Of all the later mass of Nature writings, however, very little is possessed of literary distinction. Very largely it is journalistic in style and scientific in spirit. Only one out of the later group, Bradford Torrey, compels attention. Beyond a doubt it is already safe to place him next in order after Burroughs and Muir. He is more of an artist than Burroughs, and he is more literary and finished than Muir. In his attitude toward Nature he is like Thoreau—sensitive, sympathetic, reverent. It was he who edited the journals of Thoreau in their final form, and it was he also who after that experience wrote what is undoubtedly the most discriminating study that has yet been made of the great mystic naturalist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
John Burroughs. (1837——.) Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person, New York, 1867; Wake-Robin, 1871; Winter Sunshine, 1875; Birds and Poets, 1877; Locusts and Wild Honey, 1879; Pepacton, 1881; Fresh Fields, 1884; Signs and Seasons, 1886; Indoor Studies, 1889; Riverby, 1894; Whitman, a Study, 1896; The Light of Day, 1900; Literary Values, 1904; Far and Near, 1904; Ways of Nature, 1905; Leaf and Tendril, 1908; Time and Change, 1912; The Summit of the Years, 1913; Our Friend John Burroughs. By Clara Barrus. 1914.
John Muir. (1838–1914.) "Studies in the Sierras," a series of papers in Scribner's Monthly, 1878; The Mountains of California, 1894; Our National Parks, 1901; Stickeen, the Story of a Dog, 1909; My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911; The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, 1913; Letters to a Friend, 1915.
William Hamilton Gibson. (1850–1896.) Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap-Making, 1876; Pastoral Days, or Memories of a New England Year, 1882; Highways and Byways, or Saunterings in New England, 1883; Happy Hunting Grounds, a Tribute to the Woods and Fields, 1886; Strolls by Starlight and Sunshine, 1890; Sharp Eyes, 1891; Our Edible Toadstools and Mushrooms, 1895.
Charles Conrad Abbott. (1843——.) The Stone Age in New Jersey, 1876; Primitive Industry, 1881; A Naturalist's Rambles About Home, 1884; Upland and Meadow, 1886; Wasteland Wanderings, 1887; Days out of Doors, 1889; Outings at Odd Times, 1890; Recent Rambles, 1892; Outings in a Tree-Top, 1894; The Birds About Us, 1894; Notes of the Night, 1895; Birdland Echoes, 1896; The Freedom of the Fields, 1898; Clear Skies and Cloudy, 1899; In Nature's Realm, 1900.
"Olive Thorne Miller"—Harriet Mann Miller. (1831——.) Little Folks in Feathers and Fur, 1879; Queer Pets at Marcy's, 1880; Bird Ways, 1885; In Nesting Time, 1888; Four Handed Folk, 1890; Little Brothers of the Air, 1890; Bird-Lover in the West, 1894; Upon the Tree Tops, 1896; The First Book of Birds, 1899; True Bird Stories, 1903; With the Birds in Maine, 1904; and others.
Bradford Torrey. (1843–1912.) Birds in the Bush, 1885; A Rambler's Lease, 1889; The Foot-Path Way, 1892; A Florida Sketch-Book, 1894; Spring Notes from Tennessee, 1896; A World of Green Hills, 1898; Every-Day Birds, 1900; Footing It in Franconia, 1900; The Clerk of the Woods, 1903; Nature's Invitation, 1904; Friends on the Shelf, 1906.
Florence Merriam Bailey. (1863——.) Birds Through an Opera Glass, 1889; My Summer in a Mormon Village, 1895; A Birding on a Bronco, 1896; Birds of Village and Field, 1898; Handbook of Birds of Western United States, 1902.
Frank Bolles. (1856–1894.) Land of the Lingering Snow, 1891; At the North of Bearcamp Water: Chronicles of a Stroller in New England from July to December, 1893; From Blomidon to Smoky, 1895.
[CHAPTER IX]
WALT WHITMAN
Whitman and Thoreau stand as the two prophets of the mid century, both of them offspring of the Transcendental movement, pushing its theories to their logical end, both of them voices in the wilderness crying to deaf or angry ears, both of them unheeded until a new generation had arisen to whom they had become but names and books. Thoreau was born in 1817; Whitman in 1819, the year of Lowell, Story, Parsons, Herman Melville, J. G. Holland, Julia Ward Howe, and E. P. Whipple, and of the Victorians, Kingsley, Ruskin, George Eliot, and Arthur Hugh Clough. Whitman published Leaves of Grass, his first significant volume, in 1855, the year of Hiawatha, of Maud, and of Arnold's Poems. He issued it again in 1856 and again in 1860—a strange nondescript book rendered all the more strange by the fact, thoroughly advertised in the second edition, that it had won from Emerson the words: "I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.... I greet you at the beginning of a great career." But even the compelling name of Emerson could not sell the book; little notice, in fact, was taken of it save as a few voices expressed horror and anger; and when in 1862 Whitman became lost in the confusion of the war, he had made not so much impression upon America as had Thoreau at the time of his death that same year. Until well into the seventies Walt Whitman seemed only a curious phenomenon in an age grown accustomed to curious phenomena.
The antecedents and the early training of Whitman were far from literary. He came from a race of Long Island farmers who had adhered to one spot for generations. No American was ever more completely a product of our own soil.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here,
From parents the same, and their parents' parents the same.
They were crude, vigorous plowmen, unbookish and elemental. The father was the first to break from the soil and the ancestral environment, but he left it only to become a laborer on buildings in the neighboring city of Brooklyn.