154 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



characteristics. He is the nature-writer, to be dis- 

 tinguished from the naturalist in Gilbert White, 

 the mystic in Traherne, the philosopher in Emer- 

 son, the preacher, poet, egotist in Thoreau, the 

 humorist in Charles Dudley Warner. As we now 

 know the nature-writer we come upon him for 

 the first time in Mr. Burroughs. Such credit 

 might have gone to Thomas Wentworth Hig- 

 ginson, had he not been something else before 

 he was a lover of nature of letters first, then 

 of flowers, carrying his library into the fields; 

 whereas Mr. Burroughs brings the fields into the 

 library. The essay whose matter is nature, whose 

 moral is human, whose manner is strictly literary, 

 belongs to Mr. Burroughs. His work is distin- 

 guished by this threefold and even emphasis. In 

 almost every other of our early outdoor writers 

 either the naturalist or the moralist or the stylist 

 holds the pen. 



Early or late, this or that, good outdoor writ- 

 ing must be marked, first, by fidelity to fact; and, 

 secondly, by sincerity of expression. Like quali- 

 ties mark all good literature ; but they are them- 

 selves the very literature of nature. When we 

 take up a nature-book we ask (and it was Mr. 



