Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
My Garden Acquaintance By: James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) |
---|
![]()
By James Russell Lowell ONE of the most delightful books in my father's library was White's
"Natural History of Selborne." For me it has rather gained in charm with
years. I used to read it without knowing the secret of the pleasure I
found in it, but as I grow older I begin to detect some of the simple
expedients of this natural magic. Open the book where you will, it takes
you out of doors. In our broiling July weather one can walk out with
this genially garrulous Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment instead
of fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping abreast of him as he ambles
along on his hobby horse, now pointing to a pretty view, now stopping to
watch the motions of a bird or an insect, or to bag a specimen for the
Honorable Daines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of taste and
natural refinement he reminds one of Walton; in tenderness toward
what he would have called the brute creation, of Cowper. I do not know
whether his descriptions of scenery are good or not, but they have made
me familiar with his neighborhood. Since I first read him, I have walked
over some of his favorite haunts, but I still see them through his eyes
rather than by any recollection of actual and personal vision. The book
has also the delightfulness of absolute leisure. Mr. White seems never
to have had any harder work to do than to study the habits of his
feathered fellow townsfolk, or to watch the ripening of his peaches on
the wall. His volumes are the journal of Adam in Paradise, "Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade." It is positive rest only to look into that garden of his. It is vastly
better than to "See great Diocletian walk
In the Salonian garden's noble shade," for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them the noises of Rome,
while here the world has no entrance. No rumor of the revolt of the
American Colonies seems to have reached him. "The natural term of an
hog's life" has more interest for him than that of an empire. Burgoyne
may surrender and welcome; of what consequence is that compared with
the fact that we can explain the odd tumbling of rooks in the air
by their turning over "to scratch themselves with one claw"? All the
couriers in Europe spurring rowel deep make no stir in Mr. White's
little Chartreuse;(1) but the arrival of the house martin a day earlier
or later than last year is a piece of news worth sending express to all
his correspondents. (1) La Grande Chartreuse was the original Carthusian monastery in
France, where the most austere privacy was maintained. Another secret charm of this book is its inadvertent humor, so
much the more delicious because unsuspected by the author. How pleasant
is his innocent vanity in adding to the list of the British, and
still more of the Selbornian, fauna! I believe he would gladly have
consented to be eaten by a tiger or a crocodile, if by that means
the occasional presence within the parish limits of either of these
anthropophagous brutes could have been established. He brags of no
fine society, but is plainly a little elated by "having considerable
acquaintance with a tame brown owl." Most of us have known our share
of owls, but few can boast of intimacy with a feathered one. The great
events of Mr. White's life, too, have that disproportionate importance
which is always humorous. To think of his hands having actually been
though worthy (as neither Willoughby's nor Ray's were) to hold a stilted
plover, the Charadrius himaniopus, with no back toe, and therefore
"liable, in speculation, to perpetual vacillations"! I wonder, by
the way, if metaphysicians have no hind toes. In 1770 he makes the
acquaintance in Sussex of "an old family tortoise," which had then been
domesticated for thirty years. It is clear that he fell in love with it
at first sight. We have no means of tracing the growth of his passion;
but in 1780 we find him eloping with its object in a post chaise. "The
rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it that, when I
turned it out in a border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my
garden... Continue reading book >>
|
Genres for this book |
---|
Essay/Short nonfiction |
History |
Literature |
Science |
eBook links |
---|
Wikipedia – James Russell Lowell |
Wikipedia – My Garden Acquaintance |
eBook Downloads | |
---|---|
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader |
Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle |
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser |
Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac |
Review this book |
---|