Our Friend John Burroughs

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A book, a principle, an individual, a landscape, or any object in
nature, to be understood and appreciated, must answer to something
within us; appreciation is the first step toward interpreting a
revelation.

To feel terribly beaten is a good sign; the more resources a man
is conscious of, the deeper he will feel his defeat. But to feel
unusually elated at a victory indicates that our strength did not
warrant it, that we had gone beyond our resources. The boy who
went crowing all day through the streets, on having killed a
squirrel with a stone, showed plainly enough that it was not
a general average of his throwing, and that he was not in the
habit of doing so well; while the rifleman picks the hawk from the
distant tree without remark or comment, and feels vexed if he miss.

The style of some authors, like the manners of some men, is so
naked, so artificial, has so little character at the bottom of it,
that it is constantly intruding itself upon your notice, and seems
to lie there like a huge marble counter from behind which they vend
only pins and needles; whereas the true function of style is as
a means and not as an end--to concentrate the attention upon the
thought which it bears, and not upon itself--to be so apt, natural,
and easy, and so in keeping with the character of the author, that,
like the comb in the hive, it shall seem the result of that which
it contains, and to exist for /its/ sake alone.

It is interesting to note, in these and other extracts, how the
young writer is constantly tracing the analogy between the facts
of everyday life about him, and moral and intellectual truths.
A little later he began to knit these fragments together into
essays, and to send the essays to the "Saturday Press" under
such titles as "Deep," and "A Thought on Culture." There is a
good deal of stating the same thing in diverse ways. The writer
seems to be led on and on to seek analogies which, for the most
part, are felicitous; occasionally crudities and unnecessarily
homely comparisons betray his unformed taste. The first three
paragraphs of "Deep" give a fair sample of the essay:--

Deep authors? Yes, reader, I like deep authors, that is, authors
of great penetration, reach, and compass of thought; but I must not
be bored with a sense of depth--must not be required to strain my
mental vision to see into the bottom of a well; the fountain must
flow out at the surface, though it come from the centre of the
globe. Then I can fill my cup without any artificial aid, or
any painful effort.

What we call depth in a book is often obscurity; and an author
whose meaning is got at only by severe mental exertion, and a
straining of the mind's eye, is generally weak in the backbone
of him. Occasionally it is the dullness of the reader, but oftener
the obtuseness of the writer.

A strong vigorous writer is not obscure--at any rate, not habitually
so; never leaves his reader in doubt, or compels him to mount the
lever and help to raise his burden; but clutches it in his mighty
grasp and hurls it into the air, so that it is not only unencumbered
by the soil that gave it birth, but is wholly detached and relieved,
and set off against the clear blue of his imagination. His thought
is not like a rock propped up but still sod-bound, but is like a
rock held aloft, or built into a buttress, with definite shape and
outline.

Let me next quote from "A Thought on Culture," which appeared in
the same publication a little later, and which is the first to
bear his signature:--

In the conduct of life a man should not show his knowledge, but his
wisdom; not his money--that were vulgar and foolish--but the result
of it--independence, courage, culture, generosity, manliness, and
that noble, humane, courteous air which wealth always brings to the
right sort of a man.

A display of mere knowledge, under most circumstances, is pedantry;
an exercise of wisdom is always godlike. We cannot pardon the absence
of knowledge, but itself must be hid. We can use a thing without
absolutely showing it, we can be reasonable without boring people
with our logic, and speak correctly without parsing our sentences.

The end of knowledge is not that a man may appear learned, any
more than the end of eating is that a man may seem to have a full
stomach; but the end of it is that a man may be wise, see and
understand things as they are; be able to adjust himself to the
universe in which he is placed, and judge and reason with the
celerity of instinct, and that without any conscious exercise of
his knowledge. When we feel the food we have eaten, something is
wrong; so when a man is forever conscious of his learning, he has
not digested it, and it is an encumbrance. . . .

