Rambles with John Burroughs

by R. J. H. De Loach

Fourth: "Comerado this is no book. Who touches this touches a man! As such, therefore, the book must go down to posterity, not a perfect song, but a cry vibrant still with the feeling of the man who uttered it."

Professor Newcomer closes his estimate by the declaration that Whitman stands for the American people, but not in the sense that Washington or Lincoln or Lowell does, and that his office was somewhat like one who stands by and cheers while the procession goes by. He thinks that Whitman did not sit in the seats of the mighty.

Charles W. Hubner is much more charitable and in fact just, with our poet of the body. He says: "Proclaiming the sanctity of manhood and womanhood, the power and eminence of God within us and without us; the divine relationship of body and soul; the eternalness of spirit and matter, he aims to teach us that all of these are manifestations of the Almighty spirit, present within and without all things, and out of whom all created things have come." How far this critic removes Whitman from the class of those who stood by and cheered while the procession moved on! Hubner makes him a real teacher and revealer of divine laws and eternal truth.

Joel Chandler Harris has also given a vivid picture and a most wholesome interpretation of Whitman: "In order to appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose, it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp in instant and express admiration, the vast group of facts that make man—that make liberty—that make America. There is no poetry in the details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of the mighty forces behind them—the inevitable, unaccountable, irresistible forward movement of man in the making of the republic." These estimates pro and con could be multiplied indefinitely.

How much more beautiful it is to face this new force in American poetry and deal with it justly, than to stand off and bark like some of our lesser critics have done and are doing! A recent comment upon Whitman says he has come to stay, and we must make up our minds to study him and to dispose of him by getting in sympathy with him, rather than by decrying him. This seems the just way, and the only safe way to deal with any great original force in literature.

John Burroughs has undoubtedly interpreted Whitman better than any other critic, and unquestionably owes Whitman more than any one else. He has found in the poet what so many others have found in Burroughs. "Whitman does not to me suggest the wild and unkempt, as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the elemental.... He cherished the hope that he had put into his 'Leaves', some of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and primitive aspects." From Whitman, I am constrained to believe, Burroughs has drawn much of his primitive strength as a writer. Whitman opened the book of Nature to him, and led him into a certain wilderness of beauty. At twenty, Burroughs began to read Whitman's poems, and says of them: "I was attracted by the new poet's work from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found in the current poetry.... Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the earth and the orbs." He knew that he had found in Whitman a very strong and imposing figure, but he was doubly reassured when he came upon the statement from the English critic, John Addington Symonds, that Whitman had influenced him more than any other book except the Bible,—more than Plato, more than Goethe.

THE PILE OF STONES MARKING THE SITE OF THOREAU'S CABIN, BY WALDEN POND

It was about the year 1858, when Burroughs first began reading Whitman and five years after that, in 1863, when Burroughs moved to Washington, the two men began to cultivate each other and were frequent companions till Whitman moved to Camden in 1873.

The friendship of the two men became so beautiful and grew so sacred, till Mr. Burroughs visited him every year in Camden, from 1873 till 1891, when he saw the poet for the last time. Whitman also visited Mr. Burroughs, who had gone back up the Hudson in 1873, and built his home at West Park, New York.