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.