The evolution of this author in his use of titles is interesting.
Compare the crudity of "Vagaries vs. Spiritualism," and "Deep," for
example, with those he selects when he begins to publish his books.
"Wake-Robin," "Winter Sunshine," "Locusts and Wild Honey," "Leaf
and Tendril,"--how much they connote! Then how felicitous are the
titles of most of his essays! "Birch Browsings," "The Snow-Walkers,"
"Mellow England," "Our Rural Divinity" (the cow), "The Flight of
the Eagle" (for one of his early essays on Whitman), "A Bunch of
Herbs," "A Pinch of Salt," "The Divine Soil," "The Long Road" (on
evolution)--these and many others will occur to the reader.

Following "A Thought on Culture" was a short essay on poetry, the
drift of which is that poetry as contrasted with science must give
us things, not as they are in themselves, but as they stand related
to our experience. Our young writer is more at his ease now:--

Science, of course, is literal, as it ought to be, but science is
not life; science takes no note of this finer self, this duplicate
on a higher scale. Science never laughs or cries, or whistles or
sings, or falls in love, or sees aught but the coherent reality.
It says a soap bubble is a soap bubble--a drop of water impregnated
with oleate of potash or soda, and inflated with common air; but
life says it is a crystal sphere, dipped in the rainbow, buoyant as
hope, sensitive as the eye, with a power to make children dance for
joy, and to bring youth into the look of the old. . . .

Who in his youth ever saw the swallow of natural history to be the
twittering, joyous bird that built mud nests beneath his father's
shed, and in the empty odorous barn?--that snapped the insects that
flew up in his way when returning at twilight from the upland farm;
and that filled his memory with such visions of summer when he
first caught its note on some bright May morning, flying up the
southern valley? Describe water, or a tree, in the language of
exact science, or as they really are in and of themselves, and
what person, schooled only in nature, would recognize them? Things
must be given as they seem, as they stand represented in the mind.
Objects arrange themselves in our memory, not according to the
will, or any real quality in themselves, but as they affect our
lives and stand to us in our unconscious moments. The hills we
have dwelt among, the rocks and trees we have looked upon in all
moods and feelings, that stood to us as the shore to the sea, and
received a thousand impresses of what we lived and suffered, have
significance to us that is not accounted for by anything we can
see or feel in them.

Here we see the youth of twenty-three setting forth a truth which
he has sedulously followed in his own writing about nature, the
following of which accounts so largely for the wide appeal his
works have made.

Some time in 1860, Mr. Burroughs began to send essays to the New
York "Leader," a weekly paper, the organ of Tammany Hall at that
time. His first article was made up of three short essays--"World
Growth," "New Ideas," and "Theory and Practice." Here beyond
question is the writer we know:

The ideas that indicate the approach of a new era in history come
like bluebirds in the spring, if you have ever noticed how that is.
The bird at first seems a mere wandering voice in the air; you hear
its carol on some bright morning in March, but are uncertain of
its course or origin; it seems to come from some source you cannot
divine; it falls like a drop of rain when no cloud is visible; you
look and listen, but to no purpose. The weather changes, and it is
not till a number of days that you hear the note again, or, maybe,
see the bird darting from a stake in the fence, or flitting from one
mullein-stalk to another. Its notes now become daily more frequent;
the birds multiply; they sing less in the air and more when at rest;
and their music is louder and more continuous, but less sweet and
plaintive. Their boldness increases and soon you see them flitting
with a saucy and inquiring air about barns and outbuildings,
peeping into dove-cota and stable windows, and prospecting for a
place to nest. They wage war against robins, pick quarrels with
swallows, and would forcibly appropriate their mud houses, seeming
to doubt the right of every other bird to exist but themselves.
But soon, as the season advances, domestic instincts predominate;
they subside quietly into their natural places, and become peaceful
members of the family of birds.

So the thoughts that indicate the approach of a new era in history
at first seem to be mere disembodied, impersonal voices somewhere
in the air; sweet and plaintive, half-sung and half-cried by some
obscure and unknown poet. We know not whence they come, nor whither
they tend. It is not a matter of sight or experience. They do
not attach themselves to any person or place, and their longitude
and latitude cannot be computed. But presently they become
individualized and centre in some Erasmus, or obscure thinker,
and from a voice in the air, become a living force on the earth.
They multiply and seem contagious, and assume a thousand new forms.
They grow quarrelsome and demonstrative, impudent and conceited,
crowd themselves in where they have no right, and would fain
demolish or appropriate every institution and appointment of
society. But after a time they settle into their proper relations,
incorporate themselves in the world, and become new sources of power
and progress in history.

