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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30342 ***
+
+  Books by John Burroughs.
+
+  WORKS. 14 vols., uniform, 16mo, gilt top, $17.10;
+  half calf, $34.10; half polished morocco, $37.45.
+
+    WAKE-ROBIN.
+
+    WINTER SUNSHINE.
+
+    LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY.
+
+    FRESH FIELDS.
+
+    INDOOR STUDIES.
+
+    BIRDS AND POETS, with Other Papers.
+
+    PEPACTON, and Other Sketches.
+
+    SIGNS AND SEASONS.
+
+    RIVERBY.
+
+    WHITMAN: A STUDY.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.25.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. A Series of Literary Essays.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.10, _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage 11 cents.
+
+  A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to
+  each season of the year, from the writings of John
+  Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON
+  JOHNSON. 12mo, $1.50.
+
+  WHITMAN: A Study. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+  _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50, _net_.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_. Postage, 11 cents.
+
+  WINTER SUNSHINE. _Cambridge Classics Series._
+  Crown 8vo, $1.00.
+
+  WAKE-ROBIN. _Riverside Aldine Series._ 16mo, $1.00.
+
+  SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illustrated.
+  Square 12mo, $1.00. _School Edition_, 60
+  cents, _net_.
+
+
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: WALT WHITMAN]
+
+
+
+
+  WHITMAN
+  _A STUDY_
+
+  BY
+  JOHN BURROUGHS
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1896,
+  BY JOHN BURROUGHS.
+
+  _All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+  PRELIMINARY                                    1
+
+  BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL                     23
+
+  HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS                     73
+
+  HIS SELF-RELIANCE                             85
+
+  HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE           101
+
+  HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS              169
+
+  HIS RELATION TO CULTURE                      205
+
+  HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES    229
+
+  HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE                      249
+
+  HIS RELATION TO RELIGION                     257
+
+  A FINAL WORD                                 263
+
+
+
+
+"_All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
+from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
+from elsewhere._"--TAINE.
+
+"_If you want to tell good Gothic, see if it has the sort of roughness and
+largeness and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness
+which seems always to be the sign manual of the broad vision and massy
+power of men who can see_ past _the work they are doing, and betray here
+and there something like disdain for it._"--RUSKIN.
+
+"_Formerly, during the period termed classic, when literature was governed
+by recognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the
+most perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the
+most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,--the Æneid,
+the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day something else is wanted. For us
+the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
+imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
+The greatest poet is not he who has done the best, it is he who suggests
+the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves
+you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your
+turn._"--SAINTE-BEUVE.
+
+
+
+
+WHITMAN
+
+
+PRELIMINARY
+
+
+I
+
+The writing of this preliminary chapter, and the final survey and revision
+of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild
+place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place
+Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,--an
+amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth
+of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site of
+an ancient lake, now a garden of unknown depth and fertility. Elemental
+ruggedness, savageness, and grandeur, combined with wonderful tenderness,
+modernness, and geniality. There rise the gray scarred cliffs, crowned
+here and there with a dead hemlock or pine, where, morning after morning,
+I have seen the bald-eagle perch, and here at their feet this level area
+of tender humus, with three perennial springs of delicious cold water
+flowing in its margin; a huge granite bowl filled with the elements and
+potencies of life. The scene has a strange fascination for me, and holds
+me here day after day. From the highest point of rocks I can overlook a
+long stretch of the river and of the farming country beyond; I can hear
+owls hoot, hawks scream, and roosters crow. Birds of the garden and
+orchard meet birds of the forest upon the shaggy cedar posts that uphold
+my porch. At dusk the call of the whippoorwill mingles with the chorus of
+the pickerel frogs, and in the morning I hear through the robins' cheerful
+burst the sombre plaint of the mourning-dove. When I tire of my
+manuscript, I walk in the woods, or climb the rocks, or help the men clear
+up the ground, piling and burning the stumps and rubbish. This scene and
+situation, so primitive and secluded, yet so touched with and adapted to
+civilization, responding to the moods of both sides of the life and
+imagination of a modern man, seems, I repeat, typical in many ways of my
+poet, and is a veritable Whitman land. Whitman does not to me suggest the
+wild and unkempt as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the
+elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my
+dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to
+him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and
+placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some
+of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and
+primitive aspects.
+
+His wildness is only the wildness of the great primary forces from which
+we draw our health and strength. Underneath all his unloosedness, or free
+launching forth of himself, is the sanity and repose of nature.
+
+
+II
+
+I first became acquainted with Whitman's poetry through the columns of the
+old "Saturday Press" when I was twenty or twenty-one years old (1858 or
+1859). The first things I remember to have read were "There was a child
+went forth," "This Compost," "As I ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Old
+Ireland," and maybe a few others. I was attracted by the new poet's work
+from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found
+in the current poetry. Meeting Bayard Taylor about this time, I spoke to
+him about Whitman. "Yes," he said, "there is something in him, but he is a
+man of colossal egotism."
+
+A few years later a friend sent me a copy of the Thayer & Eldridge edition
+of "Leaves of Grass" of 1860. It proved a fascinating but puzzling book to
+me. I grazed upon it like a colt upon a mountain, taking what tasted good
+to me, and avoiding what displeased me, but having little or no conception
+of the purport of the work as a whole. I found passages and whole poems
+here and there that I never tired of reading, and that gave a strange
+fillip to my moral and intellectual nature, but nearly as many passages
+and poems puzzled or repelled me. My absorption of Emerson had prepared me
+in a measure for Whitman's philosophy of life, but not for the ideals of
+character and conduct which he held up to me, nor for the standards in art
+to which the poet perpetually appealed. Whitman was Emerson translated
+from the abstract into the concrete. There was no privacy with Whitman; he
+never sat me down in a corner with a cozy, comfortable shut-in feeling,
+but he set me upon a hill or started me upon an endless journey.
+Wordsworth had been my poet of nature, of the sequestered and the idyllic;
+but I saw that here was a poet of a larger, more fundamental nature,
+indeed of the Cosmos itself. Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the
+earth and the orbs. This much soon appeared to me, but I was troubled by
+the poet's apparent "colossal egotism," by his attitude towards evil,
+declaring himself "to be the poet of wickedness also;" by his seeming
+attraction toward the turbulent and the disorderly; and, at times, by what
+the critics had called his cataloguing style of treatment.
+
+When I came to meet the poet himself, which was in the fall of 1863, I
+felt less concern about these features of his work; he was so sound and
+sweet and gentle and attractive as a man, and withal so wise and tolerant,
+that I soon came to feel the same confidence in the book that I at once
+placed in its author, even in the parts which I did not understand. I saw
+that the work and the man were one, and that the former must be good as
+the latter was good. There was something in the manner in which both the
+book and its author carried themselves under the sun, and in the way they
+confronted America and the present time, that convinced beyond the power
+of logic or criticism.
+
+The more I saw of Whitman, and the more I studied his "Leaves," the more
+significance I found in both, and the clearer it became to me that a new
+type of a man and a new departure in poetic literature were here
+foreshadowed. There was something forbidding, but there was something
+vital and grand back of it. I found to be true what the poet said of
+himself,--
+
+  "Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,
+  To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
+  For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them,"--
+
+I have persevered in my study of the poet, though balked many times, and
+the effect upon my own mental and spiritual nature has been great; no such
+"solid prizes" in the way of a broader outlook upon life and nature, and,
+I may say, upon art, has any poet of my time afforded me. There are
+passages or whole poems in the "Leaves" which I do not yet understand
+("Sleep-Chasings" is one of them), though the language is as clear as
+daylight; they are simply too subtle or elusive for me; but my confidence
+in the logical soundness of the book is so complete that I do not trouble
+myself at all about these things.
+
+
+III
+
+I would fain make these introductory remarks to my essay a sort of window
+through which the reader may get a fairly good view of what lies beyond.
+If he does not here get any glimpse or suggestion of what pleases him, or
+of what he is looking for, it will hardly be worth while for him to
+trouble himself further.
+
+A great many readers, perhaps three fourths of the readers of current
+poetry, and not a few of the writers thereof, cannot stand Whitman at all,
+or see any reason for his being. To such my essay, if it ever comes to
+their notice, will be a curiosity, may be an offense. But I trust it will
+meet with a different reception at the hands of the smaller but rapidly
+growing circle of those who are beginning to turn to Whitman as the most
+imposing and significant figure in our literary annals.
+
+The rapidly growing Whitman literature attests the increasing interest to
+which I refer. Indeed, it seems likely that by the end of the century the
+literature which will have grown up around the name of this man will
+surpass in bulk and value that which has grown up around the name of any
+other man of letters born within the century.
+
+When Mr. Stedman wrote his essay upon the poet early in the eighties, he
+referred to the mass of this literature. It has probably more than doubled
+in volume in the intervening years: since Whitman's death in the spring of
+'92, it has been added to by William Clark's book upon the poet, Professor
+Trigg's study of Browning and Whitman, and the work of that accomplished
+critic and scholar, so lately gone to his rest, John Addington Symonds.
+This last is undoubtedly the most notable contribution that has yet been
+made, or is likely very soon to be made, to the Whitman literature. Mr.
+Symonds declares that "Leaves of Grass," which he first read at the age of
+twenty-five, influenced him more than any other book has done, except the
+Bible,--more than Plato, more than Goethe.
+
+When we remember that the man who made this statement was eminently a man
+of books, deeply read in all literatures, his testimony may well offset
+that of a score of our home critics who find nothing worthy or helpful in
+Whitman's work. One positive witness in such a matter outweighs any number
+of negative ones.
+
+
+IV
+
+For making another addition to the growing Whitman literature, I have no
+apology to offer. I know well enough that "writing and talk" cannot
+"prove" a poet; that he must be his own proof or be forgotten; and my main
+purpose in writing about Whitman, as in writing about nature, is to tell
+readers what I have found there, with the hope of inducing them to look
+for themselves. At the same time, I may say that I think no modern poet so
+much needs to be surrounded by an atmosphere of comment and
+interpretation, through which readers may approach him, as does Whitman.
+His work sprang from a habit or attitude of mind quite foreign to that
+with which current literature makes us familiar,--so germinal is it, and
+so little is it beholden to the formal art we so assiduously cultivate.
+The poet says his work "connects lovingly with precedents," but it does
+not connect lovingly with any body of poetry of this century. "Leaves of
+Grass" is bound to be a shock to the timid and pampered taste of the
+majority of current readers. I would fain lessen this shock by interposing
+my own pages of comment between the book and the public. The critic can
+say so many things the poet cannot. He can explain and qualify and
+analyze, whereas the creative artist can only hint or project. The poet
+must hasten on, he must infold and bind together, he must be direct and
+synthetic in every act. Reflection and qualification are not for him, but
+action, emotion, volition, the procreant blending and surrender. He works
+as Nature does, and gives us reality in every line.
+
+Whitman says:--
+
+  "I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot
+        expound myself."
+
+
+The type of mind of Whitman's, which seldom or never emerges as a mere
+mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a
+personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself,
+because its operations are synthetic and not analytic, its mainspring is
+love and not mere knowledge. In his prose essay called "A Backward Glance
+o'er Travel'd Roads," appended to the final edition of his poems, Whitman
+has not so much sought to expound himself as to put his reader in
+possession of his point of view, and of the considerations that lie back
+of his work. This chapter might render much that I have written
+superfluous, were there not always a distinct gain in seeing an author
+through another medium, or in getting the equivalents of him in the
+thoughts and ideals of a kindred and sympathetic mind. But I have not
+consciously sought to expound Whitman, any more than in my other books I
+have sought to expound the birds or wild nature. I have written out some
+things that he means to me, and the pleasure and profit I have found in
+his pages.
+
+There is no end to what can be drawn out of him. It has been said and
+repeated that he was not a thinker, and yet I find more food for thought
+in him than in all other poets. It has been often said and repeated that
+he is not a poet, and yet the readers that respond to him the most fully
+appear to be those in whom the poetic temperament is paramount. I believe
+he supplies in fuller measure that pristine element, something akin to the
+unbreathed air of mountain and shore, which makes the arterial blood of
+poetry and literature, than any other modern writer.
+
+
+V
+
+We can make little of Whitman unless we allow him to be a law unto
+himself, and seek him through the clews which he himself brings. When we
+try him by current modes, current taste, and demand of him formal beauty,
+formal art, we are disappointed. But when we try him by what we may call
+the scientific standard, the standard of organic nature, and demand of him
+the vital and the characteristic,--demand of him that he have a law of his
+own, and fulfill that law in the poetic sphere,--the result is quite
+different.
+
+More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other
+poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies, rather than
+in what he portrays; and more than any other poet must he wait to be
+understood by the growth of the taste of himself. "I make the only growth
+by which I can be appreciated," he truly says.
+
+His words are like the manna that descended upon the Israelites, "in which
+were all manner of tastes; and every one found in it what his palate was
+chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the young
+men tasted bread; the old men honey; and the children oil." Many young
+men,--poets, artists, teachers, preachers,--have testified that they have
+found bread in Whitman, the veritable bread of life; others have found
+honey, sweet poetic morsels; and not a few report having found only gall.
+
+
+VI
+
+In considering an original work like "Leaves of Grass," the search is
+always for the grounds upon which it is to be justified and explained.
+These grounds in this work are not easy to find; they lie deeper than the
+grounds upon which the popular poets rest. Because they are not at once
+seen, many readers have denied that there are any such grounds. But to
+deny a basis of reality to a work with the history of "Leaves of Grass,"
+and a basis well grounded on æsthetic and artistic principles, is not to
+be thought of.
+
+The more the poet eludes us, the more we know he has his hiding-place
+somewhere. The more he denies our standards, the more we know he has
+standards of his own which we must discover; the more he flouts at our
+literary conventions, the more we must press him for his own principles
+and methods. How does he justify himself to himself? Could any sane man
+have written the Children of Adam poems who was not sustained by deepest
+moral and æsthetic convictions? It is the business of the critic to search
+for these principles and convictions, and not shirk the task by ridicule
+and denial.
+
+
+VII
+
+If there was never any change in taste, if it always ran in the same
+channels,--indeed, if it did not at times run in precisely opposite
+channels,--there would be little hope that Walt Whitman's poetry would
+ever find any considerable number of readers. But one of the laws that
+dominate the progress of literature, as Edmond Shérer says, is incessant
+change, not only in thought and ideas, but in taste and the
+starting-points of art. A radical and almost violent change in these
+respects is indicated by Whitman,--a change which is in unison with many
+things in modern life and morals, but which fairly crosses the prevailing
+taste in poetry and in art. No such dose of realism and individualism
+under the guise of poetry has been administered to the reading public in
+this century. No such break with literary traditions--no such audacious
+attempt to tally, in a printed page, the living concrete man, an actual
+human presence, instead of the conscious, made-up poet--is to be found in
+modern literary records.
+
+
+VIII
+
+The much that I have said in the following pages about Whitman's radical
+differences from other poets--his changed attitude towards the universe,
+his unwonted methods and aims, etc.,--might seem to place him upon a
+ground so unique and individual as to contradict my claims for his breadth
+and universality. The great poets stand upon common ground; they excel
+along familiar lines, they touch us, and touch us deeply, at many points.
+What always saves Whitman is his enormous endowment of what is "commonest,
+nearest, easiest,"--his atmosphere of the common day, the common life, and
+his fund of human sympathy and love. He is strange because he gives us the
+familiar in such a direct, unexpected manner. His "Leaves" are like some
+new fruit that we have never before tasted. It is the product of another
+clime, another hemisphere. The same old rains and dews, the same old sun
+and soil, nursed it, yet in so many ways how novel and strange! We
+certainly have to serve a certain apprenticeship to this poet, familiarize
+ourselves with his point of view and with his democratic spirit, before we
+can make much of him. The spirit in which we come to him from the other
+poets--the poets of art and culture--is for the most part unfriendly to
+him. There is something rude, strange, and unpoetic about him at first
+sight that is sure to give most readers of poetry a shock. I think one
+might come to him from the Greek poets, or the old Hebrew or Oriental
+bards, with less shock than from our modern delicate and refined singers;
+because the old poets were more simple and elemental, and aimed less at
+the distilled dainties of poetry, than the modern. They were full of
+action, too, and volition,--of that which begets and sustains life.
+Whitman's poetry is almost entirely the expression of will and
+personality, and runs very little to intellectual subtleties and
+refinements. It fulfills itself in our wills and character, rather than in
+our taste.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country's
+poets, and among English poets generally,--a cropping out again, after so
+many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain. Had he dropped upon us
+from some other sphere, he could hardly have been a greater surprise and
+puzzle to the average reader or critic. Into a literature that was timid,
+imitative, conventional, he fell like leviathan into a duck-pond, and the
+commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All
+the reigning poets in this country except Emerson denied him, and many of
+our minor poets still keep up a hostile sissing and cackling. He will
+probably always be more or less a stumbling-block to the minor poet,
+because of his indifference to the things which to the minor poet are all
+in all. He was a poet without what is called artistic form, and without
+technique, as that word is commonly understood. His method was analogous
+to the dynamic method of organic nature, rather than to the mechanical or
+constructive method of the popular poets.
+
+
+X
+
+Of course the first thing that strikes the reader in "Leaves of Grass" is
+its seeming oddity and strangeness. If a man were to come into a dress
+reception in shirt sleeves and with his hat on, the feature would strike
+us at once, and would be magnified in our eyes; we should quite forget
+that he was a man, and in essentials differed but little from the rest of
+us, after all. The exterior habiliments on such occasions count for nearly
+everything; and in the popular poetry rhyme, measure, and the language and
+manners of the poets are much more than anything else. If Whitman did not
+do anything so outré as to come into a dress reception with his coat off
+and his hat on, he did come into the circle of the poets without the usual
+poetic habiliments. He was not dressed up at all, and he was not at all
+abashed or apologetic. His air was confident and self-satisfied, if it did
+not at times suggest the insolent and aggressive. It was the dress circle
+that was on trial, and not Walt Whitman.
+
+We could forgive a man in real life for such an audacious proceeding only
+on the ground of his being something extraordinary as a person, with an
+extraordinary message to convey; and we can pardon the poet only on
+precisely like grounds. He must make us forget his unwonted garb by his
+unique and lovable personality, and the power and wisdom of his utterance.
+If he cannot do this we shall soon tire of him.
+
+That Whitman was a personality the like of which the world has not often
+seen, and that his message to his country and to his race was of prime
+importance, are conclusions at which more and more thinking persons are
+surely arriving.
+
+His want of art, of which we have heard so much, is, it seems to me, just
+this want of the usual trappings and dress uniform of the poets. In the
+essentials of art, the creative imagination, the plastic and quickening
+spirit, the power of identification with the thing contemplated, and the
+absolute use of words, he has few rivals.
+
+
+XI
+
+I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
+Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
+colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
+such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
+is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
+appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
+violently for him or violently against, and it will require the
+perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
+significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
+show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.
+
+"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
+has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
+this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
+interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
+up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
+and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
+vanity."
+
+To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
+one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
+not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
+follows, I shall be more than content.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the world of literature, as in the world of physical forces, things
+adjust themselves after a while, and no impetus can be given to any man's
+name or fame that will finally carry it beyond the limit of his real
+worth. However "one-sided" my enthusiasm for Whitman may be, or that of
+any of his friends may be, there is no danger but that in time he will
+find exactly his proper place and level. My opinion, or any man's opinion,
+of the works of another, is like a wind that blows for a moment across
+the water, heaping it up a little on the shore or else beating it down,
+but not in any way permanently affecting its proper level.
+
+The adverse winds that have blown over Whitman's work have been many and
+persistent, and yet the tide has surely risen, his fame has slowly
+increased.
+
+It will soon be forty years since he issued the first thin quarto edition
+of "Leaves of Grass," and, though the opposition to him has been the most
+fierce and determined ever recorded in our literary history, often
+degenerating into persecution and willful misrepresentation, yet his fame
+has steadily grown both at home and abroad. The impression he early made
+upon such men as Emerson, Thoreau, William O'Connor, Mr. Stedman, Colonel
+Ingersoll, and others in this country, and upon Professors Dowden and
+Clifford, upon Symonds, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti, Lord Lytton, Mrs.
+Gilchrist, George Eliot, in England, has been followed by an equally deep
+or deeper impression upon many of the younger and bolder spirits of both
+hemispheres. In fact Whitman saw his battle essentially won in his own
+lifetime, though his complete triumph is of course a matter of the distant
+future.
+
+
+XIII
+
+But let me give without further delay a fuller hint of the attitude these
+pages assume and hold towards the subject they discuss.
+
+There are always, or nearly always, a few men born to each generation who
+embody the best thought and culture of that generation, and express it in
+approved literary forms. From Petrarch down to Lowell, the lives and works
+of these men fill the literary annals; they uphold the literary and
+scholarly traditions; they are the true men of letters; they are justly
+honored and beloved in their day and land. We in this country have
+recently, in the death of Dr. Holmes, mourned the loss of the last of the
+New England band of such men. We are all indebted to them for solace, and
+for moral and intellectual stimulus.
+
+Then, much more rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like
+an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who
+bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are
+not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times
+for the most part decry and disown,--the primal, original, elemental men.
+It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the
+minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He
+is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets,--nearer the
+founders and discoverers, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic,
+patriarchal men who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with
+the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the
+seer, the prophet. The specialization and differentiation of our latter
+ages of science and culture is less marked in him than in other poets.
+Poetry, philosophy, religion, are all inseparably blended in his pages. He
+is in many ways a reversion to an earlier type. Dr. Brinton has remarked
+that his attitude toward the principle of sex and his use of sexual
+imagery in his poems, are the same as in the more primitive religions.
+Whitman was not a poet by elaboration, but by suggestion; not an artist by
+formal presentation, but by spirit and conception; not a philosopher by
+system and afterthought, but by vision and temper.
+
+In his "Leaves," we again hear the note of destiny,--again see the
+universal laws and forces exemplified in the human personality, and turned
+upon life with love and triumph.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The world always has trouble with its primary men, or with the men who
+have any primary gifts, like Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Tolstoi,
+Ibsen. The idols of an age are nearly always secondary men: they break no
+new ground; they make no extraordinary demands; our tastes and wants are
+already adjusted to their type; we understand and approve of them at once.
+The primary men disturb us; they are a summons and a challenge; they break
+up the old order; they open up new territory which we are to subdue and
+occupy; the next age and the next make more of them. In my opinion, the
+next age and the next will make more of Whitman, and the next still more,
+because he is in the great world-current, in the line of the evolutionary
+movement of our time. Is it at all probable that Tennyson can ever be to
+any other age what he has been to this? Tennyson marks an expiring age,
+the sunset of the feudal world. He did not share the spirit to which the
+future belongs. There was not one drop of democratic blood in his veins.
+To him, the people were an hundred-headed beast.
+
+
+XV
+
+If my essay seems like one continual strain to attain the unattainable, to
+compass and define Whitman, who will not be compassed and defined, I can
+only say that I regret it, but could not well help it. Talking about
+Whitman, Symonds said, was like talking about the universe, and it is so.
+There is somewhat incommensurable in his works. One may not hope to speak
+the final word about him, to sum him up in a sentence. He is so palpable,
+so real, so near at hand, that the critic or expounder of him promises
+himself an easy victory; but before one can close with him he is gone. He
+is, after all, as subtle and baffling as air or light.
+
+                    ... "I will certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you."
+
+
+It is probably this characteristic which makes Whitman an irrepressible
+figure in literature; he will not down for friend or foe. He escapes from
+all classification, and is larger than any definition of him that has yet
+been given. How many times has he been exploded by British and American
+critics; how many times has he been labeled and put upon the shelf, only
+to reappear again as vigorous and untranslatable as ever!
+
+
+XVI
+
+So far as Whitman stands merely for the spirit of revolt, or of reaction
+against current modes in life and literature, I have little interest in
+him. As the "apostle of the rough, the uncouth," to use Mr. Howells's
+words, the world would long ago have tired of him. The irruption into
+letters of the wild and lawless, or of the strained and eccentric, can
+amuse and interest us only for a moment. It is because these are only
+momentary phases of him, as it were, and because underneath all he
+embraces the whole of life and ministers to it, that his fame and
+influence are still growing in the world. One hesitates even to call
+Whitman the poet of "democracy," or of "personality," or of "the modern,"
+because such terms only half define him. He quickly escapes into that
+large and universal air which all great art breathes. We cannot sum him up
+in a phrase. He flows out on all sides, and his sympathies embrace all
+types and conditions of men. He is a great democrat, but, first and last
+and over all, he is a great man, a great nature, and deep world-currents
+course through him. He is distinctively an American poet, but his
+Americanism is only the door through which he enters upon the universal.
+
+
+XVII
+
+Call his work poetry or prose, or what you will: that it is an inspired
+utterance of some sort, any competent person ought to be able to see. And
+what else do we finally demand of any work than that it be inspired? How
+all questions of form and art, and all other questions, sink into
+insignificance beside that! The exaltation of mind and spirit shown in the
+main body of Whitman's work, the genuine, prophetic fervor, the
+intensification and amplification of the simple ego, and the resultant
+raising of all human values, seem to me as plain as daylight.
+
+Whitman is to be classed among the great names by the breadth and
+all-inclusiveness of his theme and by his irrepressible personality. I
+think it highly probable that future scholars and critics will find his
+work fully as significant and era-marking as that of any of the few
+supreme names of the past. It is the culmination of an age of
+individualism, and, as opposites meet, it is also the best lesson in
+nationalism and universal charity that this century has seen.
+
+
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL
+
+
+I
+
+Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 30, 1819, and died
+at Camden, N. J., March 26, 1892. Though born in the country, most of his
+life was passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New
+Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is
+buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,--free, unhampered,
+unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of
+money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole,
+joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter
+through the world,--no hurry, no fever, no strife; hence no bitterness, no
+depletion, no wasted energies. A farm boy, then a school-teacher, then a
+printer, editor, writer, traveler, mechanic, nurse in the army hospitals,
+and lastly government clerk; large and picturesque of figure, slow of
+movement; tolerant, passive, receptive, and democratic,--of the people; in
+all his tastes and attractions, always aiming to walk abreast with the
+great laws and forces, and to live thoroughly in the free, nonchalant
+spirit of his own day and land. His strain was mingled Dutch and English,
+with a decided Quaker tinge, which came from his mother's side, and which
+had a marked influence upon his work.
+
+The spirit that led him to devote his time and substance to the sick and
+wounded soldiers during the war may be seen in that earlier incident in
+his life when he drove a Broadway stage all one winter, that a disabled
+driver might lie by without starving his family. It is from this episode
+that the tradition of his having been a New York stage-driver comes. He
+seems always to have had a special liking for this class of workmen. One
+of the house surgeons of the old New York Hospital relates that in the
+latter part of the fifties Whitman was a frequent visitor to that
+institution, looking after and ministering to disabled stage-drivers.
+"These drivers," says the doctor, "like those of the omnibuses in London,
+were a set of men by themselves. A good deal of strength, intelligence,
+and skillful management of horses was required of a Broadway stage-driver.
+He seems to have been decidedly a higher order of man than the driver of
+the present horse-cars. He usually had his primary education in the
+country, and graduated as a thorough expert in managing a very difficult
+machine, in an exceptionally busy thoroughfare.
+
+"It was this kind of a man that so attracted Walt Whitman that he was
+constantly to be seen perched on the box alongside one of them going up
+and down Broadway. I often watched the poet and driver, as probably did
+many another New Yorker in those days.
+
+"I do not wonder as much now as I did in 1860 that a man like Walt Whitman
+became interested in these drivers. He was not interested in the news of
+every-day life--the murders and accidents and political convulsions--but
+he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not
+had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now
+that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then
+been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote
+them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said
+much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had satisfied
+himself of the nature of the injury and of the prospect of recovery.
+
+"Whitman appeared to be about forty years of age at that time. He was
+always dressed in a blue flannel coat and vest, with gray and baggy
+trousers. He wore a woolen shirt, with a Byronic collar, low in the neck,
+without a cravat, as I remember, and a large felt hat. His hair was iron
+gray, and he had a full beard and mustache of the same color. His face and
+neck were bronzed by exposure to the sun and air. He was large, and gave
+the impression of being a vigorous man. He was scrupulously careful of his
+simple attire, and his hands were soft and hairy."
+
+During the early inception of "Leaves of Grass" he was a carpenter in
+Brooklyn, building and selling small frame-houses to working people. He
+frequently knocked off work to write his poems. In his life Whitman was
+never one of the restless, striving sort. In this respect he was not
+typical of his countrymen. All his urgency and strenuousness he reserved
+for his book. He seems always to have been a sort of visitor in life,
+noting, observing, absorbing, keeping aloof from all ties that would hold
+him, and making the most of the hour and the place in which he happened to
+be. He was in no sense a typical literary man. During his life in New York
+and Brooklyn, we see him moving entirely outside the fashionable circles,
+the learned circles, the literary circles, the money-getting circles. He
+belongs to no set or club. He is seen more with the laboring
+classes,--drivers, boatmen, mechanics, printers,--and I suspect may often
+be found with publicans and sinners. He is fond of the ferries and of the
+omnibuses. He is a frequenter of the theatre and of the Italian opera.
+Alboni makes a deep and lasting impression upon him. It is probably to her
+that he writes these lines:--
+
+  "Here take this gift,
+  I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, general,
+  One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress
+        and freedom of the race,
+  Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
+  But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to
+        any."
+
+
+Elsewhere he refers to Alboni by name and speaks of her as
+
+  "The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
+  Sister of loftiest gods."
+
+
+Some of his poems were written at the opera. The great singers evidently
+gave him clews and suggestions that were applicable to his own art.
+
+His study was out of doors. He wrote on the street, on the ferry, at the
+seaside, in the fields, at the opera,--always from living impulses arising
+at the moment, and always with his eye upon the fact. He says he has read
+his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, and tried them by the realities
+of life and nature about him. Were they as real and alive as they?--this
+was the only question with him.
+
+At home in his father's family in Brooklyn we see him gentle, patient,
+conciliatory, much looked up to by all. Neighbors seek his advice. He is
+cool, deliberate, impartial. A marked trait is his indifference to money
+matters; his people are often troubled because he lets opportunities to
+make money pass by. When his "Leaves" appear, his family are puzzled, do
+not know what to make of it. His mother thinks that, if "Hiawatha" is
+poetry, may be Walt's book is, too. He never counsels with any one, and is
+utterly indifferent as to what people may say or think. He is not a
+stirring and punctual man, is always a little late; not an early riser,
+not prompt at dinner; always has ample time, and will not be hurried; the
+business gods do not receive his homage. He is gray at thirty, and is said
+to have had a look of age in youth, as he had a look of youth in age. He
+has few books, cares little for sport, never uses a gun; has no bad
+habits; has no entanglements with women, and apparently never contemplates
+marriage. It is said that during his earliest years of manhood he kept
+quite aloof from the "girls."
+
+At the age of nineteen he edited "The Long Islander," published at
+Huntington. A recent visitor to these early haunts of Whitman gathered
+some reminiscences of him at this date:--
+
+"Amid the deep revery of nature, on that mild October afternoon, we
+returned to the village of Huntington, there to meet the few, the very
+few, survivors who recall Walt's first appearance in the literary world as
+the editor of 'The Long Islander,' nigh sixty years ago (1838). Two of
+these forefathers of the hamlet clearly remembered his powerful
+personality, brimful of life, reveling in strength, careless of time and
+the world, of money and of toil; a lover of books and of jokes; delighting
+to gather round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of
+evenings, and tell them stories and read them poetry, his own and others'.
+That of his own he called his 'Yawps,' a word which he afterwards made
+famous. Both remembered him as a delightful companion, generous to a
+fault, glorying in youth, negligent of his affairs, issuing 'The Long
+Islander' at random intervals,--once a week, once in two weeks, once in
+three,--until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him
+out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt himself was editor,
+publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all in one."
+
+
+II
+
+Few men were so deeply impressed by our Civil War as was Whitman. It
+aroused all his patriotism, all his sympathies, and, as a poet, tested his
+power to deal with great contemporary events and scenes. He was first
+drawn to the seat of war on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel
+George W. Whitman, 51st New York Volunteers, who was wounded by the
+fragment of a shell at Fredericksburg. This was in the fall of 1862. This
+brought him in contact with the sick and wounded soldiers, and henceforth,
+as long as the war lasts and longer, he devoted his time and substance to
+ministering to them. The first two or three years of his life in
+Washington he supported himself by correspondence with Northern
+newspapers, mainly with the "New York Times." These letters, as well as
+the weekly letters to his mother during the same period, form an intensely
+pathetic and interesting record.
+
+They contain such revelations of himself, and such pictures of the scenes
+he moved among, that I shall here quote freely from them. The following
+extract is from a letter written from Fredericksburg the third or fourth
+day after the battle of December, 1862:--
+
+"Spent a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the
+Rappahannock, immediately opposite Fredericksburg. It is used as a
+hospital since the battle, and seems to have received only the worst
+cases. Out of doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front
+of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.,
+about a load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each
+covered with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, toward the river,
+are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of
+barrel-staves, or broken board, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies
+were subsequently taken up and transported North to their friends.)
+
+"The house is quite crowded, everything impromptu, no system, all bad
+enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds
+pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and
+bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a
+Mississippian,--a captain,--hit badly in leg, I talked with some time; he
+asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward
+in Washington, with leg amputated, doing well.)
+
+"I went through the rooms, down stairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
+I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks
+home, mothers, etc. Also talked to three or four who seemed most
+susceptible to it, and needing it."
+
+"December 22 to 31.--Am among the regimental, brigade, and division
+hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and
+sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their
+blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No
+cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around
+from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I
+cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me
+convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and
+sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.
+
+"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
+camps, talking with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups
+around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get
+acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well
+used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best."
+
+After continuing in front through the winter, he returns to Washington,
+where the wounded and sick have mainly been concentrated. The Capital
+city, truly, is now one huge hospital; and there Whitman establishes
+himself, and thenceforward, for several years, has but one daily and
+nightly avocation.
+
+He alludes to writing letters by the bedside, and says:--
+
+"I do a good deal of this, of course, writing all kinds, including
+love-letters. Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written home to
+parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives, for one reason or another, for
+a long, long time. Some are poor writers, some cannot get paper and
+envelopes; many have an aversion to writing, because they dread to worry
+the folks at home,--the facts about them are so sad to tell. I always
+encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them."
+
+A glimpse of the scenes after Chancellorsville:--
+
+"As I write this, in May, 1863, the wounded have begun to arrive from
+Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first
+arrivals. The men in charge of them told me the bad cases were yet to
+come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
+see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here foot of Sixth
+Street at night. Two boat-loads came about half past seven last night. A
+little after eight, it rained a long and violent shower. The poor, pale,
+helpless soldiers had been debarked, and lay around on the wharf and
+neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any
+rate they were exposed to it.
+
+"The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the
+ground, out on side places, etc., the men are lying on blankets and old
+quilts, with the bloody rags bound round heads, arms, legs, etc. The
+attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also,--only a few
+hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
+common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
+there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by
+the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is
+called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on
+stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their
+sufferings,--a few groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a
+scream of pain, as they lift a man into the ambulance.
+
+"To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the
+next day more, and so on for many days.
+
+"The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
+generally supposed,--I should say nine tenths are native-born. Among the
+arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
+and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
+are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
+a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was, perhaps,
+worse than usual. Amputations are going on,--the attendants are dressing
+wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw,
+the other day, a gentleman--a visitor, apparently, from curiosity--in one
+of the wards stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were
+probing, etc. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and
+fallen on the floor."
+
+An episode,--the death of a New York soldier:--
+
+"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
+have been with a good deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
+company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound
+also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
+and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
+opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
+the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
+crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
+chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
+feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
+me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
+mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It is my chief
+reliance.' He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: 'Why,
+Oscar, don't you think you will get well?' He said: 'I may, but it is not
+probable.' He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
+discharged much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that
+he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
+affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned
+fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
+post-office, Cattaraugus County, New York. I had several such interviews
+with him. He died a few days after the one just described."
+
+And here, also, a characteristic scene in another of those long
+barracks:--
+
+"It is Sunday afternoon (middle of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and
+very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now
+lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
+8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
+wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well.
+Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on,
+sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
+yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so
+handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over
+to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
+Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan."
+
+In a letter to his mother in 1863 he says, in reference to his hospital
+services: "I have got in the way, after going lightly, as it were, all
+through the wards of a hospital, and trying to give a word of cheer, if
+nothing else, to every one, then confining my special attention to the few
+where the investment seems to tell best, and who want it most.... Mother,
+I have real pride in telling you that I have the consciousness of saving
+quite a number of lives by keeping the men from giving up, and being a
+good deal with them. The men say it is so, and the doctors say it is so;
+and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I say it myself.
+I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you."
+
+Again he says: "I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity; I go
+among the smallpox, etc., just the same. I feel to go without
+apprehension, and so I go: nobody else goes; but, as the darkey said there
+at Charleston when the boat ran on a flat and the rebel sharpshooters were
+peppering them, '_somebody_ must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"
+
+In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
+wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
+hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
+large and well,--indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
+the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
+not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."
+
+As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
+letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
+Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
+a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
+do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
+secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,--a
+regular Carolina or Virginia planter."
+
+The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
+deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
+used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have seen so many
+cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
+hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
+and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."
+
+Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
+health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
+trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
+but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:--
+
+"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
+Hospital),--about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
+probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
+stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
+Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
+'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
+knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
+composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
+o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
+blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I told you,
+last letter, I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young
+men I knew well, especially two of whom I had strong hopes of their
+getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are
+crowded here in Washington in immense numbers, and all those that came up
+from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such
+plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from
+Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the
+largest proportion of worst cases get little or no attention.
+
+"We receive them here with their wounds full of worms,--some all swelled
+and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new
+feature is, that many of the poor, afflicted young men are crazy; every
+ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and
+it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is
+most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it; but I
+suppose it is because I have not felt firstrate myself."
+
+Of the Ohio soldier above referred to, Whitman had written a few days
+before: "You remember I told you of him a year ago, when he was first
+brought in. I thought him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I
+had seen. A real giant in size, and always with a smile on his face. Oh,
+what a change! He has long been very irritable to every one but me, and
+his frame is all wasted away."
+
+To his brother Jeff he wrote: "Of the many I have seen die, or known of
+the past year, I have not seen or known of one who met death with any
+terror. Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of
+seventeen named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
+Artillery, Battery M. He was brought into one of the hospitals mortally
+wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it
+ought to be a relief to his folks, after all, if they could see how little
+he suffered. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed;
+it was very warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat.
+At length he opened his eyes quite wide and clear, and looked inquiringly
+around. I said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said
+quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking
+around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he
+lay so peaceful in his dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England
+country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
+fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."
+
+Another extract from a letter to his mother in April, 1864:--
+
+"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
+active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
+gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,--the flag, the
+tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
+never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
+pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,--it belonged to one
+of our cavalry regiments,--presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
+taken by the rebs in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
+little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
+four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
+rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
+again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
+it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
+he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
+I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
+a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."
+
+[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
+movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
+principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
+simple, and on a low key,--to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
+and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
+certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
+carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
+of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
+trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
+flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
+summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
+white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
+air and sunshine.
+
+When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
+feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
+festival,--strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh
+underclothes. He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder,
+full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant
+pockets. He would sometimes come in summer with a good-sized basket filled
+with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing them among
+the feverish and thirsty.]
+
+Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses. A
+well-known correspondent of the "New York Herald" writes thus about him in
+April, 1876:--
+
+"I first heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle
+there. Subsequently I saw him, time and again, in the Washington
+hospitals, or wending his way there, with basket or haversack on his arm,
+and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed
+the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kindness,
+tenderness, and thoughtfulness.
+
+"Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds
+through a hospital filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism
+he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each
+cot bore its man. When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of
+affection and welcome on every face, however wan, and his presence seemed
+to light up the place as it might be lighted by the presence of the God of
+Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in
+whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To
+one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to
+others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a
+sheet of paper or a postage-stamp, all of which and many other things were
+in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message
+for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an
+errand; to another, some special friend very low, he would give a manly
+farewell kiss. He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do, and
+he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The
+lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it,
+and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of
+many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!'"
