My friend and neighbor united these qualities of sylvan and human in a
more remarkable manner than any whom it has been my happiness to know.
Lover of the wild, he lived a borderer on the confines of civilization,
jealous of the least encroachment upon his possessions.
"Society were all but rude
In his umbrageous solitude."
I had never thought of knowing a man so thoroughly of the country,
and so purely a son of nature. I think he had the profoundest passion
for it of any one of his time; and had the human sentiment been as
tender and pervading, would have given us pastorals of which Virgil and
Theocritus might have envied him the authorship had they chanced to be
his contemporaries. As it was, he came nearer the antique spirit than
any of our native poets, and touched the fields and groves and streams
of his native town with a classic interest that shall not fade. Some
of his verses are suffused with an elegiac tenderness, as if the woods
and brooks bewailed the absence of their Lycidas, and murmured their
griefs meanwhile to one another,--responsive like idyls. Living in
close companionship with nature, his muse breathed the spirit and voice
of poetry. For when the heart is once divorced from the senses and all
sympathy with common things, then poetry has fled and the love that
sings.
The most welcome of companions was this plain countryman. One seldom
meets with thoughts like his, coming so scented of mountain and field
breezes and rippling springs, so like a luxuriant clod from under
forest leaves, moist and mossy with earth-spirits. His presence was
tonic, like ice water in dog-days to the parched citizen pent in
chambers and under brazen ceilings. Welcome as the gurgle of brooks
and dipping of pitchers,--then drink and be cool! He seemed one with
things, of nature's essence and core, knit of strong timbers,--like
a wood and its inhabitants. There was in him sod and shade, wilds and
waters manifold,--the mould and mist of earth and sky. Self-poised
and sagacious as any denizen of the elements, he had the key to every
animal's brain, every plant; and were an Indian to flower forth
and reveal the scents hidden in his cranium, it would not be more
surprising than the speech of our Sylvanus. He belonged to the Homeric
age,--was older than pastures and gardens, as if he were of the race of
heroes and one with the elements. He of all men seemed to be the native
New-Englander, as much so as the oak, the granite ledge; our best
sample of an indigenous American, untouched by the old country, unless
he came down rather from Thor, the Northman, whose name he bore.
A peripatetic philosopher, and out-of-doors for the best part of
his days and nights, he had manifold weather and seasons in him;
the manners of an animal of probity and virtue unstained. Of all
our moralists, he seemed the wholesomest, the busiest, and the best
republican citizen in the world; always at home minding his own
affairs. A little over-confident by genius, and stiffly individual,
dropping society clean out of his theories, while standing friendly
in his strict sense of friendship, there was in him an integrity and
love of justice that made possible and actual the virtues of Sparta
and the Stoics,--all the more welcome in his time of shuffling and
pusillanimity. Plutarch would have made him immortal in his pages had
he lived before his day. Nor have we any so modern withal, so entirely
his own and ours: too purely so to be appreciated at once. A scholar by
birthright, and an author, his fame had not, at his decease, travelled
far from the banks of the rivers he described in his books; but one
hazards only the truth in affirming of his prose, that in substance
and pith, it surpasses that of any naturalist of his time; and he is
sure of large reading in the future. There are fairer fishes in his
pages than any swimming in our streams; some sleep of his on the banks
of the Merrimack by moonlight that Egypt never rivalled; a morning of
which Memnon might have envied the music, and a greyhound he once had,
meant for Adonis; frogs, better than any of Aristophanes; apples wilder
than Adam's. His senses seemed double, giving him access to secrets not
easily read by others; in sagacity resembling that of the beaver, the
bee, the dog, the deer; an instinct for seeing and judging, as by some
other, or seventh sense; dealing with objects as if they were shooting
forth from his mind mythologically, thus completing the world all round
to his senses; a creation of his at the moment. I am sure he knew the
animals one by one, as most else knowable in his town; the plants, the
geography, as Adam did in his Paradise, if, indeed, he were not that
ancestor himself. His works are pieces of exquisite sense, celebrations
of Nature's virginity exemplified by rare learning, delicate art,
replete with observations as accurate as original; contributions of the
unique to the natural history of his country, and without which it were
incomplete. Seldom has a head circumscribed so much of the sense and
core of Cosmos as this footed intelligence.
