The Writings of John Burroughs

WITHIN the last twenty years, there has sprung up, both here and in England, a class of books treating nature in a half-scientific and half - poetical way, which have been a source of the purest pleasure and inspiration to thousands of persons. These books are of the greatest value not only in fostering a desire to know more about the world we live in, but in counteracting a modern tendency towards a too absorbing study of the technically scientific aspect of nature, which could but have a deadening effect on many minds.

As the pioneer of this class of literature in America, Mr. John Burroughs deserves the sincerest gratitude of all lovers of nature ; and the reissue, at this season, of his entire writings¹ gives an opportunity, which we gladly seize, for a fresh survey of his work. In giving him the credit of opening this field, we do no injustice to the memory of Thoreau, in whose writings philosophy comes before nature, or to such authors as Colonel Higginson, who have made only desultory and incidental excursions into this province. But it is not only as a pioneer that Mr. Burroughs is noteworthy. He is unique among his fellow - craftsmen, A farmboy, a descendant of farmers, he more than all the others is filled with the spirit of country life. He is no sentimental admirer of Nature’s beauties ; in fact, he has very little to say in direct praise of her. “ My aim has been, not to tell that love to my reader, but to tell it to the trees and the birds, and to let them tell him. I think we all like this indirect way the best.” He loves her as a man loves his own family, and the reader feels that an introduction from him is of more than ordinary value. He shows a fine contempt for the thoughtless people who go about to gaze at scenery in cold blood and “ make a dead set ” at it. So far is he from being a mere admirer of Nature that he actually tries to persuade us that she does not exist as a living and quickening spirit, but is only a system of phenomena into which the poet breathes the breath of life. But, however thoroughly he is convinced of this in his understanding, we, his readers, know that his heart tells another story, and that the gentle and mighty All-mother has no more loving child than John Burroughs.

As we have hinted, Mr. Burroughs is above all the high priest of the farm. Country life, scenes, sounds, tastes, and smells are his great interest, and in writing of these he strikes a chord which no other prose writer, on this side of the Atlantic at least, has yet touched. Cows, apples, trout-streams, springs, footpaths, — how he loves them, and how he reveals to us their meaning and their beauties ! Just before the strawberry season, the writer always makes a point of reading Mr. Burroughs’s delightful essay on strawberries. What better appetizer could one have ! How one’s soul longs for the taste of a luscious “ native,” or, better still, a handful of wild berries! Visions of trout and trout-streams arise, of the free life of woods and meadows, — and then, with a sigh, we stop dreaming. But the pleasures of anticipation and of recollection are always the sweetest, and if we can add to them anything which will make them sweeter still, by all means let us do so.

It is in these essays that Mr. Burroughs is at his happiest. As a purely descriptive writer he is less successful. His lack of appreciation of the beauty of scenery has something to do with this, doubtless. Color, in which Jefferies reveled and which adds so much to Mr. Bolles’s delightful sketches, seems to mean but little to him. The landscapeartist, whether he paints with a brush or with a pen, must have an eye for color; but Mr. Burroughs is no artist. Yet perhaps we do him wrong in speaking of a lack of appreciation of scenery. We do not mean to say that he is indifferent to its charms, although he somewhere denies the existence of beauty in the landscape except under certain unusual conditions. But his descriptions are rather infrequent, and his attitude is subjective. His interest is in the qualities that touch the heart rather than in those that please the eye. Rarely, however, we find such passages as this, which, shows something of the painter’s sense of natural beauty : —

“The sun was gilding the mountains, and its yellow light seemed to be reflected through all the woods. At one point we looked through and along a valley of deep shadow upon a broad sweep of mountain quite near and densely clothed with woods, flooded from base to summit by the setting sun. It was a wild, memorable scene. What power and effectiveness in Nature, I thought, and how rarely an artist catches her touch ! Looking down upon or squarely into a mountain covered with a heavy growth of birch and maple, and shone upon by the sun, is a sight peculiarly agreeable to me. How closely the swelling umbrageous heads of the trees fit together, and how the eye revels in the flowing and easy uniformity, while the mind feels the ruggedness and terrible power beneath ! ”

And yet, even here, the last line shows that it is not his eye alone which is charmed. Of course this human view is the more suggestive and inspiring, but there is not enough of it, and we miss the vivid outlines, the chiaroscuro, and the coloring which a painter would have given us.