+
+
+III
+
+Out of that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called "Drum-Taps,"
+first published in 1865,--since merged in his "Leaves,"--were produced.
+Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, come from life. The vivid
+incidents of "The Dresser" are but daguerreotypes of the poet's own actual
+movements among the bad cases of the wounded after a battle. The same
+personal knowledge runs through "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and
+Dim," "Come up from the Fields, Father," etc., etc.
+
+The reader of this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not
+the purpose of the poet to portray battles and campaigns, or to celebrate
+special leaders or military prowess, but rather to chant the human aspects
+of anguish that follow in the train of war. He perhaps feels that the
+permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a
+business, as a means of growth, has served its time; and that,
+notwithstanding the vast difference between ancient and modern warfare,
+both in the spirit and in the means, Homer's pictures are essentially true
+yet, and no additions to them can be made. War can never be to us what it
+has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never the main
+fact, the paramount condition, tyrannizing over all the affairs of
+national and individual life, but only an episode, a passing interruption;
+and the poet, who in our day would be as true to his nation and times as
+Homer was to his, must treat of it from the standpoint of peace and
+progress, and even benevolence. Vast armies rise up in a night and
+disappear in a day; a million of men, inured to battle and to blood, go
+back to the avocations of peace without a moment's confusion or
+delay,--indicating clearly the tendency that prevails.
+
+Apostrophizing the genius of America in the supreme hour of victory, he
+says:--
+
+  "No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee--nor mastery's rapturous
+        verse:--
+  But a little book containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds,
+  And psalms of the dead."
+
+
+The collection is also remarkable for the absence of all sectional or
+partisan feeling. Under the head of "Reconciliation" are these lines:--
+
+  "Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
+  Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be
+        utterly lost!
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  ... For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
+  I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near;
+  I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the
+        coffin."
+
+
+Perhaps the most noteworthy of Whitman's war poems is the one called "When
+Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloomed," written in commemoration of
+President Lincoln.
+
+The main effect of this poem is of strong, solemn, and varied music; and
+it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great
+composers most work,--namely, spiritual auricular analogy. At first it
+would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect. No reference
+whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not
+even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone
+that of lamentation; but, with the intuitions of the grand art, which is
+the most complex when it seems most simple, he seizes upon three beautiful
+facts of nature, which he weaves into a wreath for the dead President's
+tomb. The central thought is of death, but around this he curiously
+twines, first, the early-blooming lilacs which the poet may have plucked
+the day the dark shadow came; next the song of the hermit thrush, the most
+sweet and solemn of all our songsters, heard at twilight in the dusky
+cedars; and with these the evening star, which, as many may remember,
+night after night in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in
+the west with unusual and tender brightness. These are the premises whence
+he starts his solemn chant.
+
+The attitude, therefore, is not that of being bowed down and weeping
+hopeless tears, but of singing a commemorative hymn, in which the voices
+of nature join, and fits that exalted condition of the soul which serious
+events and the presence of death induce. There are no words of mere
+eulogy, no statistics, and no story or narrative; but there are pictures,
+processions, and a strange mingling of darkness and light, of grief and
+triumph: now the voice of the bird, or the drooping lustrous star, or the
+sombre thought of death; then a recurrence to the open scenery of the land
+as it lay in the April light, "the summer approaching with richness and
+the fields all busy with labor," presently dashed in upon by a spectral
+vision of armies with torn and bloody battle-flags, and, again, of the
+white skeletons of young men long afterward strewing the ground. Hence the
+piece has little or nothing of the character of the usual productions on
+such occasions. It is dramatic; yet there is no development of plot, but
+a constant interplay, a turning and returning of images and sentiments.
+
+The poet breaks a sprig of lilac from the bush in the door-yard,--the dark
+cloud falls on the land,--the long funeral sets out,--and then the
+apostrophe:--
+
+  "Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
+  Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,
+  With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities draped in black,
+  With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women,
+        standing,
+  With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,
+  With the countless torches lit--with the silent sea of faces, and the
+        unbared heads,
+  With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
+  With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
+        and solemn;
+  With all the mournful voices of the dirges, pour'd around the coffin,
+  To dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--Where amid these you
+        journey,
+  With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;
+  Here! coffin that slowly passes,
+  I give you my sprig of lilac.
+
+  "(Nor for you, for one alone;
+  Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
+  For fresh as the morning--thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
+        and sacred death.
+
+  "All over bouquets of roses,
+  O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;
+  But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
+  Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes;
+  With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
+  For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)"
+
+
+Then the strain goes on:--
+
+  "O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
+  And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
+  And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?
+
+  "Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
+  Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till
+        there on the prairies meeting:
+  These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
+  I perfume the grave of him I love."
+
+
+The poem reaches, perhaps, its height in the matchless invocation to
+Death:--
+
+  "Come, lovely and soothing Death,
+  Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
+  In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
+  Sooner or later, delicate Death.
+
+  "Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
+  For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;
+  And for love, sweet love--but praise! O praise and praise,
+  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
+
+  "Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
+  Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
+  Then I chant it for thee--I glorify thee above all;
+  I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
+
+  "Approach, encompassing Death--strong Deliveress!
+  When it is so--when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
+  Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
+  Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
+
+  "From me to thee glad serenades,
+  Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee--adornments and feastings for
+        thee;
+  And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky are
+        fitting,
+  And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
+  The night, in silence, under many a star;
+  The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;
+  And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death,
+  And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman despised riches, and all mere worldly success, as heartily as ever
+did any of the old Christians. All outward show and finery were intensely
+distasteful to him. He probably would not have accepted the finest house
+in New York on condition that he live in it. During his hospital
+experiences he cherished the purpose, as soon as the war was over, of
+returning to Brooklyn, buying an acre or two of land in some by-place on
+Long Island, and building for himself and his family a cheap house. When
+his brother Jeff contemplated building, he advised him to build merely an
+Irish shanty. After what he had seen the soldiers put up with, he thought
+anything was good enough for him or his people. In one of his letters to
+his mother, he comments upon the un-American and inappropriate
+ornamentation of the rooms in the Capitol building, "without grandeur and
+without simplicity," he says. In the state the country was in, and with
+the hospital scenes before him, the "poppy-show goddesses" and the Italian
+style of decoration, etc., sickened him, and he got away from it all as
+quickly as he could.
+
+
+V
+
+During the war and after, I used to see a good deal of Whitman in
+Washington. Summer and winter he was a conspicuous figure on Pennsylvania
+Avenue, where he was wont to walk for exercise and to feed his hunger for
+faces. One would see him afar off, in the crowd but not of it,--a large,
+slow-moving figure, clad in gray, with broad-brimmed hat and gray
+beard,--or, quite as frequently, on the front platform of the street
+horse-cars with the driver. My eye used to single him out many blocks
+away.
+
+There were times during this period when his aspect was rather
+forbidding,--the physical man was too pronounced on first glance; the
+other man was hidden beneath the broad-brimmed hat. One needed to see the
+superbly domed head and classic brow crowning the rank physical man.
+
+In his middle manhood, judging from the photos, he had a hirsute, kindly
+look, but very far removed from the finely cut traditional poet's face.
+
+
+VI
+
+I have often heard Whitman say that he inherited most excellent blood from
+his mother,--the old Dutch Van Velser strain,--Long Island blood filtered
+and vitalized through generations by the breath of the sea. He was his
+mother's child unmistakably. With all his rank masculinity, there was a
+curious feminine undertone in him which revealed itself in the quality of
+his voice, the delicate texture of his skin, the gentleness of his touch
+and ways, the attraction he had for children and the common people. A lady
+in the West, writing to me about him, spoke of his "great mother-nature."
+He was receptive, sympathetic, tender, and met you, not in a positive,
+aggressive manner, but more or less in a passive or neutral mood. He did
+not give his friends merely his mind, he gave them himself. It is not
+merely his mind or intellect that he has put into his poems, it is
+himself. Indeed, this feminine mood or attitude might be dwelt upon at
+much length in considering his poems,--their solvent, absorbing power, and
+the way they yield themselves to diverse interpretations.
+
+The sea, too, had laid its hand upon him, as I have already suggested. He
+never appeared so striking and impressive as when seen upon the beach. His
+large and tall gray figure looked at home, and was at home, upon the
+shore. The simple, strong, flowing lines of his face, his always clean
+fresh air, his blue absorbing eye, his commanding presence, and something
+pristine and elemental in his whole expression, seemed at once to put him
+_en rapport_ with the sea. No phase of nature seems to have impressed him
+so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman was preëminently manly,--richly endowed with the universal,
+healthy human qualities and attributes. Mr. Conway relates that when
+Emerson handed him the first thin quarto edition of "Leaves of Grass,"
+while he was calling at his house in Concord, soon after the book
+appeared, he said, "Americans abroad may now come home: unto us a man is
+born."
+
+President Lincoln, standing one day during the war before a window in the
+White House, saw Whitman slowly saunter by. He followed him with his
+eyes, and, turning, said to those about him, "Well, _he_ looks like a
+_man_."
+
+  "Meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms."
+
+
+During Whitman's Western tour in 1879 or '80, at some point in Kansas, in
+company with several well-known politicians and government officials, he
+visited a lot of Indians who were being held as prisoners. The sheriff
+told the Indians who the distinguished men were who were about to see
+them, but the Indians paid little attention to them as, one after the
+other, the officials and editors passed by them. Behind all came Whitman.
+The old chief looked at him steadily, then extended his hand and said,
+"How!" All the other Indians followed, surrounding Whitman, shaking his
+hand and making the air melodious with their "Hows." The incident
+evidently pleased the old poet a good deal.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Whitman was of large mould in every way, and of bold, far-reaching
+schemes, and is very sure to fare better at the hands of large men than of
+small. The first and last impression which his personal presence always
+made upon one was of a nature wonderfully gentle, tender, and benignant.
+His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and dominated by his
+humanity, so that the impression you got from him was not that of a
+learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human
+nature,--such an impression, I fancy, only fuller, as one might have got
+from Walter Scott. This was perhaps the secret of the attraction he had,
+for the common, unlettered people and for children. I think that even his
+literary friends often sought his presence less for conversation than to
+bask in his physical or psychical sunshine, and to rest upon his boundless
+charity. The great service he rendered to the wounded and homesick
+soldiers in the hospitals during the war came from his copious endowment
+of this broad, sweet, tender democratic nature. He brought father and
+mother to them, and the tonic and cheering atmosphere of simple,
+affectionate home life.
+
+In person Whitman was large and tall, above six feet, with a breezy,
+open-air look. His temperament was sanguine; his voice was a tender
+baritone. The dominant impression he made was that of something fresh and
+clean. I remember the first time I met him, which was in Washington, in
+the fall of 1863. I was impressed by the fine grain and clean, fresh
+quality of the man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect
+something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a
+bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His
+body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar
+fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was
+undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did
+not appear till he was past sixty. After that, I have little doubt, it was
+the finest head this age or country has seen. Every artist who saw him
+was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch him. The lines were so
+simple, so free, and so strong. High, arching brows; straight, clear-cut
+nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized,
+but a vital part of a symmetrical, dome-shaped head; ear large, and the
+most delicately carved I have ever seen; the mouth and chin hidden by a
+soft, long, white beard. It seems to me his face steadily refined and
+strengthened with age. Time depleted him in just the right way,--softened
+his beard and took away the too florid look; subdued the carnal man, and
+brought out more fully the spiritual man. When I last saw him (December
+26, 1891), though he had been very near death for many days, I am sure I
+had never seen his face so beautiful. There was no breaking-down of the
+features, or the least sign of decrepitude, such as we usually note in old
+men. The expression was full of pathos, but it was as grand as that of a
+god. I could not think of him as near death, he looked so unconquered.
+
+In Washington I knew Whitman intimately from the fall of 1863 to the time
+he left in 1873. In Camden I visited him yearly after that date, usually
+in the late summer or fall. I will give one glimpse of him from my diary,
+under date of August 18, 1887. I reached his house in the morning, before
+he was up. Presently he came slowly down stairs and greeted me. "Find him
+pretty well,--looking better than last year. With his light-gray suit,
+and white hair, and fresh pink face, he made a fine picture. Among other
+things, we talked of the Swinburne attack (then recently published). W.
+did not show the least feeling on the subject, and, I clearly saw, was
+absolutely undisturbed by the article. I told him I had always been more
+disturbed by S.'s admiration for him than I was now by his condemnation.
+By and by W. had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, ten
+miles distant, to see young Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a
+level farming and truck-gardening country; warm, but breezy. W. drives
+briskly, and salutes every person we meet, little and big, black and
+white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he
+knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old
+Long Island custom of his people, to speak to every one on the road, was
+strong upon him. One tipsy man in a buggy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye
+do, pap?' etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W., as
+something I had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what
+the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would
+have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the
+centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of
+Christianity to check and curb them, etc. W. knew the history of many
+prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two colored men
+to look after him; there, in that fine house among the trees, an old
+maid, who had spent a large fortune on her house and lands, and was now
+destitute, yet she was a woman of remarkable good sense, etc. We returned
+to Camden before dark, W. apparently not fatigued by the drive of twenty
+miles."
+
+In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry. It
+was such a face, said Mr. Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected from a
+million. "It is the face of an aged loving child. As I looked, it was with
+the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never
+heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being.
+I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an avatar, was more
+gentle to all men, women, children, and living things."
+
+
+IX
+
+For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
+to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
+visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
+which the doctor printed on his return home:--
+
+"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
+and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
+of his presence as a whole.
+
+"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
+in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure
+white linen, with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt
+buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown
+open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of
+his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned
+almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned
+up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of
+the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire
+visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and
+massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong,
+white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an
+eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was
+not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is
+concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon
+his broad, square shoulders; and it is almost entirely covered with long,
+fine, straggling hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit
+snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streaming over
+and around his large but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big
+neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of
+his face, right down to the middle of his chest, like a cataract of
+materialized, white, glistening vapor, giving him a most venerable and
+patriarchal appearance. His high, massive forehead is seamed with
+wrinkles. His nose is large, strong, broad, and prominent, but
+beautifully chiseled and proportioned, almost straight, very slightly
+depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to
+the angles of the mouth. The eyebrows are thick and shaggy, with strong,
+white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes,
+which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, small, rather deeply set,
+calm, clear, penetrating, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness,
+kindness, and sympathy. The upper eyelids droop considerably over the
+eyeballs. The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache,
+are full. The whole face impresses one with a sense of resoluteness,
+strength, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness,
+unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly
+pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man.
+There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in
+them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But
+it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in
+his _tout ensemble_, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic
+presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and
+exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing
+an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I
+felt that I was here face to face with the living embodiment of all that
+was good, noble, and lovable in humanity."
+
+
+X
+
+British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic
+temperament, etc., but he was in no sense a muscular man, an athlete. His
+body, though superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in
+its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin. He
+took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports. He
+walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he
+always had an air of infinite leisure. For several years, while a clerk in
+the Attorney-General's Office in Washington, his exercise for an hour each
+day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round,
+smooth stone, of about one pound weight, and catching it as it fell. Later
+in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked
+to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that
+way. In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and
+sweetness of body, but none upon mere brute strength. This is what he says
+"To a Pupil:"--
+
+  1. Is reform needed? Is it through you?
+     The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you
+          need to accomplish it.
+
+  2. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,
+          complexion, clean and sweet?
+     Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and Soul,
+          that when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and
+          command enters with you, and every one is impressed with your
+          personality?
+
+  3. O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
+     Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to
+          inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
+          elevatedness,
+     Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
+
+
+It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
+of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,--the
+freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
+perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
+mind.
+
+A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
+several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
+face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
+was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
+majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
+looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
+seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
+friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
+would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
+all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
+upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
+identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
+poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
+poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold," he says, "the body
+includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
+soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
+of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
+strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
+knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
+singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
+curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.
+
+The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
+to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
+the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
+distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
+power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
+face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
+face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
+face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
+mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature.
+It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow.
+
+And the influence of his poems is always on the side of physiological
+cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes
+morbid and mean. He says the "expression of a well-made man appears not
+only in his face: it is in his limbs and joints also; it is curiously in
+the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his
+neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the
+strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
+flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more.
+You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."
+He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: "To be
+surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,--I
+do not ask any more delight; I swim in it, as in a sea. There is something
+in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact
+and odor of them, that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul,
+but these please the soul well." Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he
+found in the society of the common people that satisfied him so; for his
+part, he could not find anything. The subordination by Whitman of the
+purely intellectual to the human and physical, which runs all through his
+poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, who was deficient in the
+sensuous, probably could not appreciate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The atmosphere of Whitman personally was that of a large, tolerant,
+tender, sympathetic, restful man, easy of approach, indifferent to any
+special social or other distinctions and accomplishments that might be
+yours, and regarding you from the start for yourself alone.
+
+Children were very fond of him; and women, unless they had been prejudiced
+against him, were strongly drawn toward him. His personal magnetism was
+very great, and was warming and cheering. He was rich in temperament,
+probably beyond any other man of his generation,--rich in all the purely
+human and emotional endowments and basic qualities. Then there was a look
+about him hard to describe, and which I have seen in no other face,--a
+gray, brooding, elemental look, like the granite rock, something primitive
+and Adamic that might have belonged to the first man; or was it a
+suggestion of the gray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was
+born, and that had surely set its seal upon him? I know not, but I feel
+the man with that look is not of the day merely, but of the centuries. His
+eye was not piercing, but absorbing,--"draining" is the word happily used
+by William O'Connor; the soul back of it drew things to himself, and
+entered and possessed them through sympathy and personal force and
+magnetism, rather than through mere intellectual force.
+
+
+XII
+
+Walt Whitman was of the people, the common people, and always gave out
+their quality and atmosphere. His commonness, his nearness, as of the
+things you have always known,--the day, the sky, the soil, your own
+parents,--were in no way veiled, or kept in abeyance, by his culture or
+poetic gifts. He was redolent of the human and the familiar. Though
+capable, on occasions, of great pride and hauteur, yet his habitual mood
+and presence was that of simple, average, healthful humanity,--the virtue
+and flavor of sailors, soldiers, laborers, travelers, or people who live
+with real things in the open air. His commonness rose into the uncommon,
+the extraordinary, but without any hint of the exclusive or specially
+favored. He was indeed "no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women
+or apart from them."
+
+The spirit that animates every page of his book, and that it always
+effuses, is the spirit of common, universal humanity,--humanity apart from
+creeds, schools, conventions, from all special privileges and refinements,
+as it is in and of itself in its relations to the whole system of things,
+in contradistinction to the literature of culture which effuses the spirit
+of the select and exclusive.
+
+His life was the same. Walt Whitman never stood apart from or above any
+human being. The common people--workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the
+outcast--saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction
+was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity.
+Specially intellectual people rather repelled him; the wit, the scholar,
+the poet, must have a rich endowment of the common, universal, human
+attributes and qualities to pass current with him. He sought the society
+of boatmen, railroad men, farmers, mechanics, printers, teamsters, mothers
+of families, etc., rather than the society of professional men or
+scholars. Men who had the quality of things in the open air--the virtue of
+rocks, trees, hills--drew him most; and it is these qualities and virtues
+that he has aimed above all others to put into his poetry, and to put them
+there in such a way that he who reads must feel and imbibe them.
+
+The recognized poets put into their pages the virtue and quality of the
+fine gentleman, or of the sensitive, artistic nature: this poet of
+democracy effuses the atmosphere of fresh, strong Adamic man,--man acted
+upon at first hand by the shows and forces of universal nature.
+
+If our poet ever sounds the note of the crude, the loud, the exaggerated,
+he is false to himself and to his high aims. I think he may be charged
+with having done so a few times, in his earlier work, but not in his
+later. In the 1860 edition of his poems stands this portraiture, which may
+stand for himself, with one or two features rather overdrawn:--
+
+  "His shape arises
+  Arrogant, masculine, naïve, rowdyish,
+  Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman,
+  Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by
+        the sea,
+  Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from
+        taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia,
+        clean-breathed,
+  Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds,
+        full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and
+        back,
+  Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,
+  Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms,
+  Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck gray and open, of slow
+        movement on foot,
+  Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his friends, companion
+        of the street,
+  Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches, and never
+        their meanest.
+  A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the
+        life of the wharves and the great ferries,
+  Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, easily understood after all,
+  Never offering others, always offering himself, corroborating his
+        phrenology,
+  Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive,
+        of copious friendship, sublimity, firmness, self-esteem,
+        comparison, individuality, form, locality, eventuality,
+  Avowing by life, manners, words to contribute illustrations of results
+        of These States,
+  Teacher of the unquenchable creed namely egotism,
+  Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against
+        his."
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman was determined, at whatever risk to his own reputation, to make
+the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of
+American humanity, and to do this the rowdy element could not be entirely
+ignored. Hence he unflinchingly imputes it to himself, as, for that
+matter, he has nearly every sin and dereliction mankind are guilty of.
+
+Whitman developed slowly and late upon the side that related him to social
+custom and usage,--to the many fictions, concealments, make-believes, and
+subterfuges of the world of parlors and drawing-rooms. He never was an
+adept in what is called "good form;" the natural man that he was shows
+crude in certain relations. His publication of Emerson's letter with its
+magnificent eulogium of "Leaves of Grass" has been much commented upon.
+There may be two opinions as to the propriety of his course in this
+respect: a letter from a stranger upon a matter of public interest is not
+usually looked upon as a private letter. Emerson never spoke with more
+felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for
+Whitman's own sake that we would have had him practice self-denial in the
+matter; he greatly plumed himself upon Emerson's endorsement, and was
+guilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon
+the cover of the next edition of his book. Grant that it showed a certain
+crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; later in life, he could not
+have erred in this way. Ruskin is reported saying that he never in his
+life wrote a letter to any human being that he would not be willing should
+be posted up in the market-place, or cried by the public crier through the
+town. But Emerson was a much more timid and conforming man than Ruskin,
+and was much more likely to be shocked by such a circumstance.
+
+It has been said that the publication of this letter much annoyed Emerson,
+and that he never forgave Whitman the offense. That he was disturbed by it
+and by the storm that arose there can be little doubt; but there is no
+evidence that he allowed the fact to interfere with his friendship for the
+poet. Charles W. Eldridge, who personally knew of the relations of the two
+men, says:--
+
+"There was not a year from 1855 (the date of the Emerson letter and its
+publication) down to 1860 (the year Walt came to Boston to supervise the
+issue of the Thayer & Eldridge edition of 'Leaves of Grass'), that Emerson
+did not personally seek out Walt at his Brooklyn home, usually that they
+might have a long symposium together at the Astor House in New York.
+Besides that, during these years Emerson sent many of his closest friends,
+including Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of
+introduction to him. This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who
+has committed an unpardonable offense.
+
+"I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently
+came down from Concord to see him, and that they had many walks and talks
+together, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American
+House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel. On several occasions
+they met by appointment in our counting-room. Their relations were as
+cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Emerson who sought out
+Walt, and never the other way, although, of course, Walt appreciated and
+enjoyed Emerson's companionship very much. In truth, Walt never sought the
+company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary
+society. I know that at this time Walt was invited by Emerson to Concord,
+but declined to go, probably through his fear that he would see too much
+of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around
+Emerson."
+
+
+XIV
+
+Whitman gave himself to men as men and not as scholars or poets, and gave
+himself purely as a man. While not specially averse to meeting people on
+literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was more to his taste to meet on
+the broadest, commonest, human grounds. What you had seen or felt or
+suffered or done was of much more interest to him than what you had read
+or thought; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the
+last person you had met, or the last chore you had done.
+
+Any glimpse of the farm, the shop, the household--any bit of real life,
+anything that carried the flavor and quality of concrete reality--was very
+welcome to him; herein, no doubt, showing the healthy, objective, artist
+mind. He never tired of hearing me talk about the birds or wild animals,
+or my experiences in camp in the woods, the kind of characters I had met
+there, and the flavor of the life of remote settlements in Maine or
+Canada. His inward, subjective life was ample of itself; he was familiar
+with all your thoughts and speculations beforehand: what he craved was
+wider experience,--to see what you had seen, and feel what you had felt.
+He was fond of talking with returned travelers and explorers, and with
+sailors, soldiers, mechanics; much of his vast stores of information upon
+all manner of subjects was acquired at firsthand, in the old way, from the
+persons who had seen or done or been what they described or related.
+
+He had almost a passion for simple, unlettered humanity,--an attraction
+which specially intellectual persons will hardly understand. Schooling and
+culture are so often purchased at such an expense to the innate,
+fundamental human qualities! Ignorance, with sound instincts and the
+quality which converse with real things imparts to men, was more
+acceptable to him than so much of our sophisticated knowledge, or our
+studied wit, or our artificial poetry.
+
+
+XV
+
+At the time of Whitman's death, one of our leading literary journals
+charged him with having brought on premature decay by leading a riotous
+and debauched life. I hardly need say that there was no truth in the
+charge. The tremendous emotional strain of writing his "Leaves," followed
+by his years of service in the army hospitals, where he contracted
+blood-poison, resulted at the age of fifty-four in the rupture of a small
+blood-vessel in the brain, which brought on partial paralysis. A sunstroke
+during his earlier manhood also played its part in the final break-down.
+
+That, tried by the standard of the lives of our New England poets,
+Whitman's life was a blameless one, I do not assert; but that it was a
+sane, temperate, manly one, free from excesses, free from the perversions
+and morbidities of a mammonish, pampered, over-stimulated age, I do
+believe. Indeed, I may say I know. The one impression he never failed to
+make--physically, morally, intellectually--on young and old, women and
+men, was that of health, sanity, sweetness. This is the impression he
+seems to have made upon Mr. Howells, when he met the poet at Pfaff's early
+in the sixties.
+
+The critic I have alluded to inferred license in the man from liberty in
+the poet. He did not have the gumption to see that Whitman made the
+experience of all men his own, and that his scheme included the evil as
+well as the good; that especially did he exploit the unloosed, all-loving,
+all-accepting natural man,--the man who is done with conventions,
+illusions and all morbid pietisms, and who gives himself lavishly to all
+that begets and sustains life. Yet not the natural or carnal man for his
+own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual meanings and values to which
+he is the key. Indeed, Whitman is about the most uncompromising
+spiritualist in literature; with him, all things exist by and for the
+soul. He felt the tie of universal brotherhood, also, as few have felt it.
+It was not a theory with him, but a fact that shaped his life and colored
+his poems. "Whoever degrades another degrades me," and the thought fired
+his imagination.
+
+
+XVI
+
+The student of Whitman's life and works will be early struck by three
+things,--his sudden burst into song, the maturity of his work from the
+first, and his self-knowledge and self-estimate. The fit of inspiration
+came upon him suddenly; it was like the flowering of the orchards in
+spring; there was little or no hint of it till almost the very hour of
+the event. Up to the time of the appearance of the first edition of
+"Leaves of Grass," he had produced nothing above mediocrity. A hack writer
+on newspapers and magazines, then a carpenter and house-builder in a small
+way, then that astounding revelation "Leaves of Grass," the very audacity
+of it a gospel in itself. How dare he do it? how could he do it, and not
+betray hesitation or self-consciousness? It is one of the exceptional
+events in literary history. The main body of his work was produced in five
+or six years, or between 1854 and 1859. Of course it was a sudden
+flowering, which, consciously or unconsciously, must have been long
+preparing in his mind. His work must have had a long foreground, as
+Emerson suggested. Dr. Bucke, his biographer, thinks it was a special
+inspiration,--something analogous to Paul's conversion, a sudden opening
+of what the doctor calls "cosmic consciousness."
+
+Another student and lover of Whitman says: "It is certain that some time
+about his thirty-fifth year [probably a little earlier] there came over
+him a decided change: he seemed immensely to broaden and deepen; he became
+less interested in what are usually regarded as the more practical affairs
+of life. He lost what little ambition he ever had for money-making, and
+permitted good business opportunities to pass unheeded. He ceased to write
+the somewhat interesting but altogether commonplace and respectable
+stories and verses which he had been in the habit of contributing to
+periodicals. He would take long trips into the country, no one knew where,
+and would spend more time in his favorite haunts about the city, or on the
+ferries, or the tops of omnibuses, at the theatre and opera, in picture
+galleries, and wherever he could observe men and women and art and
+nature."
+
+Then the maturity of his work from the first line of it! It seems as if he
+came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one
+bound,--never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do.
+What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint.
+He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he
+first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first poem, "Starting
+from Paumanok," and he has kept the letter and the spirit of every promise
+therein made. We never see him doubtful or hesitating; we never see him
+battling for his territory, and uncertain whether or not he is upon his
+own ground. He has an air of contentment, of mastery and triumph, from the
+start.
+
+His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.
+We should probably have to go back to sacred history to find a parallel
+case. The manner of man he was, his composite character, his relation to
+his country and times, his unlikeness to other poets, his affinity to the
+common people, how he would puzzle and elude his critics, how his words
+would itch at our ears till we understood them, etc.,--how did he know all
+this from the first?
+
+
+
+
+HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS
+
+
+I
+
+Let me here summarize some of the ideas and principles in which "Leaves of
+Grass" has its root, and from which it starts. A collection of poems in
+the usual sense, a variety of themes artistically treated and appealing to
+our æsthetic perceptibilities alone, it is not. It has, strictly speaking,
+but one theme,--personality, the personality of the poet himself. To
+exploit this is always the main purpose, and, in doing so, to make the
+book both directly and indirectly a large, impassioned utterance upon all
+the main problems of life and of nationality. It is primitive, like the
+early literature of a race or people, in that its spirit and purpose are
+essentially religious. It is like the primitive literatures also in its
+prophetic cry and in its bardic simplicity and homeliness, and unlike them
+in its faith and joy and its unconquerable optimism.
+
+It has been not inaptly called the bible of democracy. Its biblical
+features are obvious enough with the darker negative traits left out. It
+is Israel with science and the modern added.
+
+Whitman was swayed by a few great passions,--the passion for country, the
+passion for comrades, the cosmic passion, etc. His first concern seems
+always to have been for his country. He has touched no theme, named no
+man, not related in some way to America. The thought of it possessed him
+as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
+Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
+power,--the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
+suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
+cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
+all-inclusive:--
+
+  "My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
+        earth,
+  I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
+        lands;
+  I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
+
+  "O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
+        continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
+  I think I have blown with you, O winds,
+  O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."
+
+
+II
+
+The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,--of
+absolute social equality.
+
+It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
+distinguished from the old theological conception,--namely, that creation
+is good and sound in all its parts.
+
+It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
+friend and not the enemy of life.
+
+It places comradeship, manly attachment, above sex love, and indicates it
+as the cement of future states and republics.
+
+It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.
+
+It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
+trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
+sexuality,--upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
+at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
+frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.
+
+It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
+conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
+works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.
+
+It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
+man,--a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
+have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
+parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
+the heroes of land and sea.
+
+Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
+real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and
+concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore,
+the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man.
+
+Its purpose is to stimulate and arouse, rather than to soothe and satisfy.
+It addresses the character, the intuitions, the ego, more than the
+intellect or the purely æsthetic faculties. Its end is not taste, but
+growth in the manly virtues and powers.
+
+Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.
+
+It aspires to a candor and a directness like that of Nature herself.
+
+It aims to let Nature speak without check, with original energy. The only
+checks are those which health and wholeness demand.
+
+Its standards are those of the natural universal.
+
+Its method is egocentric. The poet never goes out of himself, but draws
+everything into himself and makes it all serve to illustrate his
+personality.
+
+Its form is not what is called artistic. Its suggestion is to be found in
+organic nature, in trees, clouds, and in the vital and flowing currents.
+
+In its composition the author was doubtless greatly influenced by the
+opera and the great singers, and the music of the great composers. He
+would let himself go in the same manner and seek his effects through
+multitude and the quality of the living voice.
+
+Finally, "Leaves of Grass" is an utterance out of the depths of
+primordial, aboriginal human nature. It embodies and exploits a character
+not rendered anæmic by civilization, but preserving a sweet and sane
+savagery, indebted to culture only as a means to escape culture, reaching
+back always, through books, art, civilization, to fresh, unsophisticated
+nature, and drawing his strength thence.
+
+Another of the ideas that master Whitman and rule him is the idea of
+identity,--that you are you and I am I, and that we are henceforth secure
+whatever comes or goes. He revels in this idea; it is fruitful with him;
+it begets in him the ego-enthusiasm, and is at the bottom of his
+unshakable faith in immortality. It leavens all his work. It cannot be too
+often said that the book is not merely a collection of pretty poems,
+themes elaborated and followed out at long removes from the personality of
+the poet, but a series of _sorties_ into the world of materials, the
+American world, piercing through the ostensible shows of things to the
+interior meanings, and illustrating in a free and large way the genesis
+and growth of a man, his free use of the world about him, appropriating it
+to himself, seeking his spiritual identity through its various objects and
+experiences, and giving in many direct and indirect ways the meaning and
+satisfaction of life. There is much in it that is not poetical in the
+popular sense, much that is neutral and negative, and yet is an integral
+part of the whole, as is the case in the world we inhabit. If it offends,
+it is in a wholesome way, like objects in the open air.
+
+
+III
+
+Whitman rarely celebrates exceptional characters. He loves the common
+humanity, and finds his ideals among the masses. It is not difficult to
+reconcile his attraction toward the average man, towards workingmen and
+"powerful, uneducated persons," with the ideal of a high excellence,
+because he finally rests only upon the most elevated and heroic personal
+qualities,--elevated but well grounded in the common and universal.
+
+The types upon which he dwells the most fondly are of the common people.
+
+  "I knew a man,
+  He was a common farmer--he was the father of five sons,
+  And in them were the fathers of sons--and in them were the fathers of
+        sons.
+
+  "This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
+  The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale
+        yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable
+        meaning of his black eyes,
+  These I used to go and visit him to see--he was wise also,
+  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were
+        massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
+  They and his daughters loved him--all who saw him loved him,
+  They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal love;
+  He drank water only--the blood showed like scarlet through the
+        clear-brown skin of his face,
+  He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sailed his boat himself--he had
+        a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner--he had fowling-pieces
+        presented to him by men that loved him;
+  When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you
+        would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
+  You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by him
+        in the boat, that you and he might touch each other."
+
+All the _motifs_ of his work are the near, the vital, the universal;
+nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are
+democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality,
+comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of the
+sexes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it
+sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems
+are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a
+look, a gesture, a tone of voice.
+
+"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand
+at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" requires a large perspective; you must not get your face
+too near the book. You must bring to it a magnanimity of spirit,--a
+charity and faith equal to its own. Looked at too closely, it often seems
+incoherent and meaningless; draw off a little and let the figure come out.
+The book is from first to last a most determined attempt, on the part of a
+large, reflective, loving, magnetic, rather primitive, thoroughly
+imaginative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth
+century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career
+upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiasm as to lift and
+fill it with the deepest meanings of the spirit and disclose the order of
+universal nature. The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or
+criticism, or partiality whatever, but has squarely and lovingly faced the
+oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and
+fused them in his fervid humanity, and imbued them with deepest poetic
+meanings. One of the most striking features of the book is the adequacy
+and composure, even joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence
+of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era. He
+spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no
+part; and his quality, his individuality, shines through it all, as the
+sun through vapors. The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of
+Walt Whitman. It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man
+exploited and illustrated. Walt Whitman does not write poems, strictly
+speaking,--does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel
+and carve it into a beautiful image or object, or polish and elaborate a
+thought, embodying it in pleasing tropes and pictures. His purpose is
+rather to show a towering, loving, composite personality moving amid all
+sorts of materials, taking them up but for a moment, disclosing new
+meanings and suggestions in them, passing on, bestowing himself upon
+whoever or whatever will accept him, tossing hints and clues right and
+left, provoking and stimulating the thought and imagination of his reader,
+but finishing nothing for him, leaving much to be desired, much to be
+completed by him in his turn.
+
+
+IV
+
+The reader who would get at the spirit and meaning of "Leaves of Grass"
+must remember that its animating principle, from first to last, is
+Democracy,--that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit
+of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New
+World,--and that all things characteristically American (trades, tools,
+occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places
+in it. It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the
+life of the poet fell, and to show one master personality accepting,
+absorbing all and rising superior to it,--namely, the poet himself. Yet it
+is never Whitman that speaks so much as it is Democracy that speaks
+through him. He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in
+this character launches forth his "omnivorous words." What would seem
+colossal egotism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with
+low, rude persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and
+vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the
+boundless compassion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal
+Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain
+and easy in the works of this much misunderstood poet.
+
+Perhaps the single poem that throws most light upon his aims and methods,
+and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in "Calamus," and is as
+follows:--
+
+  "Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
+  Without one thing all will be useless,
+  I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
+  I am not what you suppos'd, but far different.
+
+  "Who is he that would become my follower?
+  Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
+
+  "The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
+  You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your
+        sole and exclusive standard,
+  Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
+  The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives
+        around you would have to be abandon'd,
+  Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let
+        go your hand from my shoulders,
+  Put me down and depart on your way.
+
+  "Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
+  Or back of a rock in the open air,
+  (For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
+  And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
+  But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any
+        person for miles around approach unawares,
+  Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or
+        some quiet island,
+  Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
+  With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,
+  For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
+
+  "Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
+  Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
+  Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
+  For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
+  And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
+
+  "But these leaves conning you con at peril,
+  For these leaves and me you will not understand,
+  They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
+        certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you.
+
+  "For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
+  Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
+  Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
+  Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove
+        victorious,
+  Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps
+        more,
+  For all is useless without that for which you may guess at many times
+        and not hit, that which I hinted at,
+  Therefore release me and depart on your way."
+
+
+When one has fully mastered this poem he has got a pretty good hold upon
+Whitman's spirit and method. His open-air standards, the baffling and
+elusive character of his work, the extraordinary demand it makes, its
+radical and far-reaching effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil
+as a necessary part of the good (there was a human need of sin, said
+Margaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and
+suggestive method, that it can be fully read only through our acquaintance
+with life and real things at first hand, etc.,--all this and more is in
+the poem.
+
+
+
+
+HIS SELF-RELIANCE
+
+
+I
+
+It is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a German author was to
+be a German martyr. I presume things have changed in Germany since those
+times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and
+hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In
+Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an
+American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the
+great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Molière, or Byron, was
+Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times;
+but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and
+self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His
+unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise. It was of a kind
+that tries a man's mettle, and brings out his heroic traits if he has any.
+One almost envies him his unpopularity. It was of the kind that only the
+greatest ones have experienced, and that attests something extraordinary
+in the recipient of it. He said he was more resolute because all had
+denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:--
+
+  "I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor
+        ridicule."
+
+
+There are no more precious and tonic pages in history than the records of
+men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in
+obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature.
+Whitman's is the most striking case in our literary annals,--probably the
+most striking one in our century outside of politics and religion. The
+inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: "My commission obeying, to
+question it never daring."
+
+The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained
+it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and
+cannot be avoided.
+
+  "Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you and were tender
+        with you? and stood aside for you?
+  Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace
+        themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute
+        the passage with you?"
+
+
+Every man is a partaker in the triumph of him who is always true to
+himself and makes no compromises with customs, schools, or opinions.
+Whitman's life, underneath its easy tolerance and cheerful good-will, was
+heroic. He fought his battle against great odds and he conquered; he had
+his own way, he yielded not a hair to the enemy.
+
+The pressure brought to bear upon him by the press, by many of his
+friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to
+change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served
+as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the
+more deeply he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The
+fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and
+aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could
+have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no
+publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was
+threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy
+Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would
+omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for
+one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always
+did.
+
+Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down
+Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which
+was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable
+conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so,
+whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet
+probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had
+not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your
+own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your
+private heart is true of all men,--that is genius."
+
+In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson
+invoked and prayed for,--the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who
+should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be
+Greek, or Italian, or French, or English, but only himself; who should
+not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate,
+or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debasements of
+our times the lineaments of the same gods that so ravished the bards of
+old.
+
+The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the
+books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
+thank and revere him."
+
+Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has
+done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works
+in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a
+time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures
+itself by its contempt of some external good,"--popularity, for instance.
