"Tuckerman's occasional obscurity, like that of Emily Dickinson, contributes to one's general impression of a soliloquy not quite overheard. It is interesting that Emily Dickinson should have known Frederick's brother Edward, who taught botany at Amherst College, and also Tuckerman's son and his son's wife. There is a good deal about the Tuckermans in Emily's letters; but—though Greenfield is not far from Amherst — there is no mention of Frederick Goddard. Did Emily know that the father of her friend, almost as much a recluse as herself, was writing remarkable poetry? Had Tuckerman ever been told that Emily Dickinson wrote? Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson—though he and Tuckerman had been classmates at Harvard—had no notion of Tuckerman's talent. Old Higginson was still alive when Tuckerman was rediscovered below, and in response to an inquiry by Witter Bynner, he explained that he remembered his contemporary 'as a refined and gentlemanly fellow, but I did not then know him as a poet'."