I once asked Mr. Burroughs about his early writings, his beginnings. He replied, "They were small potatoes and few in a hill, although at the time I evidently thought I was growing some big ones. I had yet to learn, as every young writer has to learn, that big words do not necessarily mean big thoughts." Later he sent me these maiden efforts, with an account of when and where they appeared.
These early articles show that Mr. Burroughs was a born essayist. They all took the essay form. In his reading, as he has said, any book of essays was pretty sure to arrest his attention. He seems early to have developed a hunger for the pure stuff of literature—something that would feed his intellect at the same time that it appealed to his aesthetic sense. Concerning his first essays, he wrote me:—
The only significant thing about my first essays, written between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, is their serious trend of thought; but the character of my early reading was serious and philosophical. Locke and Johnson and Saint-Pierre and the others no doubt left their marks upon me. I diligently held my mind down to the grindstone of Locke's philosophy, and no doubt my mind was made brighter and sharper by the process. Out of Saint-Pierre's "Studies of Nature," a work I had never before heard of, I got something, though it would be hard for me to say just what. The work is a curious blending of such science as there was in his time, with sentiment and fancy, and enlivened by a bright French mind. I still look through it with interest, and find that it has a certain power of suggestion for me yet.
He confessed that he was somewhat imposed upon by Dr. Johnson's high-sounding platitudes. "A beginner," he said, "is very apt to feel that if he is going to write, the thing to do is to write, and get as far from the easy conversational manner as possible. Let your utterances be measured and stately." At first he tried to imitate Johnson, but soon gave that up. He was less drawn to Addison and Lamb at the time, because they were less formal, and seemingly less profound; and was slow in perceiving that the art of good writing is the art of bringing one's mind and soul face to face with that of the reader. How different that early attitude from the penetrating criticism running through his "Literary Values"; how different his stilted beginnings from his own limpid prose as we know it, to read which is to forget that one is reading!
Mr. Burroughs's very first appearance in print was in a paper in Delaware County, New York,—the Bloomfield "Mirror,"—on May 18, 1856. The article—"Vagaries vs. Spiritualism"—purports to be written by "Philomath," of Roxbury, New York, who is none other than John Burroughs, at the age of nineteen. It starts out showing impatience at the unreasoning credulity of the superstitious mind, and continues in a mildly derisive strain for about a column, foreshadowing the controversial spirit which Mr. Burroughs displayed many years later in taking to task the natural-history romancers. The production was evidently provoked by a too credulous writer on spiritualism in a previous issue of the "Mirror." I will quote its first paragraph:—
Mr. Mirror,—Notwithstanding the general diffusion of knowledge in the nineteenth century, it is a lamentable fact that some minds are so obscured by ignorance, or so blinded by superstition, as to rely with implicit confidence upon the validity of opinions which have no foundation in nature, or no support by the deductions of reason. But truth and error have always been at variance, and the audacity of the contest has kept pace with the growing vigor of the contending parties. Some straightforward, conscientious persons, whose intentions are undoubtedly commendable, are so infatuated by the sophistical theories of the spiritualist, or so tossed about on the waves of public opinion, that they lose sight of truth and good sense, and, like the philosopher who looked higher than was wise in his stargazing, tumble into a ditch.
In 1859 or 1860, Mr. Burroughs began to contribute to the columns of the "Saturday Press," an organ of the literary bohemians in New York, edited by Henry Clapp. These were fragmentary things of a philosophical cast, and were grouped under the absurd title "Fragments from the Table of an Intellectual Epicure," by "All Souls." There were about sixty of these fragments. I have examined most of them; some are fanciful and far-fetched; some are apt and felicitous; but all foreshadow the independent thinker and observer, and show that this "Intellectual Epicure" was feeding on strong meat and assimilating it.