+"The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have chosen your
+part abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the
+world." "Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
+something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous
+age." Heroism "is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality
+in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of
+hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent
+than all actual and all possible antagonists." "A man is to carry himself
+in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and
+ephemeral but he." "Great works of art," he again says, "teach us to
+abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility, the
+more when the whole cry of voices is on the other side."
+
+These brave sayings of Emerson were all illustrated and confirmed by
+Whitman's course. The spectacle of this man sitting there by the window of
+his little house in Camden, poor and partially paralyzed, and looking out
+upon the trite and commonplace scenes and people, or looking athwart the
+years and seeing only detraction and denial, yet always serene, cheerful,
+charitable, his wisdom and tolerance ripening and mellowing with time, is
+something to treasure and profit by. He was a man who needed no
+assurances. He had the patience and the leisure of nature. He welcomed
+your friendly and sympathetic word, or with equal composure he did without
+it.
+
+I remember calling upon him shortly after Swinburne's fierce onslaught
+upon him had been published, some time in the latter part of the eighties.
+I was curious to see how Whitman took it, but I could not discover either
+in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly
+of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne's
+account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat
+upon himself as Swinburne had done. In fact I think hostile criticism,
+fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it
+not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against shadows.
+Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was
+trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think
+Whitman took any interest in it from the first.
+
+Self-reliance, or self-trust, is one of the principles Whitman announces
+in his "Laws for Creations." He saw that no first-class work is possible
+except it issue from a man's deepest, most radical self.
+
+  "What do you suppose creation is?
+  What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no
+        superior?
+  What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that
+        man or woman is as good as God?
+  And that there is no God any more divine than yourself?
+  And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
+  And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?"
+
+
+I think it probable that Whitman anticipated a long period of comparative
+oblivion for himself and his works. He knew from the first that the public
+would not be with him; he knew that the censors of taste, the critics and
+literary professors, would not be with him; he knew that the vast army of
+Philistia, the respectable, fashionable mammon-worshiping crowd, would not
+be with him,--that the timid, the pampered, the prurient, the conforming,
+the bourgeoisie spirit, the class spirit, the academic spirit, the
+Pharisaic spirit in all its forms, would all work against him; and that,
+as in the case of nearly all original, first-class men, he would have to
+wait to be understood for the growth of the taste of himself. None knew
+more clearly than he did how completely our people were under the
+illusion of the genteel and the conventional, and that, even among the
+emancipated few, the possession of anything like robust æsthetic
+perception was rare enough. America, so bold and original and independent
+in the world of practical politics and material endeavor, is, in spiritual
+and imaginative regions, timid, conforming, imitative. There is, perhaps,
+no civilized country in the world wherein the native, original man, the
+real critter, as Whitman loved to say, that underlies all our culture and
+conventions, crops out so little in manners, in literature, and in social
+usages. The fear of being unconventional is greater with us than the fear
+of death. A certain evasiveness, polish, distrust of ourselves, amounting
+to insipidity and insincerity, is spoken of by observant foreigners. In
+other words, we are perhaps the least like children of any people in the
+world. All these things were against Whitman, and will continue to be
+against him for a long time. With the first stroke he broke through the
+conventional and took his stand upon the natural. With rude hands he tore
+away the veils and concealments from the body and from the soul. He
+ignored entirely all social and conventional usages and hypocrisies, not
+by revolt against them, but by choosing a point of view from which they
+disappeared. He embraced the unrefined and the savage as well as the
+tender and human. The illusions of the past, the models and standards, he
+freed himself of at once, and declared for the beauty and the divinity of
+the now and the here. The rude realism of his "Leaves" shocked like a
+plunge in the surf, but it invigorated also, if we were strong enough to
+stand it.
+
+Out of Whitman's absolute self-trust arose his prophetic egotism,--the
+divine fervor and audacity of the simple ego. He shared the conviction of
+the old prophets that man is a part of God, and that there is nothing in
+the universe any more divine than the individual soul. "I, too," he says,
+and this line is the key to much there is in his work--
+
+  "I, too, have felt the resistless call of myself."
+
+
+With the old Biblical writers the motions of their own spirits, their
+thoughts, their dreams, were the voice of God. There is something of the
+same sort in Whitman. The voice of that inner self was final and
+authoritative with him. It was the voice of God. He could drive through
+and over all the conventions of the world in obedience to that voice. This
+call to him was as a voice from Sinai. One of his mastering thoughts was
+the thought of identity,--that you are you, and I am I. This was the final
+meaning of things, and the meaning of immortality. "Yourself, _yourself_,
+YOURSELF," he says, with swelling vehemence, "forever and ever." To be
+compacted and riveted and fortified in yourself, so as to be a law unto
+yourself, is the final word of the past and of the present.
+
+
+II
+
+The shadow of Whitman's self-reliance and heroic self-esteem--the sort of
+eddy or back-water--was undoubtedly a childlike fondness for praise and
+for seeing his name in print. In his relaxed moments, when the stress of
+his task was not upon him, he was indeed in many respects a child. He had
+a child's delight in his own picture. He enjoyed hearing himself lauded as
+Colonel Ingersoll lauded him in his lecture in Philadelphia, and as his
+friends lauded him at his birthday dinner parties during the last two or
+three years of his life; he loved to see his name in print, and items
+about himself in the newspapers; he sometimes wrote them himself and gave
+them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his
+life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in
+fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him
+dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him
+to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be
+frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men
+also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature,
+and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human
+nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be
+kept up to the heroic pitch.
+
+
+III
+
+It was difficult to appreciate his liking for the newspaper. But he had
+been a newspaper man himself; the printer's ink had struck in; he had many
+associations with the press-room and the composing-room; he loved the
+common, democratic character of the newspaper; it was the average man's
+library. The homely uses to which it was put, and the humble firesides to
+which it found its way, endeared it to him, and made him love to see his
+name in it.
+
+Whitman's vanity was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as
+tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy
+sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life
+there was none.
+
+His egotism is of the large generous species that never irritates or
+pricks into you like that of the merely conceited man. His love, his
+candor, his sympathy are on an equal scale.
+
+His egotism comes finally to affect one like the independence and
+indifference of natural law. It takes little heed of our opinion, whether
+it be for or against, and keeps to its own way whatever befall.
+
+Whitman's absolute faith in himself was a part of his faith in creation.
+He felt himself so keenly a part of the whole that he shared its soundness
+and excellence; he must be good as it is good.
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
+manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
+give rise to the charge that he was a _poseur_. He was a _poseur_ in the
+sense, and to the extent, that any man is a _poseur_ who tries to live up
+to a certain ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
+clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
+apart and looking upon himself as another person. Hence his extraordinary
+self-knowledge, and, we may also say, his extraordinary self-appreciation,
+or to use his own words, "the quite changed attitude of the ego, the one
+chanting or talking, towards himself." Of course there is danger in this
+attitude, but Whitman was large enough and strong enough to escape it. He
+saw himself to be the typical inevitable democrat that others have seen
+him to be, and with perfect candor and without ever forcing the note, he
+portrays himself as such. As his work is confessedly the poem of himself,
+himself magnified and projected, as it were, upon the canvas of a great
+age and country, all his traits and qualities stand out in heroic
+proportions, his pride and egotism as well as his love and tolerance.
+
+"How beautiful is candor," he says. "All faults may be forgiven of him who
+has perfect candor." The last thing that could ever be charged of Whitman
+is that he lacked openness, or was guilty of any deceit or concealments in
+his life or works.
+
+From the studies, notes, and scrap-books which Whitman left, it appears
+that he was long preparing and disciplining himself for the work he had in
+view. "The long foreground," to which Emerson referred in his letter, was
+of course a reality. But this self-consciousness and self-adjustment to a
+given end is an element of strength and not of weakness.
+
+In the famous vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the
+first "Leaves of Grass" he assumes an attitude and is in a sense a
+_poseur_; but the reader comes finally to wonder at the marvelous
+self-knowledge the picture displays, and how strictly typical it is of the
+poet's mental and spiritual attitude towards the world,--independent,
+unconventional, audacious, yet inquiring and sympathetic in a wonderful
+degree. In the same way he posed in other portraits. A favorite with him
+is the one in which he sits contemplating a butterfly upon his
+forefinger--typical of a man "preoccupied of his own soul." In another he
+peers out curiously as from behind a mask. In an earlier one he stands,
+hat in hand, in marked _negligé_ costume,--a little too intentional, one
+feels. The contempt of the polished ones is probably very strong within
+him at this time. I say contempt, though I doubt if Whitman ever felt
+contempt for any human being.
+
+
+V
+
+Then Whitman had a curious habit of standing apart, as it were, and
+looking upon himself and his career as of some other person. He was
+interested in his own cause, and took a hand in the discussion. From first
+to last he had the habit of regarding himself objectively. On his deathbed
+he seemed to be a spectator of his own last moments, and was seen to feel
+his pulse a few minutes before he breathed his last.
+
+He has recorded this trait in his poems:--
+
+  "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
+  Stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, waiting,
+  Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
+  Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it."
+
+As also in this from "Calamus:"--
+
+  "That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,
+        chattering, chaffering,
+  How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,
+  How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
+  But among my lovers, and caroling these songs,
+  Oh, I never doubt whether that is really me."
+
+
+Whitman always speaks as one having authority and not as a scribe, not as
+a mere man of letters. This is the privilege of the divine egoism of the
+prophet.
+
+Like the utterances of the biblical writers, without argument, without
+elaboration, his mere dictum seems the word of fate. It is not the voice
+of a man who has made his way through the world by rejecting and denying,
+but by accepting all and rising superior. What the "push of reading" or
+the push of argument could not start is often started and clinched by his
+mere authoritative "I say."
+
+  "I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery
+        draws the blood out of liberty,"...
+  "I say the human shape or face is so great it must never be made
+        ridiculous;
+  I say for ornaments nothing outré can be allowed,
+  And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,
+  And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology
+        and in other persons' physiologies also.
+
+  "Think of the past;
+  I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and
+        your times....
+  Think of spiritual results.
+  Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results.
+  Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
+  Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
+  Think of womanhood and you to be a woman;
+  The Creation is womanhood;
+  Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
+  Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
+        womanhood?"
+
+
+Egotism is usually intolerant, but Whitman was one of the most tolerant of
+men.
+
+A craving for sympathy and personal affection he certainly had; to be
+valued as a human being was more to him than to be valued as a poet. His
+strongest attachments were probably for persons who had no opinion, good
+or bad, of his poetry at all.
+
+
+VI
+
+Under close scrutiny his egotism turns out to be a kind of altru-egotism,
+which is vicarious and all-inclusive of his fellows. It is one phase of
+his democracy, and is vital and radical in his pages. It is a high,
+imperturbable pride in his manhood and in the humanity which he shares
+with all. It is the exultant and sometimes almost arrogant expression of
+the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world--the
+feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws,
+institutions, conventions, bibles, religions--that the divinity of kings,
+and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to the humblest
+person.
+
+It was a passion that united him to his fellows rather than separated him
+from them. His pride was not that of a man who sets himself up above
+others, or who claims some special advantage or privilege, but that
+godlike quality that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence
+we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for
+mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and
+follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is
+the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there
+might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that
+his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate
+the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves,"
+flowing curiously out of its pride and egotism, is the lesson of charity,
+of self-surrender, and the free bestowal of yourself upon all hands.
+
+The law of life of great art is the law of life in ethics, and was long
+ago announced.
+
+He that would lose his life shall find it; he who gives himself the most
+freely shall the most freely receive. Whitman made himself the brother and
+equal of all, not in word, but in very deed; he was in himself a compend
+of the people for which he spoke, and this breadth of sympathy and free
+giving of himself has resulted in an unexpected accession of power.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE
+
+
+I
+
+Whitman protests against his "Leaves" being judged merely as literature;
+but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends
+the matter. Still while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are
+paramount in most other poets,--certainly in all third and fourth rate
+poets, in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values.
+
+In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates
+that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary
+productions.
+
+"Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries," he says in one of the
+"Inscriptions,"--
+
+  "For that which was lacking in all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed
+        most, I bring.
+  Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
+  The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,
+  A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
+  But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."
+
+
+Not linked with the studied and scholarly productions, not open to the
+mere bookish mind, but more akin to the primitive utterances and oracles
+of historic humanity. A literary age like ours lays great stress upon the
+savor of books, art, culture, and has little taste for the savor of real
+things, the real man, which we get in Whitman.
+
+"It is the true breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit,
+that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes
+on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would
+not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is
+beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson,
+begat Browning, begat the New England poets, but it did not in the same
+sense beget Whitman, any more than it begat Homer or Job or Isaiah. The
+artist may delight in him and find his own ideals there; the critic may
+study him and find the poet master of all his weapons; the disciple of
+culture will find, as Professor Triggs has well said, that "there is no
+body of writings in literature which demands a wider conversancy with the
+best that has been thought or said in the world,"--yet the poet escapes
+from all hands that would finally hold him and monopolize him. Whitman is
+an immense solvent,--forms, theories, rules, criticisms, disappear in his
+fluid, teeming pages. Much can be deduced from him, because much went to
+the making up of his point of view. He makes no criticism, yet a
+far-reaching criticism is implied in the very start of his poems. No
+modern poet presupposes so much, or requires so much preliminary study and
+reflection. He brings a multitude of questions and problems, and, what is
+singular, he brings them in himself; they are implied in his temper, and
+in his attitude toward life and reality.
+
+Whitman says he has read his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, that he
+has tried himself by the elemental laws; and tells us in many ways, direct
+and indirect, that the standards he would be tried by are not those of art
+or books, but of absolute nature. He has been laughed at for calling
+himself a "Kosmos," but evidently he uses the term to indicate this
+elemental, dynamic character of his work,--its escape from indoor,
+artificial standards, its aspiration after the "amplitude of the earth,
+and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of
+the earth, and the equilibrium also."
+
+
+II
+
+Unless the poetic perception is fundamental in us, and can grasp the
+poetry of things, actions, characters, multitudes, heroisms, we shall read
+Whitman with very poor results. Unless America, the contemporary age,
+life, nature, are poetical to us, Whitman will not be. He has aimed at the
+larger poetry of forces, masses, persons, enthusiasms, rather than at the
+poetry of the specially rare and fine. He kindles in me the delight I have
+in space, freedom, power, the elements, the cosmic, democracy, and the
+great personal qualities of self-reliance, courage, candor, charity.
+
+Always in the literary poets are we impressed with the art of the poet as
+something distinct from the poet himself, and more or less put on. The
+poet gets himself up for the occasion; he assumes the pose and the
+language of the poet, as the priest assumes the pose and the language of
+devotion. In Whitman the artist and the man are one. He never gets himself
+up for the occasion. Our pleasure in him is rarely or never our pleasure
+in the well-dressed, the well-drilled, the cultivated, the refined, the
+orderly, but it is more akin to our pleasure in real things, in human
+qualities and powers, in freedom, health, development. Yet I never open
+his book without being struck afresh with its pictural quality, its grasp
+of the concrete, its vivid realism, its intimate sense of things, persons,
+truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such
+as we can never get in mere prose. It is as direct as a challenge, as
+personal as a handshake, and yet withal how mystical, how elusive, how
+incommensurable! To deny that Whitman belongs to the fraternity of great
+artists, the shapers and moulders of the ideal,--those who breathe the
+breath of life into the clay or stone of common facts and objects, who
+make all things plastic and the vehicles of great and human emotions,--is
+to read him very inadequately, to say the least. To get at Walt Whitman
+you must see through just as much as you do in dealing with nature; you
+are to bring the same interpretive imagination. You are not to be balked
+by what appears to be the coarse and the familiar, or his rank
+contemporaneity; after a time you will surely see the lambent spiritual
+flames that play about it all.
+
+  "Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering about me,"
+
+and his cosmic splendor, depth, and power. It is not the denial of art, it
+is a new affirmation of life. It is one phase of his democracy. It is the
+logical conclusion of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself that
+appeared in the first edition of his poems. He would give us more of the
+man, a fuller measure of personal, concrete, human qualities, than any
+poet before him. He strips away the artificial wrappings and illusions
+usual in poetry, and relies entirely upon the native and intrinsic. He
+will have no curtains, he says,--not the finest,--between himself and his
+reader.
+
+  "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
+        all poems,
+  You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of
+        suns left),
+  You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
+        through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
+  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+  You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."
+
+
+This is a hint of his democracy as applied to literature,--more direct and
+immediate contact with the primary and universal, less of the vestments
+and trappings of art and more of the push and power of original character
+and of nature.
+
+
+III
+
+It seems to me it is always in order to protest against the narrow and
+dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticism touching this
+matter of art. "The boundaries of art are jealously guarded," says a
+recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that
+had been accurately surveyed and fixed,--as if art was a fact and not a
+spirit.
+
+Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that
+art is in any sense an "enclosure,"--a province fenced off and set apart
+from the rest,--any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many
+people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human
+spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the
+sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has
+but one principle, one aim,--to produce an impression, a powerful
+impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the
+canons of taste and criticism. Name any principle, so called, and some day
+a genius shall be born who will produce his effects in defiance of it, or
+by appearing to reverse it. Such a man as Turner seemed, at first sight,
+to set at defiance all correct notions of art. The same with Wagner in
+music, the same with Whitman in poetry. The new man is impossible till he
+appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power
+does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical
+standards to him. But it is sure to do so at last. There is nothing final
+in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are
+deductions from his work, not its inspiration. We demand of the new man,
+of the overthrower of our idols, but one thing,--has he authentic
+inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded.
+If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of
+nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case. Is
+there no room for the new man? But the new man makes room for himself, and
+if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is
+appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.
+
+
+IV
+
+The trouble with most of us is that we found our taste for poetry upon
+particular authors, instead of upon literature as a whole, or, better yet,
+upon life and reality. Hence we form standards instead of principles.
+Standards are limited, rigid, uncompromising, while principles are
+flexible, expansive, creative. If we are wedded to the Miltonic standard
+of poetry, the classic standards, we shall have great difficulties with
+Whitman; but if we have founded our taste upon natural principles--if we
+have learned to approach literature through reality, instead of reality
+through literature--we shall not be the victims of any one style or model;
+we shall be made free of all. The real test of art, of any art, as Burke
+long ago said, and as quoted by Mr. Howells in his trenchant little volume
+called "Criticism and Fiction," is to be sought outside of art, namely, in
+nature. "I can judge but poorly of anything while I measure it by no other
+standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's
+power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the
+meanest, things in nature will give the truest lights." It is thought that
+the preëminence of the Greek standards is settled when we say they are
+natural. Yes, but Nature is not Greek. She is Asiatic, German, English, as
+well.
+
+
+V
+
+In poetry, in art, a man must sustain a certain vital relation to his
+work, and that work must sustain a certain vital relation to the laws of
+mind and of life. That is all, and that leaves the doors very wide. We are
+not to ask, Is it like this or like that? but, Is it vital, is it real, is
+it a consistent, well-organized whole?
+
+The poet must always interpret himself and nature after his own fashion.
+Is his fashion adequate? Is the interpretation vivid and real? Do his
+lines cut to the quick, and beget heat and joy in the soul? If we cannot
+make the poet's ideal our own by sharing his enthusiasm for it, the
+trouble is as likely to be in ourselves as in him. In any case he must be
+a law unto himself.
+
+The creative artist differs from the mere writer or thinker in this: he
+sustains a direct personal relation to his subject through emotion,
+intuition, will. The indirect, impersonal relation which works by
+reflection, comparison, and analysis is that of the critic and
+philosopher. The man is an artist when he gives us a concrete and
+immediate impression of reality: from his hands we get the thing itself;
+from the critic and thinker we get ideas _about_ the thing. The poet does
+not merely say the world is beautiful; he shows it as beautiful: he does
+not describe the flower; he places it before us. What are the enemies of
+art? Reflection, didacticism, description, the turgid, the obscure. A poet
+with a thesis to sustain is more or less barred from the freedom of pure
+art. It is by direct and unconsidered expression, says Scherer, that art
+communicates with reality. The things that make for art, then, are
+feeling, intuition, sentiment, soul, a fresh and vigorous sense of real
+things,--in fact, all that makes for life, health, and wholeness. Goethe
+is more truly an artist in the first part of Faust than in the second;
+Arnold has a more truly artistic mind than Lowell.
+
+The principles of art are always the same in the respect I have indicated,
+just as the principles of life are always the same, or of health and
+longevity are always the same. No writer is an artist who is related to
+his subject simply by mental or logical grip alone: he must have a certain
+emotional affiliation and identity with it; he does not so much convey to
+us ideas and principles as pictures, parables, impressions,--a lively
+sense of real things. When we put Whitman outside the pale of art, we must
+show his shortcomings here; we must show that he is not fluid and
+generative,--that he paints instead of interprets, that he gives us
+reasons instead of impulses, a stone when we ask for bread. "I do not
+give a little charity," he says; "when I give, I give myself." This the
+artist always does, not his mind merely, but his soul, his personality.
+"Leaves of Grass" is as direct an emanation from a central personal force
+as any book in literature, and always carries its own test and its own
+proof. It never hardens into a system, it never ceases to be penetrated
+with will and emotion, it never declines from the order of deeds to the
+order of mere thoughts. All is movement, progress, evolution, picture,
+parable, impulse.
+
+It is on these grounds that Whitman, first of all, is an artist. He has
+the artist temperament. His whole life was that of a man who lives to
+ideal ends,--who lived to bestow himself upon others, to extract from life
+its meaning and its joy.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman has let himself go, and trusted himself to the informal and
+spontaneous, to a degree unprecedented. His course required a
+self-reliance of the highest order; it required an innate cohesion and
+homogeneity, a firmness and consistency of individual outline, that few
+men have. It would seem to be much easier to face the poet's problem in
+the old, well-worn forms--forms that are so winsome and authoritative in
+themselves--than, to stand upon a basis so individual and intrinsic as
+Whitman chose to stand upon. His course goes to the quick at once. How
+much of a man are you? How vital and fundamental is your poetic gift? Can
+it go alone? Can it face us in undress?
+
+Never did the artist more cunningly conceal himself; never did he so
+completely lose himself in the man, identifying himself with the natural
+and spontaneous; never emerging and challenging attention on his own
+account, denying us when we too literally seek him, mocking us when we
+demand his credentials, and revealing himself only when we have come to
+him upon his own terms.
+
+The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no
+outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader. "This is
+no book," he says: "who touches this touches a man." In one sense Whitman
+is without art,--the impression which he always seeks to make is that of
+reality itself. He aims to give us reality without the usual literary
+veils and illusions,--the least possible amount of the artificial, the
+extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader. He banishes from
+his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,--all
+atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and
+decoration,--and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers.
+The verse does not seem to have been shaped; it might have grown: it takes
+no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular,
+rhythmical, and always fluid and real. A cry will always be raised against
+the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and
+falls back upon simple Nature, or upon himself, as Millet did in painting,
+and Wagner in music, and Whitman in poetry.
+
+Whitman's working ideas, the principles that inspired him, are all
+directly related to life and the problems of life; they are democracy,
+nature, freedom, love, personality, religion: while the ideas from which
+our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,--they are
+literary ideas, such as lucidity, form, beauty.
+
+
+VII
+
+Much light is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark
+which he once made in conversation with Dr. Bucke:--
+
+"I have aimed to make the book simple,--tasteless, or with little
+taste,--with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or
+writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is
+not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her
+productions--her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, meats--with
+faint and delicate flavor and fragrance, but these in the long run make
+the deepest impression. Man, dealing with natural things, constantly aims
+to increase their piquancy. By crossing and selection he deepens and
+intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so
+on. He pursues the same method in poetry,--that is, strives for strong
+light or shade, for high color, perfume, pungency, in all ways for the
+greatest immediate effect. In so doing he leaves the true way, the way of
+Nature, and, in the long run, comes far short of producing her effects."
+
+More light of the same kind is thrown upon his methods by the following
+passage from the preface to the first edition of his poems in 1855.
+
+"To speak in literature," he says, "with the perfect rectitude and
+insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the
+sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless
+triumph of art." And again: "The great poet has less a marked style, and
+is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution,
+and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be
+meddlesome; I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or
+originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I
+will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell,
+I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate
+or soothe, I will have purpose, as health or heat or snow has, and be as
+regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my
+composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side
+and look in the mirror with me."
+
+
+VIII
+
+But in view of the profound impression Whitman's work has made upon widely
+different types of mind on both sides of the Atlantic, and in view of the
+persistent vitality of his fame, the question whether he is inside or
+outside the pale of art amounts to very little. I quite agree with the
+late Mrs. Gilchrist, that, when "great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please."
+
+That Whitman has expressed great meanings and great emotions with adequate
+power, even his unfriendly critics admit. Thus Professor Wendell, in an
+admirable essay on American literature, says that "though Whitman is
+uncouth, inarticulate, and lacking in a grotesque degree artistic form,
+yet for all that he can make you feel for the moment how even the
+ferry-boats plying from New York to Brooklyn are fragments of God's
+eternities." In the same way Mr. William Clark, his British critic and
+expounder, says that he is wanting in discrimination and art, "flings his
+ideas at us in a heap," etc., and yet that the effect of his work is "to
+stir our emotions, widen our interests, and rally the forces of our moral
+nature."
+
+It seems to me that a man who, through the printed page, can do these
+things, must have some kind of art worth considering. If, through his
+impassioned treatment of a prosy, commonplace object like a ferry-boat, he
+can so dignify and exalt it, and so fill it with the meanings of the
+spirit, that it seems like a part of God's eternities, his methods are at
+least worth inquiring into.
+
+The truth is, Whitman's art, in its lack of extrinsic form and finish, is
+Oriental rather than Occidental, and is an offense to a taste founded upon
+the precision and finish of a mechanical age. His verse is like the
+irregular, slightly rude coin of the Greeks compared with the exact,
+machine-cut dies of our own day, or like the unfinished look of Japanese
+pottery beside the less beautiful but more perfect specimens of modern
+ceramic art.
+
+For present purposes, we may say there are two phases of art,--formal art
+and creative art. By formal art I mean that which makes a direct appeal to
+our sense of form,--our sense of the finely carved, the highly wrought,
+the deftly planned; and by creative art I mean that quickening,
+fructifying power of the masters, that heat and passion that make the
+world plastic and submissive to their hands, teeming with new meanings and
+thrilling with new life.
+
+Formal art is always in the ascendant. Formal anything--formal dress,
+formal manners, formal religion, formal this and that--always counts for
+more than the informal, the spontaneous, the original. It is easier, it
+can be put off and on.
+
+Formal art is nearly always the gift of the minor poet, and often of the
+major poet also. In such a poet as Swinburne, formal art leads by a great
+way. The content of his verse,--what is it? In Tennyson as well I should
+say formal art is in the ascendant. Creative art is his also; Tennyson
+reaches and moves the spirit, yet his skill is more noteworthy than his
+power. In Wordsworth, on the other hand, I should say creative art led:
+the content of his verse is more than its form; his spiritual and
+religious values are greater than his literary and artistic. The same is
+true of our own Emerson. Poe, again, is much more as an artist than as a
+man or a personality.
+
+I hardly need say that in Whitman formal art, the ostensibly artistic,
+counts for but very little. The intentional artist, the professional poet,
+is kept entirely in abeyance, or is completely merged and hidden in the
+man, more so undoubtedly than in any poet this side the old Oriental
+bards. We call him formless, chaotic, amorphous, etc., because he makes no
+appeal to our modern highly stimulated sense of art or artificial form. We
+must discriminate this from our sense of power, our sense of life, our
+sense of beauty, of the sublime, of the all, which clearly Whitman would
+reach and move. Whitman certainly has a form of his own: what would a
+poet, or any writer or worker in the ideal, do without some kind of form?
+some consistent and adequate vehicle of expression? But Whitman's form is
+not what is called artistic, because it is not brought within the rules of
+the prosodical system, and does not appeal to our sense of the consciously
+shaped and cultivated. It is essentially the prose form heightened and
+intensified by a deep, strong, lyric and prophetic note.
+
+The bonds and shackles of regular verse-form Whitman threw off. This
+course seemed to be demanded by the spirit to which he had dedicated
+himself,--the spirit of absolute unconstraint. The restrictions and
+hamperings of the scholastic forms did not seem to be consistent with this
+spirit, which he identified with democracy and the New World. A poet who
+sets out to let down the bars everywhere, to remove veils and
+obstructions, to emulate the freedom of the elemental forces, to effuse
+always the atmosphere of open-air growths and objects, to be as
+"regardless of observation" as the processes of nature, etc., will not be
+apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression. The
+essentially prose form which Whitman chose is far more in keeping with the
+spirit and aim of his work than any conventional metrical system could
+have been. Had he wrought solely as a conscious artist, aiming at the
+effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have chosen a
+different medium.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman threw himself with love and enthusiasm upon this great, crude,
+seething, materialistic American world. The question is, Did he master it?
+Is he adequate to absorb and digest it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is
+it plastic in his hands? Does he stamp it with his own image? I do not
+ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make
+it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because
+evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it. He is content if he
+present America and the modern to us as they are inwrought into his own
+personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character,
+passion, will, motive, conviction. He would show them subjectively and as
+living impulses in himself. Of course a great constructive, dramatic poet
+like Shakespeare would have solved his problem in a different manner, or
+through the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters. But the
+poet and prophet of democracy and of egotism shows us all things in and
+through himself.
+
+His egotism, or egocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work.
+It colors all and determines all. The poems are the direct outgrowth of
+the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it
+were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon
+the trunk. His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most
+poets. He never leads us away from himself into pleasant paths with
+enticing flowers of fancy or forms of art. He carves or shapes nothing for
+its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent
+grounds as pure art. His work is not material made precious by elaboration
+and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life.
+
+
+X
+
+Whitman was compelled to this negation of extrinsic art by the problem he
+had set before himself,--first, to arouse, to suggest, rather than to
+finish or elaborate, less to display any theme or thought than "to bring
+the reader into the atmosphere of the theme or thought;" secondly, to make
+his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that
+the dominant impression should always be that of the living, breathing
+man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see
+him and feel him in books or art,--the man in the form and garb of actual,
+concrete life, not as poet or artist, but simply as man. This is doubtless
+the meaning of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to
+the first issue of the "Leaves," to which I have referred. This portrait
+is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task. It was a
+hint that we must take this poet with very little literary tailoring; it
+was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and
+spoke in their spirit.
+
+It is never the theme treated, but always the character exploited; never
+the structure finished, but always the plan suggested; never the work
+accomplished, but always the impulse imparted,--freedom, power, growth.
+
+  "Allons! we must not stop here.
+  However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling,
+        we cannot remain here,
+  However sheltered this port, or however calm these waters, we must not
+        anchor here,
+  However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to
+        receive it but a little while.
+
+  "Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
+  Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
+  Allons! from all formulas!
+  From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!"
+
+
+This magnificent poem, "The Song of the Open Road," is one of the most
+significant in Whitman's work. He takes the open road as his type,--not an
+end in itself, not a fulfillment, but a start, a journey, a progression.
+It teaches him the profound lesson of reception, "no preference nor
+denial," and the profounder lesson of liberty and truth:--
+
+  "From this hour, freedom!
+  From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
+  Going where I list--my own master, total and absolute,
+  Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
+  Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
+  Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
+        would hold me.
+
+  "I inhale great draughts of air,
+  The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine."
+
+He will not rest with art, he will not rest with books, he will press his
+way steadily toward the largest freedom.
+
+  "Only the kernel of every object nourishes.
+  Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
+  Where is he who undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?"
+
+
+Whitman was not a builder. If he had the architectural power which the
+great poets have shown, he gave little proof of it. It was not required by
+the task he set before himself. His book is not a temple: it is a wood, a
+field, a highway; vista, vista, everywhere,--vanishing lights and shades,
+truths half disclosed, successions of objects, hints, suggestions, brief
+pictures, groups, voices, contrasts, blendings, and, above all, the tonic
+quality of the open air. The shorter poems are like bunches of herbs or
+leaves, or a handful of sprays gathered in a walk; never a thought
+carefully carved, and appealing to our sense of artistic form.
+
+The main poem of the book, "The Song of Myself," is a series of
+utterances, ejaculations, apostrophes, enumerations, associations,
+pictures, parables, incidents, suggestions, with little or no structural
+or logical connection, but all emanating from a personality whose presence
+dominates the page, and whose eye is ever upon us. Without this vivid and
+intimate sense of the man back of all, of a sane and powerful spirit
+sustaining ours, the piece would be wild and inchoate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The reader will be sure to demand of Whitman ample compensation for the
+absence from his work of those things which current poets give us in such
+full measure. Whether or not the compensation is ample, whether the music
+of his verse as of winds and waves, the long, irregular, dithyrambic
+movement, its fluid and tonic character, the vastness of conception, the
+large, biblical speech, the surging cosmic emotion, the vivid personal
+presence as of the living man looking into your eye or walking by your
+side,--whether all these things, the refreshing quality as of "harsh salt
+spray" which the poet Lanier found in the "Leaves," the electric currents
+which Mrs. Gilchrist found there, the "unexcelled imaginative justice of
+language" which Mr. Stevenson at times found, the religious liberation and
+faith which Mr. Symonds found, the "incomparable things incomparably well
+said" of Emerson, the rifle-bullets of Ruskin, the "supreme words" of
+Colonel Ingersoll, etc.,--whether qualities and effects like these, I say,
+make up to us for the absence of the traditional poetic graces and
+adornments, is a question which will undoubtedly long divide the reading
+world.
+
+In the works upon which our poetic taste is founded, artistic form is
+paramount; we have never been led to apply to such works open-air
+standards,--clouds, trees, rivers, spaces,--but the precision and
+definiteness of the cultured and the artificial. If Whitman had aimed at
+pure art and had failed, his work would be intolerable. As his French
+critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, has well said: "In the large work which Whitman
+attempted, there come no rules save those of nobility and strength of
+spirit; and these suffice amply to create a most unlooked-for and
+grandiose aspect of beauty." "Overcrowded and disorderly" as it may seem,
+"if heroic emotion and thought and enthusiasm vitalize it," the poet has
+reached his goal.
+
+
+XII
+
+Sometimes I define Whitman to myself as the poet of the open air,--not
+because he sings the praises of these things after the manner of the
+so-called nature-poets, but because he has the quality of things in the
+open air, the quality of the unhoused, the untamed, the elemental and
+aboriginal. He pleases and he offends, the same way things at large do. He
+has the brawn, the indifference, the rudeness, the virility, the
+coarseness,--something gray, unpronounced, elemental, about him, the
+effect of mass, size, distance, flowing, vanishing lines, neutral
+spaces,--something informal, multitudinous, and processional,--something
+regardless of criticism, that makes no bid for our applause, not
+calculated instantly to please, unmindful of details, prosaic if we make
+it so, common, near at hand, and yet that provokes thought and stirs our
+emotions in an unusual degree. The long lists and catalogues of objects
+and scenes in Whitman, that have so excited the mirth of the critics, are
+one phase of his out-of-doors character,--a multitude of concrete objects,
+a grove, a thicket, a field, a stretch of beach,--every object sharply
+defined, but no attempt at logical or artistic sequence, the effect of the
+whole informal, multitudinous. It may be objected to these pages that they
+consist of a mass of details that do not make a picture. But every line is
+a picture of a scene or an object. Whitman always keeps up the movement,
+he never pauses to describe; it is all action.
+
+Passing from such a poet as Tennyson to Whitman is like going from a warm,
+perfumed interior, with rich hangings, pictures, books, statuary, fine men
+and women, out into the street, or upon the beach, or upon the hill, or
+under the midnight stars. We lose something certainly, but do we not gain
+something also? Do we not gain just what Whitman had in view, namely,
+direct contact with the elements in which are the sources of our life and
+health? Do we not gain in scope and power what we lose in art and
+refinement?
+
+The title, "Leaves of Grass," is full of meaning. What self-knowledge and
+self-scrutiny it implies! The grass, perennial sprouting, universal,
+formless, common, the always spread feast of the herds, dotted with
+flowers, the herbage of the earth, so suggestive of the multitudinous,
+loosely aggregated, unelaborated character of the book; the lines
+springing directly out of the personality of the poet, the soil of his
+life.
+
+  "What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me,"
+
+says the poet, and this turns out to be the case. We only look to see if
+in the common and the cheap he discloses new values and new meanings,--if
+his leaves of grass have the old freshness and nutriment, and be not a
+mere painted greenness.
+
+  "The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
+  The carpenter dresses his plank--the tongue of his foreplane whistles
+        its wild ascending lisp,
+  The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving
+        dinner,
+  The pilot seizes the king-pin--he heaves down with a strong arm,
+  The mate stands braced in the whale-boat--lance and harpoon are ready,
+  The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
+  The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
+  The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
+  The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First Day loafe, and looks
+        at the oats and rye,
+  The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case,
+  He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
+        bedroom;
+  The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
+  He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
+  The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,
+  What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
+  The quadroon girl is sold at the stand--the drunkard nods by the
+        bar-room stove,
+  The machinist rolls up his sleeves--the policeman travels his beat--the
+        gate-keeper marks who pass,
+  The young fellow drives the express-wagon--I love him, though I do not
+        know him,
+  The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
+  The western turkey-shooting draws old and young--some lean on their
+        rifles, some sit on logs,
+  Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his
+        piece;
+  The groups of newly-come emigrants cover the wharf or levee,
+  As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them
+        from his saddle,
+  The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners,
+        the dancers bow to each other,
+  The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret, and harks to the
+        musical rain,
+  The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
+  The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and
+        the winter-grain falls in the ground,
+  Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the
+        frozen surface,
+  The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep
+        with his axe,
+  Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-wood or pekan-trees,
+  Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River, or through those
+        drained by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
+  Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,
+  Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons
+        around them,
+  In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their
+        day's sport,
+  The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
+  The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
+  The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his
+        wife;
+  And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
+  And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am."
+
+
+What is this but tufts and tussocks of grass; not branching trees, nor yet
+something framed and deftly put together, but a succession of simple
+things, objects, actions, persons; handfuls of native growths, a stretch
+of prairie or savanna; no composition, no artistic wholes, no logical
+sequence, yet all vital and real; jets of warm life that shoot and play
+over the surface of contemporary America, and that the poet uses as the
+stuff out of which to weave the song of himself.
+
+This simple aggregating or cataloguing style as it has been called, and
+which often occurs in the "Leaves," has been much criticised, but it seems
+to me in perfect keeping in a work that does not aim at total artistic
+effects, at finished structural perfection like architecture, but to
+picture the elements of a man's life and character in outward scenes and
+objects and to show how all nature tends inward to him and he outward to
+it. Whitman showers the elements of American life upon his reader until,
+so to speak, his mind is drenched with them, but never groups them into
+patterns to tickle his sense of form. It is charged that his method is
+inartistic, and it is so in a sense, but it is the Whitman art and has its
+own value in his work. Only the artist instinct could prompt to this
+succession of one line genre word painting.
+
+But this is not the way of the great artists. No, but it is Whitman's way,
+and these things have a certain artistic value in his work, a work that
+professedly aims to typify his country and times,--the value of multitude,
+processions, mass-movements, and the gathering together of elements and
+forces from wide areas.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman's relation to art, then, is primary and fundamental, just as his
+relations to religion, to culture, to politics, to democracy, are primary
+and fundamental,--through his emotion, his soul, and not merely through
+his tools, his intellect. His artistic conscience is quickly revealed to
+any searching inquiry. It is seen in his purpose to convey his message by
+suggestion and indirection, or as an informing, vitalizing breath and
+spirit. His thought and meaning are enveloped in his crowded, concrete,
+and often turbulent pages, as science is enveloped in nature. He has a
+profound ethic, a profound metaphysic, but they are not formulated; they
+are vital in his pages as hearing or eyesight.
+
+Whitman studied effects, and shaped his means to his end, weighing values
+and subordinating parts, as only the great artist does. He knew the power
+of words as few know them; he knew the value of vista, perspective,
+vanishing lights and lines. He knew how to make his words itch at your
+ears till you understood them; how to fold up and put away in his
+sentences meanings, glimpses, that did not at first reveal themselves. It
+is only the work of the great creative artist that is pervaded by will,
+and that emanates directly and inevitably from the personality of the man
+himself. As a man and an American, Whitman is as closely related to his
+work as Æschylus to his, or Dante to his. This is always a supreme
+test,--the closeness and vitality of the relation of a man to his work.