If one would learn the wealth of wit there was in this plain man,
the information, the poetry, the piety, he should have accompanied
him on an afternoon walk to Walden, or elsewhere about the skirts
of his village residence. Pagan as he might outwardly appear, yet
he was the hearty worshipper of whatsoever is sound and wholesome
in nature,--a piece of russet probity and strong sense, that nature
delighted to own and honor. His talk was suggestive, subtle, sincere,
under as many masks and mimicries as the shows he might pass; as
significant, substantial,--nature choosing to speak through his
mouth-piece,--cynically, perhaps, and searching into the marrows of men
and times he spoke of, to his discomfort mostly and avoidance.
Nature, poetry, life,--not politics, not strict science, not society
as it is,--were his preferred themes. The world was holy, the things
seen symbolizing the things unseen, and thus worthy of worship, calling
men out-of-doors and under the firmament for health and wholesomeness
to be insinuated into their souls, not as idolators, but as idealists.
His religion was of the most primitive type, inclusive of all natural
creatures and things, even to "the sparrow that falls to the ground,"
though never by shot of his, and for whatsoever was manly in men, his
worship was comparable to that of the priests and heroes of all time. I
should say he inspired the sentiment of love, if, indeed, the sentiment
did not seem to partake of something purer, were that possible, but
nameless from its excellency. Certainly he was better poised and more
nearly self-reliant than other men.
"The happy man who lived content
With his own town, his continent,
Whose chiding streams its banks did curb
As ocean circumscribes its orb,
Round which, when he his walk did take,
Thought he performed far more than Drake;
For other lands he took less thought
Than this his muse and mother brought."
More primitive and Homeric than any American, his style of thinking was
robust, racy, as if Nature herself had built his sentences and seasoned
the sense of his paragraphs with her own vigor and salubrity. Nothing
can be spared from them; there is nothing superfluous; all is compact,
concrete, as nature is.
His politics were of a piece with his individualism. We must admit that
he found little in political or religious establishments answering to
his wants, that his attitude was defiant, if not annihilating, as if he
had said to himself:--
"The state is man's pantry at most, and filled at an enormous cost,--a
spoliation of the human commonwealth. Let it go. Heroes can live on
nuts, and freemen sun themselves in the clefts of rocks, rather than
sell their liberty for this pottage of slavery. We, the few honest
neighbors, can help one another; and should the state ask any favors
of us, we can take the matter into consideration leisurely, and at our
convenience give a respectful answer.
"But why require a state to protect one's rights? the man is all. Let
him husband himself; needs he other servant or runner? Self-keeping is
the best economy. That is a great age when the state is nothing and man
is all. He founds himself in freedom, and maintains his uprightness
therein; founds an empire and maintains states. Just retire from
those concerns, and see how soon they must needs go to pieces, the
sooner for the virtue thus withdrawn from them. All the manliness of
individuals is sunk in that partnership in trade. Not only must I come
out of institutions, but come out of myself, if I will be free and
independent. Shall one be denied the privilege on coming of mature age
of choosing whether he will be a citizen of the country he happens to
be born in, or another? And what better title to a spot of ground than
being a man, and having none? Is not man superior to state or country?
I plead exemption from all interference by men or states with my
individual prerogatives. That is mine which none can steal from me, nor
is that yours which I or any man can take away."
"I am too high born to be propertied,
To be a secondary at control,
Or useful serving man and instrument
To any sovereign state throughout the world."
A famous speech is recorded of an old Norseman thoroughly
characteristic of this Teuton. "I believe neither in idols nor demons;
I put my sole trust in my own strength of body and soul." The ancient
crest of a pick-axe, with the motto, "Either I will find a way or
make one," characterizes the same sturdy independence and practical
materialism which distinguishes the descendants of Thor, whose symbol
was a hammer.