"John is making an impression on his age—has come to stay—has veritable, indisputable, dynamic gifts," Walt Whitman said familiarly to a friend in 1888, in commenting on our subject's place in literature. And of a letter written to him by Mr. Burroughs that same year he said: "It is a June letter, worthy of June; written in John's best outdoor mood. Why, it gets into your blood, and makes you feel worth while. I sit here, helpless as I am, and breathe it in like fresh air."
Minot Savage once asked in a sermon if it did not occur to his hearers that John Burroughs gets a little more of June than the rest of us do, and added that Mr. Burroughs had paid years of consecration of thought and patient study of the lives of birds and flowers, and so had bought the right to take June and all that it means into his brain and heart and life; and that if the rest of us wish these joys, we must purchase them on the same terms. We are often led to ask what month he has not taken into his heart and life, and given out again in his writings. Perhaps most of all he has taken April into his heart, as his essay on it in "Birds and Poets" will show:—
How it (April) touches one and makes him both glad and sad! The voices of the arriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of pigeons sweeping across the sky or filling the woods, the elfin horn of the first honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the camp-fire in the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun,—how these things and others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear! April is my natal month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at each return of it. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two syllables are like the calls of the first birds,—like that of the phoebe-bird, or of the meadowlark.
But why continue? The whole essay breathes of swelling buds, springing grass, calls of birds, April flowers, April odors, and April's uncloying freshness and charm. As we realize what the returning spring brings to this writer, we say with Bliss Carman:—
"Make (him) over. Mother April,
When the sap begins to stir."
I fancy there are many of his readers who will echo what one of his friends has said to him: "For me the 3d of April will ever stand apart in the calendar with a poignant beauty and sweetness because it is your birthday. It is the keynote to which the whole springtime music is set." Or another: "If April 3d comes in like any other day, please understand that it will be because she does not dare to show how glad she is over her own doings." On another birthday, the same correspondent says: "I find that you are so inwoven with the spring-time that I shall never again be able to resolve the season into its elements. But I am the richer for it. I feel a sort of compassion for one who has never seen the spring through your eyes."
Mr. Burroughs puts his reader into close and sympathetic communion with the open-air world as no other literary naturalist has done. Gilbert White reported with painstaking fidelity the natural history of Selborne; Thoreau gave Thoreau with glimpses of nature thrown in; Richard Jefferies, in dreamy, introspective descriptions of rare beauty and delicacy, portrayed his own mystical impressions of nature; but Mr. Burroughs takes us with him to the homes and haunts of the wild creatures, sets us down in their midst, and lets us see and hear and feel just what is going on. We read his books and echo Whitman's verdict on them: "They take me outdoors! God bless outdoors!" And since God has blessed outdoors, we say, "God bless John Burroughs for taking us out of doors with him!"
Our writer never prates about nature, telling us to look and admire. He loves the common, everyday life about him, sees it more intimately than you or I see it, and tells about it so simply and clearly that he begets a like feeling in his reader. It was enjoined of the early Puritans "to walke honestlie in the sweete fields and woodes." How well our friend has obeyed this injunction!
And what an unobtrusive lover he is! Although it is through him that his mistress stands revealed, it is not until we look closely that we spy her adorer in the background, intent only on unveiling her charms. How does he do this? First by succumbing himself—Nature's graces, her inconsistencies, even her objectionable traits appeal to him. Like the true lover, he is captivated by each of her phases, and surrenders himself without reserve. Such homage makes him the recipient of her choicest treasures, her most adorable revelations.
(Illustration of Mr. Burroughs sitting for a Statuette. From a photograph by Charles S. Olcott)