+Could any one else have done it? Is it the general intelligence that
+speaks, the culture and refinement of the age? or have we a new revelation
+of life, a new mind and soul? The lesser poets sustain only a secondary
+relation to their works. It is other poets, other experiences, the past,
+the schools, the forms, that speak through them. In all Whitman's
+recitatives, as he calls them, the free-flowing ends of the sentences, the
+loose threads of meaning, the unraveled or unknitted threads and fringes,
+are all well considered, and are one phase of _his_ art. He seeks his
+effects thus.
+
+His method is indirect, allegorical, and elliptical to an unusual degree;
+often a curious suspension and withholding in a statement, a suggestive
+incompleteness, both ends of his thought, as it were, left in the air;
+sometimes the substantive, sometimes the nominative, is wanting, and all
+for a purpose. The poet somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic
+screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are
+used to in prophecy. The forthrightness of utterance, the projectile
+force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the
+great prophetic souls, is here.
+
+Whitman is poetic in the same way in which he is democratic, in the same
+way in which he is religious, or American, or modern,--not by word merely,
+but by deed; not by the extrinsic, but by the intrinsic; not by art, but
+by life.
+
+I am never tired of saying that to put great personal qualities in a poem,
+or other literary work, not formulated or didactically stated, but in
+tone, manner, attitude, breadth of view, love, charity, good fellowship,
+etc., is the great triumph for our day. So put, they are a possession to
+the race forever; they grow and bear fruit perennially, like the grass and
+the trees. And shall it be said that the poet who does this has no worthy
+art?
+
+
+XIV
+
+Nearly all modern artificial products, when compared with the ancient, are
+characterized by greater mechanical finish and precision. Can we say,
+therefore, they are more artistic? Is a gold coin of the time of Pericles,
+so rude and simple, less artistic than the elaborate coins of our own day?
+Is Japanese pottery, the glazing often ragged and uneven, less artistic
+than the highly finished work of the moderns?
+
+Are we quite sure, after all, that what we call "artistic form" is in any
+high or fundamental sense artistic? Are the precise, the regular, the
+measured, the finished, the symmetrical, indispensable to our conception
+of art? If regular extrinsic form and measure and proportion are necessary
+elements of the artistic, then geometrical flower-beds, and trees set in
+rows or trained to some fancy pattern, ought to please the artist. But do
+they? If we look for the artistic in these things, then Addison is a
+greater artist than Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says, "Addison speaks the
+language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." Which is really the most
+artistic? The one is the coin from the die, the other the coin from the
+hand.
+
+Tennyson's faultless form and finish are not what stamp him a great
+artist. He would no doubt be glad to get rid of them if he could, at least
+to keep them in abeyance and make them less obtrusive; he would give
+anything for the freedom, raciness, and wildness of Shakespeare. But he is
+not equal to these things. The culture, the refinement, the precision of a
+correct and mechanical age have sunk too deeply into his soul. He has not
+the courage or the spring to let himself go as Shakespeare did. Tennyson,
+too, speaks the language of poets, and not of men; he savors of the
+flower-garden, and not of the forest. Tennyson knows that he is an artist.
+Shakespeare, apparently, never had such a thought; he is intent solely
+upon holding the mirror up to nature. The former lived in an age of
+criticism, and when the poets loved poetry more than they did life and
+things; the latter, in a more virile time, and in "the full stream of the
+world."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not self-advertised as a work of art. The author had
+no thought that you should lay down his book and say, "What a great
+artist!" "What a master workman!" He would rather you should say, "What a
+great man!" "What a loving comrade!" "What a real democrat!" "What a
+healing and helpful force!" He would not have you admire his poetry: he
+would have you filled with the breath of a new and larger and saner life;
+he would be a teacher and trainer of men.
+
+The love of the precise, the exact, the methodical, is characteristic of
+an age of machinery, of a commercial and industrial age like ours. These
+things are indispensable in the mill and counting-house, but why should we
+insist upon them in poetry? Why should we cling to an arbitrary form like
+the sonnet? Why should we insist upon a perfect rhyme, as if it was a cog
+in a wheel? Why not allow and even welcome the freedom of half-rhymes, or
+suggestive rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it
+into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering
+and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the
+man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an
+artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair with great laws
+and forces?
+
+Of course it is much easier for a poet to use the regular verse-forms and
+verse language than it is to dispense with them; that is, a much less
+poetic capital is required in the former case than in the latter. The
+stock forms and the stock language count for a good deal. A very small
+amount of original talent may cut quite an imposing figure in the robes of
+the great masters. Require the poet to divest himself of them, and to
+speak in the language of men and in the spirit of real things, and see how
+he fares.
+
+
+XV
+
+Whitman was afraid of what he called the beauty disease. He thought a poet
+of the first order should be sparing of the direct use of the beautiful,
+as Nature herself is. His aim should be larger, and beauty should follow
+and not lead. The poet should not say to himself, "Come, I will make
+something beautiful," but rather "I will make something true, and
+quickening, and powerful. I will not dress my verse up in fine words and
+pretty fancies, but I will breathe into it the grit and force and
+adhesiveness of real things." Beauty is the flowering of life and
+fecundity, and it must have deep root in the non-beautiful.
+
+Beauty, as the master knows it, is a spirit and not an adornment. It is
+not merely akin to flowers and gems and rainbows: it is akin to the All.
+Looking through his eyes, you shall see it in the rude and the savage
+also, in rocks and deserts and mountains, in the common as well as in the
+rare, in wrinkled age as well as in rosy youth.
+
+The non-beautiful holds the world together, holds life together and
+nourishes it, more than the beautiful. Nature is beautiful because she is
+so much else first,--yes, and last, and all the time.
+
+  "For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
+        delicates of the earth and of man,
+  And nothing endures but personal qualities."
+
+
+Is there not in field, wood, or shore something more precious and tonic
+than any special beauties we may chance to find there,--flowers, perfumes,
+sunsets,--something that we cannot do without, though we can do without
+these? Is it health, life, power, or what is it?
+
+Whatever it is, it is something analogous to this that we get in Whitman.
+There is little in his "Leaves" that one would care to quote for its mere
+beauty, though this element is there also. One may pluck a flower here and
+there in his rugged landscape, as in any other; but the flowers are always
+by the way, and never the main matter. We should not miss them if they
+were not there. What delights and invigorates us is in the air, and in the
+look of things. The flowers are like our wild blossoms growing under great
+trees or amid rocks, never the camellia or tuberose of the garden or
+hot-house,--something rude and bracing is always present, always a breath
+of the untamed and aboriginal.
+
+Whitman's work gives results, and never processes. There is no return of
+the mind upon itself; it descends constantly upon things, persons,
+realities. It is a rushing stream which will not stop to be analyzed. It
+has been urged that Whitman does not give the purely intellectual
+satisfaction that would seem to be warranted by his mental grasp and
+penetration. No, nor the æsthetic satisfaction warranted by his
+essentially artistic habit of mind. Well, he did not promise satisfaction
+in anything, but only to put us on the road to satisfaction. His book, he
+says, is not a "good lesson," but it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
+and that to another, and every one to another still.
+
+Let me repeat that the sharp, distinct intellectual note--the note of
+culture, books, clubs, etc., such as we get from so many modern writers,
+you will not get from Whitman. In my opinion, the note he sounds is deeper
+and better than that. It has been charged by an unfriendly critic that he
+strikes lower than the intellect. If it is meant by this that he misses
+the intellect, it is not true; he stimulates the intellect as few poets
+do. He strikes lower because he strikes farther. He sounds the note of
+character, personality, volition, the note of prophecy, of democracy, and
+of love. He seems unintellectual to an abnormally intellectual age; he
+seems unpoetic to a taste formed upon poetic tidbits; he seems irreligious
+to standards founded upon the old models of devotional piety; he seems
+disorderly, incoherent to all petty thumb and finger measurements. In his
+ideas and convictions, Whitman was a modern of the moderns; yet in his
+type, his tastes, his fundamental make-up, he was primitive, of an earlier
+race and age,--before, as Emerson suggests, the gods had cut Man up into
+men, with special talents of one kind or another.
+
+
+XVI
+
+Take any of Whitman's irregular-flowing lines, and clip and trim them, and
+compress them into artificial verse-forms, and what have we gained to make
+up for what we have lost? Take his lines called "Reconciliation," for
+instance:--
+
+  "Word over all beautiful as the sky,
+  Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
+        lost,
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
+  I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
+  Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."
+
+Or take his poem called "Old Ireland:"--
+
+  "Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
+  Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
+  Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
+  Her old white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,
+  At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
+  Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,
+  Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.
+
+  "Yet a word, ancient mother,
+  You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between
+        your knees,
+  Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,
+  For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
+  It was an illusion; the son you loved was not really dead,
+  The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another
+        country.
+  Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
+  What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,
+      The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,
+      And now with rosy and new blood,
+      Moves to-day in a new country."
+
+Or take these lines from "Children of Adam:"--
+
+  "I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I
+        pass'd the church,
+  Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your
+        long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,
+  I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
+        soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
+  Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the
+        wrists around my head,
+  Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last
+        night under my ear."
+
+Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
+measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
+highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
+wanted to preserve at all hazards,--vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
+free-careering forces of nature.
+
+I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
+not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
+is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
+restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
+and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
+like him best without it.
+
+
+XVII
+
+How well we know the language of the conventional poetic! In this
+language, the language of nine tenths of current poetry, the wind comes
+up out of the south and kisses the rose's crimson mouth, or it comes out
+of the wood and rumples the poppy's hood. Morning comes in glistening
+sandals, and her footsteps are jeweled with flowers. Everything is
+bedecked and bejeweled. Nothing is truly seen or truly reported. It is an
+attempt to paint the world beautiful. It is not beautiful as it is, and we
+must deck it out in the colors of the fancy. Now, I do not want the world
+painted for me. I want the grass green or brown, as the case may be; the
+sky blue, the rocks gray, the soil red; and that the sun should rise and
+set without any poetic claptrap. What I want is to see these things spin
+around a thought, or float on the current of an emotion, as they always do
+in real poetry.
+
+Beauty always follows, never leads the great poet. It arises out of the
+interior substance and structure of his work, like the bloom of health in
+the cheeks. The young poet thinks to win Beauty by direct and persistent
+wooing of her. He has not learned yet that she comes unsought to the
+truthful, the brave, the heroic. Let him think some great thought,
+experience some noble impulse, give himself with love to life and reality
+about him, and Beauty is already his. She is the reward of noble deeds.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+The modern standard in art is becoming more and more what has been called
+the canon of the characteristic, as distinguished from the Greek or
+classic canon of formal beauty. It is this canon, as Professor Triggs
+suggests, that we are to apply to Whitman. Dr. Johnson had it in mind when
+he wrote thus of Shakespeare:--
+
+"The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed
+and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers: the
+composition of Shakespeare is a forest in which oaks extend their
+branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds
+and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
+filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless
+diversity."
+
+Classic art holds to certain fixed standards; it seeks formal beauty; it
+holds to order and proportion in external parts; its ideal of natural
+beauty is the well-ordered park or grove or flower-garden. It has a horror
+of the wild and savage. Mountains and forests, and tempests and seas,
+filled the classic mind with terror. Not so with the modern romantic mind,
+which finds its best stimulus and delight in free, unhampered nature. It
+loves the element of mystery and the suggestion of uncontrollable power.
+The modern mind has a sense of the vast, the infinite, that the Greek had
+not, and it is drawn by informal beauty more than by the formal.
+
+
+XIX
+
+It is urged against Whitman that he brings us the materials of poetry, but
+not poetry: he brings us the marble block, but not the statue; or he
+brings us the brick and mortar, but not the house. False or superficial
+analogies mislead us. Poetry is not something made; it is something grown,
+it is a vital union of the fact and the spirit. If the verse awakens in us
+the poetic thrill, the material, whatever it be, must have been touched
+with the transforming spirit of poesy. Why does Whitman's material suggest
+to any reader that it is poetic material? Because it has already been
+breathed upon by the poetic spirit. A poet may bring the raw material of
+poetry in the sense that he may bring the raw material of a gold coin; the
+stamp and form you give it does not add to its value. It is doubtful if
+any of Whitman's utterances could be worked up into what is called poetry
+without a distinct loss of poetic value. What they would gain in finish
+they would lose in suggestiveness. This word "suggestiveness" affords one
+of the keys to Whitman. The objection to him I have been considering
+arises from the failure of the critic to see and appreciate his avowed
+purpose to make his page fruitful in poetic suggestion, rather than in
+samples of poetic elaboration. "I finish no specimens," he says. "I shower
+them by exhaustless laws, fresh and modern continually, as Nature does."
+He is quite content if he awaken the poetic emotion without at all
+satisfying it. He would have you more eager and hungry for poetry when you
+had finished with him than when you began. He brings the poetic stimulus,
+and brings it in fuller measure than any contemporary poet; and this is
+enough for him.
+
+An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that
+reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry
+did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in
+motion at once; he was so fruitful in themes, so suggestive of new
+harmonies and melodies. He gave the hints, and left his reader to follow
+them up. This is exactly what Whitman wanted to do. It defines his
+attitude toward poetry, towards philosophy, towards religion,--to suggest
+and set going, to arouse unanswerable questions, and to brace you to meet
+them; to bring the materials of poetry, if you will have it so, and leave
+you to make the poem; to start trains of thought, and leave you to pursue
+the flight alone. Not a thinker, several critics have urged; no, but the
+cause of thought in others to an unwonted degree. "Whether you agree with
+him or not," says an Australian essayist, "he will sting you into such an
+anguish of thought as must in the end be beneficial." It matters little to
+him whether or not you agree with him; what is important is, that you
+should think the matter out for yourself. He purposely avoids hemming you
+in by his conclusions; he would lead you in no direction but your own.
+"Once more I charge you give play to your self. I charge you leave all
+free, as I have left all free."
+
+No thought, no philosophy, no music, no poetry, in his pages; no, it is
+all character, impulse, emotion, suggestion. But the true reader of him
+experiences all these things: he finds in his pages, if he knows how to
+look for it, a profound metaphysic, a profound ethic, a profound æsthetic;
+a theory of art and poetry which is never stated, but only hinted or
+suggested, and which is much more robust and vital than what we are used
+to; a theory of good and evil; a view of character and conduct; a theory
+of the state and of politics, of the relation of the sexes, etc., to give
+ample food for thought and speculation. The Hegelian philosophy is in the
+"Leaves" as vital as the red corpuscles in the blood, so much is implied
+that is not stated, but only suggested, as in Nature herself. The really
+vast erudition of the work is adroitly concealed, hidden like its
+philosophy, as a tree hides its roots. Readers should not need to be told
+that, in the region of art as of religion, mentality is not first, but
+spirituality, personality, imagination; and that we do not expect a poet's
+thoughts to lie upon his pages like boulders in the field, but rather to
+show their presence like elements in the soil.
+
+  "Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
+  Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
+  If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
+        form, color, perfume to you,
+  If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
+        tall branches and trees."
+
+
+The early records and sacred books of most peoples contain what is called
+the materials of poetry. The Bible is full of such materials. English
+literature shows many attempts to work this material up into poetry, but
+always with a distinct loss of poetic value. The gold is simply beaten
+out thin and made to cover more surface, or it is mixed with some base
+metal. A recent English poet has attempted to work up the New Testament
+records into poetry, and the result is for the most part a thin, windy
+dilution of the original. If the record or legend is full of poetic
+suggestion, that is enough; to elaborate it, and deck it out in poetic
+finery without loss of poetic value, is next to impossible.
+
+To me the Arthurian legends as they are given in the old books, are more
+poetic, more stimulating to the imagination, than they are after they have
+gone through the verbal upholstering and polishing of such a poet as
+Swinburne or even Tennyson. These poets add little but words and flowers
+of fancy, and the heroic simplicity of the original is quite destroyed.
+
+
+XX
+
+No critic of repute has been more puzzled and misled by this unwrought
+character of our poet's verse than Mr. Edmund Gosse, the London poet and
+essayist. Mr. Gosse finds Whitman only a potential or possible poet; his
+work is literature in the condition of protoplasm. He is a maker of poems
+in solution; the structural change which should have crystallized his
+fluid and teeming pages into forms of art never came. It does not occur to
+Mr. Gosse to inquire whether or not something like this may not have been
+the poet's intention. Perhaps this is the secret of the vitality of his
+work, which, as Mr. Gosse says, now, after forty years, shows no sign of
+declining. Perhaps it was a large, fresh supply of poetic yeast that the
+poet really sought to bring us. Undoubtedly Whitman aimed to give his work
+just this fluid, generative quality, to put into it the very basic
+elements of life itself. He feared the "structural change" to which Mr.
+Gosse refers; he knew it was more or less a change from life to death: the
+cell and not the crystal; the leaf of grass, and not the gem, is the type
+of his sentences. He sacrificed fixed form; above all, did he stop short
+of that conscious intellectual elaboration so characteristic of later
+poetry, the better to give the impression and the stimulus of creative
+elemental power. It is not to the point to urge that this is not the
+method or aim of other poets; that others have used the fixed forms, and
+found them plastic and vital in their hands. It was Whitman's aim; these
+were the effects he sought. I think beyond doubt that he gives us the
+impression of something dynamic, something akin to the vital forces of the
+organic world, much more distinctly and fully than any other poet who has
+lived.
+
+Whitman always aimed to make his reader an active partner with him in his
+poetic enterprise. "I seek less," he says, "to state or display any theme
+or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
+theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." This trait is brought
+out by Mr. Gosse in a little allegory. "Every reader who comes to
+Whitman," he says, "starts upon an expedition to the virgin forest. He
+must take his conveniences with him. He will make of the excursion what
+his own spirit dictates. [We generally do, in such cases, Mr. Gosse.]
+There are solitudes, fresh air, rough landscape, and a well of water, but
+if he wishes to enjoy the latter he must bring his own cup with him." This
+phase of Whitman's work has never been more clearly defined. Mr. Gosse
+utters it as an adverse criticism. It is true exposition, however we take
+it, what we get out of Whitman depends so largely upon what we bring to
+him. Readers will not all get the same. We do not all get the same out of
+a walk or a mountain climb. We get out of him in proportion to the
+sympathetic and interpretative power of our own spirits. Have you the
+brooding, warming, vivifying mother-mind? That vague, elusive,
+incommensurable something in the "Leaves" that led Symonds to say that
+talking about Whitman was like talking about the universe,--that seems to
+challenge our pursuit and definition, that takes on so many different
+aspects to so many different minds,--it seems to be this that has led Mr.
+Gosse to persuade himself that there is no real Walt Whitman, no man whom
+we can take, as we take any other figure in literature, as an "entity of
+positive value and definite characteristics," but a mere mass of literary
+protoplasm that takes the instant impression of whatever mood approaches
+it. Stevenson finds a Stevenson in it, Mr. Symonds finds a Symonds,
+Emerson finds an Emerson, etc. Truly may our poet say, "I contain
+multitudes." In what other poet do these men, or others like them, find
+themselves?
+
+Whitman was a powerful solvent undoubtedly. He never hardens into anything
+like a system, or into mere intellectual propositions. One of his own
+phrases, "the fluid and swallowing soul," is descriptive of this trait of
+him. One source of his charm is, that we each see some phase of ourselves
+in him, as Mr. Gosse suggests. Above all things is he potential and
+indicative, bard of "flowing mouth and indicative hand." In his
+"Inscriptions" he says:--
+
+  "I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual
+        look upon you and then averts his face,
+  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
+  Expecting the main things from you."
+
+
+This withholding and half-averted glancing, then, on the part of the poet,
+is deliberate and enters into the scheme of the work. Mr. Gosse would have
+shown himself a sounder critic had he penetrated the poet's purpose in
+this respect, and shown whether or not he had violated the canons he had
+set up for his own guidance. We do not condemn a creative work when it
+departs from some rule or precedent, but when it violates its own
+principle, when it is not consistent with itself, when it hath not eyes to
+see, or ears to hear, or hands to reach what lies within its own sphere.
+Art, in the plastic realms of written language, may set its mind upon
+elaboration, upon structural finish and proportion, upon exact forms and
+compensations, as in architecture, or it may set its mind upon
+suggestion, indirection, and the flowing, changing forms of organic
+nature. It is as much art in the one case as in the other. To get rid of
+all visible artifice is, of course, the great thing in both cases. There
+is so little apparent artifice in Whitman's case that he has been accused
+of being entirely without art, and of throwing his matter together in a
+haphazard way,--"without thought, without selection," without
+"composition, evolution, vertebration of style," says Mr. Gosse. Yet his
+work more than holds its own in a field where these things alone are
+supposed to insure success. Whitman covers up his processes well, and
+knows how to hit his mark without seeming to take aim. The verdicts upon
+him are mainly contradictory, because each critic only takes in a part of
+his scheme. Mr. Stedman finds him a formalist. Mr. Gosse finds in him a
+negation of all form. The London critic says he is without thought. A
+Boston critic speaks of what he happily calls the "waves of thought" in
+his work,--vast mind-impulses that lift and sway great masses of concrete
+facts and incidents. Whitman knew from the start that he would puzzle and
+baffle his critics, and would escape from them like air when they felt
+most sure they had him in their verbal nets. So it has been from the
+first, and so it continues to be. Without one thing, he says, it is
+useless to read him; and of what that one thing needful is, he gives only
+the vaguest hint, only a "significant look."
+
+
+XXI
+
+I may here notice two objections to Whitman urged by Mr. Stedman,--a
+critic for whose opinion I have great respect, and a man for whom I have a
+genuine affection. With all his boasted breadth and tolerance, Whitman,
+says my friend, is narrow; and, with all his vaunted escape from the
+shackles of verse-form, he is a formalist: his "irregular, manneristic
+chant" is as much at the extreme of artificiality as is the sonnet. These
+certainly are faults that one does not readily associate with the work of
+Whitman. But then I remember that the French critic, Scherer, charges
+Carlyle, the apostle of the gospel of sincerity, with being insincere and
+guilty of canting about cant. If Carlyle is insincere, I think it very
+likely that Whitman may be narrow and hide-bound. These things are so much
+a matter of temperament that one cannot judge for another. Yet one ought
+not to confound narrowness and breadth, or little and big. All earnest,
+uncompromising men are more or less open to the charge of narrowness. A
+man is narrow when he concentrates himself upon a point; even a
+cannon-shot is. Whitman was narrow in the sense that he was at times
+monotonous; that he sought but few effects, that he poured himself out
+mainly in one channel, that he struck chiefly the major chords of life.
+His "Leaves" do not show a great range of artistic motifs. A versatile,
+many-sided nature he certainly was not; a large, broad, tolerant nature
+he as certainly was. He does not assume many and diverse forms like a
+purely artistic talent, sporting with and masquerading in all the elements
+of life, like Shakespeare; but in his own proper form, and in his own
+proper person, he gives a sense of vastness and power that are
+unapproached in modern literature. He asserts himself uncompromisingly,
+but he would have you do the same. "He who spreads a wider breast than my
+own proves the width of my own." "He most honors my style who learns under
+it to destroy the teacher." His highest hope is to be the soil of superior
+poems.
+
+Mr. Stedman thinks he detects in the poet a partiality for the coarser,
+commoner elements of our humanity over the finer and choicer,--for the
+"rough" over the gentleman. But when all things have been duly considered,
+it will be found, I think, that he finally rests only with great personal
+qualities and traits. He is drawn by powerful, natural persons, wherever
+found,--men and women self-poised, fully equipped on all sides:--
+
+  "I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully arm'd,
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,"--
+
+and much more to the same effect.
+
+  "I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain:
+  If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it."
+
+
+Whitman is a formalist, just as every man who has a way of his own of
+saying and doing things, no matter how natural, is a formalist; but he is
+not a stickler for form of any sort. He has his own proper form, of
+course, which he rarely departs from. At one extreme of artificiality Mr.
+Stedman apparently places the sonnet. This is an arbitrary form; its rules
+are inflexible; it is something cut and shaped and fitted together after a
+predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial. If Whitman's
+irregularity was equally studied; if it gave us the same sense of
+something cunningly planned and wrought to a particular end, clipped here,
+curbed there, folded back in this line, drawn out in that, and attaining
+to a certain mechanical proportion and balance as a whole,--then there
+would be good ground for the critic's charge. But such is not the case.
+Whitman did not have, nor claim to have, the architectonic power of the
+great constructive poets. He did not build the lofty rhyme. He did not
+build anything, strictly speaking. He let himself go. He named his book
+after the grass, which makes a carpet over the earth, and which is a sign
+and a presence rather than a form.
+
+
+XXII
+
+Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect
+from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional
+cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might
+expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or
+grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a
+little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional
+obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is
+commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy;
+from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an
+average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"
+may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc. The price paid for his
+strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination
+to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision
+with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"
+with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious,"
+will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"
+will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his
+healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk
+to flight.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+To say that Whitman is a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If
+it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of
+language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the
+saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the
+right word--for just the right word--than did Whitman. He would wait for
+days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the
+language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the
+evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language
+never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not
+consciously challenge your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is
+never on dress parade. His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so
+much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to _stumble_ upon
+them. His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial
+adjuncts of poetry,--no finery or stuck-on ornament,--nothing obtrusively
+beautiful or poetic; and because it bears itself with the freedom and
+nonchalance of a man in his every-day attire.
+
+But it is always in a measure misleading to compare language with dress,
+to say that a poet clothes his thought, etc. The language is the thought;
+it is an incarnation, not an outside tailoring. To improve the expression
+is to improve the thought. In the most vital writing, the thought is nude;
+the mind of the reader touches something alive and real. When we begin to
+hear the rustle of a pompous or highly wrought vocabulary, when the man
+begins to dress his commonplace ideas up in fine phrases, we have enough
+of him.
+
+Indeed, it is only the mechanical writer who may be said to "clothe" his
+ideas with words; the real poet thinks through words.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps
+has been made, that in him we find the big merely,--strength without
+power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this
+impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious
+things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here
+is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great
+lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires
+a large space to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and
+multitude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The
+style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling,
+cloud-like masses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me
+there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not
+only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity;
+not only breadth, there is quality and charm. He is both Dantesque and
+Darwinian, as has been said.
+
+Mr. Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whitman, and,
+despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of
+literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,--the
+symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power. Thus, "he
+is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or
+buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a
+kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the
+world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise
+mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,--all seas,
+lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal
+earth."
+
+Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and
+plains, and to the globe itself.
+
+But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only
+claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size
+and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no
+impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to
+size,--breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of
+a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists
+are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.
+
+Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast masses of
+humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the
+industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
+are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
+elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
+effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
+sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere
+the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
+significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
+contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
+forces and objects of the universe, first with reference to character and
+personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
+of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
+in his first poem:--
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.
+
+  "I tramp a perpetual journey,
+  My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
+        woods,
+  No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
+  I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
+  I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,
+  But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
+  My left hand hooking you round the waist,
+  My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public
+        road."
+
+
+He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
+effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
+and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
+the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
+before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
+views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
+disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
+disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
+things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
+His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
+in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
+bits and parts as from the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
+of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:--
+
+  "It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
+        exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the
+        untruth of a single second,
+  I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor
+        ten billions of years,
+  Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and
+        builds a house."
+
+In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
+as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.
+These are typical lines:--
+
+  "A thousand perfect men and women appear,
+  Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths,
+        with offerings."
+
+  "Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young,
+  The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young."
+
+
+"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same
+effect. Always wholes, total impressions,--always a view as of a "strong
+bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower,
+but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a
+city. The title of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might
+stand as the title of the book. When he gathers details and special
+features he masses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo
+carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always
+in the totals, the breadth, the sweep of conception. The part that is
+local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality
+is the background across which it all flits.
+
+We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give
+us,--studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects,
+rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we
+inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He
+tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and
+processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the
+orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon
+he sees a spirit kindred to his own.
+
+He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and
+what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and
+equilibrium.
+
+"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:--
+
+  "The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed
+        either,
+  They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.
+  They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,
+  Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The earth does not argue,
+  Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
+  Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
+  Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
+  Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.
+  Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."
+
+He says the best of life
+
+  "Is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"
+
+and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:--
+
+  "I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate
+        the theory of the earth,
+  No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless
+        it compares with the amplitude of the earth,
+  Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
+        earth."
+
+
+No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
+these and kindred passages:--
+
+  "The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
+  His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
+  The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
+  The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has
+        the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of
+        poems, the Answerer,
+  (Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day,
+        for all its names.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
+  The words of true poems do not merely please,
+  The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of
+        beauty;
+  The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
+        fathers,
+  The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
+
+  "Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness
+        of body, withdrawnness,
+  Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,
+  The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
+  The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all
+        these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
+  The words of the true poems give you more than poems;
+  They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
+        peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything
+        else.
+  They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;
+  They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
+  Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain,
+        love-sick.
+  They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the
+        outset,
+  They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,
+  Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to
+        learn one of the meanings,
+  To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings
+        and never be quiet again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Of these States the poet is the equable man,
+  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of
+        their full returns,
+  Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
+  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more
+        nor less,
+  He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
+  He is the equalizer of his age and land,
+  He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
+  In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
+        building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce,
+        lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality,
+        government,
+  In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as
+        the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
+  The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
+  He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),
+  He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a
+        helpless thing,
+  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
+  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
+  In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
+  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
+  He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as
+        dreams or dots.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass
+        away,
+  The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
+  Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."
+
+
+Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's
+idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the
+beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in
+centuries.
+
+We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in
+these lines of Tennyson:--
+
+  "The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."
+
+"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's
+pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.
+
+Whitman's ideal poet is the most composite man, rich in temperament, rank
+in the human attributes, embracing races and eras in himself. All men see
+themselves in him:--
+
+  "The mechanic takes him for a mechanic,
+  And the soldier supposes him to be a soldier, and the sailor that he
+        has followed the sea,
+  And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
+  And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,
+  No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has
+        followed it,
+  No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters
+        there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
+  The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
+        themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,
+  They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so
+        grown."
+
+
+Let us hold the poet to his own ideals, and not condemn him because he has
+not aimed at something foreign to himself.
+
+The questions which Whitman puts to him who would be an American poet may
+fairly be put to himself.
+
+  "Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what the land and sea, the
+        bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
+  Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
+  Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce
+        contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole
+        people?
+  Are you not of some coterie? some school, or mere religion?
+  Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to
+        life itself?
+  Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
+  Have you, too, the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  What is this you bring my America?
+  Is it uniform with my country?
+  Is it not something that has been better done or told before?
+  Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?
+  Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?--is the good old cause
+        in it?
+  Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
+        literats of enemies' lands?
+  Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
+  Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?
+  Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?
+  Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my
+        strength, gait, face?
+  Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere
+        amanuenses?
+
+
+So far as Whitman's poetry falls within any of the old divisions it is
+lyrical,--a personal and individual utterance. Open the book anywhere and
+you are face to face with a man. His eye is fixed upon you. It is a man's
+voice you hear, and it is directed to _you_. He is not elaborating a
+theme: he is suggesting a relation or hinting a meaning. He is not
+chiseling, or carving a work of art: he is roughly outlining a man; he is
+planting a seed, or tilling a field.
+
+
+XXV
+
+I believe it was the lamented Professor Clifford who first used the term
+"cosmic emotion" in connection with "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's
+atmosphere is so distinctly outside of and above that which ministers to
+our social and domestic wants,--the confined and perfumed air of an indoor
+life; his mood and temper are so habitually begotten by the contemplation
+of the orbs and the laws and processes of universal nature, that the
+phrase often comes to mind in considering him. He is not in any sense,
+except perhaps in a few minor pieces, a domestic and fireside poet,--a
+solace to our social instincts and cultivated ideals. He is too large, too
+aboriginal, too elemental, too strong for that. I seem to understand and
+appreciate him best when I keep in mind the earth as a whole, and its
+relation to the system. Any large view or thought, or survey of life or
+mankind, is a preparation for him. He demands the outdoor temper and
+habit, he demands a sense of space and power, he demands above all things
+a feeling for reality. "Vastness" is a word that applies to him; abysmal
+man, cosmic consciousness, the standards of the natural universal,--all
+hint some phase of his genius. His survey of life and duty is from a point
+not included in any four walls, or in any school or convention. It is a
+survey from out the depths of being; the breath of worlds and systems is
+in these utterances. His treatment of sex, of comradeship, of death, of
+democracy, of religion, of art, of immortality, is in the spirit of the
+great out-of-doors of the universe; the point of view is cosmic rather
+than personal or philanthropic. What charity is this!--the charity of
+sunlight that spares nothing and turns away from nothing. What "heroic
+nudity"! like the nakedness of rocks and winter trees. What sexuality!
+like the lust of spring or the push of tides. What welcome to death, as
+only the night which proves the day!
+
+
+XXVI
+
+This orbic nature which so thrills and fills Whitman is not at all akin to
+that which we get in the so-called nature-poets of Wordsworth and his
+school,--the charm of privacy, of the sequestered, the cosy,--qualities
+that belong to the art of a domestic, home-loving race, and to lovers of
+solitude. Tennyson's poetry abounds in these qualities; so does
+Wordsworth's. There is less of them in Browning, and more of them in the
+younger poets. That communing with nature, those dear friendships with
+birds and flowers, that gentle wooing of the wild and sylvan, that flavor
+of the rural, the bucolic,--all these are important features in the
+current popular poetry, but they are not to any marked extent
+characteristic of Whitman. The sentiment of domesticity, love as a
+sentiment; the attraction of children, home and fireside; the attraction
+of books, art, travel; our pleasure in the choice, the refined, the
+artificial,--these are not the things you are to demand of Whitman. You do
+not demand them of Homer or Dante or the Biblical writers. We are to
+demand of him the major things, primary things; the lift of great
+emotions; the cosmic, the universal; the joy of health, of selfhood; the
+stimulus of the real, the modern, the American; always the large, the
+virile; always perfect acceptance and triumph.
+
+Whitman's free use of the speech of the common people is doubtless
+offensive to a fastidious literary taste. Such phrases as "I will be even
+with you," "what would it amount to," "give in," "not one jot less;"
+"young fellows," "old fellows," "stuck up," "every bit as much," "week in
+and week out," and a thousand others, would jar on the page of any other
+poet more than on his.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+William Rossetti says his language has a certain ultimate quality. Another
+critic speaks of his absolute use of language. Colonel Ingersoll credits
+him with more supreme words than have been uttered by any other man of our
+time.
+
+The power to use words was in Whitman's eyes a divine power, and was
+bought with a price:--
+
+  "For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,
+        procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
+  After treading ground, and breasting river and lake,
+  After a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,
+        after knowledge, freedom, crimes,
+  After complete faith, after clarifying elevations and removing
+        obstructions,
+  After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman,
+        the divine power to speak words."
+
+
+Whitman's sense of composition and his rare artistic faculty of using
+language are seen, as John Addington Symonds says, in the "countless clear
+and perfect phrases" "which are hung, like golden medals of consummate
+workmanship and incised form, in rich clusters over every poem he
+produced. And, what he aimed at above all, these phrases are redolent of
+the very spirit of the emotions they suggest, communicate the breadth and
+largeness of the natural things they indicate, embody the essence of
+realities in living words which palpitate and burn forever."
+
+The great poet is always more or less the original, the abysmal man. He is
+face to face with universal laws and conditions. He speaks out of a
+greater exaltation of sentiment than the prose-writer. He takes liberties;
+he speaks for all men; he is a bird on "pinions free."
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+In saying or implying that Whitman's aim was not primarily literary or
+artistic, I am liable to be misunderstood; and when Whitman himself says,
+"No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
+performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward
+art or æstheticism," he exposes himself to the same misconception. It is
+the literary and poetic value of his verses alone that can save them.
+Their philosophy, their democracy, their vehement patriotism, their
+religious ardor, their spirit of comradeship, or what not, will not alone
+suffice. All depends upon the manner in which these things are presented
+to us. Do we get the reality, or words about the reality? No matter what
+the content of the verse, unless into the whole is breathed the breath of
+the true creative artist they will surely perish. Oblivion awaits every
+utterance not touched with the life of the spirit. Whitman was as
+essentially an artist as was Shakespeare or Dante; his work shows the same
+fusion of imagination, will, emotion, personality; it carries the same
+quality of real things,--not the same shaping, constructive power, but the
+same quickening, stimulating power, the same magic use of words. The
+artist in him is less conscious of itself, is less differentiated from the
+man, than in the other poets. He objected to having his work estimated for
+its literary value alone, but in so doing he used the word in a narrow
+sense.
+
+After all these ages of the assiduous cultivation of literature, there has
+grown up in men a kind of lust of the mere art of writing, just as, after
+so many generations of religious training, there has grown up a passion
+for religious forms and observances. "Mere literature" has come to be a
+current phrase in criticism, meaning, I suppose, that the production to
+which it is applied is notable only for good craftsmanship. In the same
+spirit one speaks of mere scholarship, or of a certain type of man as a
+mere gentleman. It was mere literature that Whitman was afraid of, the
+æsthetic disease, the passion for letters, for poetry, divorced from love
+of life and of things. None knew better than he that the ultimate value of
+any imaginative and emotional work, even of the Bible, is its literary
+value. Its spiritual and religious value is inseparably connected with its
+literary value.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not bookish; it is always the voice of a man, and not
+of a scholar or conventional poet, that addresses us. We all imbue words
+more or less with meanings of our own; but, from the point of view I am
+now essaying, literature is the largest fact, and embraces all inspired
+utterances. The hymn-book seeks to embody or awaken religious emotion
+alone; would its religious value be less if its poetic value were more? I
+think not. The best of the Psalms of David, from the religious point of
+view, are the best from the literary point of view. What reaches and
+thrills the soul,--that is great art. What arouses the passions--mirth,
+anger, indignation, pity--may or may not be true art. No one, for
+instance, can read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" without tears, laughter, anger; but
+no one, I fancy, could ever get from it that deep, tranquil pleasure and
+edification that the great imaginative works impart. Keble's poetry is
+more obviously religious than Wordsworth's or Arnold's, but how
+short-lived, because it is not embalmed in the true artistic spirit! In
+all the great poems, there is something as deep and calm as the light and
+the sky, and as common and universal. I find this something in Whitman. In
+saying, therefore, that his aim was ulterior to that of art, that he was
+not begotten by the literary spirit, I only mean that his aim was that of
+the largest art, and of the most vital and comprehensive literature. We
+should have heard the last of his "Leaves" long ago had they not possessed
+unmistakably the vitality of true literature, "incomparable things,
+incomparably well said," as Emerson remarked.
+
+A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary
+merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its
+literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words
+"literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital
+and imaginative use of language which is the characteristic of all true
+literature. The most effective way of saying a thing in the region of the
+sentiments and emotions,--that is the true literary way.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS
+
+
+I
+
+I have divided my subject into many chapters, and given to each a separate
+heading, yet I am aware that they are all but slight variations of a
+single theme,--viz., Whitman's reliance upon absolute nature. That there
+might be no mistake about it, and that his reader might at once be put in
+possession of his point of view, the poet declared at the outset of his
+career that at every hazard he should let nature speak.
+
+  "Creeds and schools in abeyance
+  Retiring back awhile, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
+  I harbor for good or bad,
+  I permit to speak at every hazard,
+  Nature without check, with original energy."
+
+
+The hazard of letting nature speak will, of course, be great,--the hazard
+of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and
+inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely
+passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his
+criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former
+contingency--the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser
+public--has been astounding. He has been read in a narrow, literal,
+bourgeois spirit. The personal pronoun, which he uses so freely, has been
+taken to stand for the private individual Walt Whitman, so that he has
+been looked upon as a compound of egotism and licentiousness. His
+character has been traduced, and his purpose in the "Leaves" entirely
+misunderstood.
+
+We see at a glance that his attitude towards nature, towards God, towards
+the body and the soul, reverses many of the old ascetic theological
+conceptions.
+
+All is good, all is as it should be; to abase the body is to abase the
+soul. Man is divine inside and out, and is no more divine about the head
+than about the loins. It is from this point of view that he has launched
+his work. He believed the time had come for an utterance out of radical,
+uncompromising human nature; let conventions and refinements stand back,
+let nature, let the soul, let the elemental forces speak; let the body,
+the passions, sex, be exalted; the stone rejected by the builders shall be
+the chief stone in the corner. Evil shall be shown to be a part of the
+good, and death shall be welcomed as joyously as life.