I assume that it will interest the reader who knows Mr. Burroughs only as the practiced writer of the past fifty years to see some of his first sallies into literature, to trace the unlikeness to his present style, and the resemblances here and there. Accordingly I subjoin some extracts by "All Souls" from the time-stained pages of the New York "Saturday Press" of 1859 and 1860:—
A principle of absolute truth, pointed with fact and feathered with fancy, and shot from the bow-string of a master intellect, is one of the most potent things under the sun. It sings like a bird of peace to those who are not the object of its aim, but woe, woe to him who is the butt of such terrible archery!
For a thing to appear heavy to us, it is necessary that we have heft to balance against it; to appear strong, it is necessary that we have strength; to appear great, it is necessary that we have an idea of greatness. We must have a standard to measure by, and that standard must be in ourselves. An ignorant peasant cannot know that Bacon is so wise. To duly appreciate genius, you must have genius; a pigmy cannot measure the strength of a giant. The faculty that reads and admires, is the green undeveloped state of the faculty that writes and creates.
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.
I read your essay carefully in a few days after receiving it and laid it aside for a second perusal. Now I despair of finding time for such a second reading as I designed, and so must write you at once my impressions after a single reading.
The inference concerning your mind that I draw from your essay enhances the interest I previously felt in you. All that you tell me of yourself has the same effect. You certainly have high, very high, mental power; and the patience and persistency that you must have shown hitherto assures me that you will in future be equal to the demands of your intellect. As to publishing what you have now written, you must judge. The main question, is whether you will be discouraged by failure of your book. If not, publish, if you like; and then, if the public ignores your thought, gather up your strength again and write so that they cannot ignore you. For, in truth, the public does not like to think; it likes to be amused; and conceives a sort of hatred against the writer who would force it to the use of its intellect. This is invariably the case; it will be so with you. If the public finds anything in your work that can be condemned, it will be but too happy to pass sentence; if it can make out to think that you are a pretender, it will gladly do so; if it can turn its back upon you and ignore you, its back, and nothing else, you will surely see. And this on account of your merits. You really have thoughts. You make combinations of your own. You have freighted your words out of your own mental experience. You do not flatter any of the sects by using their cant. Now, then, be sure that you have got to do finished work, finished in every minutest particular, for years, before your claims will be allowed.
If you were a pretender, your success in immediate prospect would be more promising; the very difficulty is that you are not—that you think—that the public must read you humbly, confessing that you have intelligence beyond its own. I said that the general public wants to be amused: I now add that it dearly desires to be flattered, or at least allowed to flatter itself. Those people who have no thoughts of their own are the very ones who hate mortally to admit to themselves that any intelligence in the world is superior to their own. A noble nature is indeed never so delighted as when it finds something that may be lawfully reverenced; but all the ignoble keep up their self-complacence by shutting their eyes to all superiority.
I state the case strongly, as you will feel it bye and bye. Mind, I am not a disappointed man; and have met as generous appreciation as I ought to wish. I am not misanthropic, nor in the least soured. I say all this, not against the public, but for you.
Now, then, as to the essay. It is rich in thought. Everywhere are the traces of a penetrating and sincere intellect. Much of the expression is also good. The faults of it, me judice, are as follows: The introduction I think too long. I should nearly throw away the first five pages. Your true beginning I think to be near the bottom of the sixth page, though the island in the middle paragraph of that page is too fine to be lost. From the sixth to about the twentieth I read with hearty pleasure. Then begin subordinate essays in illustration of your main theme. These are good in themselves, but their subordination is a little obscured. I think careless readers—and most of your readers, be sure, will be careless—will fail to perceive the connection. You are younger than I, and will hope more from your readers; but I find even superior men slow, slow, SLOW to understand—missing your point so often! I think the relationship must be brought out more strongly, and some very good sentences must be thrown out because they are more related to the subordinate than the commanding subject. This is about all that I have to say. Sometimes your sentences are a little heavy, but you will find, little by little, happier terms of expression. I do not in the least believe that you cannot in time write as well as I. What I have done to earn expression I know better than you The crudities that I have outgrown or outlabored, I also know.
You must be a little less careless about your spelling, simply because these slips will discredit your thought in the eyes of superficial critics.
