William Cullen Bryant and the Science of Geology

Abstract

T HAT WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT maintained an active interest in contemporary science throughout his life is a fact too well known to need documentation here. The poet himself has left an account of his introduction into the principles of medicine, chemistry, and botany,1 while his son-in-law and biographer, Parke Godwin, prints numerous letters of Bryant's friends revealing the poet as a competent, if amateur, scientist.2 Moreover, in 'his travel letters and public addresses, Bryant provides additional evidence of his concern with scientific matters.3 Finally, we may observe that in a recent article Charles I. Glicksberg has collected the most important references which the poet makes to contemporary scientific study.4 The fact of Bryant's interest in physical science is clearly beyond dispute. To the critic of Bryant's poetry, however, the listing of such evidence is not enough. For although it reveals much about the life of the man, it tells us little of the nature of his poetic achievement. It is Bryant the poet who is to be remembered, if he be remembered at all, and unless we can demonstrate that Bryant's scientific knowledge bears a direct relation to his verse, the fact of that knowledge is of little significance in any aesthetic consideration of his poetry. To be sure, Tremaine McDowell has shown that Bryant's poetry of nature rests upon a substantial basis of exact botanical information, that his allusions to natural objects are as varied and extensive as they are accurate.5 Such a state1 Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, with Extracts from His Private Correspondence (New York, I883), I, 36. 2 See, for example, the evidence of Colonel Ralph Taylor or of John Durand, quoted in ibid., I, 203; II, 74-75. 'A good example is Our Native Fruits and Flowers, an address of Bryant's reprinted in Prose Writings, ed. Parke Godwin (New York, I884), II, 194-202. 'William Cullen Bryant and Nineteenth-Century Science, New England Quarterly, XXIII, 9I-96 (March, I950). 6 William Cullen Bryant, American Writers Series (New York, 1935), pp. xxxiv-