+
+Whitman says his poems will do just as much evil as good, and perhaps
+more. To many readers this confession of itself would be his condemnation.
+To others it would be an evidence of his candor and breadth of view. I
+suppose all great vital forces, whether embodied in a man or in a book,
+work evil as well as good. If they do not, they only tickle the surface
+of things. Has not the Bible worked evil also? Some think more evil than
+good. The dews and the rains and the sunshine work evil.
+
+From Whitman's point of view, there is no good without evil; evil is an
+unripe kind of good. There is no light without darkness, no life without
+death, no growth without pain and struggle. Beware the emasculated good,
+the good by exclusion rather than by victory. "Leaves of Grass" will work
+evil on evil minds,--on narrow, unbalanced minds. It is not a guide, but
+an inspiration; not a remedy, but health and strength. Art does not preach
+directly, but indirectly; it is moral by its spirit, and the mood and
+temper it begets.
+
+Whitman, in celebrating manly pride, self-reliance, the deliciousness of
+sex; in glorifying the body, the natural passions and appetites, nativity;
+in identifying himself with criminals and low or lewd persons; in frankly
+imputing to himself all sins men are guilty of, runs the risk, of course,
+of being read in a spirit less generous and redemptive than his own.
+
+The charity of the poet may stimulate the license of the libertine; the
+optimism of the seer may confirm the evil-doer; the equality of the
+democrat may foster the insolence of the rowdy. This is our lookout and
+not the poet's. We take the same chances with him that we do with nature;
+we are to trim our sails to the breeze he brings; we are to sow wheat and
+not tares for his rains to water.
+
+Whitman's glorification of the body has led some critics to say that he is
+the poet of the body only. But it is just as true to say he is the poet of
+the soul only. He always seeks the spiritual through the material. He
+treats the body and the soul as one, and he treats all things as having
+reference to the soul.
+
+  "I will not make a poem, nor the least part, of a poem, but has
+        reference to the soul,
+  Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there
+        is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul."
+
+
+The curious physiological strain which runs through the poems is to be
+considered in the light of this idea. He exalts the body because in doing
+so he exalts the soul.
+
+  "Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results."
+
+
+II
+
+The reader of Whitman must do his or her own moralizing; the poet is here
+not to deprecate or criticise, but to love and celebrate; he has no
+partialities; our notions of morality do not concern him; he exploits the
+average man just as he finds him; he _is_ the average man for the time
+being and confesses to all his sins and shortcomings, and we will make of
+the result good or evil, according to our mental horizon. That his work is
+unmixed good is the last thing the poet would claim for it. He has not,
+after the easy fashion of the moralist, set the good here and the bad
+there; he has blended them as they are in nature and in life; our profit
+and discipline begin when we have found out whither he finally tends, or
+when we have mastered him and extracted the good he holds. If we expect he
+is going to preach an austere system of morality to us, or any system of
+morality, we are doomed to disappointment. Does Nature preach such a
+system? does Nature preach at all? neither will he. He presents you the
+elements of good and evil in himself in vital fusion and play; your part
+is to see how the totals are at last good.
+
+It is objected that Whitman is too persistent in declaring himself an
+animal, when the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he is an
+animal and the thing he is least likely to remember is that he is a spirit
+and a child of God. But Whitman insists with the same determination that
+he is a spirit and an heir of immortality,--not as one who has cheated the
+devil of his due, but as one who shares the privileges and felicities of
+all, and who finds the divine in the human. Indeed it is here that he
+sounds his most joyous and triumphant note. No such faith in spiritual
+results, no such conviction of the truth of immortality, no such
+determined recognition of the unseen world as the final reality is to be
+found in modern poetry.
+
+As I have said, Whitman aimed to put his whole nature in a poem--the
+physical or physiological, the spiritual, the æsthetic and
+intellectual,--without giving any undue prominence to either. If he has
+not done so, if he has made the animal and sexual too pronounced, more so
+than nature will justify in the best proportioned man, then and then only
+is his artistic scheme vitiated and his work truly immoral.
+
+It may be true that the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he
+is an animal; what he is most likely to forget, is that the animal is just
+as sacred and important as any other part; indeed that it is the basis of
+all, and that a sane and healthful and powerful spirituality and
+intellectuality can only flow out of a sane and healthful animality.
+
+  "I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
+  And you must not be abased to the other."
+
+
+III
+
+Furthermore, Whitman's main problem is to project into literature the new
+democratic man as he conceives him,--the man of the future, intensely
+American, but in the broadest sense human and cosmopolitan; he is to
+project him on a scale large enough for all uses and conditions, ignoring
+the feudal and aristocratic types which have for the most part dominated
+literature, and matching them with a type more copious in friendship,
+charity, sympathy, religion, candor, and of equal egoism and power.
+
+It is to exploit and enforce and illustrate this type or character that
+"Leaves of Grass" is written. The poems are the drama of this new
+democratic man. This type Whitman finds in himself. He does not have to
+create it as Shakespeare did Hamlet or Lear; he has only to discover it
+in himself. He is it and he gives it free utterance. His work is,
+therefore, as he says, the poem of himself,--himself written
+large,--written as upon the face of the continent, written in the types
+and events he finds on all sides. He sees himself in all men, the bad as
+well as the good, and he sees all men in himself. All the stupendous
+claims he makes for himself he makes for others. His egotism is vicarious
+and embraces the world. It is not the private individual Walt Whitman that
+makes these stupendous claims for himself; it is Walt Whitman as the
+spokesman of the genius of American democracy. He is not to discuss a
+question. He is to outline a character, he is to incarnate a principle.
+The essayist or philosopher may discuss the value of any given idea,--may
+talk about it; the creative artist alone can give us the thing itself, the
+concrete flesh-and-blood reality. Whitman is not only to make this survey,
+to launch this criticism; he is to embody it in a living human
+personality, and enable us to see the world of man and morals through its
+eyes. What with the scientist, the philosopher, is thought, must be
+emotion and passion with him.
+
+Whitman promises that we shall share with him "two greatnesses, and a
+third one rising inclusive and more resplendent,"--
+
+  "The greatness of Love and Democracy and the greatness of Religion"--
+
+not merely as ideas, but as living impulses. He is to show the spirit of
+absolute, impartial nature, incarnated in a human being, imbued with
+love, democracy, and religion, moving amid the scenes and events of the
+New World, sounding all the joys and abandonments of life, and re-reading
+the oracles from the American point of view. And the utterance launched
+forth is to be imbued with poetic passion.
+
+Whitman always aims at a complete human synthesis, and leaves his reader
+to make of it what he can. It is not for the poet to qualify and explain.
+He seeks to reproduce his whole nature in a book,--reproduce it with all
+its contradictions and carnalities, the good and the bad, the coarse and
+the fine, the body and the soul,--to give free swing to himself, trusting
+to natural checks and compensations to ensure a good result at last, but
+not at all disturbed if you find parts of it bad as in creation itself.
+
+His method being that of the poet, and not that of the moralist or
+preacher, how shall he sort and sift, culling this virtue and that, giving
+parts and fragments instead of the entire man? He must give all, not
+abstractly, but concretely, synthetically.
+
+To a common prostitute Whitman says:--
+
+  "Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you;
+  Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle
+        for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you."
+
+
+We are housed in social usages and laws, we are sheltered and warmed and
+comforted by conventions and institutions and numberless traditions;
+their value no one disputes. But for purposes of his own Whitman ignores
+them all; he lets in upon us the free and maybe raw air of the great
+out-of-doors of absolute nature; his standards are not found inside of any
+four walls; he contemplates life, and would quicken it in its
+fundamentals; his survey is from a plane whence our arts and refinements
+and petty distinctions disappear. He sees the evil of the world no less
+necessary than the good; he sees death as a part of life itself; he sees
+the body and the soul as one; he sees the spiritual always issuing from
+the material; he sees not one result at last lamentable in the universe.
+
+
+IV
+
+Unless, as I have already said, we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself,
+we can make little of him; unless we place ourselves at his absolute point
+of view, his work is an offense and without meaning. The only question is,
+Has he a law, has he a steady and rational point of view, is his work a
+consistent and well-organized whole? Ask yourself, What is the point of
+view of absolute, uncompromising science? It is that creation is all good
+and sound; things are as they should be or must be; there are no
+conceivable failures; there is no evil in the final analysis, or, if there
+is, it is necessary, and plays its part also; there is no more beginning
+nor ending than there is now, no more heaven or hell than we find or make
+here:--
+
+  "Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and
+        rectified?"
+
+
+It has been urged that Whitman violates his own canon of the excellence of
+nature. But what he violates is more a secondary or acquired nature. He
+violates our social conventions and instincts, he exposes what we cover
+up; but the spirit of his undertaking demanded this of him. Remember that
+at all hazards he is to let nature--absolute nature--speak; that he is to
+be the poet of the body as well as of the soul, and that no part of the
+body of a man or woman, "hearty and clean," is vile, and that "none shall
+be less familiar than the rest."
+
+His glory is, that he never flinched or hesitated in following his
+principle to its logical conclusions,--"my commission obeying, to question
+it never daring."
+
+It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones for the sins of us all,--the sins
+of perverting, denying, abusing the most sacred and important organs and
+functions of our bodies.
+
+
+V
+
+In Whitman we find the most complete identification of the man with the
+subject. He always is, or becomes, the thing he portrays. Not merely does
+he portray America,--he speaks out of the American spirit, the spirit that
+has broken irrevocably with the past and turns joyously to the future; he
+does not praise equality, he illustrates it; he puts himself down beside
+the lowest and most despised person, and calls him brother.
+
+  "You felons on trial in courts,
+  You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and
+        handcuff'd with iron,
+  Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
+  Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with
+        iron, or my ankles with iron?"
+
+
+He does not give a little charity, he gives himself as freely as the
+clouds give rain, or the sun gives light; he does not write a treatise on
+democracy, he applies the democratic spirit to everything in heaven and on
+earth, and redistributes the prizes from its points of view; he does not,
+except very briefly, sing the praises of science, but he launches his
+poems always from the scientific view of the world, in contradistinction
+to the old theological and mythical point of view. It is always the
+example, it is always the thing itself, he gives us. Few precepts, no
+sermon, no reproof. Does he praise candor? No, he is candor; he confesses
+to everything; he shows us the inmost working of his mind. We know him
+better than we know our nearest friends. Does he exalt the pride of man in
+himself, or egoism? Again he illustrates it: he is egoism; he makes the
+whole universe revolve around himself; he never for a moment goes out of
+himself; he does not seek a theme; he is the theme. His egocentric method
+of treatment is what characterizes him as an artist. He elaborates no
+theme, he builds nothing, he carves nothing, but makes himself a source
+and centre of pulsing, vital energy. Wave after wave radiates from him.
+What we see and get always is Walt Whitman. Our attention is never fixed
+upon the writer, but always upon the man.
+
+Of course this method of Whitman of becoming one with his subject, and
+speaking out of it, is always the method of the creative artist. It is
+this that distinguishes the artist from the mere thinker or prose-writer.
+The latter tells us about a thing; the former gives us the thing, or the
+spirit of the thing itself.
+
+If Whitman had put his criticism of our time and civilization in an
+argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As
+an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and
+tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we
+tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a
+personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a
+theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons and a challenge,
+and will not be easily put aside.
+
+The great philosophical poets, like Lucretius, try to solve the riddles.
+Whitman's aim is only to thrust the riddles before you, to give you a new
+sense of them, and start the game afresh. He knows what a complex,
+contradictory thing the universe is, and that the most any poet can do is
+to break the old firmament up into new forms. To put his arms around it?
+No. Put your arms around your fellow-man, and then you have encompassed it
+as nearly as mortal can do.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman's attraction toward the common people was real. There is one thing
+that makes every-day humanity, the great, toiling, unlettered masses,
+forever welcome to men who unite great imagination with broad
+sympathies,--they give a sense of reality; they refresh, as nature always
+refreshes. There is a tang and a sting to the native, the spontaneous,
+that the cultivated rarely has. The farmer, the mechanic, the sailor, the
+soldier, savor of the primal and the hardy. In painting his own portrait,
+Whitman makes prominent the coarser, unrefined traits, because here the
+colors are fast,--here is the basis of all. The careful student of Whitman
+will surely come to see how all the elements of his picture--his pride,
+his candor, his democracy, his sensuality, his coarseness,--finally fit
+together, and correct and offset each other and make a perfect unity.
+
+No poet is so easily caricatured and turned into ridicule as Whitman. He
+is deficient in humor, and hence, like the Biblical writers, is sometimes
+on the verge of the grotesque without knowing it. The sense of the
+ridiculous has been enormously stimulated and developed in the modern
+mind, and--what is to be regretted--it has been mostly at the expense of
+the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this
+country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push
+and topple it over. The fear which all Americans have before their eyes,
+and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of
+appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked
+individuality of manners or dress, lest we expose ourselves to the shafts
+of ridicule. Emerson said he had heard with admiring submission the remark
+of a lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gave
+a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow;
+and what ranks before religion with us as a people is being in the mode,
+and writing our verse and cutting our coats in the approved style. Pride
+of the eye, a keen sense of the proprieties and the conventionalities, and
+a morbid feeling for the ridiculous, would have been death to Whitman's
+undertaking. He would have faltered, or betrayed self-consciousness. He
+certainly never could have spoken with that elemental aplomb and
+indifference which is so marked a feature of his work. Any hesitation, any
+knuckling, would have been his ruin. We should have seen he was not
+entirely serious, and should have laughed at him. We laugh now only for a
+moment; the spell of his earnestness and power is soon upon us.
+
+
+VII
+
+Thoreau considered Whitman's "Leaves" worth all the sermons in the country
+for preaching; and yet few poets have assumed so little the function of
+the preacher. His great cure-all is love; he gives himself instead of a
+sermon. His faith in the remedial power of affection, comradeship, is
+truly Christ-like. Lover of sinners is also his designation. The reproof
+is always indirect or implied. He brings to bear character rather than
+precept. He helps you as health, as nature, as fresh air, pure water help.
+He says to you:--
+
+  "The mockeries are not you;
+  Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
+  I pursue you where none else has pursued you:
+  Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed
+        routine,--if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they
+        do not conceal you from me.
+  The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion,--if these balk
+        others, they do not balk me.
+  The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature
+        death,--all these I part aside.
+  I track through your windings and turnings,--I come upon you where you
+        thought eye should never come upon you."
+
+
+Whitman said, in the now famous preface of 1855, that "the greatest poet
+does not moralize, or make applications of morals,--he knows the soul."
+There is no preaching or reproof in the "Leaves."
+
+  "I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
+        oppression and shame;
+  I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
+        remorseful after deeds done;
+  I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,
+        gaunt, desperate;
+  I see the wife misused by her husband; I see the treacherous seducer of
+        the young woman;
+  I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
+        hid,--I see these sights on the earth,
+  I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and
+        prisoners,
+  I observe a famine at sea,--I observe the sailors casting lots who shall
+        be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest,
+  I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
+        laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
+  All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out
+        upon,
+  See, hear, and am silent."
+
+
+Only once does he shame and rebuke the offender; then he holds up to him
+"a hand-mirror."
+
+  "Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (who is it? is it you?)
+  Outside fair costume,--within, ashes and filth.
+  No more a flashing eye,--no more a sonorous voice or springy step,
+  Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
+  A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,
+  Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
+  Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
+  Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
+  Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
+  No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
+  Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
+  Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!"
+
+
+The poet's way is so different from the moralist's way! The poet confesses
+all, loves all,--has no preferences. He is moral only in his results. We
+ask ourselves, Does he breathe the air of health? Can he stand the test of
+nature? Is he tonic and inspiring? That he shocks us is nothing. The first
+touch of the sea is a shock. Does he toughen us, does he help make
+arterial blood?
+
+All that men do and are guilty of attracts him. Their vices and
+excesses,--he would make these his own also. He is jealous lest he be
+thought better than other men,--lest he seem to stand apart from even
+criminals and offenders. When the passion for human brotherhood is upon
+him, he is balked by nothing; he goes down into the social mire to find
+his lovers and equals. In the pride of our morality and civic well-being,
+this phase of his work shocks us; but there are moods when the soul says
+it is good, and we rejoice in the strong man that can do it.
+
+The restrictions, denials, and safeguards put upon us by the social order,
+and the dictates of worldly prudence, fall only before a still more fervid
+humanism, or a still more vehement love.
+
+The vital question is, Where does he leave us? On firmer ground, or in the
+mire? Depleted and enervated, or full and joyous? In the gloom of
+pessimism, or in the sunlight of its opposite?---
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a man or woman coming--perhaps you are the one;
+  I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully armed.
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
+  And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its
+        translation.
+
+  "I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded;
+  I announce a race of splendid and savage old men."
+
+
+There is no contradiction here. The poet sounds all the experiences of
+life, and he gives out the true note at last.
+
+  "No specification is necessary,--all that a male or female does, that is
+        vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her, in
+        the unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope
+        of it forever."
+
+
+VIII
+
+Nothing but the most uncompromising religious purpose can justify certain
+things in the "Leaves;" nothing but the most buoyant and pervasive
+spirituality can justify its overwhelming materiality; nothing but the
+most creative imagination can offset its tremendous realism; nothing but
+the note of universal brotherhood can atone for its vehement Americanism;
+nothing but the primal spirit of poesy itself can make amends for this
+open flouting of the routine poetic, and this endless procession before us
+of the common and the familiar.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman loved the word "unrefined." It was one of the words he would have
+us apply to himself. He was unrefined, as the air, the soil, the water,
+and all sweet natural things are unrefined (fine but not _re_fined). He
+applies the word to himself two or three times in the course of his poems.
+He loved the words sun-tan, air-sweetness, brawn, etc. He speaks of his
+"savage song," not to call forth the bards of the past, he says, but to
+invoke the bards of the future.
+
+  "Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage songs?"
+
+
+The thought that his poems might help contribute to the production of a
+"race of splendid and savage old men" was dear to him. He feared the
+depleting and emasculating effects of our culture and conventions. The
+decay of maternity and paternity in this country, the falling off of the
+native populations, were facts full of evil omen. His ideal of manly or
+womanly character is rich in all the purely human qualities and
+attributes; rich in sex, in sympathy, in temperament; physiologically
+sound and clean, as well as mentally and morally so.
+
+  "Fear grace, fear delicatesse;
+  Fear the mellow-sweet, the sucking of honey-juice:
+  Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!
+  Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men."
+
+
+He was himself the savage old man he invoked. It was no part of his plan
+to preach, in refined and euphonious terms, hygiene and the value of the
+natural man, but to project into literature the thing itself, to exploit a
+character coarse as well as fine, and to imbue his poems with a
+physiological quality as well as a psychological and intellectual.
+
+  "I will scatter the new roughness and gladness among them."
+
+He says to the pale, impotent victim of over-refinement, with intentional
+rudeness,
+
+  "Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you."
+
+
+X
+
+One of the key-words to Whitman both as a man and a poet is the word
+"composite." He was probably the most composite man this century has
+produced, and in this respect at least is representative of the American
+of the future, who must be the result of the blending of more diverse
+racial elements than any man of history. He seems to have had an
+intuition of his composite character when he said in his first poem:--
+
+  "I am large,--I contain multitudes."
+
+
+The London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," in reluctantly
+conceding at the time of the poet's death something to the British
+admiration of him, said he was "rich in temperament." The phrase is well
+chosen. An English expert on the subject of temperament, who visited
+Whitman some years ago, said he had all four temperaments, the sanguine,
+the nervous, the melancholic, and the lymphatic, while most persons have
+but two temperaments, and rarely three.
+
+It was probably the composite character of Whitman that caused him to
+attract such diverse and opposite types of men,--scholars and workingmen,
+lawyers, doctors, scientists, and men of the world,--and that made him
+personally such a puzzle to most people,--so impossible to classify. On
+the street the promenaders would turn and look after him, and I have often
+heard them ask each other, "What man was that?" He has often been taken
+for a doctor, and during his services in the army hospitals various myths
+were floating about concerning him. Now he was a benevolent Catholic
+priest,--then some unknown army general, or retired sea captain; at one
+time he was reputed to be one of the owners of the Cunard line of
+steamers. To be taken for a Californian was common. One recalls the
+composite character of the poet whom he outlines in his poems (see
+quotation, page 159).
+
+The book is as composite as the man. It is all things to all men; it lends
+itself to a multitude of interpretations. Every earnest reader of it will
+find some clew or suggestion by the aid of which he fancies he can unlock
+the whole book, but in the end he will be pretty sure to discover that one
+key is not enough. To one critic, his book is the "hoarse song of a man,"
+its manly and masculine element attracts him; to another he is the poet of
+joy, to another the poet of health, to still another he is the bard of
+personality; others read him as the poet of nature, or the poet of
+democracy. His French critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, calls him an apostle,--the
+apostle of the idea that man is an indivisible fragment of the universal
+Divinity.
+
+
+XI
+
+What has a poet of Whitman's aims to do with decency or indecency, with
+modesty or immodesty? These are social or conventional virtues; he
+represents mainly primary qualities and forces. Does life, does death,
+does nature, respect our proprieties, our conventional veils and
+illusions? Neither will he. He will strip them all away. He will act and
+speak as if all things in the universe were equally sacred and divine; as
+if all men were really his brothers, all women his sisters; as if all
+parts of the human body were equally beautiful and wonderful; as if
+fatherhood and motherhood, birth and begetting, were sacred acts. Of
+course it is easy to see that this course will speedily bring him in
+collision with the guardians of taste and social morality. But what of
+that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I
+behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question
+is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or
+betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and
+thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than
+the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he assumes to speak.
+
+Nothing is easier than to convict Walt Whitman of what is called
+indecency; he laughs indifferent when you have done so. It is not your
+gods that he serves. He says he would be as indifferent of observation as
+the trees or rocks. And it is here that we must look for his
+justification, upon ethical rather than upon the grounds of conventional
+art. He has taken our sins upon himself. He has applied to the morbid
+sex-consciousness, that has eaten so deeply into our social system, the
+heroic treatment; he has fairly turned it naked into the street. He has
+not merely in words denied the inherent vileness of sex; he has denied it
+in very deed. We should not have taken offense had he confined himself to
+words,--had he said sex is pure, the body is as clean about the loins as
+about the head; but being an artist, a creator, and not a mere thinker or
+preacher, he was compelled to act,--to do the thing instead of saying it.
+
+The same in other matters. Being an artist, he could not merely say all
+men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and
+sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must
+make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of
+the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the
+concrete and not with the abstract,--fraternity and equality as a reality,
+not as a sentiment.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the phase in which we are now considering him, Whitman appears as the
+Adamic man re-born here in the nineteenth century, or with science and the
+modern added, and fully and fearlessly embodying himself in a poem. It is
+stronger than we can stand, but it is good for us, and one of these days,
+or one of these centuries, we shall be able to stand it and enjoy it.
+
+  "To the garden the world anew ascending,
+  Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
+  The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
+  Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber,
+  The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, having brought me again,
+  Amorous, mature--all beautiful to me--all wondrous,
+  My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
+        reasons most wondrous;
+  Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
+  Content with the present--content with the past,
+  By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
+  Or in front, and I following her just the same."
+
+
+The critics perpetually misread Whitman because they fail to see this
+essentially composite and dramatic character of his work,--that it is not
+the song of Walt Whitman the private individual, but of Walt Whitman as
+representative of, and speaking for, all types and conditions of men; in
+fact, that it is the drama of a new democratic personality, a character
+outlined on a larger, more copious, more vehement scale than has yet
+appeared in the world. The germs of this character he would sow broadcast
+over the land.
+
+In this drama of personality the poet always identifies himself with the
+scene, incident, experience, or person he delineates, or for whom he
+speaks. He says to the New Englander, or to the man of the South and the
+West, "I depict you as myself." In the same way he depicts offenders,
+roughs, criminals, and low and despised persons as himself; he lays claim
+to every sin of omission and commission men are guilty of, because, he
+says, "the germs are in all men." Men dare not tell their faults. He will
+make them all his own, and then tell them; there shall be full confession
+for once.
+
+  "If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;
+  If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think I cannot
+        remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?"
+
+
+It will not do to read this poet, or any great poet, in a narrow and
+exacting spirit. As Whitman himself says: "The messages of great poems to
+each man and woman are: Come to us on equal terms, only then can you
+understand us."
+
+In the much misunderstood group of poems called "Children of Adam" the
+poet speaks for the male generative principle, and all the excesses and
+abuses that grow out of it he unblushingly imputes to himself. What men
+have done and still do, while under the intoxication of the sexual
+passion, he does, he makes it all his own experience.
+
+That we have here a revelation of his own personal taste and experiences
+may or may not be the case, but we have no more right to assume it than we
+have to assume that all other poets speak from experience when they use
+the first person singular. When John Brown mounted the scaffold in
+Virginia, in 1860, the poet says:--
+
+  "I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,
+  I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling
+        with age and your unheal'd wounds, you mounted the scaffold,"--
+
+very near him he stood in spirit; very near him he stood in the person of
+others, but not in his own proper person.
+
+If we take this poet literally, we shall believe he has been in California
+and Oregon; that he has set foot in every city on the continent; that he
+grew up in Virginia; that every Southern State has been by turns his home;
+that he has been a soldier, a sailor, a miner; that he has lived in
+Dakota's woods, his "diet meat, his drink from the spring;" that he has
+lived on the plains with hunters and ranchmen, etc. He lays claim to all
+these characters, all these experiences, because what others do, what
+others assume, or suffer, or enjoy, that he appropriates to himself.
+
+  "I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+  Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+  I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of
+        my skin,
+  I fall on the weeds and stones,
+  The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+  Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whipstocks.
+
+  "Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
+  I do not ask the wounded person how he feels--I myself become the wounded
+        person,
+  My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
+
+  "I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
+  See myself in prison shaped like another man,
+  And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
+
+  "For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
+  It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.
+  Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him
+        and walk by his side."
+
+
+XIII
+
+It is charged against Whitman that he does not celebrate love at all, and
+very justly. He had no purpose to celebrate the sentiment of love.
+Literature is vastly overloaded with this element already. He celebrates
+fatherhood and motherhood, and the need of well-begotten, physiologically
+well-begotten, offspring. Of that veiled prurient suggestion which readers
+so delight in--of "bosoms mutinously fair," and "the soul-lingering loops
+of perfumed hair," as one of our latest poets puts it--there is no hint
+in his volume. He would have fallen from grace the moment he had attempted
+such a thing. Any trifling or dalliance on his part would have been his
+ruin. Love as a sentiment has fairly run riot in literature. From
+Whitman's point of view, it would have been positively immoral for him
+either to have vied with the lascivious poets in painting it as the
+forbidden, or with the sentimental poets in depicting it as a charm. Woman
+with him is always the mate and equal of the man, never his plaything.
+
+Whitman is seldom or never the poet of a sentiment, at least of the
+domestic and social sentiments. His is more the voice of the eternal,
+abysmal man.
+
+The home, the fireside, the domestic allurements, are not in him; love, as
+we find it in other poets, is not in him; the idyllic, except in touches
+here and there, is not in him; the choice, the finished, the perfumed, the
+romantic, the charm of art and the delight of form, are not to be looked
+for in his pages. The cosmic takes the place of the idyllic; the begetter,
+the Adamic man, takes the place of the lover; patriotism takes the place
+of family affection; charity takes the place of piety; love of kind is
+more than love of neighbor; the poet and the artist are swallowed up in
+the seer and the prophet.
+
+The poet evidently aimed to put in his sex poems a rank and healthful
+animality, and to make them as frank as the shedding of pollen by the
+trees, strong even to the point of offense. He could not make it pleasing,
+a sweet morsel to be rolled under the tongue; that would have been levity
+and sin, as in Byron and the other poets. It must be direct and rank,
+healthfully so. The courage that did it, and showed no wavering or
+self-consciousness, was more than human. Man is a begetter. How shall a
+poet in our day and land treat this fact? With levity and by throwing over
+it the lure of the forbidden, the attraction of the erotic? That is one
+way, the way of nearly all the poets of the past. But that is not
+Whitman's way. He would sooner be bestial than Byronic, he would sooner
+shock by his frankness than inflame by his suggestion. And this in the
+interest of health and longevity, not in the interest of a prurient and
+effeminate "art." In these poems Whitman for a moment emphasizes sex, the
+need of sex, and the power of sex. "All were lacking if sex were lacking."
+He says to men and women, Here is where you live after all, here is the
+seat of empire. You are at the top of your condition when you are fullest
+and sanest there. Fearful consequences follow any corrupting or abusing or
+perverting of sex. The poet stands in the garden of the world naked and
+not ashamed. It is a great comfort that he could do it in this age of
+hectic lust and Swinburnian impotence,--that he could do it and not be
+ridiculous. To have done it without offense would have been proof that he
+had failed utterly. Let us be shocked; it is a wholesome shock, like the
+douse of the sea, or the buffet of the wind. We shall be all the better
+for it by and by.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The lover of Whitman comes inevitably to associate him with character and
+personal qualities. I sometimes meet women whom I say are of the Whitman
+type--the kind of woman he invoked and predicted. They bear children, and
+are not ashamed; motherhood is their pride and their joy: they are
+cheerful, tolerant, friendly, think no evil, meet high and low on equal
+terms; they walk, row, climb mountains; they reach forth into the actual
+world of questions and events, open-minded, sympathetic, frank, natural,
+good-natured; the mates and companions of their husbands, keeping pace
+with them in all matters; home-makers, but larger than home, considerate,
+forgiving, unceremonious,--in short, the large, fresh, wholesome open-air
+natures whose ideal so completely possessed Walt Whitman.
+
+A British critic wisely says the gift of Whitman to us is the gift of life
+rather than of literature, but it is the gift of life through literature.
+Indeed, Whitman means a life as much as Christianity means a life. He
+says:--
+
+  "Writing and talk do not prove me."
+
+Nothing but the test of reality finally proves him:--
+
+  "The proof of the poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country has
+        absorbed him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."
+
+
+The proof of Whitman shall be deferred till he has borne fruit in actual,
+concrete life.
+
+He knew that merely intellectual and artistic tests did not settle matters
+in his case, or that we would not reach his final value by making a
+dead-set at him through the purely æsthetic faculties. Is he animating to
+life itself? Can we absorb and assimilate him? Does he nourish the manly
+and heroic virtues? Does he make us more religious, more tolerant, more
+charitable, more candid, more self-reliant? If not, he fails of his chief
+end. It is doubtful if the purely scholarly and literary poets, like
+Milton, say, or like our own Poe, are ever absorbed in the sense above
+implied; while there is little doubt that poets like Homer, like
+Shakespeare, are absorbed and modify a people's manners and ideals. Only
+that which we love affects our lives. Our admiration for art and
+literature as such is something entirely outside the sources of character
+and power of action.
+
+Whitman identifies himself with our lives. We associate him with reality,
+with days, scenes, persons, events. The youth who reads Poe or Lowell
+wants to be a scholar, a wit, a poet, a writer; the youth who reads
+Whitman wants to be a man, and to get at the meaning and value of life.
+Our author's bent towards real things, real men and women, and his power
+to feed and foster personality, are unmistakable.
+
+Life, reality, alone proves him; a saner and more robust fatherhood and
+motherhood, more practical democracy, more charity, more love, more
+comradeship, more social equality, more robust ideals of womanly and manly
+character, prove him. When we are more tolerant and patient and
+long-suffering, when the strain of our worldly, commercial spirit relaxes,
+then is he justified. Whitman means a letting-up of the strain all along
+the line,--less hurry, less greed, less rivalry, more leisure, more
+charity, more fraternalism and altruism, more religion, less formality and
+convention.
+
+  "When America does what was promised,
+  When each part is peopled with free people,
+  When there is no city on earth to lead my city, the city of young men,
+        the Mannahatta city--but when the Mannahatta leads all the cities
+        of the earth,
+  When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,
+  When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
+  When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,
+  When fathers, firm, unconstrained, open-eyed--when breeds of the most
+        perfect mothers denote America,
+  Then to me ripeness and conclusion."
+
+
+XV
+
+After all I think it matters little whether we call him poet or not. Grant
+that he is not a poet in the usual or technical sense, but poet-prophet,
+or poet-seer, or all combined. He is a poet plus something else. It is
+when he is judged less than poet, or no poet at all, that we feel
+injustice is done him. Grant that his work is not art, that it does not
+give off the perfume, the atmosphere of the highly wrought artistic works
+like those of Tennyson, but of something quite different.
+
+We have all been slow to see that his cherished ends were religious rather
+than literary; that, over and above all else, he was a great religious
+teacher and prophet. Had he been strictly a literary poet, like Lowell, or
+Longfellow, or Tennyson,--that is, a writer working for purely artistic
+effects,--we should be compelled to judge him quite differently.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is a gospel--glad tidings of great joy to those who are
+prepared to receive it. Its final value lies in its direct, intense,
+personal appeal; in what it did for Symonds, who said it made a man of
+him; in what it did for Stevenson, who said it dispelled a thousand
+illusions; in what it did for Mrs. Gilchrist, who said it enabled her to
+find her own soul; in what it does for all earnest readers of it in
+blending with the inmost current of their lives. Whitman is the life-giver
+of our time. How shall a poet give us life but by making us share his
+larger measure of life, his larger hope, his larger love, his larger
+charity, his saner and wider outlook? What are the three great life-giving
+principles? Can we name them better than St. Paul named them eighteen
+hundred years ago,--faith, hope, charity? And these are the cornerstones
+of Whitman's work,--a faith so broad and fervent that it accepts death as
+joyously as life, and sees all things at last issue in spiritual results;
+a hope that sees the golden age ahead of us, not behind us; and a charity
+that balks at nothing, that makes him identify himself with offenders and
+outlaws; a charity as great as his who said to the thief on the cross,
+"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."
+
+To cry up faith, hope, and charity is not to make men partakers of them;
+but to exemplify them in a survey of the whole problem of life, to make
+them vital as hearing, or eyesight in a work of the imagination, to show
+them as motives and impulses controlling all the rest, is to beget and
+foster them in the mind of the beholder.
+
+He is more and he is less than the best of the other poets. The popular,
+the conventional poets are mainly occupied with the artistic side of
+things,--with that which refines, solaces, beautifies. Whitman is mainly
+occupied with the cosmic and universal side of things, and the human and
+spiritual values that may be extracted from them. His poetry is not the
+result of the same kind of selection and partiality as that we are more
+familiar with.
+
+Hence, while the message of Tennyson and his kind is the message of
+beauty, the message of Whitman is, in a much fuller sense, the message of
+life. He speaks the word of faith and power. This is his distinction; he
+is the life-giver. Such a man comes that we may have life, and have it
+more abundantly.
+
+The message of beauty,--who would undervalue it? The least poet and
+poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples
+and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of
+life, there is danger that we shall not know it when we hear it. It is a
+harsher and more heroic strain than the other. It calls no man to his
+ease, or to be lulled and soothed. It is a summons and a challenge. It
+lays rude, strong hands upon you. It filters and fibres your blood. It is
+more of the frost, the rains, the winds, than of cushions or parlors.
+
+The call of life is a call to battle always. We are stronger by the
+strength of every obstacle or enemy overcome.
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
+  These are the days that must happen to you:
+
+  "You shall not heap up what is called riches,
+  You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;
+  You but arrive at the city to which you were destined--you hardly settle
+        yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an irresistible
+        call to depart.
+  You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
+        remain behind you;
+  What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with
+        passionate kisses of parting,
+  You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands
+        toward you.
+
+  "Allons! After the GREAT COMPANIONS! and to belong to them!"
+
+
+XVI
+
+Whitman always avails himself of the poet's privilege and magnifies
+himself. He magnifies others in the same ratio, he magnifies all things.
+"Magnifying and applying come I," he says, "outbidding at the start the
+old cautious hucksters." Indeed, the character which speaks throughout
+"Leaves of Grass" is raised to the highest degree of personal exaltation.
+To it nothing is trivial, nothing is mean; all is good, all is divine. The
+usual distinctions disappear, burned up, the poet says, for religion's
+sake. All the human attributes are heightened and enlarged; sympathy as
+wide as the world; love that balks at nothing; charity as embracing as the
+sky; egotism like the force of gravity; religious fervor that consumes the
+coarsest facts like stubble; spirituality that finds God everywhere every
+hour of the day; faith that welcomes death as cheerfully as life;
+comradeship that would weld the nation into a family of brothers;
+sexuality that makes prudes shudder; poetic enthusiasm that scornfully
+dispenses with all the usual adventitious aids; and in general a
+largeness, coarseness, and vehemence that are quite appalling to the
+general reader. Lovers of poetry will of necessity be very slow in
+adjusting their notions to the standards of "Leaves of Grass." It is a
+survey of life and of the world from the cosmic rather than from the
+conventional standpoint. It carries the standards of the natural-universal
+into all fields.
+
+Some men have accepted poverty and privation with such contentment and
+composure as to make us almost envious of their lot; and Whitman accepts
+the coarser, commoner human elements which he finds in himself, and which
+most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception
+of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes.
+If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference
+for them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an element of
+weakness.
+
+His precept and his illustration, carried out in life, would fill the land
+with strong, native, original types of men and women animated by the most
+vehement comradeship, selfism and otherism going hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO CULTURE
+
+
+I
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not the poetry of culture, but it is to be said in
+the same breath that it is not such a work as an uncultured man produces,
+or is capable of producing.
+
+The uncultured man does not think Whitman's thoughts, or propose Whitman's
+problems to himself, or understand or appreciate them at all. The "Leaves"
+are perhaps of supreme interest only to men of deepest culture, because
+they contain in such ample measure that without which all culture is mere
+varnish or veneer. They are indirectly a tremendous criticism of American
+life and civilization, and they imply that breadth of view and that
+liberation of spirit--that complete disillusioning--which is the best
+result of culture, and which all great souls have reached, no matter who
+or what their schoolmasters may have been.
+
+Our reading public probably does not and cannot see itself in Whitman at
+all. He must be a great shock to its sense of the genteel and the
+respectable. Nor can the working people and the unlettered, though they
+were drawn to Whitman the man, be expected to respond to any considerable
+extent to Whitman the poet. His standpoint can be reached only after
+passing through many things and freeing one's self from many illusions. He
+is more representative of the time-spirit out of which America grew, and
+which is now shaping the destiny of the race upon this continent. He
+strikes under and through our whole civilization.
+
+He despised our social gods, he distrusted our book-culture, he was
+alarmed at the tendency to the depletion and attenuation of the national
+type, and he aimed to sow broadcast the germs of more manly ideals. His
+purpose was to launch his criticism from the basic facts of human life,
+psychic and physiologic; to inject into the veins of our anæmic literature
+the reddest, healthiest kind of blood; and in doing so he has given free
+swing to the primary human traits and affections and to sexuality, and has
+charged his pages with the spirit of real things, real life.
+
+We have been so long used to verse which is the outcome of the literary
+impulse alone, which is written at so many removes from the primary human
+qualities, produced from the extreme verge of culture and artificial
+refinement, which is so innocent of the raciness and healthful coarseness
+of nature, that poetry which has these qualities, which implies the body
+as well as the mind, which is the direct outgrowth of a radical human
+personality, and which make demands like those made by real things, is
+either an offense to us or is misunderstood.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman says his book is not a good lesson, but it takes down the bars to
+a good lesson, and that to another, and that to another still. To take
+down bars rather than to put them up is always Whitman's aim; to make his
+reader free of the universe, to turn him forth into the fresh and
+inexhaustible pastures of time, space, eternity, and with a smart slap
+upon his back with the halter as a spur and send-off, is about what he
+would do. His message, first and last, is "give play to yourself;" "let
+yourself go;"--happiness is in the quest of happiness; power comes to him
+who power uses.
+
+  "Long enough have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore;
+  Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
+  To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
+        and laughingly dash with your hair."
