114 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
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without abating in the least his placid realism ~ 
or endangering his reputation for merciless 
analysis. 
But even so delicately refined a novelist as 
Mr. James loses less by the lack of a knowl- 
edge of out-door things than does the least of 
minor poets. The singer must not, cannot, 
rely upon any other reserve than Nature, 
from which to draw the freshness and racy 
flavor that every true poem must have. Still 
it must be remembered that mere descriptive 
writing, no matter how true to Nature, is not 
what gives that ‘smack of Helicon ” of which 
Mr. Lowell speaks. The true critical test is 
one that will discover any trace of the simplic- 
ity, the artlessness, and the self-sufficiency of 
Nature. Whatever is truly fresh and original 
in literature will be found to contain something 
not acquired from books, nor from observation 
of society, nor yet from introspection; this 
comes, one might say, from the soil and the 
air by a growth like that of the flowers. I be- — 
lieve it is due, in nearly every case, to out- | 
door recreation. It is felt on almost every 
page of Emerson, Tennyson, and William 
Black, and it is just as charming in a story 
like A Princess of Thule, as it is in Ln Memo- 
viam or in Wood Notes. John Burroughs has 
shown what a delightful study Nature may 
be to him who plays with her for the mere 
sake of the play. He has given us the ex- 
treme of what may be called wind-rustled 
and dew-dashed literature. What a grand 
novelist Henry James and John Burrougks 
would make if they could be welded together! 
Life would then be represented sympathet: 
