Default Metadata, or override by section

  Dear Walt:

A happy New Year to you, & many returns of the same. I was right glad to get your letter & to know your eyes were so much better. I feel certain that if you eat little or no meat you will be greatly the gainer. It will not do to take in sail in ones activities &c, unless he takes in sail in his food also.

We are all pretty well here   this winter so far. I have just sent off the copy for my new vol​ : think I shall stick to "Signs & Seasons" for the title, as this covers all the articles. Kennedy sent me his essay on the Poet as Craftsman. I liked it pretty well: what he has to say about you is excellent. He wanted my opinion about the argument of the essay, so I told him that I never felt like quarreling with a real poet about his form: let him take the form he can use best; any form is good if it holds good poetry   & any form is bad that holds bad poetry. I would not have Tennyson, or Longfellow or Burns use other forms than they do. If a man excells in prose he is pretty sure to use prose. Coleridge is greater in prose than in poetry. Poe is greater in poetry than in prose. Carlyle tried the poetic form & gave it up.

I hope you will keep well & that I will see you again before long. How much I wish you were here to eat a New Years dinner   with us. I wrote to Herbert Gilchrist the other day. These must be dark days for he & Grace. To me a black shadow seems to have settled on all England since I read of the death of Mrs Gilchrist. I wish you would send me by mail or by Express those books of Emerson, the essays & the miscellanies. I want to use them. I am going to re-read Emerson, & see how he strikes me now.

With much love John Burroughs   see notes Aug 3 1888