EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
BIOGRAPHY
JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
VIDA D. SCUDDER
THE PUBLISHERS OF EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TOALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES TO BECOMPRISED UNDER THE FOLLOWING TWELVE HEADINGS:
TRAVEL
SCIENCE
FICTION
THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY
CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS
ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
ROMANCE
IN TWO STYLES OF BINDING, CLOTH, FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP, AND LEATHER,ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP.
London: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.
New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
A GOOD BOOK IS THE PRECIOUS LIFE-BLOOD OF A MASTER SPIRIT EMBALMED &TREASURED UPON PURPOSE TO A LIFE BEYOND LIFE—MILTON
THE JOURNAL with other WRITINGS of JOHN WOOLMAN
LONDON: PUBLISHED
by J. M. DENT & SONS Ltd
AND IN NEW YORK
BY E. P. DUTTON & CO
All rights reserved
INTRODUCTION
From the days of Charles Lamb to those of Dr. Eliot of Harvard, theunique charm and worth of the Journal of John Woolman have beensignalled by a thinker of distinction here and there, and the book, ifnot widely known, has quietly found its way to many hearts and beenreprinted in sundry editions. The more formal works, however, in whichthis gentle and audacious eighteenth-century Quaker-preacher spoke outhis whole careful mind have been for the most part neglected. Theseworks are sometimes prosy, always indifferent to style in theirunflinching quest for "pure wisdom," often concerned with the dead issueof negro slavery. Yet even in this last case they have much value ashistoric documents; no full knowledge of Woolman's spirit is possiblewithout them; and not to know that spirit in its entirety is a distinctloss.
The present edition, while making no claim to critical completeness,presents the main accessible body of Woolman's writings. Here is a wellof purest water, "dug deep," to use the Quaker phrase. The merelimpidity of the water will be joy enough for some: others gazing intoit may feel that they see down to the proverbial Truth—the very originof things, the foundations of the moral universe.
A studious moderation of utterance is the first quality to make itselffelt in Woolman's works. To casual or jaded readers who crave theword-embroidery, the heightened note, of the romanticist in style, theresult may seem colourless. Here is a lack of adjectives, an entireabsence of emphasis, a systematic habit of under-statement that, in theclimax of a paragraph or the crisis of an emotion, seems at times almostludicrous. Yet to the reader of severer taste, this very absence ofemphasis, so quaintly sober, so sensitive in its unfaltering reticence,becomes the choicest grace of Woolman's style. As is the style, so isthe man.[Pg viii] Woolman "studied to be quiet," and his steady self-disciplinewas rewarded by a scrupulous yet instinctive control over the finestshades of verity in speech and life. In the youthful trou