THE NATURE-WRITER 139 



went down behind a horizon of real experience, 

 then rose from a human heart, the source of all 

 true feeling, of all sincere form. Good nature- 

 writing particularly must have a pre-literary ex- 

 istence as lived reality ; its writing must be only 

 the necessary accident of its being lived again in 

 thought. It will be something very human, very 

 natural, warm, quick, irregular, imperfect, with 

 the imperfections and irregularities of life. And 

 the nature-writer will be very human, too, and 

 so very faulty ; but he will have no lack of love 

 for nature, and no lack of love for the truth. 

 Whatever else he does, he will never touch the 

 flat, disquieting note of make-believe. He will 

 never invent, never pretend, never pose, never 

 shy. He will be honest which is nothing un- 

 usual for birds and rocks and stars ; but for hu- 

 man beings, and for nature-writers very particu- 

 larly, it is a state less common, perhaps, than it 

 ought to be. 



