JOHN BURROUGHS 153 



of feeding for a whole year upon Dr. Johnson ! 

 Then we find him reading Whipple's essays, and 

 the early outdoor papers of Higginson ; and 

 later, at twenty-three, settling down with Emer- 

 son's essays, and getting one of his own into the 

 " Atlantic Monthly." 



How early his own began to come to him ! 



That first essay in the "Atlantic" was followed 

 by a number of outdoor sketches in the New 

 York " Leader " — written, Mr. Burroughs says, 

 " mainly to break the spell of Emerson's influ- 

 ence and get upon ground of my own." He 

 succeeded in both purposes; and a large and 

 exceedingly fertile piece of ground it proved to 

 be, too, this which he got upon ! Already the 

 young writer had chosen his field and his crop. 

 The out-of-doors has been largely his literary 

 material, as the essay has been largely his liter- 

 ary form, ever since. He has done other things 

 — volumes of literary studies and criticisms; 

 but his theme from first to last has been the 

 Great Book of Nature, a page of which, here 

 and there, he has tried to read to us. 



Mr. Burroughs's work, in outdoor literature, 

 is a distinct species, with new and well-marked 



