Pepacton. By John Burroughs.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The natural state of man, according to Von Moltke, is a state
of warfare, and it is probable that most of the readers of Mr. Burroughs will
turn first on opening his new volume to his tilt against his brother-authors
in the chapter called, "Nature and the Poets." This essay had to run
the gauntlet of pretty sharp criticism from scientific men and others after
its first appearance: in Scribner's Monthly for December, 1879. On,
inspecting the revised issue we find that our author has learned wisdom by experience,
and has quietly abandoned some of his untenable positions. He drops out of his
indictment against Bryant the charge made in Scribner's Monthly, that
the poet makes his "Summer Wind" shake down fragrant blossoms from
the shrubs, whereas, according to Mr. Burroughs, there are no trees or shrubs
that have fragrant blossoms so late as July. He had unluckily forgotten the
very fragrant azalea (A. viscosa), which flowers profusely through
the meadows of New England in just that month; and this error having been pointed
out, he wisely now omits that count in the indictment. In the same essay he
omits the assertion made in the original essay, that the common wild Houstonia
blooms earlier in the spring than the yellow violet (V. rotundifolia)
which he apparently did not at that time distinguish from the later species
(V. palustris). These omissions show candor, if a man is to have credit
for candor when it has become inevitable. Unluckily, they do not show a punctilious
habit of accuracy. The assertions which he thus withdraws were made as bluntly
as those which he still retains; and some of these, we regret to say, are equally
unfounded. Take, for instance, his censure upon Lowell for the passage in his
"Al Fresco":
This passage is thus criticised by Mr. Burroughs:
"Of course the dandelion blooms occasionally throughout the whole summer, especially where the grass is kept short; but its proper season, when it 'gilds all the lawn,' is, in every part of the country, some weeks earlier than the tall buttercup (R. acris) and the clover. These bloom in June in New England and New York, and are contemporaries of the daisy. In the meadows and lawns the dandelion drops its flower and holds aloft its sphere of down, touching the green surface as with a light frost, long before the clover and the buttercup have formed their buds" (p. 120).
"Long
before the clover and the buttercup have formed their buds"! And yet any
one of the numerous, visitors who were drawn to Cambridge by the Greek play,
in the last week of May last, might have seen with his own eyes the completeness
of Mr. Burroughs's mistake. Any such visitor who happened, as we did, to walk
from Harvard Square to Elmwood (Lowell's home) on the very last day of May,
would have seen the dandelions and buttercups so nearly balanced in numbers
on lawn after lawn that nothing short of a Returning Board could have settled
the question between them. As to the white clover (Trifolium repens),
its blossoms were also visible, though not abundant. Mr. Lowell's botany was
thus vindicated by the irresistible testimony of the human eye. The simple fact
is that, in the locality which Lowell describes, the buttercup does not, as
Mr. Burroughs asserts, follow the dandelion by a distinct interval, but laps
over upon it in the same fields and lawns, so that, on certain day or days of
every spring, the two flowers will be equally balanced. What, then, is a poet
to do who happens to write on one of these days? Is he to describe what he sees
before him, in the precise place where he is; or is he to send to Mr. Burroughs,
wherever he may be within that very wide botanical domain which he calls loosely
"New England and New York," to ascertain the permissible combinations?
The truth is—and it may as well be told frankly, as
the one drawback found, by most readers in the very pleasant books of Mr. Burroughs—that
he allows himself an amount of dogmatizing, in presence of nature, which is
not only unattractive but quite unsafe. He certainly has in him, either, by
nature or through the influence of Walt Whitman, something of the quality of
that good old Scotchman whose petition was "O Lord! we pray thee, that
we may be right, for thou seest that we are very decided." It is true that
Thoreau, who is in some respects Mr. Burroughs's prototype or exemplar, had
something of the same gift. But Thoreau had in two respects the advantage: first,
in a more exact and thorough habit of mental discipline, and, secondly, in concentrating
his observation upon one very limited region. When he made a statement it was
very nearly infallible, if it, related to a fact in nature; because all his
dogmatizing was about Concord, and he knew Concord through and through. He wrote
simply a monograph, like White of Selborne: he was, as Henry James, jr., says,
"parochial," and hence his strength. But the observations of Mr. Burroughs
range throughout the country; he is in New York, in Washington, and sometimes,
though rarely, in New England. Gaining thus in width of comparison, he loses
in precision. When he says "hereabouts" or "in our latitude"
we never know whether he means the Hudson or the Potomac; and if he were spending
a winter in Florida, he would, we suspect, undertake to correct the botany of
an Alaskan poet.
A good illustration of this is the perseverance with which
he follows up the assertion that the early yellow violet has no odor. Bryant
says of it:
His critic says, as he
said long since in Scribner, "I have never been able
to detect any perfume in the yellow species (Viola rotundifolia). This
honor belongs alone to our two white violets, Viola blanda and Viola
Canadensis" (p. 107). Now, the first statement is unexceptional,
for each man has a right to testify according to the perceptions of his own
nose. It is the second sentence that is objectionable, in which he elevates
that organ into a standard of universal authority. Mr. Burroughs is an excellent
observer, and although we have never happened to find any of these early yellow
violets that were scentless, or found anyone else who pronounced them scentless,
we are willing to admit that they are so in the precise-localities where he
has found them. Why should not he be equally tolerant? By his own showing, the
hepatica varies as to odor, in just this way: why not the violet? The white
water-lily, perhaps the most fragrant of our northern flowers, is often wholly
without fragrance, as we can personally testify, in South Carolina. In deference
to the many people who have smelt precisely that "faint perfume" which
Bryant so well describes in the yellow violet, it would be better for Mr. Burroughs
to yield the point. It is proverbially difficult to prove a negative. The rural
French judge who heard the testimony of three witnesses to the effect that they
had seen a certain man commit a homicide, and then allowed it to be outweighed
by the evidence of four men who swore that they had never seen him commit one,
is not a good model for the scientific observer.
We own to liking Mr. Burroughs best when he is least controversial,
and when, on the other hand, he gives us something more than simple narrative.
For instance, his voyage down the Pepacton, or east branch of the Delaware,
suggests comparison with Thoreau's Concord voyage, and the difference in wealth
of material and depth of thought is very observable; the younger writer seems
thin and trivial in comparison. But where he takes a little more pains, and
gives a more studied result of thought and fancy, brought to bear on a theme
of his own selection, he appears at his best. This is the case in "An Idyl
of the Honey-Bee," "A Bunch of Herbs," and "Springs."
He has done nothing more agreeable and valuable than these three papers. "Footpaths"
is of less weight, and is on a theme that has been treated by others; while
the "Notes by the Way" are too fragmentary. On the whole, this must
be pronounced one of Mr. Burroughs's best books. It shows more depth of thought
than some of his writings; more care in execution than others; there is none
of that occasional coarseness which marred some of his earlier descriptions;
and he only gives two pages to Walt Whitman.