You understand, of course, that I speak above of the general public—not of the finer natures, who will welcome you with warm hands.
I fear that the results of my reading will not correspond to your wishes, and that it was hardly worth your while to send me your MS. But I am obliged to you for informing me of your existence, for I augur good for my country from the discovery of every such intelligence as yours, and I pledge to you my warm interest and regard.
Very cordially yours,
David A. Wasson
Worcester, Sept. 29, 1862,
My Dear Mr. Burroughs,—
To the medicine proposition I say. Yes. A man of your tastes and mental vigor should be able to do some clean work in that profession. I know not of any other established profession that allows a larger scope of mind than this. There is some danger of materialism, but this you have already weaponed yourself against, and the scientific studies that come in the line of the profession will furnish material for thought and expression which I am sure you will know well how to use.
I am glad if my suggestions about your essay proved of some service to you. There is thought and statement in it which will certainly one day come to a market. The book, too, all in good season. Life for you is very long, and you can take your time. Take it by all means. Give yourself large leisure to do your best. I am about setting up my household gods in Worcester. This makes me in much haste, and therefore without another word I must say that I shall always be glad to hear from you, and that I am always truly your friend.
D. A. Wasson
Of the early nature papers which Mr. Burroughs wrote for the New York "Leader," and which were grouped under the general title, "From the Back Country," there were five or six in number, of two or three columns each. One on "Butter-Making," of which I will quote the opening passage, fairly makes the mouth water:—
With green grass comes golden butter. With the bobolinks and the swallows, with singing groves, and musical winds, with June,—ah, yes! with tender, succulent, gorgeous June,—all things are blessed. The dairyman's heart rejoices, and the butter tray with its virgin treasure becomes a sight to behold. There lie the rich masses, fold upon fold, leaf upon leaf, fresh, sweet, and odorous, just as the ladle of the dairymaid dipped it from the churn, sweating great drops of buttermilk, and looking like some rare and precious ore. The cool spring water is the only clarifier needed to remove all dross and impurities and bring out all the virtues and beauties of this cream-evolved element. How firm and bright it becomes, how delicious the odor it emits! what vegetarian ever found it in his heart, or his palate either, to repudiate butter? The essence of clover and grass and dandelions and beechen woods is here. How wonderful the chemistry that from elements so common and near at hand produces a result so beautiful and useful! Eureka! Is not this the alchemy that turns into gold the commonest substances? How can transformation be more perfect?
During the years of this early essay-writing, Mr. Burroughs was teaching country schools in the fall and winter, and working on the home farm in summer; at the same time he was reading serious books and preparing himself for whatever was in store for him. He read medicine for only three months, in the fall of 1862, and then resumed teaching. His first magazine article about the birds was written in the summer or fall of 1863, and appeared in the "Atlantic" in the spring of 1885. He learned from a friend to whom Mr. Sanborn had written that the article had pleased Emerson.
It was in 1864, while in the Currency Bureau in Washington, that he wrote the essays which make up his first nature book, "Wake-Robin." His first book, however, was not a nature book, but was "Walt Whitman as Poet and Person." It was published in 1867, preceding "Wake-Robin" by four years. It has long been out of print, and is less known than his extended, riper work, "Whitman, A. Study," written in 1896.
A record of the early writings of Mr. Burroughs would not be complete without considering also his ventures into the field of poetry. In the summer of 1860 he wrote and printed his first verses (with the exception of some still earlier ones written in 1856 to the sweetheart who became his wife), which were addressed to his friend and comrade E. M. Allen, subsequently the husband of Elizabeth Akers, the author of "Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight." The lines to E. M. A. were printed in the "Saturday Press." Because they are the first of our author's verses to appear in print, I quote them here:—
TO E. M. A.
A change has come over nature
Since you and June were here;
The sun has turned to the southward
Adown the steps of the year.
The grass is ripe in the meadow,
And the mowers swing in rhyme;
The grain so green on the hillside
Is in its golden prime.
No more the breath of the clover
Is borne on every breeze,
No more the eye of the daisy
Is bright on meadow leas.