Mr. Burroughs’s attitude towards birds, on the other hand, is objective, and is happily free from that excessive “ anthropomorphism ” which pervades the writings of some recent observers, mostly of the motherly sex. His birds are birds, not feathered people ; and though he finds human traits in them at times, one seldom feels that these traits exist only in the author’s imagination, as is apt to be the case when the search for analogies is carried too far. Such phrases as “bird babies” and “feathered darlings ” are, of course, not to be found in his vocabulary.

Mr. Burroughs has made many original observations on the habits of our more common birds, and has added much to the literature of science in this respect. It was he who first called attention to the ecstatic song-flight of the oven-bird, and his description of the discovery of the black-throated blue warbler’s nest is both interesting and valuable. Sometimes he makes a rather sweeping statement without giving his grounds ; so that we find ourselves wondering whether his observations were sufficiently wide and long continued to warrant it. But, on the whole, the reader will find in this new edition little to question from a scientific point of view.

Not the least entertaining of the outdoor papers are those on British birds, flowers, and landscapes. Mr. Burroughs, we think, is the only competent American observer who has published a record of his experiences on the other side, and we believe no Englishman has ever given us a similar record of his impressions of nature in America. Our author’s notes on the characters and customs of the English, Scotch, and French, also, and on the general aspects of city and country on both sides of the Channel, deserve more than this passing mention.

Besides the outdoor sketches, by which Mr. Burroughs is best known, these volumes contain an amount of fresh, fair, and wholesome criticism which will be a surprise to many readers. As a critic the author has decided opinions, and is enthusiastic in praise or in defense of his favorites. Walt Whitman, Emerson, and Carlyle receive a large share of his attention, and the free and unconventional views of these and other men which this untrammeled literary observer gives us are refreshing indeed. In the critical articles, as in the nature - sketches, we sometimes find a rather polemical and controversial tone, but the warfare is always open and honorable. Mr. Burroughs’s unconventionality, it will be understood, does not lead him away from a very sane and natural view of life. He seizes every opportunity to insist on a complete manliness and virility, and a healthy coarseness is by no means unwelcome to him. We are not surprised, therefore, to find him a warm supporter of Walt Whitman, and one of the chief faults he finds in his “ master-enchanter,” Emerson, is a tendency to refinement at the expense of breadth and heartiness. He will make no attempt to remove the “cakes and ale ” from the world’s bill of fare.

We have said that Mr. Burroughs lacks the artist’s eye. We think he himself would confess to lacking a perfect appreciation of literary art. The matter, not the manner, interests him, and still more the man behind the book. His favorite authors are those whose style is faulty, — Whitman, Emerson, Carlyle. He commends Matthew Arnold’s style, but his praise is for its lucidity and continuity, not for any beauties he finds in it. In An Egotistical Chapter — which, by the way, is more modest than its title promises — the author says : “ I must write from sympathy and love, or not at all. I have in no sort of measure the gift of the ready writer, who can turn his pen to all sorts of themes, or the dramatic, creative gift of the great poets, which enables them to get out of themselves, and present vividly and powerfully things entirely beyond the circle of their own lives and experiences.

I go to the woods to enjoy myself, and not to report them ; and if I succeed, the expedition may by and by bear fruit at my pen.” This explains the fact that he writes most charmingly when under the exhilarating spell of his recollections of country sights and sounds ; when he enjoys again those autumn walks near Washington ; when he calls to mind just how the apples tasted which, as a boy, he drew out of the apple hole in the garden ; when he lives over again that first day in England ; when, in imagination, he wooes the coy trout in a Catskill mountain stream, or follows the cows to pasture, or listens to the wild bark of a fox in the wintry woods. He cannot produce an artistically beautiful effect in cold blood.

But it would be ungracious to complain that the hermit thrush is not as faultless a singer as the mocking-bird, that his plumage lacks the gorgeousness of the tanager’s. He has honest and unassuming virtues of his own, and his song is an inspiring hymn to Nature’s praise. Last summer, visitors to our northern forests missed his glorious music. Only here and there a single songster could be heard, where in previous summers the woods had resounded to the answering strains of dozens. The rest had, like the bluebirds, fallen victims to the terrible cold of last February in the South. But we can never lose John Burroughs ! His call into the woods and fields we can always hear when we will.

A word should be said in praise of this edition, for the fair proportion of the page, the durability and beauty of the paper, and the good taste of the binding. The decoration, confined to etched frontispieces and title-pages, is to the point; portraits of the author and sketches of his haunts form the subjects of the designs ; and the total effect is to dignify the art of book-making. The careful indexes in the several volumes add to the value, and confirm one’s confidence in the thoroughness with which the whole series has been edited.