i 3 2 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



Nor is this all. For the sad case with much 

 nature-writing, as I have said, is that it not only- 

 fails to answer to genuine observation, but it also 

 fails to answer to genuine emotion. Often as we 

 detect the unsound natural history, we much 

 oftener are aware of the unsound, the insincere, 

 art of the author. 



Now the facts of nature, as Mr. Burroughs 

 says, are the material of nature literature — of one 

 kind of such literature, let me add; for, while 

 fabrications can be made only into lies, there may 

 be another kind of good nature-literature com- 

 pounded wholly of fancies. Facts, to quote Mr. 

 Burroughs again, are the flora upon which the 

 nature-writer lives. " I can do nothing without 

 them." Of course he could not. But Chaucer 

 could. Indeed, Chaucer could do nothing with 

 the facts ; he had to have fancies. The truth in 

 his story of the Cock and the Fox is a different 

 kind of truth from the truth about Burroughs's 

 "Winter Neighbors," yet no less the truth. Good 

 nature-writing is literature, not science, and the 

 truth we demand first and last is a literary truth 

 — the fidelity of the writer to himself. He may 

 elect to use facts for his material ; yet they are 