The bobolink and the swallow
Have left for other clime—
They mind the sun when he beckons
And go with summer's prime.
Buttercups that shone in the meadow
Like rifts of golden snow,
They, too, have melted and vanished
Beneath the summer's glow.
Still at evenfall in the upland
The vesper sparrow sings,
And the brooklet in the pasture
Still waves its glassy rings.
And the lake of fog to the southward
With surges white as snow—
Still at morn away in the distance
I see it ebb and flow.
But a change has come over nature,
The youth of the year has gone;
A grace from the wood has departed,
And a freshness from the dawn.
Another poem, "Loss and Gain," was printed in the New York "Independent" about the same time.
LOSS AND GAIN
The ship that drops behind the rim
Of sea and sky, so pale and dim,
Still sails the seas
With favored breeze,
Where other waves chant ocean's hymn.
The wave that left this shore so wide,
And led away the ebbing tide,
Is with its host
On fairer coast,
Bedecked and plumed in all its pride.
The grub I found encased in clay
When next I came had slipped away
On golden wing,
With birds that sing,
To mount and soar in sunny day.
No thought or hope can e'er be lost—
The spring will come in spite of frost.
Go crop the branch
Of maple stanch,
The root will gain what you exhaust.
The man is formed as ground he tills—
Decay and death lie 'neath his sills.
The storm that beats,
And solar heats,
Have helped to form whereon he builds.
Successive crops that lived and grew,
And drank the air, the light, the dew,
And then deceased,
His soil increased
In strength, and depth, and richness, too.
From slow decay the ages grow,
From blood and crime the centuries blow,
What disappears
Beneath the years,
Will mount again as grain we sow.
These rather commonplace verses, the first showing his love for comrades, the others his philosophical bent, were the forerunners of that poem of Mr. Burroughs's—"Waiting"—which has become a household treasure, often without the ones who cherish it knowing its source. "Waiting" was Written in the fall of 1862. In response to my inquiry as to its genesis, its author said:—
I was reading medicine in the office of a country doctor at the time and was in a rather gloomy and discouraged state of mind. My outlook upon life was anything but encouraging. I was poor. I had no certain means of livelihood. I had married five years before, and, at a venture, I had turned to medicine as a likely solution of my life's problems. The Civil War was raging and that, too, disturbed me. It sounded a call of duty which increased my perturbations; yet something must have said to me, "Courage! all will yet be well. You are bound to have your own, whatever happens." Doubtless this feeling had been nurtured in me by the brave words of Emerson. At any rate, there in a little dingy back room of Dr. Hull's office, I paused in my study of anatomy and wrote "Waiting." I had at that time had some literary correspondence with David A. Wasson whose essays in the "Atlantic" I had read with deep interest. I sent him a copy of the poem. He spoke of it as a vigorous piece of work, but seemed to see no special merit in it. I then sent it to "Knickerbocker's Magazine," where it was printed, in December, I think, in 1862. It attracted no attention, and was almost forgotten by me till many years afterwards when it appeared in Whittier's "Songs of Three Centuries." This indorsement by Whittier gave it vogue. It began to be copied by newspapers and religious Journals, and it has been traveling on the wings of public print ever since. I do not think it has any great poetic merit. The secret of its success is its serious religious strain, or what people interpret as such. It embodies a very comfortable optimistic philosophy which it chants in a solemn, psalm-like voice. Its sincerity carries conviction. It voices absolute faith and trust in what, in the language of our fathers, would be called the ways of God with man. I have often told persons, when they have questioned me about the poem, that I came of the Old School Baptist stock, and that these verses show what form the old Calvinistic doctrine took in me.
Let me quote here the letter which Mr. Wasson wrote to the author of "Waiting," on receiving the first autograph copy of it ever written:—
Worcester, Dec. 22,1862.
Mr. Burroughs,—
My Dear Sir,—I beg your pardon a thousand times for having neglected so long to acknowledge the letter containing your vigorous verses. Excess of work, and then a dash of illness consequent upon this excess, must be my excuse—by your kind allowance.
