114 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NO TES, 



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 Thuk, as it is in In Memo- 

 riam 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 Burroughs 

 would make if they could be welded together ! 

 Life would then be represented sympathefc 