+
+
+To hold Whitman up to ridicule, and to convict him of grossness and
+tediousness, is easy enough; first, because he is so out of relation to
+the modes and taste of his times, and, secondly, because he has somewhat
+of the uncouthness and coarseness of large bodies. Then his seriousness
+and simplicity, like that of Biblical and Oriental writers,--a kind of
+childish inaptness and homeliness,--often exposes him to our keen, almost
+abnormal sense of the ridiculous. He was deficient in humor, and he wrote
+his book in entire obliviousness of social usages and conventions, so that
+the perspective of it is not the social or indoor perspective, but that
+of life and nature at large, careering and unhampered. It is probably the
+one modern poem whose standards are not social and what are called
+artistic.
+
+Its atmosphere is always that of the large, free spaces of vast, unhoused
+nature. It has been said that the modern world could be reconstructed from
+"Leaves of Grass," so compendious and all-inclusive is it in its details;
+but of the modern world as a social organization, of man as the creature
+of social usages and prohibitions, of fashions, of dress, of
+ceremony,--the indoor, parlor and drawing-room man,--there is no hint in
+its pages. In its matter and in its spirit, in its standards and in its
+execution, in its ideals and in its processes, it belongs to and
+affiliates with open-air nature, often reaching, I think, the cosmic and
+unconditioned. In a new sense is Whitman the brother of the orbs and
+cosmic processes, "conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth." All
+his enthusiasms, all his sympathies have to do with the major and
+fundamental elements of life. He is a world-poet. We do not readily adjust
+our indoor notions to him. Our culture-standards do not fit him.
+
+
+III
+
+The problem of the poet is doubtless more difficult in our day than in any
+past day; it is harder for him to touch reality.
+
+The accumulations of our civilization are enormous: an artificial world of
+great depth and potency overlies the world of reality; especially does it
+overlie the world of man's moral and intellectual nature. Most of us live
+and thrive in this artificial world, and never know but it is the world of
+God's own creating. Only now and then a man strikes his roots down through
+this made land into fresh, virgin soil. When the religious genius strikes
+his roots through it, and insists upon a present revelation, we are apt to
+cry "heretic;" when the poet strikes his roots through it, as Whitman did,
+and insists upon giving us reality,--giving us himself before custom or
+law,--we cry "barbarian," or "art-heretic," or "outlaw of art."
+
+In the countless adjustments and accumulations, and in the oceanic
+currents of our day and land, the individual is more and more lost sight
+of,--merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See
+it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will.
+See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing
+power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a
+single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their
+types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite
+character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe
+with the old joy and contentment.
+
+
+IV
+
+  "The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
+  Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and master of it?"
+
+
+Do we not, consciously or unconsciously, ask this or a similar question of
+every poet or artist whom we pass in review before us? Is he master of his
+culture, or does it master him? Does he strike back through it to simple,
+original nature, or is he a potted plant? Does he retain the native savage
+virtues, or is he entirely built up from the outside? We constantly
+mistake culture for mere refinement, which it is not: it is a liberating
+process; it is a clearing away of obstructions, and the giving to inherent
+virtues a chance to express themselves. It makes savage nature friendly
+and considerate. The aim of culture is not to get rid of nature, but to
+utilize nature. The great poet is always a "friendly and flowing savage,"
+the master and never the slave of the complex elements of our artificial
+lives.
+
+Though our progress and civilization are a triumph over nature, yet in an
+important sense we never get away from nature or improve upon her. Her
+standards are still our standards, her sweetness and excellence are still
+our aim. Her health, her fertility, her wholeness, her freshness, her
+innocence, her evolution, we would fain copy or reproduce. We would, if we
+could, keep the pungency and aroma of her wild fruit in our cultivated
+specimens, the virtue and hardiness of the savage in our fine gentlemen,
+the joy and spontaneity of her bird-songs in our poetry, the grace and
+beauty of her forms in our sculpture and carvings.
+
+A poetic utterance from an original individual standpoint, something
+definite and characteristic,--this is always the crying need. What a fine
+talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name!
+But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a
+kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste and intelligence that
+speak. When will he redeem all these promises, and become a fixed centre
+of thought and emotion in himself? To write poems is no distinction; to be
+a poem, to be a fixed point amid the seething chaos, a rock amid the
+currents, giving your own form and character to them,--that is something.
+
+It matters little, as Whitman himself says, who contributes the mass of
+poetic verbiage upon which any given age feeds.
+
+But for a national first-class poem, or a great work of the imagination of
+any sort, the man is everything, because such works finally rest upon
+primary human qualities and special individual traits. A richly endowed
+personality is always the main dependence in such cases, or, as Goethe
+says, "in the great work the great person is always present as the great
+factor."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is as distinctly an emanation from Walt Whitman, from
+his quality and equipment as a man apart from anything he owed to books or
+to secondary influences, as a tree is an emanation from the soil. It is,
+moreover, an emanation from him as an American in the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, and as a typical democratic composite man, a man of
+the common people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but with
+an extraordinary endowment of spiritual and intellectual power, to which
+he has given full swing without abating one jot or tittle the influence of
+his heritage of the common stock.
+
+
+V
+
+There is one important quality that enters into all first-class literary
+production and into all art, which is taken little account of in current
+criticism: I mean the quality of the manly,--the pulse and pressure of
+manly virility and strength. Goethe spoke of it to Eckermann as a certain
+urgent power in which the art of his time was lacking. The producers had
+taste and skill, but were not masterful as men. Goethe always looked
+straight through the work to the man behind it; in art and poetry the
+personality was everything. The special talent of one kind or another was
+quite secondary. The greatest works are the least literary. To speak in
+literature as a man, and not merely as a scholar or professional
+litterateur, is always the crying need. The new poet has this or that
+gift, but what is the human fund back of all? What is his endowment of the
+common universal human traits? How much of a man is he? His measure in
+this respect will be the measure of the final value of his contribution.
+
+The decadence of literature sets in when there is more talent than
+character in current production; when rare literary and artistic gifts no
+longer come wedded to large human and manly gifts; when taste is
+fastidious rather than robust and hearty. When was there a man born to
+English or American literature with a large endowment of the universal
+human qualities, or with those elements that give breadth and power, and
+which lead art rather than follow it? We are living in an age of great
+purity and refinement of taste in art and letters, but destitute of power.
+Goethe spoke of Walter Scott not merely as a great talent, but as a
+"comprehensive nature." Without this comprehensive nature as a setting,
+his great talent would have amounted to but little. This gives the weight,
+the final authority. How little there was on the surface of Scott of the
+literary keenness, subtlety, knowingness of later producers, and yet how
+far his contribution surpasses theirs in real human pathos and
+suggestiveness!
+
+The same might be said of Count Tolstoï, who is also, back of all, a great
+loving nature.
+
+One has great joy in Whitman because he is beyond and over all a large and
+loving personality; his work is but a thin veil through which a great
+nature clearly shows. The urgent power of which Goethe speaks is almost
+too strong,--too strong for current taste: we want more art and less man,
+more literature and less life. It is not merely a great mind that we feel,
+but a great character. It penetrates every line, and indeed makes it true
+of the book that whoever "touches this touches a man."
+
+The lesson of the poet is all in the direction of the practical manly and
+womanly qualities and virtues,--health, temperance, sanity, power,
+endurance, aplomb,--and not at all in the direction of the literary and
+artistic qualities or culture.
+
+  "To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat,
+        to manage horses, to beget superb children,
+  To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,
+  To hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea."
+
+
+All his aims, ideas, impulses, aspirations, relate to life, to
+personality, and to power to deal with real things; and if we expect from
+him only literary ideas--form, beauty, lucidity, proportion--we shall be
+disappointed. He seeks to make the impression of concrete forces and
+objects, and not of art.
+
+  "Not for an embroiderer,
+  (There will always be plenty of embroiderers--I welcome them also),
+  But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.
+
+  "Not to chisel ornaments,
+  But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme
+        Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking."
+
+His whole work is a radiation from an exemplification of the idea that
+there is something better than to be an artist or a poet,--namely, to be a
+man. The poet's rapture springs not merely from the contemplation of the
+beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; from
+the contemplation of democracy, the common people, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors, his own body, death, sex, manly love, occupations, and the force
+and vitality of things. We are to look for the clews to him in the open
+air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forms and
+methods. He declares he will never again mention love or death inside of a
+house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay
+with him in the open air.
+
+  "If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore;
+  The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key:
+  The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words.
+
+  "No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children better than they.
+
+  "The young mechanic is closest to me--he knows me pretty well.
+  The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with
+        him all day;
+  The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my
+        voice:
+  In vessels that sail, my words sail--I go with fishermen and seamen,
+        and love them.
+
+  "My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his
+        blanket;
+  The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;
+  The young mother and old mother comprehend me;
+  The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where
+        they are:
+  They and all would resume what I have told them."
+
+
+VI
+
+So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few,
+its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness
+of man rather than his strength; so far as it expresses a shrinking from
+reality and a refuge in sentimentalism; so far as it is aristocratic as in
+Tennyson, or mocking and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and mephitic as
+in Swinburne, or regretful and reminiscent as in Arnold, or a melodious
+baying of the moon as in Shelley, or the outcome of mere scholarly and
+technical acquirements as in so many of our younger poets,--so far as
+literature or poetry, I say, stand for these things, there is little of
+either in Whitman. Whitman stands for the primary and essential; he stands
+for that which makes the body as well as the mind, which makes life sane
+and joyous and masterful. Everything that tends to depletion, satiety, the
+abnormal, the erotic and exotic, that induces the stress and fever of
+life, is foreign to his spirit. He is less beautiful than the popular
+poets, yet more beautiful. He will have to do only with the inevitable
+beauty, the beauty that comes unsought, that resides in the interior
+meanings and affiliations,--the beauty that dare turn its back upon the
+beautiful.
+
+Whitman has escaped entirely the literary disease, the characteristic
+symptoms of which, according to Renan, is that people love less things
+themselves than the literary effects which they produce. He has escaped
+the art disease which makes art all in all; the religious disease, which
+runs to maudlin piety and seeks to win heaven by denying earth; the beauty
+disease, which would make of poesy a conventional flower-garden. He brings
+heroic remedies for our morbid sex-consciousness, and for all the
+pathological conditions brought about by our excess of refinement, and the
+dyspeptic depletions of our indoor artificial lives. Whitman withstood the
+æsthetic temptation, as Amiel calls it, to which most of our poets fall a
+victim,--the lust for the merely beautiful, the epicureanism of the
+literary faculties. We can make little of him if we are in quest of
+æsthetic pleasures alone. "In order to establish those literary
+authorities which are called classic centuries," says Renan, "something
+healthy and solid is necessary. Common household bread is of more value
+here than pastry." But the vast majority of literary producers aim at
+pastry, or, worse yet, confectionery,--something especially delightful and
+titivating to the taste. No doubt Renan himself was something of a
+literary epicure, but then he imposed upon himself large and serious
+tasks, and his work as a whole is solid and nourishing; his charm of style
+does not blind and seduce us. It makes all the difference in the world
+whether we seek the beautiful through the true, or the true through the
+beautiful. Seek ye the kingdom of truth first and all things shall be
+added. The novice aims to write beautifully, but the master aims to see
+truly and to feel vitally. Beauty follows him, and is never followed by
+him.
+
+Nature is beautiful because she is something else first, yes, and last,
+too, and all the while. Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the
+whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with
+the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields
+compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuyé.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman's ideal is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger--much more
+racy and democratic--than the ideal we are familiar with in current
+literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the
+democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,--excluding all the
+old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and
+legends, etc.,--but he applies it to the form as well, excluding rhyme and
+measure and all the conventional verse architecture. His work stands or it
+falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or
+power which it holds. This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest,
+nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated. His
+influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or
+extra-cultured humanity. The spirit of his work transferred to practice
+begets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, magnetic,
+tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple,
+healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he
+opposes that which weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a
+scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature,
+and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and
+affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic
+spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our
+artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature.
+The people look askance at men who are above them without being of them,
+who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with
+unlettered humanity. Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit,
+and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Sumner.
+
+Whitman might be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned. His
+work is launched at a farther remove from our arts, conventions, usages,
+civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into
+our lives, than that of any other man. Absolute candor, absolute pride,
+absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature. It
+is not conditioned by what we deem modest or immodest, high or low, male
+or female. It is not conditioned by our notions of good and evil, by our
+notions of the refined and the select, by what we call good taste and bad
+taste. It is the voice of absolute man, sweeping away the artificial,
+throwing himself boldly, joyously, upon unconditioned nature. We are all
+engaged in upholding the correct and the conventional, and drawing the
+line sharply between good and evil, the high and the low, and it is well
+that we should; but here is a man who aims to take absolute ground, and to
+look at the world as God himself might look at it, without partiality or
+discriminating,--it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection
+in the universe and can be none:--
+
+  "Open mouth of my Soul uttering gladness,
+  Eyes of my Soul seeing perfection,
+  Natural life of me, faithfully praising things,
+  Corroborating forever the triumph of things."
+
+He does not take sides against evil, in the usual way, he does not take
+sides with the good except as nature herself does. He celebrates the All.
+
+Can we accept the world as science reveals it to us, as all significant,
+as all in ceaseless transmutation, as every atom aspiring to be man, an
+endless unfolding of primal germs, without beginning, without end, without
+failure or imperfection, the golden age ahead of us, not behind us?
+
+
+VIII
+
+Because of Whitman's glorification of pride, egoism, brawn, self-reliance,
+it is charged that the noble, the cultured, the self-denying, have no
+place in his system. What place have they in the antique bards?--in Homer,
+in Job, in Isaiah, in Dante? They have the same place in Whitman, yet it
+is to be kept in mind that Whitman does not stand for the specially social
+virtues, nor for culture, nor for the refinements which it induces, nor
+for art, nor for any conventionality. There are flowers of human life
+which we are not to look for in Walt Whitman. The note of fine manners,
+chivalrous conduct, which we get in Emerson; the sweetness and light
+gospel of Arnold; the gospel of hero-worship of Carlyle; the gracious
+scholarship of our New England poets, etc.,--we do not get in Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him at war with these things, but he is
+concerned with more primal and elemental questions. He strikes under and
+beyond all these things.
+
+What are the questions or purposes, then, in which his work has root?
+Simply put, to lead the way to larger, saner, more normal, more robust
+types of men and women on this continent; to prefigure and help develop
+the new democratic man,--to project him into literature on a scale and
+with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep
+hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and
+influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and
+for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,--the air,
+the water, the soil, the sunshine,--and the more we pervert or shut out
+these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we
+pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the
+religious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny and belittle our bodies,
+the further we are from the spirit of Walt Whitman, and from the spirit of
+the All.
+
+With all Whitman's glorification of pride, self-esteem, self-reliance,
+etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,--the
+free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential
+nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you
+possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life
+and conditions of men, charity as broad as the sunlight, standing up for
+those whom others are down upon, claiming nothing for self which others
+may not have upon the same terms,--of such nobility and fine manners, I
+say, you shall find an abundance in the life and works of Walt Whitman.
+
+The spirit of a man's work is everything; the letter, little or nothing.
+Though Whitman boasts of his affiliation with the common and near at hand,
+yet he is always saved from the vulgar, the mean, the humdrum, by the
+breadth of his charity and sympathy and his tremendous ideality.
+
+Of worldliness, materialism, commercialism, he has not a trace; his only
+values are spiritual and ideal; his only standards are the essential and
+the enduring. What Matthew Arnold called the Anglo-Saxon contagion, the
+bourgeois spirit, the worldly and sordid ideal, is entirely corrected in
+Whitman by the ascendant of the ethic and the universal. His democracy
+ends in universal brotherhood, his patriotism in the solidarity of
+nations, his glorification of the material in the final triumph of the
+spiritual, his egoism issues at last in complete otherism.
+
+A race that can produce a man of his fibre, his continental type, is yet
+at its best estate. Did one begin to see evil omen in this perpetual
+whittling away and sharpening and lightening of the American type,--grace
+without power, clearness without mass, intellect without character,--then
+take comfort from the volume and the rankness of Walt Whitman. Did one
+begin to fear that the decay of maternity and paternity in our older
+communities and the falling off in the native population presaged the
+drying up of the race in its very sources? Then welcome to the rank
+sexuality and to the athletic fatherhood and motherhood celebrated by
+Whitman. Did our skepticism, our headiness, our worldliness, threaten to
+eat us up like a cancer? did our hardness, our irreligiousness, and our
+passion for the genteel point to a fugitive, superficial race? was our
+literature threatened with the artistic degeneration,--running all to art
+and not at all to power? were our communities invaded by a dry rot of
+culture? were we fast becoming a delicate, indoor, genteel race? were our
+women sinking deeper and deeper into the "incredible sloughs of fashion
+and all kinds of dyspeptic depletion,"--the antidote for all these ills is
+in Walt Whitman. In him nature shows great fullness and fertility, and an
+immense friendliness. He supplements and corrects most of the special
+deficiencies and weaknesses toward which the American type seems to tend.
+He brings us back to nature again. The perpetuity of the race is with the
+common people. The race is constantly crying out at the top, in our times
+at least; culture and refinement beget fewer and fewer and poorer and
+poorer children. Where struggle ceases, that family or race is doomed.
+
+  "Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that
+        from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
+        something to make a greater struggle necessary."
+
+
+In more primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept
+in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest.
+War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and
+everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, power, longevity,
+manliness. The scholar poets are occupied with that which makes for
+culture, taste, refinement, ease, art.
+
+"Leaves of Grass," taken as a whole, aims to exhibit a modern, democratic,
+archetypal man, here in America, confronting and subduing our enormous
+materialism to his own purposes, putting it off and on as a garment;
+identifying himself with all forms of life and conditions of men; trying
+himself by cosmic laws and processes, exulting in the life of his body and
+the delights of his senses; and seeking to clinch, to develop, and to
+realize himself through the shows and events of the visible world. The
+poet seeks to interpret life from the central point of absolute abysmal
+man.
+
+The wild and the savage in nature with which Whitman perpetually
+identifies himself, and the hirsute, sun-tanned, and aboriginal in
+humanity, have misled many readers into looking upon him as expressive of
+these things only. Mr. Stedman thinks him guilty of a certain narrowness
+in preferring, or seeming to prefer, the laboring man to the gentleman.
+But the poet uses these elements only for checks and balances, and to keep
+our attention, in the midst of a highly refined and civilized age, fixed
+upon the fact that here are the final sources of our health, our power,
+our longevity. The need of the pre-scientific age was knowledge and
+refinement; the need of our age is health and sanity, cool heads and good
+digestion. And to this end the bitter and drastic remedies from the shore
+and the mountains are for us.
+
+
+IX
+
+The gospel of the average man, Matthew Arnold thought, was inimical to the
+ideal of a rare and high excellence. But, in holding up the average man,
+Whitman was only holding up the broad, universal human qualities, and
+showing that excellence may go with them also. As a matter of fact, are we
+not astonished almost daily by the superb qualities shown by the average
+man, the heroism shown by firemen, engineers, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors? Do we not know that true greatness, true nobility and strength of
+soul, may go and do go with commonplace, every-day humanity? Whitman would
+lift the average man to a higher average, and still to a higher, without
+at all weakening the qualities which he shares with universal humanity as
+it exists over and under all special advantages and social refinements.
+He says that one of the convictions that underlie his "Leaves" is the
+conviction that the "crowning growth of the United States is to be
+spiritual and heroic,"--a prophecy which in our times, I confess, does not
+seem very near fulfillment.
+
+He does not look longingly and anxiously toward the genteel social gods,
+but quite the contrary. In the library and parlor, he confesses he is as a
+gawk or one dumb. The great middle-class ideal, which is mainly the ideal
+of our own people, Whitman flouts and affronts. There are things to him of
+higher import than to have wealth and be respectable and in the mode.
+
+We might charge him with narrowness and partiality and with seeing only
+half truths, as Mr. Stedman has done, did he simply rest with the native
+as opposed to the cultivated, with brawn as opposed to brains. What he
+does do, what the upshot of his teaching shows, is that he identifies
+himself with the masses, with those universal human currents out of which
+alone a national spirit arises, as opposed to isolated schools and
+coteries and a privileged few. Whitman decries culture only so far as it
+cuts a man off from his fellows, clips away or effaces the sweet, native,
+healthy parts of him, and begets a bloodless, superstitious, infidelistic
+class. "The best culture," he says, "will always be that of the manly and
+courageous instincts and loving perceptions, and of self-respect." For
+the most part, our schooling is like our milling, which takes the bone
+and nerve building elements out of our bread. The bread of life demands
+the coarse as well as the fine, and this is what Whitman stands for.
+
+In his spirit and affiliation with the great mass of the people, with the
+commoner, sturdier, human traits, Whitman is more of the type of Angelo,
+or Rembrandt, or the antique bards, than he is like modern singers. He was
+not a product of the schools, but of the race.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES
+
+
+I
+
+It has been said, and justly I think, that in Whitman we see the first
+appearance in literature of the genuinely democratic spirit on anything
+like an ample scale. Plenty of men of democratic tendencies and
+affiliations have appeared, but none that have carried the temper and
+quality of the people, the masses, into the same regions, or blended the
+same humanity and commonness with the same commanding personality and
+spirituality. In recent English poetry the names of Burns and Wordsworth
+occur to mind, but neither of these men had anything like Whitman's
+breadth of relation to the mass of mankind, or expressed anything like his
+sweeping cosmic emotion. Wordsworth's muse was clad in homespun, but in no
+strict sense was his genius democratic--using the word to express, not a
+political creed, but the genius of modern civilization. He made much of
+the common man, common life, common things, but always does the poet stand
+apart, the recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, loving and contemplating
+these things for purposes of his art. Only through intellectual sympathy
+is he a part of what he surveys. In Whitman the common or average man has
+grown haughty, almost aristocratic. He coolly confronts the old types, the
+man of caste, culture, privileges, royalties, and relegates him to the
+past. He readjusts the standards, and estimates everything from the human
+and democratic point of view. In his scheme, the old traditions--the
+aristocratic, the scholastic, the ecclesiastical, the military, the social
+traditions--play no part. He dared to look at life, past and present, from
+the American and scientific standpoint. He turns to the old types a pride
+and complacency equal to their own.
+
+Indeed, we see in the character which Whitman has exploited and in the
+interest of which his poems are written, the democratic type fully
+realized,--pride and self-reliance equal to the greatest, and these
+matched with a love, a compassion, a spirit of fraternity and equality,
+that are entirely foreign to the old order of things.
+
+
+II
+
+At first sight Whitman does not seem vitally related to his own country
+and people; he seems an anomaly, an exception, or like one of those
+mammoth sports that sometimes appear in the vegetable world. The Whitman
+ideal is not, and has never been, the conscious ideal of the mass of our
+people. We have aspired more to the ideal of the traditional fine
+gentleman as he has figured in British letters. There seems to have been
+no hint or prophecy of such a man as Whitman in our New England
+literature, unless it be in Emerson, and here it is in the region of the
+abstract and not of the concrete. Emerson's prayer was for the absolutely
+self-reliant man, but when Whitman refused to follow his advice with
+regard to certain passages in the "Leaves," the sage withheld further
+approval of the work.
+
+We must look for the origins of Whitman, I think, in the deep
+world-currents that have been shaping the destinies of the race for the
+past hundred years or more; in the universal loosening, freeing, and
+removing obstructions; in the emancipation of the people, and their coming
+forward and taking possession of the world in their own right; in the
+triumph of democracy and of science; the downfall of kingcraft and
+priestcraft; the growth of individualism and non-conformity; the
+increasing disgust of the soul of man with forms and ceremonies; the
+sentiment of realism and positivism, the religious hunger that flees the
+churches; the growing conviction that life, that nature, are not failures,
+that the universe is good, that man is clean and divine inside and out,
+that God is immanent in nature,--all these things and more lie back of
+Whitman, and hold a causal relation to him.
+
+
+III
+
+Of course the essential elements of all first-class artistic and literary
+productions are always the same, just as nature, just as man, are
+essentially the same everywhere. Yet the literature of every people has a
+stamp of its own, starts from and implies antecedents and environments
+peculiar to itself.
+
+Just as ripe, mellow, storied, ivy-towered, velvet-turfed England lies
+back of Tennyson, and is vocal through him; just as canny, covenanting,
+conscience-burdened, craggy, sharp-tongued Scotland lies back of Carlyle;
+just as thrifty, well-schooled, well-housed, prudent, and moral New
+England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them,--so
+America as a whole, our turbulent democracy, our self-glorification, our
+faith in the future, our huge mass movements, our continental spirit, our
+sprawling, sublime, and unkempt nature, lie back of Whitman and are
+implied by his work.
+
+He had not the shaping, manipulating gift to carve his American material
+into forms of ideal beauty, and did not claim to have. He did not value
+beauty as an abstraction.
+
+What Whitman did that is unprecedented was, to take up the whole country
+into himself, fuse it, imbue it with soul and poetic emotion, and recast
+it as a sort of colossal Walt Whitman. He has not so much treated American
+themes as he has identified himself with everything American, and made the
+whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross
+materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses
+with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them
+with something like the breath of universal nature. His special gift is
+his magnetic and unconquerable personality, his towering egoism united
+with such a fund of human sympathy. His power is centripetal, so to
+speak,--he draws everything into himself like a maelstrom; the centrifugal
+power of the great dramatic artists, the power to get out of and away from
+himself, he has not. It was not for Whitman to write the dramas and
+tragedies of democracy, as Shakespeare wrote those of feudalism, or as
+Tennyson sang in delectable verse the swan-song of an overripe
+civilization. It was for him to voice the democratic spirit, to show it
+full-grown, athletic, haughtily taking possession of the world and
+redistributing the prizes according to its own standards. It was for him
+to sow broadcast over the land the germs of larger, more sane, more robust
+types of men and women, indicating them in himself.
+
+In him the new spirit of democracy first completely knows itself, is proud
+of itself, has faith and joy in itself, is fearless, tolerant, religious,
+aggressive, triumphant, and bestows itself lavishly upon all sides. It is
+tentative, doubtful, hesitating no longer. It is at ease in the world, it
+takes possession, it fears no rival, it advances with confident step.
+
+No man was ever more truly fathered by what is formative and expansive in
+his country and times than was Whitman. Not by the literature of his
+country was he begotten, but by the spirit that lies back of all, and
+that begat America itself,--the America that Europe loves and fears, that
+she comes to this country to see, and looks expectantly, but for the most
+part vainly, in our books to find.
+
+It seems to me he is distinctly a continental type. His sense of space, of
+magnitude, his processional pages, his unloosedness, his wide horizons,
+his vanishing boundaries,--always something unconfined and unconfinable,
+always the deferring and undemonstrable. The bad as well as the good
+traits of his country and his people are doubtless implied by his work.
+
+If he does not finally escape from our unripe Americanism, if he does not
+rise through it all and clarify it and turn it to ideal uses, draw out the
+spiritual meanings, then avaunt! we want nothing of him.
+
+  "The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell.
+  The former I graft and increase upon myself,
+  The latter I translate into a new tongue."
+
+
+The vital and the formative the true poet always engrafts and increases
+upon himself, and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the
+accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against
+Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers
+of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when
+his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the
+first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the
+modern; we see them translated into character; we see them tried by
+universal standards; we see them vivified by a powerful imagination. We
+see America as an idea, and see its relation to other ideas. We get a new
+conception of the value of the near, the common, the familiar. New light
+is thrown upon the worth and significance of the common people, and it is
+not the light of an abstract idea, but the light of a concrete example. We
+see the democratic type on a scale it has never before assumed; it is on a
+par with any of the types that have ruled the world in the past, the
+military, the aristocratic, the regal. It is at home, it has taken
+possession, it can hold its own. Henceforth the world is going its way. If
+it is over-confident, over-self-assertive, too American, that is the
+surplusage of the poet, of whom we do not want a penny prudence and
+caution; make your prophecy bold enough and it fulfills itself. Whitman
+has betrayed no doubt or hesitation in his poetry. His assumptions and
+vaticinations are tremendous, but they are uttered with an authority and
+an assurance that convince like natural law.
+
+
+IV
+
+I think he gives new meaning to democracy and America. In him we see a new
+type, rising out of new conditions, and fully able to justify itself and
+hold its own. It is the new man in the new world, no longer dependent upon
+or facing toward the old. I confess that to me America and the modern
+would not mean very much without Whitman. The final proof was wanting
+till they gave birth to a personality equal to the old types.
+
+Discussions and speculations about democracy do not carry very far, after
+all; to preach equality is not much. But when we see these things made
+into a man, and see the world through his eyes, and see new joy and new
+meaning in it, our doubts and perplexities are cleared up. Our universal
+balloting, and schooling, and material prosperity prove nothing: can your
+democracy produce a man who shall carry its spirit into loftiest regions,
+and prove as helpful and masterful under the new conditions as the by-gone
+types were under the old?
+
+
+V
+
+I predict a great future for Whitman, because the world is so unmistakably
+going his way. The three or four great currents of the century--the
+democratic current, the scientific current, the humanitarian current, the
+new religious current, and what flows out of them--are underneath all
+Whitman has written. They shape all and make all. They do not appear in
+him as mere dicta, or intellectual propositions, but as impulses, will,
+character, flesh-and-blood reality. We get these things, not as sentiments
+or yet theories, but as a man. We see life and the world as they appear to
+the inevitable democrat, the inevitable lover, the inevitable believer in
+God and immortality, the inevitable acceptor of absolute science.
+
+We are all going his way. We are more and more impatient of formalities,
+ceremonies, and make-believe; we more and more crave the essential, the
+real. More and more we want to see the thing as in itself it is; more and
+more is science opening our eyes to see the divine, the illustrious, the
+universal in the common, the near at hand; more and more do we tire of
+words and crave things; deeper and deeper sinks the conviction that
+personal qualities alone tell,--that the man is all in all, that the
+brotherhood of the race is not a dream, that love covers all and atones
+for all.
+
+Everything in our modern life and culture that tends to broaden,
+liberalize, free; that tends to make hardy, self-reliant, virile; that
+tends to widen charity, deepen affection between man and man, to foster
+sanity and self-reliance; that tends to kindle our appreciation of the
+divinity of all things; that heightens our rational enjoyment of life;
+that inspires hope in the future and faith in the unseen,--are on
+Whitman's side. All these things prepare the way for him.
+
+On the other hand, the strain and strife and hoggishness of our
+civilization, our trading politics, our worship of conventions, our
+millionaire ideals, our high-pressure lives, our pruriency, our
+sordidness, our perversions of nature, our scoffing caricaturing
+tendencies, are against him. He antagonizes all these things.
+
+The more democratic we become, the more we are prepared for Whitman; the
+more tolerant, fraternal, sympathetic we become, the more we are ready
+for Whitman; the more we inure ourselves to the open air and to real
+things, the more we value and understand our own bodies, the more the
+woman becomes the mate and equal of the man, the more social equality
+prevails,--the sooner will come to Whitman fullness and fruition.
+
+
+VI
+
+Some of our own critics have been a good deal annoyed by the fact that
+many European scholars and experts have recognized Whitman as the only
+distinctive American poet thus far. It would seem as if our reputation for
+culture and good manners is at stake. We want Europe to see America in our
+literary poets like Lowell, or Longfellow, or Whittier. And Europe may
+well see much that is truly representative of America in these and in
+other New England poets. She may see our aspiration toward her own ideals
+of culture and refinement; she may see native and patriotic themes firing
+Lowell and Whittier; she may see a certain spirit and temper begotten by
+our natural environment reflected in Bryant, our delicate and gentle
+humanities and scholarly aptitudes shining in Longfellow. But in every
+case she sees a type she has long been familiar with. All the poets'
+thoughts, moods, points of view, effects, aims, methods, are what she has
+long known. These are not the poets of a new _world_, but of a new
+_England_. The new-world book implies more than a new talent, more than a
+fresh pair of eyes, a fresh and original mind like the poets named; such
+men are required to keep up the old line of succession in English
+authorship. What is implied is a new national and continental spirit,
+which must arise and voice the old eternal truths through a large, new,
+democratic personality,--a new man, and, beyond and above him, a new
+heaven and a new earth.
+
+Our band of New England poets have carried the New England spirit into
+poetry,--its sense of fitness, order, propriety, its shrewdness,
+inventiveness, aptness, and its aspiration for the pure and noble in life.
+They have finely exemplified the best Yankee traits; but in no instance
+were these traits merged in a personality large enough, bold enough, and
+copious and democratic enough to give them national and continental
+significance. It would be absurd to claim that the pulse-beat of a great
+people or a great era is to be felt in the work of any of these poets.
+
+Whitman is responded to in Europe, because he expresses a new type with
+adequate power,--not, as has been so often urged, simply because he is
+strange, and gives the jaded literary palate over there a new fillip. He
+meets the demand for something in American literature that should not face
+toward Europe, that should joyfully stand upon its own ground and yet
+fulfill the conditions of greatness. He fully satisfies the thirst for
+individualism amid these awakening peoples, and the thirst for nationalism
+also. He realizes the democratic ideal, no longer tentative or apologetic,
+but taking possession of the world as its own and reappraising the wares
+it finds there.
+
+
+VII
+
+The American spirit is a continental spirit; there is nothing insular or
+narrow about it. It is informal, nonchalant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive,
+patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of
+particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable,
+unostentatious, inclined to exaggerate, generous, unrefined,--never
+meddlesome, never hypercritical, never hoggish, never exclusive. Whitman
+shared the hopeful optimistic temperament of his countrymen, the faith and
+confidence begotten by a great, fertile, sunny land. He expresses the
+independence of the people,--their pride, their jealousy of superiors,
+their contempt of authority (not always beautiful). Our want of reverence
+and veneration are supplemented in him with world-wide sympathies and
+good-fellowship.
+
+Emerson is our divine man, the precious quintessence of the New England
+type, invaluable for his stimulating and ennobling strain; but his genius
+is too astral, too select, too remote, to incarnate and give voice to the
+national spirit. Clothe him with flesh and blood, make his daring
+affirmations real and vital in a human personality and imbued with the
+American spirit, and we are on the way to Whitman.
+
+Moreover, the strong, undisguised man-flavor of "Leaves of Grass," the
+throb and pressure in it of those things that make life rank and make it
+masterful, and that make for the virility and perpetuity of the race, are,
+if it must be confessed, more keenly relished abroad than in this country,
+so thoroughly are we yet under the spell of the merely refined and
+conventional. We fail to see that in letters, as in life, the great prizes
+are not to the polished, but to the virile and the strong.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
+speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
+made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
+enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
+the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
+personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
+over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
+them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
+his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
+of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
+mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
+himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
+those who live in the open air, even laying claim to the "rowdyish." He is
+proud of freckles, sun-tan, brawn, and holds up the powerful and
+unrefined.
+
+  "I am enamor'd of growing out-doors,
+  Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
+  Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes
+        and mauls, and the drivers of horses;
+  I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out."
+
+
+"Nothing endures," he says, "but personal qualities." "Produce great
+persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently
+bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union?
+but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout
+at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He
+is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He
+sees all and embraces and encloses all.
+
+Then we see united and harmonized in Whitman the two great paramount
+tendencies of our time and of the modern world,--the altruistic or
+humanitarian tendency and the individualistic tendency; or, democracy and
+individualism, pride and equality, or, rather, pride in equality. These
+two forces, as they appear in separate individuals, are often
+antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman
+they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and
+uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping
+fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one
+motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his
+fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him
+with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he claims for
+himself he demands in the same terms for all. He has set such an example
+of self-trust and self-assertion as has no parallel in our literature, at
+the same time that he has set an equal example in practical democracy and
+universal brotherhood.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman's democracy is the breath of his nostrils, the light of his eyes,
+the blood in his veins. The reader does not feel that here is some fine
+scholar, some fine poet singing the praises of democracy; he feels that
+here is a democrat, probably, as Thoreau surmised, the greatest the world
+has yet seen, turning the light of a great love, a great intellect, a
+great soul, upon America, upon contemporary life and events, and upon the
+universe, and reading new lessons, new meanings, therein. He is a great
+poet and prophet, speaking through the average man, speaking as one of the
+people, and interpreting life from the point of view of absolute
+democracy.
+
+True, the people in their average taste and perceptions are crude and
+flippant and superficial, and often the victims of mountebanks and fools;
+yet, as forming the body of our social and political organism, and the
+chief factor in the world-problem of to-day, they are the exponents of
+great forces and laws, and often, in emergencies, show the wisdom and
+unimpeachableness of Nature herself. Deep-hidden currents and forces in
+them are liable to come to the surface, and when the politicians get in
+their way, or miscalculate them, as so often happens, they are crushed.
+Whitman is a projection into literature of the cosmic sense and conscience
+of the people, and their participation in the forces that are shaping the
+world in our century. Much comes to a head in him. Much comes to joyous
+speech and song, that heretofore had only come to thought and speculation.
+A towering, audacious personality has appeared which is strictly the fruit
+of the democratic spirit, and which has voiced itself in an impassioned
+utterance touching the whole problem of national and individual life.
+
+
+X
+
+The Whitman literature is democratic, not in the sense that it caters to
+the taste of the masses or to the taste of the average man; for, as a
+matter of fact, the masses and the average man are likely to be the last
+to recognize its value. The common people, the average newspaper-reading
+citizens, are much more likely to be drawn by the artificial and the
+conventional. But it is democratic because it is filled with the spirit of
+absolute human equality and brotherhood, and gives out the atmosphere of
+the universal, primary, human traits. The social, artificial, accidental
+distinctions of wealth, culture, position, etc., have not influenced the
+poet in the slightest degree. Whitman finds his joy and his triumph, not
+in being better than other people or above them, but in being one with
+them, and sharing their sins as well as their virtues.
+
+  "As if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as
+        myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that
+        others possess the same."
+
+
+This is one step further than others have taken, and makes democracy
+complete in itself. Again, his work identifies itself with the democratic
+ideal in getting rid of the professional and arbitrary elements of poetry,
+and appealing to the reader entirely through its spirit and content. It is
+as democratic in this respect as the workman in the field, or the mechanic
+at his bench.
+
+The poems are bathed and flooded with the quality of the common people;
+with the commonness and nearness which they share with real things and
+with all open-air nature,--with hunters, travelers, soldiers, workers in
+all fields, and with rocks, trees, and woods. It is only in the spirit of
+these things that a man himself can have health, sweetness, and
+proportion; and only in their spirit that he can give an essentially sound
+judgment of a work of art, no matter what the subject of it may be.
+
+This spirit of the "commonest, cheapest, nearest" is the only spirit in
+which man's concrete life can be carried forward. We do not live and
+breathe and grow and multiply, we do not have health and sanity and
+wholeness and proportion, we do not subdue and improve and possess the
+earth, in the spirit of something exclusive, exceptional, faraway,
+aristocratic, but in the spirit of the common and universal. The only
+demand is that, in a work of art, the common or universal shall be
+vitalized with poetic thought and enthusiasm, or imbued with the ideal of
+a rare and high excellence.
+
+
+XI
+
+Our critics have been fond of taunting Whitman with the fact that the
+common people, the workers, of whom he makes so much, and to whom he
+perpetually appeals, do not read him, or show any liking for his poems at
+all.
+
+Whitman's appeal to the common people, to the democratic masses, is an
+appeal to the future; it is an appeal to the universal human conscience
+and intelligence, as they exist above and beneath all special advantages
+of birth and culture and stand related to the total system of things. It
+also calls attention to the fact that the spirit in which he writes, and
+in which he is to be read, is the spirit of open-air life and nature.
+
+  "No school or shutter'd room commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children, better than they,"
+
+because the simple, unforced, unrefined elements of human nature are those
+out of which the poems sprang and with which they are charged. Their
+spirit is closer akin to unlettered humanity than to the over-intellectual
+and sophisticated products of the schools.
+
+Of course "roughs and little children" can make nothing of "Leaves of
+Grass," but unless the trained reader has that fund of fresh, simple,
+wholesome nature, and the love for real things, which unlettered humanity
+possesses, he will make nothing of it either.
+
+
+XII
+
+It has been truly said that "the noblest seer is ever over-possessed."
