Meaning of “Literature is not a mere Science, to be…”

The short formulation emphasizes that literary skill develops through use and practice rather than through passive admiration of established works alone.

Repeated drawing is treated as the route to improvement, making practice and quantity of attempts part of developing a useful skill.

Improvement is framed as practical rather than mystical: even modest writers can remove avoidable weakness when they slow down and revise deliberately.

Learning to write is presented as demanding practice rather than a shortcut: difficulty belongs to the training and does not by itself signal failure.

Partial knowledge can produce misplaced confidence; the warning favors deeper study over shallow certainty.

Thoreau treats reading as potentially transformative: a book can mark a genuine before-and-after point when it gives language to questions a reader has struggled to express.