It was a modest man - a modest life; a life filled, none the less,
with romantic incident. All this throws into relief the beauty of
its best fruits. Crevecoeur made no claim to artistry when he wrote
his simple, heartfelt Letters; and yet his style, in spite of
occasional defects and extra flourishes, seems to us worthy of his
theme. These Letters from an American Farmer have been an
inspiration to poets - and they "smell of the woods."
In a prose age, Crevecoeur lived a kind of pastoral poetry; in an
age largely blind, he saw the beauties of nature, less through
readings in the Nouvelle Heloise and Bernardin's Etudes than with
his own keen eyes; he was a true idealist, besides, and as such
kindles one's enthusiasm. The man's optimism, his grateful
personality, his saneness, too - for here is a dreamer neither idle
nor morbid - are qualities no less enduring, or endearing, than his
fame as "poet-naturalist." The American Farmer might have used
Cotton's Retirement for an epigraph on his title-page: -
"Farewell, thou busy world, and may
We never meet again,
Here I can eat and sleep and pray. ..."
but for the fact that he found time to turn the clods, withal, and
eyes to watch the earth blackening behind the plough. "Our
necessities," wrote Poe, who contended, in a half-hearted way, that
the Americans of his generation were as poetical a people as any
other, "have been mistaken for our propensities.