The verses are vigorous and flowing, good in sentiment, and certainly worthy of being sent to "some paper," if you like to print them. On the other hand, they do not indicate to me that you have any special call to write verse. A man of your ability and fineness of structure must necessarily be enough of a poet not to fail altogether in use of the poetical form. But all that I know of you indicates a predominance of reflective intellect—a habit of mind quite foreign from the lyrical. I think it may be very good practice to compose in verse, as it exercises you in terse and rhythmical expression; but I question whether your vocation lies in that direction.
After all, you must not let anything which I, or any one, may say stand in your way, if you feel any clear leading of your genius in a given direction. What I have said is designed to guard you against an expenditure of power and hope in directions that may yield you but a partial harvest, when the same ought to be sown on more fruitful fields. I think you have unusual reflective power; and I am sure that in time you will find time and occasion for its exercise, and will accomplish some honorable tasks.
Very truly yours,
D. A. Wasson
It maybe fancy on my part, but I have a feeling that, all unconsciously to Mr. Burroughs, a sentence or two in Mr. Wasson's letter of September 29, 1862, had something to do with inspiring the mood of trustfulness and the attitude of waiting in serenity, which gave birth to this poem:—
... The book, too, all in good season. Life for you is very long, and you can take your time. Take it by all means. Give yourself large leisure to do your best.
Whether or not this is so, I am sure the sympathy and understanding of such a man as Mr. Wasson was a godsend to our struggling writer, and was one of the most beautiful instances in his life of "his own" coming to him.
"Waiting" seems to have gone all over the world. It has been several times set to music, and its authorship has even been claimed by others. It has been parodied, more's the pity; and spurious stanzas have occasionally been appended to it; while an inferior stanza, which the author dropped years ago, is from time to time resurrected by certain insistent ones. Originally, it had seven stanzas; the sixth, discarded by its author, ran as follows:—
You flowret, nodding in the wind,
Is ready plighted to the bee;
And, maiden, why that look unkind?
For, lo! thy lover seeketh thee.
This stanza is a detraction from the poem as we know it, and assuredly its author has a right to drop it. Concerning the fifth stanza, Mr. Burroughs says he has never liked it, and has often substituted one which he wrote a few years ago. The stanza he would reject is—
The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.
The one he would offer instead—
The law of love binds every heart,
And knits it to its utmost kin,
Nor can our lives flow long apart
From souls our secret souls would win.
And yet he is not satisfied with this; he says it is too subtle and lacks the large, simple imagery of the original lines.
The legion who cherish this poem in their hearts are justly incensed whenever they come across a copy of it to which some one, a few years ago, had the effrontery to add this inane stanza:—
Serene I fold my hands and wait,
Whate'er the storms of life may be,
Faith guides me up to heaven's gate,
And love will bring my own to me.
One of Mr. Burroughs's friends (Joel Benton), himself a poet, in an article tracing the vicissitudes of this poem, shows pardonable indignation at the "impudence and hardihood of the unmannered meddler" who tacked on the "heaven's gate" stanza, and adds:—
The lyric as Burroughs wrote it embodies a motive, or concept, that has scarcely been surpassed for amenability to poetic treatment, and for touching and impressive point. Its partly elusive outlines add to its charm. Its balance between hint and affirmation; its faith in universal forces, and its tender yet virile expression, are all shining qualities, apparent to the critical, and hypnotic to the general, reader. There is nothing in it that need even stop at "heaven's gate." It permits the deserving reader by happy instinct to go through that portal—without waiting outside to parade his sect mark. But the force of the poem and catholicity of its sanctions are either utterly destroyed or ridiculously enfeebled, by capping it with a sectarian and narrowly interpreted climax.
Although the poem is so well known, I shall quote it here in the form preferred by its author;—
WAITING
Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.
I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid th' eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.
Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.
What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it hath sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.
The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.
The stars come nightly to the sky,
The tidal wave comes to the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.
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