+This has been the case with nearly all original, first-class men. Carlyle
+furnished a good illustration of its truth in our own time. He was
+over-possessed with his idea of the hero and hero-worship. And it may be
+that Whitman was over-possessed with the idea of democracy, America,
+nationality, and the need of a radically new departure in poetic
+literature. Yet none knew better than he that in the long run the
+conditions of life and of human happiness and progress remain about the
+same; that the same price must still be paid for the same things; that
+character alone counts; that the same problem "how to live" ever confronts
+us; and that democracy, America, nationality, are only way stations, and
+by no means the end of the route. The all-leveling tendency of democracy
+is certainly not in the interest of literature. The world is not saved by
+the average man, but by the man much above the average, the rare and
+extraordinary man,--by the "remnant," as Arnold called them.
+
+No one knew this better than Whitman, and he said that "one main
+genesis-motive" of his "Leaves" was the conviction that the crowning
+growth of the United States was to be spiritual and heroic. Only "superb
+persons" can finally justify him.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE
+
+
+I
+
+The stupendous disclosures of modern science, and what they mean when
+translated into the language of man's ethical and æsthetic nature, have
+not yet furnished to any considerable extent the inspiration of poems.
+That all things are alike divine, that this earth is a star in the
+heavens, that the celestial laws and processes are here underfoot, that
+size is only relative, that good and bad are only relative, that forces
+are convertible and interchangeable, that matter is indestructible, that
+death is the law of life, that man is of animal origin, that the sum of
+forces is constant, that the universe is a complexus of powers
+inconceivably subtle and vital, that motion is the law of all things,--in
+fact, that we have got rid of the notions of the absolute, the fixed, the
+arbitrary, and the notion of origins and of the dualism of the world,--to
+what extent will these and kindred ideas modify art and all æsthetic
+production? The idea of the divine right of kings and the divine authority
+of priests is gone; that, in some other time or some other place God was
+nearer man than now and here,--this idea is gone. Indeed, the whole of
+man's spiritual and religious belief which forms the background of
+literature has changed,--a change as great as if the sky were to change
+from blue to red or to orange. The light of day is different. But
+literature deals with life, and the essential conditions of life, you say,
+always remain the same. Yes, but the expression of their artistic values
+is forever changing. If we ask where is the modern imaginative work that
+is based upon these revelations of science, the work in which they are the
+blood and vital juices, I answer, "Leaves of Grass," and no other. The
+work is the outgrowth of science and modern ideas, just as truly as Dante
+is the outgrowth of mediæval ideas and superstitions; and the imagination,
+the creative spirit, is just as unhampered in Whitman as in Dante or in
+Shakespeare. The poet finds the universe just as plastic and ductile, just
+as obedient to his will, and just as ready to take the impress of his
+spirit, as did these supreme artists. Science has not hardened it at all.
+The poet opposes himself to it, and masters it and rises superior. He is
+not balked or oppressed for a moment. He knows from the start what science
+can bring him, what it can give, and what it can take away; he knows the
+universe is not orphaned; he finds more grounds than ever for a pæan of
+thanksgiving and praise. His conviction of the identity of soul and body,
+matter and spirit, does not shake his faith in immortality in the least.
+His faith arises, not from half views, but from whole views. In him the
+idea of the soul, of humanity, of identity, easily balanced the idea of
+the material universe. Man was more than a match for nature. It was all
+for him, and not for itself. His enormous egotism, or hold upon the
+central thought or instinct of human worth and import, was an anchor that
+never gave way. Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an
+iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world
+of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as
+immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and
+anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old
+bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the
+universe is directed to one man,--to you. His anthropomorphism is not a
+projection of himself into nature, but an absorption of nature in himself.
+The tables are turned. It is not alien or superhuman beings that he sees
+and hears in nature, but his own that he finds everywhere. All gods are
+merged in himself.
+
+Not the least fear, not the least doubt or dismay, in this book. Not one
+moment's hesitation or losing of the way. And it is not merely an
+intellectual triumph, but the triumph of soul and personality. The iron
+knots are not untied, they are melted. Indeed, the poet's contentment and
+triumph in view of the fullest recognition of all the sin and sorrow of
+the world, and of all that baffles and dwarfs, is not the least of the
+remarkable features of the book.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil
+under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and
+illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties
+perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and
+exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained
+more than we have lost. The world is anew created by science and
+democracy, and he pronounces it good with the joy and fervor of the old
+faith.
+
+He shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets of note in
+our time who have drawn inspiration from this source, or viewed the
+universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern
+poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious
+compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was
+stupendous; the other childish and empty. But Whitman and Tennyson were
+fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vision that
+matches the best science can do. Tennyson drew upon science more for his
+images and illustrations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and
+appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed
+Whitman's imagination and made him bold; its effects were moral and
+spiritual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellectual; it enlarged
+his vocabulary without strengthening his faith. Indeed, one would say,
+from certain passages in "In Memoriam," that it had distinctly weakened
+his faith. Let us note for a moment the different ways these two poets use
+science. In his poem to Fitzgerald, Tennyson draws upon the nebular
+hypothesis for an image:--
+
+  "A planet equal to the sun
+  Which cast it, that large infidel
+  Your Omar."
+
+In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
+"of an earth that is dead."
+
+  "The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of
+        space,
+  Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."
+
+In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:--
+
+  "The fires that arch this dusky dot--
+    Yon myriad-worlded way--
+  The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,
+    World-isles in lonely skies,
+  Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
+    Our brief humanities."
+
+
+As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
+not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
+anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
+makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
+the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:--
+
+  "I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains,
+        esculent roots,
+  And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
+  And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
+  And call anything close again, when I desire it.
+
+  "In vain the speeding or shyness,
+  In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,
+  In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
+  In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
+  In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
+  In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
+  In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
+  In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
+  In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
+  I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.
+  My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
+  On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,
+  All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.
+
+  "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
+  Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there,
+  I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
+  And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
+
+  "Long I was hugged close--long and long.
+  Immense have been the preparations for me,
+  Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,
+  Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
+  For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
+  They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
+
+  "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me,
+  My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
+  For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
+  The long, slow strata piled to rest it in,
+  Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
+  Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with
+        care.
+  All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
+  Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.
+
+  "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
+  And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of
+        the farther systems:
+  Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
+  Outward, outward, and forever outward:
+  My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels;
+  He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
+  And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
+
+  "There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage.
+  If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the
+        palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float,
+        it would not avail in the long run.
+  We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
+  And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther.
+  A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not
+        hazard the span or make it impatient.
+  They are but parts--anything is but a part,
+  See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+  Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
+
+In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is
+always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of
+the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the
+man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality
+has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does
+not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional
+realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man
+refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the
+presence of the cosmic laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all
+directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the
+"full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
+outside of itself.
+
+  "I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
+  And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO RELIGION
+
+
+Whitman, as I have elsewhere said, was swayed by two or three great
+passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He
+thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.
+
+  "The soul,
+  Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
+        water ebbs and flows."
+
+
+He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy
+manly or womanly development, without religion.
+
+  "I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these
+        States must be their Religion,
+  Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur."
+
+All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.
+
+  "Each is not for its own sake,
+  I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's
+        sake."
+
+All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business
+pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion.
+
+  "For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
+        life of the earth,
+  Any more than such are to Religion."
+
+
+Again he says:--
+
+  "My Comrade!
+  For you to share with me two greatnesses--And a third one, rising
+        inclusive and more resplendent,
+  The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion."
+
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates
+is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It was larger than any creed that has
+yet been formulated. It was the conviction of the man of science touched
+and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his
+life its chief elements were faith, hope, charity. Its object was to
+prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind
+what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."
+
+The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse.
+Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had
+resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated.
+The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of
+the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was
+through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The
+great mass of the human race was doomed to endless perdition. Now there is
+no trace of this religion in Whitman, and it does not seem to have left
+any shadow upon him. Ecclesiasticism is dead; he clears the ground for a
+new growth. To the priests he says: "Your day is done."
+
+He sings a new song; he tastes a new joy in life. The earth is as divine
+as heaven, and there is no god more sacred than yourself. It is as if the
+world had been anew created, and Adam had once more been placed in the
+garden,--the world, with all consequences of the fall, purged from him.
+
+Hence we have in Whitman the whole human attitude towards the universe,
+towards God, towards life and death, towards good and evil, completely
+changed. We have absolute faith and acceptance in place of the fear and
+repentance of the old creeds; we have death welcomed as joyously as life,
+we have political and social equality as motifs and impulses, and not
+merely as sentiments. He would show us the muse of poetry, as impartial,
+as sweeping in its vision, as modern, as real, as free from the morbid and
+make-believe, as the muse of science. He sees good in all, beauty in all.
+It is not the old piety, it is the new faith; it is not the old worship,
+it is the new acceptance; not the old, corroding religious pessimism, but
+the new scientific optimism.
+
+He does not deny, he affirms; he does not criticise, he celebrates; his is
+not a call to repentance, it is a call to triumph:--
+
+  "I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
+  None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,
+  None has begun to think how divine he himself is, or how certain the
+        future is."
+
+He accepted science absolutely, yet science was not an end in itself: it
+was not his dwelling; he but entered by it to an area of his dwelling.
+
+The flower of science was religion. Without this religion, or something
+akin to it,--without some spiritual, emotional life that centred about an
+ideal,--Whitman urged that there could be no permanent national or
+individual development. In the past this ideal was found in the
+supernatural; for us and the future democratic ages, it must be found in
+the natural, in the now and the here.
+
+The aristocratic tradition not only largely shaped the literature of the
+past, it shaped the religion: man was a culprit, his life a rebellion; his
+proper attitude toward the unseen powers was that of a subject to his
+offended sovereign,--one of prostration and supplication. Heaven was a
+select circle reserved for the few,--the aristocracy of the pure and just.
+The religion of a democratic and scientific era, as voiced by Whitman and
+as exemplified in his life, is of quite another character,--not
+veneration, but joy and triumph; not fear, but love; not self-abasement,
+but self-exaltation; not sacrifice, but service: in fact, not religion at
+all in the old sense of the spiritual at war with the natural, the divine
+with the human, this world a vale of tears, and mundane things but filth
+and ashes, heaven for the good and hell for the bad; but in the new sense
+of the divinity of all things, of the equality of gods and men, of the
+brotherhood of the race, of the identity of the material and the
+spiritual, of the beneficence of death and the perfection of the universe.
+The poet turns his face to earth and not to heaven; he finds the
+miraculous, the spiritual, in the things about him, and gods and goddesses
+in the men and women he meets. He effaces the old distinctions; he
+establishes a sort of universal suffrage in spiritual matters; there are
+no select circles, no privileged persons. Is this the democracy of
+religion? liberty, fraternity, and equality carried out in the spiritual
+sphere? Death is the right hand of God, and evil plays a necessary part
+also. Nothing is discriminated against; there are no reprisals or
+postponements, no dualism or devilism. Everything is in its place; man's
+life and all the things of his life are well-considered.
+
+Carried out in practice, this democratic religion will not beget priests,
+or churches, or creeds, or rituals, but a life cheerful and full on all
+sides, helpful, loving, unworldly, tolerant, open-souled, temperate,
+fearless, free, and contemplating with pleasure, rather than alarm, "the
+exquisite transition of death."
+
+
+
+
+A FINAL WORD
+
+
+After all I have written about Whitman, I feel at times that the main
+thing I wanted to say about him I have not said, cannot say; the best
+about him cannot be told anyway. "My final merit I refuse you." His full
+significance in connection with the great modern movement; how he embodies
+it all and speaks out of it, and yet maintains his hold upon the
+primitive, the aboriginal; how he presupposes science and culture, yet
+draws his strength from that which antedates these things; how he glories
+in the present, and yet is sustained and justified by the past; how he is
+the poet of America and the modern, and yet translates these things into
+universal truths; how he is the poet of wickedness, while yet every fibre
+of him is sound and good; how his page is burdened with the material, the
+real, the contemporary, while yet his hold upon the ideal, the spiritual,
+never relaxes; how he is the poet of the body, while yet he is in even
+fuller measure the poet of the soul; in fact, how all contradictions are
+finally reconciled in him,--all these things and more, I say, I feel that
+I have not set forth with the clearness and emphasis the subject demanded.
+Other students of him will approach him on other lines, and will disclose
+meanings that I have missed.
+
+Writing about him, as Symonds said, is enormously difficult. At times I
+feel as if I was almost as much at sea with regard to him as when I first
+began to study him; not at sea with regard to his commanding genius and
+power, but with regard to any adequate statement and summary of him in
+current critical terms. One cannot define and classify him as he can a
+more highly specialized poetic genius. What is he like? He is like
+everything. He is like the soil which holds the germs of a thousand forms
+of life; he is like the grass, common, universal, perennial, formless; he
+is like your own heart, mystical yearning, rebellious, contradictory, but
+ever throbbing with life. He is fluid, generative, electric; he is full of
+the germs, potencies, and latencies of things; he provokes thought without
+satisfying it; he is formless without being void; he is both Darwinian and
+Dantesque. He is the great reconciler, he united and harmonized so many
+opposites in himself. As a man he united the masculine and feminine
+elements in a remarkable degree; he united the innocent vanity of the
+child with the self-reliance of a god. In his moral aspects, he united
+egoism and altruism, pride and charity, individualism and democracy,
+fierce patriotism and the cosmopolitan spirit; in his literary aspects he
+united mysticism and realism, the poet and prophet, the local and the
+universal; in his religious aspects he united faith and agnosticism, the
+glorification of the body and all objective things, with an unshakable
+trust in the reality of the invisible world.
+
+Rich in the elements of poetry, a London critic says, almost beyond any
+other poet of his time, and yet the conscious, elaborate, crystallic,
+poetic work which the critic demanded of him, carefully stopping short of,
+quite content to hold it all in solution, and give his reader an impulse
+rather than a specimen.
+
+I have accepted Whitman entire and without reservation. I could not do
+otherwise. It was clear enough to me that he was to be taken as a whole or
+not at all. We cannot cut and carve a man. The latest poet brings us
+poetic wares, curiously and beautifully carved and wrought specimens, some
+of which we accept and some of which we pass by. Whitman brings us no
+cunning handicraft of the muses: he brings us a gospel, he brings us a
+man, he brings us a new revelation of life; and either his work appeals to
+us as a whole, or it does not so appeal. He will not live in separate
+passages, or in a few brief poems, any more than Shakespeare or Homer or
+Dante, or the Bible, so lives.
+
+The chief thing about the average literary poet is his poetic gift, apart
+from any other consideration; we select from what he brings us as we
+select from a basket of fruit. The chief thing about Whitman is the
+personality which the poetic gift is engaged in exploiting; the excitement
+of our literary or artistic sense is always less than the excitement of
+our sense of life and of real things. We get in him a fixed point of view,
+a new vantage-ground of personality from which to survey life. It is less
+what he brings, and more what he is, than with other poets. To take him by
+fragments, picking out poetic tidbits here and there, rejecting all the
+rest, were like valuing a walk through the fields and woods only for the
+flowers culled here and there, or the bits of color in the grass or
+foliage. Is the air, the sunshine, the free spaces, the rocks, the soil,
+the trees, and the exhilaration of it all, nothing? There are flowers in
+Whitman, too, but they are amid the rocks or under the trees, and seem
+quite unpremeditated and by the way, and never the main concern. If our
+quest is for these alone, we shall surely be disappointed. "In order to
+appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose," says Joel Chandler Harris,
+"it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp
+in instant and express admiration the vast group of facts that make
+man,--that make liberty,--that make America. There is no poetry in the
+details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of
+the mighty forces behind them,--the inevitable, unaccountable,
+irresistible forward movement of man in the making of this republic."
+
+And again: "Those who approach Walt Whitman's poetry from the literary
+side are sure to be disappointed. Whatever else it is, it is not literary.
+Its art is its own, and the melody of it must be sought in other
+suggestions than those of metre.... Those who are merely literary will
+find little substance in the great drama of Democracy which is outlined
+by Walt Whitman in his writings,--it is no distinction to call them poems.
+But those who know nature at first hand--who know man, who see in this
+Republic something more than a political government--will find therein the
+thrill and glow of poetry and the essence of melody. Not the poetry that
+culture stands in expectation of, nor the melody that capers in verse and
+metre, but those rarer intimations and suggestions that are born in
+primeval solitudes, or come whirling from the vast funnel of the storm."
+How admirable! how true! No man has ever spoken more to the point upon
+Walt Whitman.
+
+The appearance of such a man as Whitman involves deep world-forces of race
+and time. He is rooted in the very basic structure of his age. After what
+I have already said, my reader will not be surprised when I tell him that
+I look upon Whitman as the one mountain thus far in our literary
+landscape. To me he changes the whole aspect, almost the very climate, of
+our literature. He adds the much-needed ruggedness, breadth, audacity,
+independence, and the elements of primal strength and health. We owe much
+to Emerson. But Emerson was much more a _made_ man than was Whitman,--much
+more the result of secondary forces, the college, the church, and of New
+England social and literary culture. With all his fervid humanity and
+deeply ingrained modernness, Whitman has the virtues of the primal and the
+savage. "Leaves of Grass" has not the charm, or the kind of charm, of the
+more highly wrought artistic works, but it has the incentive of nature and
+the charm of real things. We shall not go to it to be soothed and lulled.
+It will always remain among the difficult and heroic undertakings,
+demanding our best moments, our best strength, our morning push and power.
+Like voyaging or mountain-climbing, or facing any danger or hardship by
+land or sea, it fosters manly endeavor and the great virtues of sanity and
+self-reliance.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as
+presented in the original text.
+
+The following misprint has been corrected:
+  "differentation" corrected to "differentiation" (page 18)
+
+Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30342 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Whitman
+       A Study
+
+Author: John Burroughs
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2009 [EBook #30342]
+
+Language: English
+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITMAN ***
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+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
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+
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+
+
+  Books by John Burroughs.
+
+  WORKS. 14 vols., uniform, 16mo, gilt top, $17.10;
+  half calf, $34.10; half polished morocco, $37.45.
+
+    WAKE-ROBIN.
+
+    WINTER SUNSHINE.
+
+    LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY.
+
+    FRESH FIELDS.
+
+    INDOOR STUDIES.
+
+    BIRDS AND POETS, with Other Papers.
+
+    PEPACTON, and Other Sketches.
+
+    SIGNS AND SEASONS.
+
+    RIVERBY.
+
+    WHITMAN: A STUDY.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.25.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. A Series of Literary Essays.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.10, _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage extra.
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+  _net_. Postage 11 cents.
+
+  A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to
+  each season of the year, from the writings of John
+  Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON
+  JOHNSON. 12mo, $1.50.
+
+  WHITMAN: A Study. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+  _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50, _net_.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_. Postage, 11 cents.
+
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+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: WALT WHITMAN]
+
+
+
+
+  WHITMAN
+  _A STUDY_
+
+  BY
+  JOHN BURROUGHS
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1896,
+  BY JOHN BURROUGHS.
+
+  _All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+  PRELIMINARY                                    1
+
+  BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL                     23
+
+  HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS                     73
+
+  HIS SELF-RELIANCE                             85
+
+  HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE           101
+
+  HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS              169
+
+  HIS RELATION TO CULTURE                      205
+
+  HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES    229
+
+  HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE                      249
+
+  HIS RELATION TO RELIGION                     257
+
+  A FINAL WORD                                 263
+
+
+
+
+"_All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
+from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
+from elsewhere._"--TAINE.
+
+"_If you want to tell good Gothic, see if it has the sort of roughness and
+largeness and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness
+which seems always to be the sign manual of the broad vision and massy
+power of men who can see_ past _the work they are doing, and betray here
+and there something like disdain for it._"--RUSKIN.
+
+"_Formerly, during the period termed classic, when literature was governed
+by recognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the
+most perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the
+most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,--the Æneid,
+the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day something else is wanted. For us
+the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
+imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
+The greatest poet is not he who has done the best, it is he who suggests
+the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves
+you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your
+turn._"--SAINTE-BEUVE.
+
+
+
+
+WHITMAN
+
+
+PRELIMINARY
+
+
+I
+
+The writing of this preliminary chapter, and the final survey and revision
+of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild
+place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place
+Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,--an
+amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth
+of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site of
+an ancient lake, now a garden of unknown depth and fertility. Elemental
+ruggedness, savageness, and grandeur, combined with wonderful tenderness,
+modernness, and geniality. There rise the gray scarred cliffs, crowned
+here and there with a dead hemlock or pine, where, morning after morning,
+I have seen the bald-eagle perch, and here at their feet this level area
+of tender humus, with three perennial springs of delicious cold water
+flowing in its margin; a huge granite bowl filled with the elements and
+potencies of life. The scene has a strange fascination for me, and holds
+me here day after day. From the highest point of rocks I can overlook a
+long stretch of the river and of the farming country beyond; I can hear
+owls hoot, hawks scream, and roosters crow. Birds of the garden and
+orchard meet birds of the forest upon the shaggy cedar posts that uphold
+my porch. At dusk the call of the whippoorwill mingles with the chorus of
+the pickerel frogs, and in the morning I hear through the robins' cheerful
+burst the sombre plaint of the mourning-dove. When I tire of my
+manuscript, I walk in the woods, or climb the rocks, or help the men clear
+up the ground, piling and burning the stumps and rubbish. This scene and
+situation, so primitive and secluded, yet so touched with and adapted to
+civilization, responding to the moods of both sides of the life and
+imagination of a modern man, seems, I repeat, typical in many ways of my
+poet, and is a veritable Whitman land. Whitman does not to me suggest the
+wild and unkempt as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the
+elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my
+dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to
+him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and
+placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some
+of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and
+primitive aspects.
+
+His wildness is only the wildness of the great primary forces from which
+we draw our health and strength. Underneath all his unloosedness, or free
+launching forth of himself, is the sanity and repose of nature.
+
+
+II
+
+I first became acquainted with Whitman's poetry through the columns of the
+old "Saturday Press" when I was twenty or twenty-one years old (1858 or
+1859). The first things I remember to have read were "There was a child
+went forth," "This Compost," "As I ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Old
+Ireland," and maybe a few others. I was attracted by the new poet's work
+from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found
+in the current poetry. Meeting Bayard Taylor about this time, I spoke to
+him about Whitman. "Yes," he said, "there is something in him, but he is a
+man of colossal egotism."
+
+A few years later a friend sent me a copy of the Thayer & Eldridge edition
+of "Leaves of Grass" of 1860. It proved a fascinating but puzzling book to
+me. I grazed upon it like a colt upon a mountain, taking what tasted good
+to me, and avoiding what displeased me, but having little or no conception
+of the purport of the work as a whole. I found passages and whole poems
+here and there that I never tired of reading, and that gave a strange
+fillip to my moral and intellectual nature, but nearly as many passages
+and poems puzzled or repelled me. My absorption of Emerson had prepared me
+in a measure for Whitman's philosophy of life, but not for the ideals of
+character and conduct which he held up to me, nor for the standards in art
+to which the poet perpetually appealed. Whitman was Emerson translated
+from the abstract into the concrete. There was no privacy with Whitman; he
+never sat me down in a corner with a cozy, comfortable shut-in feeling,
+but he set me upon a hill or started me upon an endless journey.
+Wordsworth had been my poet of nature, of the sequestered and the idyllic;
+but I saw that here was a poet of a larger, more fundamental nature,
+indeed of the Cosmos itself. Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the
+earth and the orbs. This much soon appeared to me, but I was troubled by
+the poet's apparent "colossal egotism," by his attitude towards evil,
+declaring himself "to be the poet of wickedness also;" by his seeming
+attraction toward the turbulent and the disorderly; and, at times, by what
+the critics had called his cataloguing style of treatment.
+
+When I came to meet the poet himself, which was in the fall of 1863, I
+felt less concern about these features of his work; he was so sound and
+sweet and gentle and attractive as a man, and withal so wise and tolerant,
+that I soon came to feel the same confidence in the book that I at once
+placed in its author, even in the parts which I did not understand. I saw
+that the work and the man were one, and that the former must be good as
+the latter was good. There was something in the manner in which both the
+book and its author carried themselves under the sun, and in the way they
+confronted America and the present time, that convinced beyond the power
+of logic or criticism.
+
+The more I saw of Whitman, and the more I studied his "Leaves," the more
+significance I found in both, and the clearer it became to me that a new
+type of a man and a new departure in poetic literature were here
+foreshadowed. There was something forbidding, but there was something
+vital and grand back of it. I found to be true what the poet said of
+himself,--
+
+  "Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,
+  To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
+  For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them,"--
+
+I have persevered in my study of the poet, though balked many times, and
+the effect upon my own mental and spiritual nature has been great; no such
+"solid prizes" in the way of a broader outlook upon life and nature, and,
+I may say, upon art, has any poet of my time afforded me. There are
+passages or whole poems in the "Leaves" which I do not yet understand
+("Sleep-Chasings" is one of them), though the language is as clear as
+daylight; they are simply too subtle or elusive for me; but my confidence
+in the logical soundness of the book is so complete that I do not trouble
+myself at all about these things.
+
+
+III
+
+I would fain make these introductory remarks to my essay a sort of window
+through which the reader may get a fairly good view of what lies beyond.
+If he does not here get any glimpse or suggestion of what pleases him, or
+of what he is looking for, it will hardly be worth while for him to
+trouble himself further.
+
+A great many readers, perhaps three fourths of the readers of current
+poetry, and not a few of the writers thereof, cannot stand Whitman at all,
+or see any reason for his being. To such my essay, if it ever comes to
+their notice, will be a curiosity, may be an offense. But I trust it will
+meet with a different reception at the hands of the smaller but rapidly
+growing circle of those who are beginning to turn to Whitman as the most
+imposing and significant figure in our literary annals.
+
+The rapidly growing Whitman literature attests the increasing interest to
+which I refer. Indeed, it seems likely that by the end of the century the
+literature which will have grown up around the name of this man will
+surpass in bulk and value that which has grown up around the name of any
+other man of letters born within the century.
+
+When Mr. Stedman wrote his essay upon the poet early in the eighties, he
+referred to the mass of this literature. It has probably more than doubled
+in volume in the intervening years: since Whitman's death in the spring of
+'92, it has been added to by William Clark's book upon the poet, Professor
+Trigg's study of Browning and Whitman, and the work of that accomplished
+critic and scholar, so lately gone to his rest, John Addington Symonds.
+This last is undoubtedly the most notable contribution that has yet been
+made, or is likely very soon to be made, to the Whitman literature. Mr.
+Symonds declares that "Leaves of Grass," which he first read at the age of
+twenty-five, influenced him more than any other book has done, except the
+Bible,--more than Plato, more than Goethe.
+
+When we remember that the man who made this statement was eminently a man
+of books, deeply read in all literatures, his testimony may well offset
+that of a score of our home critics who find nothing worthy or helpful in
+Whitman's work. One positive witness in such a matter outweighs any number
+of negative ones.
+
+
+IV
+
+For making another addition to the growing Whitman literature, I have no
+apology to offer. I know well enough that "writing and talk" cannot
+"prove" a poet; that he must be his own proof or be forgotten; and my main
+purpose in writing about Whitman, as in writing about nature, is to tell
+readers what I have found there, with the hope of inducing them to look
+for themselves. At the same time, I may say that I think no modern poet so
+much needs to be surrounded by an atmosphere of comment and
+interpretation, through which readers may approach him, as does Whitman.
+His work sprang from a habit or attitude of mind quite foreign to that
+with which current literature makes us familiar,--so germinal is it, and
+so little is it beholden to the formal art we so assiduously cultivate.
+The poet says his work "connects lovingly with precedents," but it does
+not connect lovingly with any body of poetry of this century. "Leaves of
+Grass" is bound to be a shock to the timid and pampered taste of the
+majority of current readers. I would fain lessen this shock by interposing
+my own pages of comment between the book and the public. The critic can
+say so many things the poet cannot. He can explain and qualify and
+analyze, whereas the creative artist can only hint or project. The poet
+must hasten on, he must infold and bind together, he must be direct and
+synthetic in every act. Reflection and qualification are not for him, but
+action, emotion, volition, the procreant blending and surrender. He works
+as Nature does, and gives us reality in every line.
+
+Whitman says:--
+
+  "I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot
+        expound myself."
+
+
+The type of mind of Whitman's, which seldom or never emerges as a mere
+mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a
+personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself,
+because its operations are synthetic and not analytic, its mainspring is
+love and not mere knowledge. In his prose essay called "A Backward Glance
+o'er Travel'd Roads," appended to the final edition of his poems, Whitman
+has not so much sought to expound himself as to put his reader in
+possession of his point of view, and of the considerations that lie back
+of his work. This chapter might render much that I have written
+superfluous, were there not always a distinct gain in seeing an author
+through another medium, or in getting the equivalents of him in the
+thoughts and ideals of a kindred and sympathetic mind. But I have not
+consciously sought to expound Whitman, any more than in my other books I
+have sought to expound the birds or wild nature. I have written out some
+things that he means to me, and the pleasure and profit I have found in
+his pages.
+
+There is no end to what can be drawn out of him. It has been said and
+repeated that he was not a thinker, and yet I find more food for thought
+in him than in all other poets. It has been often said and repeated that
+he is not a poet, and yet the readers that respond to him the most fully
+appear to be those in whom the poetic temperament is paramount. I believe
+he supplies in fuller measure that pristine element, something akin to the
+unbreathed air of mountain and shore, which makes the arterial blood of
+poetry and literature, than any other modern writer.
+
+
+V
+
+We can make little of Whitman unless we allow him to be a law unto
+himself, and seek him through the clews which he himself brings. When we
+try him by current modes, current taste, and demand of him formal beauty,
+formal art, we are disappointed. But when we try him by what we may call
+the scientific standard, the standard of organic nature, and demand of him
+the vital and the characteristic,--demand of him that he have a law of his
+own, and fulfill that law in the poetic sphere,--the result is quite
+different.
+
+More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other
+poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies, rather than
+in what he portrays; and more than any other poet must he wait to be
+understood by the growth of the taste of himself. "I make the only growth
+by which I can be appreciated," he truly says.
+
+His words are like the manna that descended upon the Israelites, "in which
+were all manner of tastes; and every one found in it what his palate was
+chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the young
+men tasted bread; the old men honey; and the children oil." Many young
+men,--poets, artists, teachers, preachers,--have testified that they have
+found bread in Whitman, the veritable bread of life; others have found
+honey, sweet poetic morsels; and not a few report having found only gall.
+
+
+VI
+
+In considering an original work like "Leaves of Grass," the search is
+always for the grounds upon which it is to be justified and explained.
+These grounds in this work are not easy to find; they lie deeper than the
+grounds upon which the popular poets rest. Because they are not at once
+seen, many readers have denied that there are any such grounds. But to
+deny a basis of reality to a work with the history of "Leaves of Grass,"
+and a basis well grounded on æsthetic and artistic principles, is not to
+be thought of.
+
+The more the poet eludes us, the more we know he has his hiding-place
+somewhere. The more he denies our standards, the more we know he has
+standards of his own which we must discover; the more he flouts at our
+literary conventions, the more we must press him for his own principles
+and methods. How does he justify himself to himself? Could any sane man
+have written the Children of Adam poems who was not sustained by deepest
+moral and æsthetic convictions? It is the business of the critic to search
+for these principles and convictions, and not shirk the task by ridicule
+and denial.
+
+
+VII
+
+If there was never any change in taste, if it always ran in the same
+channels,--indeed, if it did not at times run in precisely opposite
+channels,--there would be little hope that Walt Whitman's poetry would
+ever find any considerable number of readers. But one of the laws that
+dominate the progress of literature, as Edmond Shérer says, is incessant
+change, not only in thought and ideas, but in taste and the
+starting-points of art. A radical and almost violent change in these
+respects is indicated by Whitman,--a change which is in unison with many
+things in modern life and morals, but which fairly crosses the prevailing
+taste in poetry and in art. No such dose of realism and individualism
+under the guise of poetry has been administered to the reading public in
+this century. No such break with literary traditions--no such audacious
+attempt to tally, in a printed page, the living concrete man, an actual
+human presence, instead of the conscious, made-up poet--is to be found in
+modern literary records.
+
+
+VIII
+
+The much that I have said in the following pages about Whitman's radical
+differences from other poets--his changed attitude towards the universe,
+his unwonted methods and aims, etc.,--might seem to place him upon a
+ground so unique and individual as to contradict my claims for his breadth
+and universality. The great poets stand upon common ground; they excel
+along familiar lines, they touch us, and touch us deeply, at many points.
+What always saves Whitman is his enormous endowment of what is "commonest,
+nearest, easiest,"--his atmosphere of the common day, the common life, and
+his fund of human sympathy and love. He is strange because he gives us the
+familiar in such a direct, unexpected manner. His "Leaves" are like some
+new fruit that we have never before tasted. It is the product of another
+clime, another hemisphere. The same old rains and dews, the same old sun
+and soil, nursed it, yet in so many ways how novel and strange! We
+certainly have to serve a certain apprenticeship to this poet, familiarize
+ourselves with his point of view and with his democratic spirit, before we
+can make much of him. The spirit in which we come to him from the other
+poets--the poets of art and culture--is for the most part unfriendly to
+him. There is something rude, strange, and unpoetic about him at first
+sight that is sure to give most readers of poetry a shock. I think one
+might come to him from the Greek poets, or the old Hebrew or Oriental
+bards, with less shock than from our modern delicate and refined singers;
+because the old poets were more simple and elemental, and aimed less at
+the distilled dainties of poetry, than the modern. They were full of
+action, too, and volition,--of that which begets and sustains life.
+Whitman's poetry is almost entirely the expression of will and
+personality, and runs very little to intellectual subtleties and
+refinements. It fulfills itself in our wills and character, rather than in
+our taste.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country's
+poets, and among English poets generally,--a cropping out again, after so
+many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain. Had he dropped upon us
+from some other sphere, he could hardly have been a greater surprise and
+puzzle to the average reader or critic. Into a literature that was timid,
+imitative, conventional, he fell like leviathan into a duck-pond, and the
+commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All
+the reigning poets in this country except Emerson denied him, and many of
+our minor poets still keep up a hostile sissing and cackling. He will
+probably always be more or less a stumbling-block to the minor poet,
+because of his indifference to the things which to the minor poet are all
+in all. He was a poet without what is called artistic form, and without
+technique, as that word is commonly understood. His method was analogous
+to the dynamic method of organic nature, rather than to the mechanical or
+constructive method of the popular poets.
+
+
+X
+
+Of course the first thing that strikes the reader in "Leaves of Grass" is
+its seeming oddity and strangeness. If a man were to come into a dress
+reception in shirt sleeves and with his hat on, the feature would strike
+us at once, and would be magnified in our eyes; we should quite forget
+that he was a man, and in essentials differed but little from the rest of
+us, after all. The exterior habiliments on such occasions count for nearly
+everything; and in the popular poetry rhyme, measure, and the language and
+manners of the poets are much more than anything else. If Whitman did not
+do anything so outré as to come into a dress reception with his coat off
+and his hat on, he did come into the circle of the poets without the usual
+poetic habiliments. He was not dressed up at all, and he was not at all
+abashed or apologetic. His air was confident and self-satisfied, if it did
+not at times suggest the insolent and aggressive. It was the dress circle
+that was on trial, and not Walt Whitman.
+
+We could forgive a man in real life for such an audacious proceeding only
+on the ground of his being something extraordinary as a person, with an
+extraordinary message to convey; and we can pardon the poet only on
+precisely like grounds. He must make us forget his unwonted garb by his
+unique and lovable personality, and the power and wisdom of his utterance.
+If he cannot do this we shall soon tire of him.
+
+That Whitman was a personality the like of which the world has not often
+seen, and that his message to his country and to his race was of prime
+importance, are conclusions at which more and more thinking persons are
+surely arriving.
+
+His want of art, of which we have heard so much, is, it seems to me, just
+this want of the usual trappings and dress uniform of the poets. In the
+essentials of art, the creative imagination, the plastic and quickening
+spirit, the power of identification with the thing contemplated, and the
+absolute use of words, he has few rivals.
+
+
+XI
+
+I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
+Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
+colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
+such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
+is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
+appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
+violently for him or violently against, and it will require the
+perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
+significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
+show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.
+
+"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
+has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
+this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
+interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
+up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
+and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
+vanity."
+
+To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
+one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
+not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
+follows, I shall be more than content.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the world of literature, as in the world of physical forces, things
+adjust themselves after a while, and no impetus can be given to any man's
+name or fame that will finally carry it beyond the limit of his real
+worth. However "one-sided" my enthusiasm for Whitman may be, or that of
+any of his friends may be, there is no danger but that in time he will
+find exactly his proper place and level. My opinion, or any man's opinion,
+of the works of another, is like a wind that blows for a moment across
+the water, heaping it up a little on the shore or else beating it down,
+but not in any way permanently affecting its proper level.
+
+The adverse winds that have blown over Whitman's work have been many and
+persistent, and yet the tide has surely risen, his fame has slowly
+increased.
+
+It will soon be forty years since he issued the first thin quarto edition
+of "Leaves of Grass," and, though the opposition to him has been the most
+fierce and determined ever recorded in our literary history, often
+degenerating into persecution and willful misrepresentation, yet his fame
+has steadily grown both at home and abroad. The impression he early made
+upon such men as Emerson, Thoreau, William O'Connor, Mr. Stedman, Colonel
+Ingersoll, and others in this country, and upon Professors Dowden and
+Clifford, upon Symonds, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti, Lord Lytton, Mrs.
+Gilchrist, George Eliot, in England, has been followed by an equally deep
+or deeper impression upon many of the younger and bolder spirits of both
+hemispheres. In fact Whitman saw his battle essentially won in his own
+lifetime, though his complete triumph is of course a matter of the distant
+future.
+
+
+XIII
+
+But let me give without further delay a fuller hint of the attitude these
+pages assume and hold towards the subject they discuss.
+
+There are always, or nearly always, a few men born to each generation who
+embody the best thought and culture of that generation, and express it in
+approved literary forms. From Petrarch down to Lowell, the lives and works
+of these men fill the literary annals; they uphold the literary and
+scholarly traditions; they are the true men of letters; they are justly
+honored and beloved in their day and land. We in this country have
+recently, in the death of Dr. Holmes, mourned the loss of the last of the
+New England band of such men. We are all indebted to them for solace, and
+for moral and intellectual stimulus.
+
+Then, much more rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like
+an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who
+bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are
+not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times
+for the most part decry and disown,--the primal, original, elemental men.
+It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the
+minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He
+is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets,--nearer the
+founders and discoverers, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic,
+patriarchal men who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with
+the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the
+seer, the prophet. The specialization and differentiation of our latter
+ages of science and culture is less marked in him than in other poets.
+Poetry, philosophy, religion, are all inseparably blended in his pages. He
+is in many ways a reversion to an earlier type. Dr. Brinton has remarked
+that his attitude toward the principle of sex and his use of sexual
+imagery in his poems, are the same as in the more primitive religions.
+Whitman was not a poet by elaboration, but by suggestion; not an artist by
+formal presentation, but by spirit and conception; not a philosopher by
+system and afterthought, but by vision and temper.
+
+In his "Leaves," we again hear the note of destiny,--again see the
+universal laws and forces exemplified in the human personality, and turned
+upon life with love and triumph.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The world always has trouble with its primary men, or with the men who
+have any primary gifts, like Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Tolstoi,
+Ibsen. The idols of an age are nearly always secondary men: they break no
+new ground; they make no extraordinary demands; our tastes and wants are
+already adjusted to their type; we understand and approve of them at once.
+The primary men disturb us; they are a summons and a challenge; they break
+up the old order; they open up new territory which we are to subdue and
+occupy; the next age and the next make more of them. In my opinion, the
+next age and the next will make more of Whitman, and the next still more,
+because he is in the great world-current, in the line of the evolutionary
+movement of our time. Is it at all probable that Tennyson can ever be to
+any other age what he has been to this? Tennyson marks an expiring age,
+the sunset of the feudal world. He did not share the spirit to which the
+future belongs. There was not one drop of democratic blood in his veins.
+To him, the people were an hundred-headed beast.
+
+
+XV
+
+If my essay seems like one continual strain to attain the unattainable, to
+compass and define Whitman, who will not be compassed and defined, I can
+only say that I regret it, but could not well help it. Talking about
+Whitman, Symonds said, was like talking about the universe, and it is so.
+There is somewhat incommensurable in his works. One may not hope to speak
+the final word about him, to sum him up in a sentence. He is so palpable,
+so real, so near at hand, that the critic or expounder of him promises
+himself an easy victory; but before one can close with him he is gone. He
+is, after all, as subtle and baffling as air or light.