This quotation is especially significant, as it shows the writer's
already keen observation of the birds, and his cleverness in
appropriating these facts of nature to his philosophical purpose.
How neatly it is done! Readers of "Wake-Robin" will recognize a
part of it in the matchless description of the bluebird which is
found in the initial essay of that book.

In 1860, in the "Leader," there also appeared a long essay by Mr.
Burroughs, "On Indirections." This has the most unity and flow of
thought of any thus far. It is so good I should like to quote it
all. Here are the opening paragraphs:--

The South American Indian who discovered the silver mines of Potosi
by the turning up of a bush at the roots, which he had caught hold
of to aid his ascent while pursuing a deer up a steep hill,
represents very well how far intention and will are concerned in
the grand results that flow from men's lives. Every schoolboy
knows that many of the most valuable discoveries in science and art
were accidental, or a kind of necessity, and sprang from causes that
had no place in the forethought of the discoverer. The ostrich lays
its eggs in the sand, and the sun hatches them; so man puts forth an
effort and higher powers second him, and he finds himself the source
of events that he had never conceived or meditated. Things are
so intimately connected and so interdependent, the near and the
remote are so closely related, and all parts of the universe are so
mutually sympathetic, that it is impossible to tell what momentous
secrets may lurk under the most trifling facts, or what grand and
beautiful results may be attained through low and unimportant means.
It seems that Nature delights in surprise, and in underlying our
careless existences with plans that are evermore to disclose
themselves to us and stimulate us to new enterprise and research.
The simplest act of life may discover a chain of cause and effect
that binds together the most remote parts of the system. We are
often nearest to truth in some unexpected moment, and may stumble
upon that while in a careless mood which has eluded our most
vigilant and untiring efforts. Men have seen deepest and farthest
when they opened their eyes without any special aim, and a word or
two carelessly dropped by a companion has revealed to me a truth
that weeks of study had failed to compass. . . .

Nature will not be come at directly, but indirectly; all her ways
are retiring and elusive, and she is more apt to reveal herself
to her quiet, unobtrusive lover, than to her formal, ceremonious
suitor. A man who goes out to admire the sunset, or to catch the
spirit of field and grove, will very likely come back disappointed.
A bird seldom sings when watched, and Nature is no coquette, and
will not ogle and attitudinize when stared at. The farmer and
traveler drink deepest of this cup, because it is always a surprise
and comes without forethought or preparation. No insulation or
entanglement takes place, and the soothing, medicinal influence
of the fields and the wood takes possession of us as quietly as a
dream, and before we know it we are living the life of the grass
and the trees.

How unconsciously here he describes his own intercourse with
Nature! And what an unusual production for a youth of twenty-three
of such meagre educational advantages!

In 1862, in an essay on "Some of the Ways of Power," which appeared
in the "Leader," he celebrated the beauty and completeness of
nature's inexorable laws:--

There is an evident earnestness and seriousness in the meaning of
things, and the laws that traverse nature and our own being are
as fixed and inexorable, though, maybe, less instantaneous and
immediate in their operation, as the principle of gravitation,
and are as little disposed to pardon the violator or adjourn the
day of adjudication.

There seems to be this terrible alternative put to every man on
entering the world, /conquer or be conquered/. It is what the waves
say to the swimmer, "Use me or drown"; what gravity says to the
babe, "Use me or fall"; what the winds say to the sailor, "Use me
or be wrecked"; what the passions say to every one of us, "Drive
or be driven." Time in its dealings with us says plainly enough,
"Here I am, your master or your servant." If we fail to make a
good use of time, time will not fail to make a bad use of us. The
miser does not use his money, so his money uses him; men do not
govern their ambition, and so are governed by it. . . .

These considerations are valuable chiefly for their analogical
import. They indicate a larger truth. Man grows by conquering
his limitations--by subduing new territory and occupying it. He
commences life on a very small capital; his force yet lies outside
of him, scattered up and down in the world like his wealth--in
rocks, in trees, in storms and flood, in dangers, in difficulties,
in hardships,--in short, in whatever opposes his progress and puts
on a threatening front. The first difficulty overcome, the first
victory gained, is so much added to his side of the scale--so much
reinforcement of pure power.

