Bobolinks
and thrushes take the place of skylarks; sumach and cedar begin to
be as familiar as heather and gorse; forests, prairies, a clear,
high sky, a snowy winter, a summer of thunderstorms, drive out the
misty England which, since the days of Cynewulf, our ancestors had
seen in the mind's eye while they were writing. Nature literature
becomes a category. Men make their reputations by means of it.
No one has yet catalogued--so far as I am aware--the vast
collection of back-to-nature books that followed Thoreau. No one
has ever seriously criticized it, except Mr. Roosevelt, who with
characteristic vigor of phrase, stamped "nature-faking" on its
worser half. But every one reads in it. Indeed, the popularity of
such writing has been so great as to make us distrust its serious
literary value. And yet, viewed internationally, there are few
achievements in American literature so original. I will not say
that John Muir and John Burroughs, upon whom Thoreau's mantle
fell, have written great books. Probably not. Certainly it is too
soon to say. But when you have gathered the names of Gilbert
White, Jeffries, Fabre, Maeterlinck, and in slightly different
_genres_, Izaak Walton, Hudson, and Kipling from various literatures
you will find few others abroad to list with ours.
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