammals, the 1st of its kind. FAUNA AMERICANA Along the banks of the Delaware River Professor Harlan had discovered a curious skull. It would eventually be determined to be merely the skull of a South American paca, brought out of place, but Professor Harlan incautiously assigned this to a new genus and species of North American “Osteopera platycephala” (and, he would be blistered for this error, anonymously, by the naturalist Dr. John Godman). [According to Harlan] prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of animals generically CAT distinct, between the martin, (Mustela martes) and the domestic cat. ABOUT THIS SOURCE The sisters of John Thoreau, Senior (Elizabeth Thoreau, Maria Thoreau, and Jane Thoreau) again mortgaged their home at Number 57 on Prince Street in Boston to Isaac Dupee for $1,000.00. THOREAU RESIDENCES 1 According to Marcel R. Garnier’s L’ANCÊTRE (THE ANCESTOR), it was in about this year that John Guillet went from the Isle of Jersey to Québec in the New World. Harrison Gray Dyar reached his majority and completed his apprenticeship at the Concord clockmaking shop of Lemuel Curtis on the “Milldam”. Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau joined the Concord Female Charitable Society. One of the many things this society had done for the local “silent poor” was provide snuff, rice, tea, brandy, and spirits to Zilpah White while she had lived (she had died in 1820) “at the very corner of my bean field” near Walden Pond alone in a cabin, and provide yarn that she could weave so as to have some sort of cash income. WALDEN: Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer PEOPLE OF to town, Zilpha, a colored woman, held her little house, where WALDEN she spun linen for townsfolk, making the Walden Woods ring with her shrill singing, for she had a loud and notable voice. At length, in the war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers, prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and hens were all burned up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself over her gurgling pot, –“Ye are all bones, bones!” I have seen bricks amid the oak copse there. ZILPAH WHITE SLAVERY After less than a year spent learning English and “networking,” Charles Follen landed a job at Harvard College as its 1st instructor in the German language. 1. In the Huguenot diaspora, the Guillet family was closely entangled with the Thoreau family. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA Charles Butler’s BOOK OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. Also, his THE LIFE OF ERASMUS; WITH HISTORICAL REMARKS ON THE STATE OF LITERATURE BETWEEN THE 10TH AND 16TH CENTURIES (London: J. Murray). (This LIFE would be consulted by David Henry Thoreau in 1833.) LIFE OF ERASMUS Publication in London, also, of the four volumes of David Henry’s required textbooks, that would eventually be found in his personal library, Horace’s QUINTI HORATII FLACCI OPERA OMNIA EX EDITIONE J C ZEUNII CUM NOTIS ET INTERPRETATIONE IN USUM DELPHINI VARIIS LECTIONIBUS NOTIS VARIORUM RECENSU EDITIONUM ET CODICUM ET INDICE LOCUPLETISSIMO ACCURATE RECENSITI. This variorum edition contains all the then- known variants of the texts, with notes by Johann Carl Zeune (1736-1788). It had been part of a large series of Latin classics prepared originally for Louis, le Grand Dauphin, in the 17th century, and was republished in London by Abraham John Valpy (1787-1854). HORACE’S OPERA HORACE’S OPERA HORACE’S OPERA HORACE’S OPERA It was in epistle 6 in book 1 of EPISTLES that Horace wrote “To marvel at nothing, Numicius, is almost the one and only thing that can make and keep men happy. There are some people who moved by no awe watch this sun, the stars, and the seasons that follow one another in definite times.” [Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, / Solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum. / Hunc solem et stellas et decedentia certis / Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla / Imbuti spectent....] Thoreau would hold this in tension against the sock- it-to-me romanticism to which Edmund Burke gave voice in A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL — the higher realms of literature, like the realms of astronomy, are above such Sturm und Drang. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR A WEEK: I know of no studies so composing as those of the classical PEOPLE OF scholar. When we have sat down to them, life seems as still and A WEEK serene as if it were very far off, and I believe it is not habitually seen from any common platform so truly and unexaggerated as in the light of literature. In serene hours we contemplate the tour of the Greek and Latin authors with more pleasure than the traveller does the fairest scenery of Greece or Italy. Where shall we find a more refined society? That highway down from Homer and Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more attractive than the Appian. Reading the classics, or conversing with those old Greeks and Latins in their surviving works, is like walking amid the stars and constellations, a high and by way serene to travel. Indeed, the true scholar will be not a little of an astronomer in his habits. Distracting cares will not be allowed to obstruct the field of his vision, for the higher regions of literature, like astronomy, are above storm and darkness. HOMER HESIOD HORACE JUVENAL At Harvard Divinity School, the following young white gentlemen commenced their studies: • Benjamin Brigham • George Bradford • Jonathan Cole • Wendell Bayard Davis • Frederick Augustus Farley • George Fiske • Frederick Henry Hedge • Samuel Kirkland Lothrop • William Parsons Lunt • Artemas Bowers Muzzey • John Langdon Sibley • Moses George Thomas (A.B. Brown University) HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA In these early years there were no formal class graduations as students would be in the habit of studying there for varying periods until they obtained an appropriate offer to enter a pulpit. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR Waldo Emerson was admitted to the middle class at the Divinity School. THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT HERRICK (London: William Pickering, Chancery Lane). Emerson would have this edition in his personal library, and it would be consulted by David Henry Thoreau. ROBERT HERRICK, VOL. I ROBERT HERRICK, VOL. II At the age of 22, Robert Spence Hardy sailed for Ceylon as a Wesleyan missionary (the initial trip, of three). A society was organized in the USA for the purpose of obtaining information in regard to the state of religion in India. Prominent among these people was the Reverend Henry Ware, Sr., seated in the Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard College. Per HOWE’S BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX OF TWELVE UNITARIAN MORALISTS: Henry Ware, Sr. (1764-1845) is another Unitarian moralist who HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 9TH YEAR THOREAU’S 9TH STANZA illustrates upward social mobility.