I have said elsewhere that Mr. Burroughs has written himself into
his books. We see him doing this in these early years; he was an
earnest student of life at an age when most young men would have
been far less seriously occupied. Difficulties and hardships were
roundabout him, his force was, indeed, "scattered up and down in
the world, in rocks and trees," in birds and flowers, and from
these sources he was even then wresting the beginnings of his
successful career.

It was in November, 1860, when twenty-three years of age, that he
made his first appearance in the pages of the "Atlantic Monthly,"
in the essay "Expression," comments upon which by its author I have
already quoted. At that time he was under the Emersonian spell
of which he speaks in his autobiographical sketch. Other readers
and lovers of Emerson had had similar experiences. Brownlee Brown,
an "Atlantic" contributor (of "Genius" and "The Ideal Tendency,"
especially), was a "sort of refined and spiritualized Emerson,
without the grip and gristle of the master, but very pleasing
and suggestive," Mr. Burroughs says. The younger writer made
a pilgrimage to the home of Brownlee Brown in the fall of 1862,
having been much attracted to him by the above-named essays. He
found him in a field gathering turnips. They had much interesting
talk, and some correspondence thereafter. Mr. Brown admitted that
his mind had been fertilized by the Emersonian pollen, and declared
he could write in no other way.

Concerning his own imitation of Emerson, Mr. Burroughs says:--

It was by no means a conscious imitation. Had I tried to imitate
him, probably the spurious character of my essay would have
deceived no one. It was one of those unconscious imitations that
so often give an impression of genuineness. . . . When I began to
realize how deeply Emerson had set his stamp upon me, I said to
myself: "This will never do. I must resist this influence. If
I would be a true disciple of Emerson, I must be myself and not
another. I must brace myself by his spirit, and not go tricked
out in his manner, and his spirit was /'Never imitate.'/"

It was this resolution, as he has before told us, that turned
him to writing on outdoor subjects.

In rereading "Expression" recently, I was struck, not so much by
its Emersonian manner, as by its Bergsonian ideas. I had heard Mr.
Burroughs, when he came under the spell of Bergson in the summer of
1911, say that the reason he was so moved by the French philosopher
was doubtless because he found in him so many of his own ideas; and
it was with keen pleasure that I came upon these forerunners of
Bergson written before Bergson was born.

At the time when Mr. Burroughs was dropping the Emersonian manner,
and while his style was in the transition stage, he wrote an essay
on "Analogy," and sent it also to the "Atlantic," receiving quite a
damper on his enthusiasm when Lowell, the editor, returned it. But
he sent it to the old "Knickerbocker Magazine," where it appeared in
1862. Many years later he rewrote it, and it was accepted by Horace
Scudder, then the "Atlantic's" editor; in 1902, after rewriting it
the second time, he published it in "Literary Values."

Because of the deep significance of them at this time in the career
of Mr. Burroughs, I shall quote the following letters received by
him from David A. Wasson, a Unitarian clergyman of Massachusetts,
and a contributor to the early numbers of the "Atlantic." Their
encouragement, their candor, their penetration, and their prescience
entitle them to a high place in an attempt to trace the evolution
of our author. One readily divines how much such appreciation and
criticism meant to the youthful essayist.

Groveland, Mass., May 21, 1860

Mr. Burroughs,--

My Dear Sir,--Let me tell you at the outset that I have for five
years suffered from a spinal hurt, from which I am now slowly
recovering, but am still unable to walk more than a quarter of
a mile or to write without much pain. I have all the will in
the world to serve you, but, as you will perceive, must use much
brevity in writing.

"Expression" I do not remember,--probably did not read,--for I
read no periodical literature--not even the "Atlantic," which is
the best periodical I know--unless my attention is very especially
called to it, and often, to tell the truth, do not heed the call
when it is given. Where I am at present I have not access to back
numbers of the "Atlantic," but shall have soon. The essay that
you sent me I read carefully twice, but unfortunately left it in
Boston, where it reached me. I can therefore only speak of it
generally. It certainly shows in you, if my judgment may be
trusted, unusual gifts of pure intellect--unusual, I mean,
among scholars and literary men; and the literary execution is
creditable, though by no means of the same grade with the mental
power evinced. You must become a fine literary worker to be equal
to the demands of such an intellect as yours. For the deeper the
thought, the more difficult to give it a clear and attractive
expression. You can write so as to command attention. I am sure
you can. Will you? that is the only question. Can you work and
wait long enough? Have you the requisite patience and persistency?
If you have, there is undoubtedly an honorable future before you.

But I will not conceal from you that I think you too young to have
written "numerous essays" of the class you attempt, or to publish
a book consisting of such. No other kind of writing requires such
mental maturity; stories may be written at any age, though good
ones are seldom written early. Even poems and works of art have
been produced by some Raphael or Milton at a comparatively early
season of life, and have not given shame to the author at a later
age; though this is the exception, not the rule. But the purely
reflective essay belongs emphatically to maturer life. Your
twenty-four years have evidently been worth more to you than the
longest life to most men; but my judgment is that you should give
your genius more time yet, and should wait upon it with more labor.
This is my frank counsel. I will respect you so much as to offer
it without disguise. Let me fortify it by an example or two. Mr.
Emerson published nothing, I think, until he was past thirty, and
his brother Charles, now dead, who was considered almost superior
to him, maintained that it is almost a sin to go into print sooner.
Yet both these had all possible educational advantages, and were
familiar with the best books and the best results of American
culture from infancy almost. I myself printed nothing--saving some
poetical indiscretions--until I was twenty-seven, and this was only
a criticism on Dr. Isaac Barrow--not a subject, you see, that made
great demands upon me. Two years later an article on Lord Bacon,
for which I had been indirectly preparing more than two years, and
directly at least one; and even then I would say little respecting
his philosophy, and confined myself chiefly to a portraiture of his
character as a man. At thirty-two years of age I sent to press an
essay similar in character to those I write now--and am at present
a little ashamed of it. I am now thirty-nine years old, and all
that I have ever put in print would not make more than one hundred
and thirty or one hundred and forty pages in the "Atlantic."
Upon reflection, however, I will say two hundred pages, including
pamphlet publications. I would have it less rather than more. But
for this illness it would have been even less, for this has led me
to postpone larger enterprises, which would have gone to press much
later, and prepare shorter articles for the "Atlantic." Yet my
literary interest began at a very early age.

In writing essays such as it seems to me you have a genius for,
I require:--

1. That one should get the range--the largest /range/--of the laws
he sets forth. This is the /sine qua num/. Every primary law goes
through heaven and earth. Go with it. This is the business and
privilege of intellect.

2. When one comes to writing, let his discourse have a beginning
and an end. Do not let the end of his essay be merely the end of
his sheet, or the place where he took a notion to stop writing,
but let it be necessary. Each paragraph, too, should represent
a distinct advance, a clear step, in the exposition of his thought.
I spare no labor in securing this, and reckon no labor lost that
brings me toward this mark. I reckon my work ill done if a single
paragraph, yes, or a single sentence, can be transposed without
injuring the whole.

3. Vivid expression must be sought, must be labored for unsparingly.
This you, from your position, will find it somewhat hard to attain,
unless you have peculiar aptitude for it. Expression in the country
is far less vivacious than in cities.

I have spoken frankly; now you must decide for yourself. You have
mental power enough; if you have accessory qualities (which I think
you must possess), you cannot fail to make your mark.

The brevity that I promised you will not find in this letter, but
you will find haste enough to make up for the lack of it.

If now, after the foregoing, you feel any inclination to send me
the essay on "Analogy" (capital subject), pray do so. I will read
it, and if I have anything to say about it, will speak as frankly
as above.

I shall be in this place--Groveland, Mass.--about three weeks;
after that in Worcester a short while.

Very truly yours,

DAVID A. WASSON.

Groveland, Mass., June 18, 1862.

Mr. Burroughs,--

My Dear Sir,--
I am sorry to have detained your MS. so long, but part of the time
I have been away, and during the other portion of it, the fatigue
that I must undergo was all that my strength would bear.

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