+
+                    ... "I will certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you."
+
+
+It is probably this characteristic which makes Whitman an irrepressible
+figure in literature; he will not down for friend or foe. He escapes from
+all classification, and is larger than any definition of him that has yet
+been given. How many times has he been exploded by British and American
+critics; how many times has he been labeled and put upon the shelf, only
+to reappear again as vigorous and untranslatable as ever!
+
+
+XVI
+
+So far as Whitman stands merely for the spirit of revolt, or of reaction
+against current modes in life and literature, I have little interest in
+him. As the "apostle of the rough, the uncouth," to use Mr. Howells's
+words, the world would long ago have tired of him. The irruption into
+letters of the wild and lawless, or of the strained and eccentric, can
+amuse and interest us only for a moment. It is because these are only
+momentary phases of him, as it were, and because underneath all he
+embraces the whole of life and ministers to it, that his fame and
+influence are still growing in the world. One hesitates even to call
+Whitman the poet of "democracy," or of "personality," or of "the modern,"
+because such terms only half define him. He quickly escapes into that
+large and universal air which all great art breathes. We cannot sum him up
+in a phrase. He flows out on all sides, and his sympathies embrace all
+types and conditions of men. He is a great democrat, but, first and last
+and over all, he is a great man, a great nature, and deep world-currents
+course through him. He is distinctively an American poet, but his
+Americanism is only the door through which he enters upon the universal.
+
+
+XVII
+
+Call his work poetry or prose, or what you will: that it is an inspired
+utterance of some sort, any competent person ought to be able to see. And
+what else do we finally demand of any work than that it be inspired? How
+all questions of form and art, and all other questions, sink into
+insignificance beside that! The exaltation of mind and spirit shown in the
+main body of Whitman's work, the genuine, prophetic fervor, the
+intensification and amplification of the simple ego, and the resultant
+raising of all human values, seem to me as plain as daylight.
+
+Whitman is to be classed among the great names by the breadth and
+all-inclusiveness of his theme and by his irrepressible personality. I
+think it highly probable that future scholars and critics will find his
+work fully as significant and era-marking as that of any of the few
+supreme names of the past. It is the culmination of an age of
+individualism, and, as opposites meet, it is also the best lesson in
+nationalism and universal charity that this century has seen.
+
+
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL
+
+
+I
+
+Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 30, 1819, and died
+at Camden, N. J., March 26, 1892. Though born in the country, most of his
+life was passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New
+Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is
+buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,--free, unhampered,
+unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of
+money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole,
+joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter
+through the world,--no hurry, no fever, no strife; hence no bitterness, no
+depletion, no wasted energies. A farm boy, then a school-teacher, then a
+printer, editor, writer, traveler, mechanic, nurse in the army hospitals,
+and lastly government clerk; large and picturesque of figure, slow of
+movement; tolerant, passive, receptive, and democratic,--of the people; in
+all his tastes and attractions, always aiming to walk abreast with the
+great laws and forces, and to live thoroughly in the free, nonchalant
+spirit of his own day and land. His strain was mingled Dutch and English,
+with a decided Quaker tinge, which came from his mother's side, and which
+had a marked influence upon his work.
+
+The spirit that led him to devote his time and substance to the sick and
+wounded soldiers during the war may be seen in that earlier incident in
+his life when he drove a Broadway stage all one winter, that a disabled
+driver might lie by without starving his family. It is from this episode
+that the tradition of his having been a New York stage-driver comes. He
+seems always to have had a special liking for this class of workmen. One
+of the house surgeons of the old New York Hospital relates that in the
+latter part of the fifties Whitman was a frequent visitor to that
+institution, looking after and ministering to disabled stage-drivers.
+"These drivers," says the doctor, "like those of the omnibuses in London,
+were a set of men by themselves. A good deal of strength, intelligence,
+and skillful management of horses was required of a Broadway stage-driver.
+He seems to have been decidedly a higher order of man than the driver of
+the present horse-cars. He usually had his primary education in the
+country, and graduated as a thorough expert in managing a very difficult
+machine, in an exceptionally busy thoroughfare.
+
+"It was this kind of a man that so attracted Walt Whitman that he was
+constantly to be seen perched on the box alongside one of them going up
+and down Broadway. I often watched the poet and driver, as probably did
+many another New Yorker in those days.
+
+"I do not wonder as much now as I did in 1860 that a man like Walt Whitman
+became interested in these drivers. He was not interested in the news of
+every-day life--the murders and accidents and political convulsions--but
+he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not
+had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now
+that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then
+been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote
+them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said
+much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had satisfied
+himself of the nature of the injury and of the prospect of recovery.
+
+"Whitman appeared to be about forty years of age at that time. He was
+always dressed in a blue flannel coat and vest, with gray and baggy
+trousers. He wore a woolen shirt, with a Byronic collar, low in the neck,
+without a cravat, as I remember, and a large felt hat. His hair was iron
+gray, and he had a full beard and mustache of the same color. His face and
+neck were bronzed by exposure to the sun and air. He was large, and gave
+the impression of being a vigorous man. He was scrupulously careful of his
+simple attire, and his hands were soft and hairy."
+
+During the early inception of "Leaves of Grass" he was a carpenter in
+Brooklyn, building and selling small frame-houses to working people. He
+frequently knocked off work to write his poems. In his life Whitman was
+never one of the restless, striving sort. In this respect he was not
+typical of his countrymen. All his urgency and strenuousness he reserved
+for his book. He seems always to have been a sort of visitor in life,
+noting, observing, absorbing, keeping aloof from all ties that would hold
+him, and making the most of the hour and the place in which he happened to
+be. He was in no sense a typical literary man. During his life in New York
+and Brooklyn, we see him moving entirely outside the fashionable circles,
+the learned circles, the literary circles, the money-getting circles. He
+belongs to no set or club. He is seen more with the laboring
+classes,--drivers, boatmen, mechanics, printers,--and I suspect may often
+be found with publicans and sinners. He is fond of the ferries and of the
+omnibuses. He is a frequenter of the theatre and of the Italian opera.
+Alboni makes a deep and lasting impression upon him. It is probably to her
+that he writes these lines:--
+
+  "Here take this gift,
+  I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, general,
+  One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress
+        and freedom of the race,
+  Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
+  But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to
+        any."
+
+
+Elsewhere he refers to Alboni by name and speaks of her as
+
+  "The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
+  Sister of loftiest gods."
+
+
+Some of his poems were written at the opera. The great singers evidently
+gave him clews and suggestions that were applicable to his own art.
+
+His study was out of doors. He wrote on the street, on the ferry, at the
+seaside, in the fields, at the opera,--always from living impulses arising
+at the moment, and always with his eye upon the fact. He says he has read
+his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, and tried them by the realities
+of life and nature about him. Were they as real and alive as they?--this
+was the only question with him.
+
+At home in his father's family in Brooklyn we see him gentle, patient,
+conciliatory, much looked up to by all. Neighbors seek his advice. He is
+cool, deliberate, impartial. A marked trait is his indifference to money
+matters; his people are often troubled because he lets opportunities to
+make money pass by. When his "Leaves" appear, his family are puzzled, do
+not know what to make of it. His mother thinks that, if "Hiawatha" is
+poetry, may be Walt's book is, too. He never counsels with any one, and is
+utterly indifferent as to what people may say or think. He is not a
+stirring and punctual man, is always a little late; not an early riser,
+not prompt at dinner; always has ample time, and will not be hurried; the
+business gods do not receive his homage. He is gray at thirty, and is said
+to have had a look of age in youth, as he had a look of youth in age. He
+has few books, cares little for sport, never uses a gun; has no bad
+habits; has no entanglements with women, and apparently never contemplates
+marriage. It is said that during his earliest years of manhood he kept
+quite aloof from the "girls."
+
+At the age of nineteen he edited "The Long Islander," published at
+Huntington. A recent visitor to these early haunts of Whitman gathered
+some reminiscences of him at this date:--
+
+"Amid the deep revery of nature, on that mild October afternoon, we
+returned to the village of Huntington, there to meet the few, the very
+few, survivors who recall Walt's first appearance in the literary world as
+the editor of 'The Long Islander,' nigh sixty years ago (1838). Two of
+these forefathers of the hamlet clearly remembered his powerful
+personality, brimful of life, reveling in strength, careless of time and
+the world, of money and of toil; a lover of books and of jokes; delighting
+to gather round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of
+evenings, and tell them stories and read them poetry, his own and others'.
+That of his own he called his 'Yawps,' a word which he afterwards made
+famous. Both remembered him as a delightful companion, generous to a
+fault, glorying in youth, negligent of his affairs, issuing 'The Long
+Islander' at random intervals,--once a week, once in two weeks, once in
+three,--until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him
+out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt himself was editor,
+publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all in one."
+
+
+II
+
+Few men were so deeply impressed by our Civil War as was Whitman. It
+aroused all his patriotism, all his sympathies, and, as a poet, tested his
+power to deal with great contemporary events and scenes. He was first
+drawn to the seat of war on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel
+George W. Whitman, 51st New York Volunteers, who was wounded by the
+fragment of a shell at Fredericksburg. This was in the fall of 1862. This
+brought him in contact with the sick and wounded soldiers, and henceforth,
+as long as the war lasts and longer, he devoted his time and substance to
+ministering to them. The first two or three years of his life in
+Washington he supported himself by correspondence with Northern
+newspapers, mainly with the "New York Times." These letters, as well as
+the weekly letters to his mother during the same period, form an intensely
+pathetic and interesting record.
+
+They contain such revelations of himself, and such pictures of the scenes
+he moved among, that I shall here quote freely from them. The following
+extract is from a letter written from Fredericksburg the third or fourth
+day after the battle of December, 1862:--
+
+"Spent a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the
+Rappahannock, immediately opposite Fredericksburg. It is used as a
+hospital since the battle, and seems to have received only the worst
+cases. Out of doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front
+of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.,
+about a load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each
+covered with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, toward the river,
+are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of
+barrel-staves, or broken board, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies
+were subsequently taken up and transported North to their friends.)
+
+"The house is quite crowded, everything impromptu, no system, all bad
+enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds
+pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and
+bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a
+Mississippian,--a captain,--hit badly in leg, I talked with some time; he
+asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward
+in Washington, with leg amputated, doing well.)
+
+"I went through the rooms, down stairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
+I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks
+home, mothers, etc. Also talked to three or four who seemed most
+susceptible to it, and needing it."
+
+"December 22 to 31.--Am among the regimental, brigade, and division
+hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and
+sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their
+blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No
+cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around
+from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I
+cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me
+convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and
+sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.
+
+"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
+camps, talking with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups
+around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get
+acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well
+used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best."
+
+After continuing in front through the winter, he returns to Washington,
+where the wounded and sick have mainly been concentrated. The Capital
+city, truly, is now one huge hospital; and there Whitman establishes
+himself, and thenceforward, for several years, has but one daily and
+nightly avocation.
+
+He alludes to writing letters by the bedside, and says:--
+
+"I do a good deal of this, of course, writing all kinds, including
+love-letters. Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written home to
+parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives, for one reason or another, for
+a long, long time. Some are poor writers, some cannot get paper and
+envelopes; many have an aversion to writing, because they dread to worry
+the folks at home,--the facts about them are so sad to tell. I always
+encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them."
+
+A glimpse of the scenes after Chancellorsville:--
+
+"As I write this, in May, 1863, the wounded have begun to arrive from
+Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first
+arrivals. The men in charge of them told me the bad cases were yet to
+come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
+see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here foot of Sixth
+Street at night. Two boat-loads came about half past seven last night. A
+little after eight, it rained a long and violent shower. The poor, pale,
+helpless soldiers had been debarked, and lay around on the wharf and
+neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any
+rate they were exposed to it.
+
+"The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the
+ground, out on side places, etc., the men are lying on blankets and old
+quilts, with the bloody rags bound round heads, arms, legs, etc. The
+attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also,--only a few
+hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
+common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
+there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by
+the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is
+called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on
+stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their
+sufferings,--a few groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a
+scream of pain, as they lift a man into the ambulance.
+
+"To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the
+next day more, and so on for many days.
+
+"The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
+generally supposed,--I should say nine tenths are native-born. Among the
+arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
+and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
+are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
+a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was, perhaps,
+worse than usual. Amputations are going on,--the attendants are dressing
+wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw,
+the other day, a gentleman--a visitor, apparently, from curiosity--in one
+of the wards stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were
+probing, etc. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and
+fallen on the floor."
+
+An episode,--the death of a New York soldier:--
+
+"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
+have been with a good deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
+company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound
+also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
+and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
+opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
+the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
+crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
+chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
+feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
+me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
+mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It is my chief
+reliance.' He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: 'Why,
+Oscar, don't you think you will get well?' He said: 'I may, but it is not
+probable.' He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
+discharged much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that
+he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
+affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned
+fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
+post-office, Cattaraugus County, New York. I had several such interviews
+with him. He died a few days after the one just described."
+
+And here, also, a characteristic scene in another of those long
+barracks:--
+
+"It is Sunday afternoon (middle of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and
+very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now
+lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
+8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
+wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well.
+Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on,
+sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
+yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so
+handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over
+to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
+Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan."
+
+In a letter to his mother in 1863 he says, in reference to his hospital
+services: "I have got in the way, after going lightly, as it were, all
+through the wards of a hospital, and trying to give a word of cheer, if
+nothing else, to every one, then confining my special attention to the few
+where the investment seems to tell best, and who want it most.... Mother,
+I have real pride in telling you that I have the consciousness of saving
+quite a number of lives by keeping the men from giving up, and being a
+good deal with them. The men say it is so, and the doctors say it is so;
+and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I say it myself.
+I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you."
+
+Again he says: "I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity; I go
+among the smallpox, etc., just the same. I feel to go without
+apprehension, and so I go: nobody else goes; but, as the darkey said there
+at Charleston when the boat ran on a flat and the rebel sharpshooters were
+peppering them, '_somebody_ must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"
+
+In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
+wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
+hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
+large and well,--indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
+the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
+not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."
+
+As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
+letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
+Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
+a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
+do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
+secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,--a
+regular Carolina or Virginia planter."
+
+The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
+deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
+used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have seen so many
+cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
+hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
+and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."
+
+Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
+health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
+trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
+but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:--
+
+"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
+Hospital),--about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
+probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
+stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
+Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
+'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
+knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
+composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
+o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
+blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I told you,
+last letter, I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young
+men I knew well, especially two of whom I had strong hopes of their
+getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are
+crowded here in Washington in immense numbers, and all those that came up
+from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such
+plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from
+Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the
+largest proportion of worst cases get little or no attention.
+
+"We receive them here with their wounds full of worms,--some all swelled
+and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new
+feature is, that many of the poor, afflicted young men are crazy; every
+ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and
+it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is
+most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it; but I
+suppose it is because I have not felt firstrate myself."
+
+Of the Ohio soldier above referred to, Whitman had written a few days
+before: "You remember I told you of him a year ago, when he was first
+brought in. I thought him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I
+had seen. A real giant in size, and always with a smile on his face. Oh,
+what a change! He has long been very irritable to every one but me, and
+his frame is all wasted away."
+
+To his brother Jeff he wrote: "Of the many I have seen die, or known of
+the past year, I have not seen or known of one who met death with any
+terror. Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of
+seventeen named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
+Artillery, Battery M. He was brought into one of the hospitals mortally
+wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it
+ought to be a relief to his folks, after all, if they could see how little
+he suffered. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed;
+it was very warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat.
+At length he opened his eyes quite wide and clear, and looked inquiringly
+around. I said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said
+quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking
+around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he
+lay so peaceful in his dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England
+country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
+fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."
+
+Another extract from a letter to his mother in April, 1864:--
+
+"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
+active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
+gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,--the flag, the
+tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
+never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
+pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,--it belonged to one
+of our cavalry regiments,--presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
+taken by the rebs in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
+little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
+four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
+rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
+again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
+it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
+he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
+I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
+a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."
+
+[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
+movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
+principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
+simple, and on a low key,--to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
+and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
+certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
+carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
+of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
+trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
+flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
+summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
+white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
+air and sunshine.
+
+When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
+feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
+festival,--strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh
+underclothes. He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder,
+full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant
+pockets. He would sometimes come in summer with a good-sized basket filled
+with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing them among
+the feverish and thirsty.]
+
+Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses. A
+well-known correspondent of the "New York Herald" writes thus about him in
+April, 1876:--
+
+"I first heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle
+there. Subsequently I saw him, time and again, in the Washington
+hospitals, or wending his way there, with basket or haversack on his arm,
+and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed
+the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kindness,
+tenderness, and thoughtfulness.
+
+"Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds
+through a hospital filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism
+he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each
+cot bore its man. When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of
+affection and welcome on every face, however wan, and his presence seemed
+to light up the place as it might be lighted by the presence of the God of
+Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in
+whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To
+one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to
+others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a
+sheet of paper or a postage-stamp, all of which and many other things were
+in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message
+for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an
+errand; to another, some special friend very low, he would give a manly
+farewell kiss. He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do, and
+he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The
+lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it,
+and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of
+many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!'"
+
+
+III
+
+Out of that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called "Drum-Taps,"
+first published in 1865,--since merged in his "Leaves,"--were produced.
+Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, come from life. The vivid
+incidents of "The Dresser" are but daguerreotypes of the poet's own actual
+movements among the bad cases of the wounded after a battle. The same
+personal knowledge runs through "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and
+Dim," "Come up from the Fields, Father," etc., etc.
+
+The reader of this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not
+the purpose of the poet to portray battles and campaigns, or to celebrate
+special leaders or military prowess, but rather to chant the human aspects
+of anguish that follow in the train of war. He perhaps feels that the
+permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a
+business, as a means of growth, has served its time; and that,
+notwithstanding the vast difference between ancient and modern warfare,
+both in the spirit and in the means, Homer's pictures are essentially true
+yet, and no additions to them can be made. War can never be to us what it
+has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never the main
+fact, the paramount condition, tyrannizing over all the affairs of
+national and individual life, but only an episode, a passing interruption;
+and the poet, who in our day would be as true to his nation and times as
+Homer was to his, must treat of it from the standpoint of peace and
+progress, and even benevolence. Vast armies rise up in a night and
+disappear in a day; a million of men, inured to battle and to blood, go
+back to the avocations of peace without a moment's confusion or
+delay,--indicating clearly the tendency that prevails.
+
+Apostrophizing the genius of America in the supreme hour of victory, he
+says:--
+
+  "No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee--nor mastery's rapturous
+        verse:--
+  But a little book containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds,
+  And psalms of the dead."
+
+
+The collection is also remarkable for the absence of all sectional or
+partisan feeling. Under the head of "Reconciliation" are these lines:--
+
+  "Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
+  Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be
+        utterly lost!
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  ... For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
+  I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near;
+  I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the
+        coffin."
+
+
+Perhaps the most noteworthy of Whitman's war poems is the one called "When
+Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloomed," written in commemoration of
+President Lincoln.
+
+The main effect of this poem is of strong, solemn, and varied music; and
+it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great
+composers most work,--namely, spiritual auricular analogy. At first it
+would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect. No reference
+whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not
+even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone
+that of lamentation; but, with the intuitions of the grand art, which is
+the most complex when it seems most simple, he seizes upon three beautiful
+facts of nature, which he weaves into a wreath for the dead President's
+tomb. The central thought is of death, but around this he curiously
+twines, first, the early-blooming lilacs which the poet may have plucked
+the day the dark shadow came; next the song of the hermit thrush, the most
+sweet and solemn of all our songsters, heard at twilight in the dusky
+cedars; and with these the evening star, which, as many may remember,
+night after night in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in
+the west with unusual and tender brightness. These are the premises whence
+he starts his solemn chant.
+
+The attitude, therefore, is not that of being bowed down and weeping
+hopeless tears, but of singing a commemorative hymn, in which the voices
+of nature join, and fits that exalted condition of the soul which serious
+events and the presence of death induce. There are no words of mere
+eulogy, no statistics, and no story or narrative; but there are pictures,
+processions, and a strange mingling of darkness and light, of grief and
+triumph: now the voice of the bird, or the drooping lustrous star, or the
+sombre thought of death; then a recurrence to the open scenery of the land
+as it lay in the April light, "the summer approaching with richness and
+the fields all busy with labor," presently dashed in upon by a spectral
+vision of armies with torn and bloody battle-flags, and, again, of the
+white skeletons of young men long afterward strewing the ground. Hence the
+piece has little or nothing of the character of the usual productions on
+such occasions. It is dramatic; yet there is no development of plot, but
+a constant interplay, a turning and returning of images and sentiments.
+
+The poet breaks a sprig of lilac from the bush in the door-yard,--the dark
+cloud falls on the land,--the long funeral sets out,--and then the
+apostrophe:--
+
+  "Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
+  Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,
+  With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities draped in black,
+  With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women,
+        standing,
+  With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,
+  With the countless torches lit--with the silent sea of faces, and the
+        unbared heads,
+  With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
+  With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
+        and solemn;
+  With all the mournful voices of the dirges, pour'd around the coffin,
+  To dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--Where amid these you
+        journey,
+  With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;
+  Here! coffin that slowly passes,
+  I give you my sprig of lilac.
+
+  "(Nor for you, for one alone;
+  Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
+  For fresh as the morning--thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
+        and sacred death.
+
+  "All over bouquets of roses,
+  O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;
+  But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
+  Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes;
+  With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
+  For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)"
+
+
+Then the strain goes on:--
+
+  "O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
+  And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
+  And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?
+
+  "Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
+  Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till
+        there on the prairies meeting:
+  These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
+  I perfume the grave of him I love."
+
+
+The poem reaches, perhaps, its height in the matchless invocation to
+Death:--
+
+  "Come, lovely and soothing Death,
+  Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
+  In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
+  Sooner or later, delicate Death.
+
+  "Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
+  For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;
+  And for love, sweet love--but praise! O praise and praise,
+  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
+
+  "Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
+  Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
+  Then I chant it for thee--I glorify thee above all;
+  I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
+
+  "Approach, encompassing Death--strong Deliveress!
+  When it is so--when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
+  Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
+  Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
+
+  "From me to thee glad serenades,
+  Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee--adornments and feastings for
+        thee;
+  And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky are
+        fitting,
+  And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
+  The night, in silence, under many a star;
+  The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;
+  And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death,
+  And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman despised riches, and all mere worldly success, as heartily as ever
+did any of the old Christians. All outward show and finery were intensely
+distasteful to him. He probably would not have accepted the finest house
+in New York on condition that he live in it. During his hospital
+experiences he cherished the purpose, as soon as the war was over, of
+returning to Brooklyn, buying an acre or two of land in some by-place on
+Long Island, and building for himself and his family a cheap house. When
+his brother Jeff contemplated building, he advised him to build merely an
+Irish shanty. After what he had seen the soldiers put up with, he thought
+anything was good enough for him or his people. In one of his letters to
+his mother, he comments upon the un-American and inappropriate
+ornamentation of the rooms in the Capitol building, "without grandeur and
+without simplicity," he says. In the state the country was in, and with
+the hospital scenes before him, the "poppy-show goddesses" and the Italian
+style of decoration, etc., sickened him, and he got away from it all as
+quickly as he could.
+
+
+V
+
+During the war and after, I used to see a good deal of Whitman in
+Washington. Summer and winter he was a conspicuous figure on Pennsylvania
+Avenue, where he was wont to walk for exercise and to feed his hunger for
+faces. One would see him afar off, in the crowd but not of it,--a large,
+slow-moving figure, clad in gray, with broad-brimmed hat and gray
+beard,--or, quite as frequently, on the front platform of the street
+horse-cars with the driver. My eye used to single him out many blocks
+away.
+
+There were times during this period when his aspect was rather
+forbidding,--the physical man was too pronounced on first glance; the
+other man was hidden beneath the broad-brimmed hat. One needed to see the
+superbly domed head and classic brow crowning the rank physical man.
+
+In his middle manhood, judging from the photos, he had a hirsute, kindly
+look, but very far removed from the finely cut traditional poet's face.
+
+
+VI
+
+I have often heard Whitman say that he inherited most excellent blood from
+his mother,--the old Dutch Van Velser strain,--Long Island blood filtered
+and vitalized through generations by the breath of the sea. He was his
+mother's child unmistakably. With all his rank masculinity, there was a
+curious feminine undertone in him which revealed itself in the quality of
+his voice, the delicate texture of his skin, the gentleness of his touch
+and ways, the attraction he had for children and the common people. A lady
+in the West, writing to me about him, spoke of his "great mother-nature."
+He was receptive, sympathetic, tender, and met you, not in a positive,
+aggressive manner, but more or less in a passive or neutral mood. He did
+not give his friends merely his mind, he gave them himself. It is not
+merely his mind or intellect that he has put into his poems, it is
+himself. Indeed, this feminine mood or attitude might be dwelt upon at
+much length in considering his poems,--their solvent, absorbing power, and
+the way they yield themselves to diverse interpretations.
+
+The sea, too, had laid its hand upon him, as I have already suggested. He
+never appeared so striking and impressive as when seen upon the beach. His
+large and tall gray figure looked at home, and was at home, upon the
+shore. The simple, strong, flowing lines of his face, his always clean
+fresh air, his blue absorbing eye, his commanding presence, and something
+pristine and elemental in his whole expression, seemed at once to put him
+_en rapport_ with the sea. No phase of nature seems to have impressed him
+so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman was preëminently manly,--richly endowed with the universal,
+healthy human qualities and attributes. Mr. Conway relates that when
+Emerson handed him the first thin quarto edition of "Leaves of Grass,"
+while he was calling at his house in Concord, soon after the book
+appeared, he said, "Americans abroad may now come home: unto us a man is
+born."
+
+President Lincoln, standing one day during the war before a window in the
+White House, saw Whitman slowly saunter by. He followed him with his
+eyes, and, turning, said to those about him, "Well, _he_ looks like a
+_man_."
+
+  "Meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms."
+
+
+During Whitman's Western tour in 1879 or '80, at some point in Kansas, in
+company with several well-known politicians and government officials, he
+visited a lot of Indians who were being held as prisoners. The sheriff
+told the Indians who the distinguished men were who were about to see
+them, but the Indians paid little attention to them as, one after the
+other, the officials and editors passed by them. Behind all came Whitman.
+The old chief looked at him steadily, then extended his hand and said,
+"How!" All the other Indians followed, surrounding Whitman, shaking his
+hand and making the air melodious with their "Hows." The incident
+evidently pleased the old poet a good deal.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Whitman was of large mould in every way, and of bold, far-reaching
+schemes, and is very sure to fare better at the hands of large men than of
+small. The first and last impression which his personal presence always
+made upon one was of a nature wonderfully gentle, tender, and benignant.
+His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and dominated by his
+humanity, so that the impression you got from him was not that of a
+learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human
+nature,--such an impression, I fancy, only fuller, as one might have got
+from Walter Scott. This was perhaps the secret of the attraction he had,
+for the common, unlettered people and for children. I think that even his
+literary friends often sought his presence less for conversation than to
+bask in his physical or psychical sunshine, and to rest upon his boundless
+charity. The great service he rendered to the wounded and homesick
+soldiers in the hospitals during the war came from his copious endowment
+of this broad, sweet, tender democratic nature. He brought father and
+mother to them, and the tonic and cheering atmosphere of simple,
+affectionate home life.
+
+In person Whitman was large and tall, above six feet, with a breezy,
+open-air look. His temperament was sanguine; his voice was a tender
+baritone. The dominant impression he made was that of something fresh and
+clean. I remember the first time I met him, which was in Washington, in
+the fall of 1863. I was impressed by the fine grain and clean, fresh
+quality of the man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect
+something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a
+bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His
+body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar
+fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was
+undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did
+not appear till he was past sixty. After that, I have little doubt, it was
+the finest head this age or country has seen. Every artist who saw him
+was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch him. The lines were so
+simple, so free, and so strong. High, arching brows; straight, clear-cut
+nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized,
+but a vital part of a symmetrical, dome-shaped head; ear large, and the
+most delicately carved I have ever seen; the mouth and chin hidden by a
+soft, long, white beard. It seems to me his face steadily refined and
+strengthened with age. Time depleted him in just the right way,--softened
+his beard and took away the too florid look; subdued the carnal man, and
+brought out more fully the spiritual man. When I last saw him (December
+26, 1891), though he had been very near death for many days, I am sure I
+had never seen his face so beautiful. There was no breaking-down of the
+features, or the least sign of decrepitude, such as we usually note in old
+men. The expression was full of pathos, but it was as grand as that of a
+god. I could not think of him as near death, he looked so unconquered.
+
+In Washington I knew Whitman intimately from the fall of 1863 to the time
+he left in 1873. In Camden I visited him yearly after that date, usually
+in the late summer or fall. I will give one glimpse of him from my diary,
+under date of August 18, 1887. I reached his house in the morning, before
+he was up. Presently he came slowly down stairs and greeted me. "Find him
+pretty well,--looking better than last year. With his light-gray suit,
+and white hair, and fresh pink face, he made a fine picture. Among other
+things, we talked of the Swinburne attack (then recently published). W.
+did not show the least feeling on the subject, and, I clearly saw, was
+absolutely undisturbed by the article. I told him I had always been more
+disturbed by S.'s admiration for him than I was now by his condemnation.
+By and by W. had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, ten
+miles distant, to see young Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a
+level farming and truck-gardening country; warm, but breezy. W. drives
+briskly, and salutes every person we meet, little and big, black and
+white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he
+knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old
+Long Island custom of his people, to speak to every one on the road, was
+strong upon him. One tipsy man in a buggy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye
+do, pap?' etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W., as
+something I had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what
+the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would
+have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the
+centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of
+Christianity to check and curb them, etc. W. knew the history of many
+prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two colored men
+to look after him; there, in that fine house among the trees, an old
+maid, who had spent a large fortune on her house and lands, and was now
+destitute, yet she was a woman of remarkable good sense, etc. We returned
+to Camden before dark, W. apparently not fatigued by the drive of twenty
+miles."
+
+In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry. It
+was such a face, said Mr. Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected from a
+million. "It is the face of an aged loving child. As I looked, it was with
+the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never
+heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being.
+I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an avatar, was more
+gentle to all men, women, children, and living things."
+
+
+IX
+
+For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
+to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
+visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
+which the doctor printed on his return home:--
+
+"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
+and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
+of his presence as a whole.
+
+"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
+in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure
+white linen, with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt
+buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown
+open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of
+his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned
+almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned
+up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of
+the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire
+visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and
+massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong,
+white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an
+eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was
+not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is
+concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon
+his broad, square shoulders; and it is almost entirely covered with long,
+fine, straggling hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit
+snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streaming over
+and around his large but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big
+neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of
+his face, right down to the middle of his chest, like a cataract of
+materialized, white, glistening vapor, giving him a most venerable and
+patriarchal appearance. His high, massive forehead is seamed with
+wrinkles. His nose is large, strong, broad, and prominent, but
+beautifully chiseled and proportioned, almost straight, very slightly
+depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to
+the angles of the mouth. The eyebrows are thick and shaggy, with strong,
+white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes,
+which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, small, rather deeply set,
+calm, clear, penetrating, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness,
+kindness, and sympathy. The upper eyelids droop considerably over the
+eyeballs. The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache,
+are full. The whole face impresses one with a sense of resoluteness,
+strength, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness,
+unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly
+pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man.
+There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in
+them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But
+it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in
+his _tout ensemble_, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic
+presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and
+exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing
+an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I
+felt that I was here face to face with the living embodiment of all that
+was good, noble, and lovable in humanity."
+
+
+X
+
+British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic
+temperament, etc., but he was in no sense a muscular man, an athlete. His
+body, though superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in
+its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin. He
+took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports. He
+walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he
+always had an air of infinite leisure. For several years, while a clerk in
+the Attorney-General's Office in Washington, his exercise for an hour each
+day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round,
+smooth stone, of about one pound weight, and catching it as it fell. Later
+in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked
+to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that
+way. In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and
+sweetness of body, but none upon mere brute strength. This is what he says
+"To a Pupil:"--
+
+  1. Is reform needed? Is it through you?
+     The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you
+          need to accomplish it.
+
+  2. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,
+          complexion, clean and sweet?
+     Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and Soul,
+          that when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and
+          command enters with you, and every one is impressed with your
+          personality?
+
+  3. O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
+     Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to
+          inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
+          elevatedness,
+     Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
+
+
+It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
+of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,--the
+freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
+perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
+mind.
+
+A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
+several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
+face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
+was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
+majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
+looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
+seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
+friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
+would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
+all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
+upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
+identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
+poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
+poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold," he says, "the body
+includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
+soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
+of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
+strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
+knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
+singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
+curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.
+
+The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
+to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
+the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
+distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
+power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
+face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
+face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
+face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
+mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature.
+It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow.
+
+And the influence of his poems is always on the side of physiological
+cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes
+morbid and mean. He says the "expression of a well-made man appears not
+only in his face: it is in his limbs and joints also; it is curiously in
+the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his
+neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the
+strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
+flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more.
+You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."
+He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: "To be
+surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,--I
+do not ask any more delight; I swim in it, as in a sea. There is something
+in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact
+and odor of them, that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul,
+but these please the soul well." Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he
+found in the society of the common people that satisfied him so; for his
+part, he could not find anything. The subordination by Whitman of the
+purely intellectual to the human and physical, which runs all through his
+poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, who was deficient in the
+sensuous, probably could not appreciate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The atmosphere of Whitman personally was that of a large, tolerant,
+tender, sympathetic, restful man, easy of approach, indifferent to any
+special social or other distinctions and accomplishments that might be
+yours, and regarding you from the start for yourself alone.
+
+Children were very fond of him; and women, unless they had been prejudiced
+against him, were strongly drawn toward him. His personal magnetism was
+very great, and was warming and cheering. He was rich in temperament,
+probably beyond any other man of his generation,--rich in all the purely
+human and emotional endowments and basic qualities. Then there was a look
+about him hard to describe, and which I have seen in no other face,--a
+gray, brooding, elemental look, like the granite rock, something primitive
+and Adamic that might have belonged to the first man; or was it a
+suggestion of the gray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was
+born, and that had surely set its seal upon him? I know not, but I feel
+the man with that look is not of the day merely, but of the centuries. His
+eye was not piercing, but absorbing,--"draining" is the word happily used
+by William O'Connor; the soul back of it drew things to himself, and
+entered and possessed them through sympathy and personal force and
+magnetism, rather than through mere intellectual force.
+
+
+XII
+
+Walt Whitman was of the people, the common people, and always gave out
+their quality and atmosphere. His commonness, his nearness, as of the
+things you have always known,--the day, the sky, the soil, your own
+parents,--were in no way veiled, or kept in abeyance, by his culture or
+poetic gifts. He was redolent of the human and the familiar. Though
+capable, on occasions, of great pride and hauteur, yet his habitual mood
+and presence was that of simple, average, healthful humanity,--the virtue
+and flavor of sailors, soldiers, laborers, travelers, or people who live
+with real things in the open air. His commonness rose into the uncommon,
+the extraordinary, but without any hint of the exclusive or specially
+favored. He was indeed "no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women
+or apart from them."
+
+The spirit that animates every page of his book, and that it always
+effuses, is the spirit of common, universal humanity,--humanity apart from
+creeds, schools, conventions, from all special privileges and refinements,
+as it is in and of itself in its relations to the whole system of things,
+in contradistinction to the literature of culture which effuses the spirit
+of the select and exclusive.
+
+His life was the same. Walt Whitman never stood apart from or above any
+human being. The common people--workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the
+outcast--saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction
+was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity.
+Specially intellectual people rather repelled him; the wit, the scholar,
+the poet, must have a rich endowment of the common, universal, human
+attributes and qualities to pass current with him. He sought the society
+of boatmen, railroad men, farmers, mechanics, printers, teamsters, mothers
+of families, etc., rather than the society of professional men or
+scholars. Men who had the quality of things in the open air--the virtue of
+rocks, trees, hills--drew him most; and it is these qualities and virtues
+that he has aimed above all others to put into his poetry, and to put them
+there in such a way that he who reads must feel and imbibe them.
+
+The recognized poets put into their pages the virtue and quality of the
+fine gentleman, or of the sensitive, artistic nature: this poet of
+democracy effuses the atmosphere of fresh, strong Adamic man,--man acted
+upon at first hand by the shows and forces of universal nature.
+
+If our poet ever sounds the note of the crude, the loud, the exaggerated,
+he is false to himself and to his high aims. I think he may be charged
+with having done so a few times, in his earlier work, but not in his
+later. In the 1860 edition of his poems stands this portraiture, which may
+stand for himself, with one or two features rather overdrawn:--
+
+  "His shape arises
+  Arrogant, masculine, naïve, rowdyish,
+  Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman,
+  Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by
+        the sea,
+  Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from
+        taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia,
+        clean-breathed,
+  Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds,
+        full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and
+        back,
+  Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,
+  Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms,
+  Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck gray and open, of slow
+        movement on foot,
+  Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his friends, companion
+        of the street,
+  Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches, and never
+        their meanest.
+  A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the
+        life of the wharves and the great ferries,
+  Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, easily understood after all,
+  Never offering others, always offering himself, corroborating his
+        phrenology,
+  Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive,
+        of copious friendship, sublimity, firmness, self-esteem,
+        comparison, individuality, form, locality, eventuality,
+  Avowing by life, manners, words to contribute illustrations of results
+        of These States,
+  Teacher of the unquenchable creed namely egotism,
+  Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against
+        his."
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman was determined, at whatever risk to his own reputation, to make
+the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of
+American humanity, and to do this the rowdy element could not be entirely
+ignored. Hence he unflinchingly imputes it to himself, as, for that
+matter, he has nearly every sin and dereliction mankind are guilty of.
+
+Whitman developed slowly and late upon the side that related him to social
+custom and usage,--to the many fictions, concealments, make-believes, and
+subterfuges of the world of parlors and drawing-rooms. He never was an
+adept in what is called "good form;" the natural man that he was shows
+crude in certain relations. His publication of Emerson's letter with its
+magnificent eulogium of "Leaves of Grass" has been much commented upon.
+There may be two opinions as to the propriety of his course in this
+respect: a letter from a stranger upon a matter of public interest is not
+usually looked upon as a private letter. Emerson never spoke with more
+felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for
+Whitman's own sake that we would have had him practice self-denial in the
+matter; he greatly plumed himself upon Emerson's endorsement, and was
+guilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon
+the cover of the next edition of his book. Grant that it showed a certain
+crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; later in life, he could not
+have erred in this way. Ruskin is reported saying that he never in his
+life wrote a letter to any human being that he would not be willing should
+be posted up in the market-place, or cried by the public crier through the
+town. But Emerson was a much more timid and conforming man than Ruskin,
+and was much more likely to be shocked by such a circumstance.
+
+It has been said that the publication of this letter much annoyed Emerson,
+and that he never forgave Whitman the offense. That he was disturbed by it
+and by the storm that arose there can be little doubt; but there is no
+evidence that he allowed the fact to interfere with his friendship for the
+poet. Charles W. Eldridge, who personally knew of the relations of the two
+men, says:--
+
+"There was not a year from 1855 (the date of the Emerson letter and its
+publication) down to 1860 (the year Walt came to Boston to supervise the
+issue of the Thayer & Eldridge edition of 'Leaves of Grass'), that Emerson
+did not personally seek out Walt at his Brooklyn home, usually that they
+might have a long symposium together at the Astor House in New York.
+Besides that, during these years Emerson sent many of his closest friends,
+including Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of
+introduction to him. This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who
+has committed an unpardonable offense.
+
+"I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently
+came down from Concord to see him, and that they had many walks and talks
+together, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American
+House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel. On several occasions
+they met by appointment in our counting-room. Their relations were as
+cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Emerson who sought out
+Walt, and never the other way, although, of course, Walt appreciated and
+enjoyed Emerson's companionship very much. In truth, Walt never sought the
+company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary
+society. I know that at this time Walt was invited by Emerson to Concord,
+but declined to go, probably through his fear that he would see too much
+of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around
+Emerson."
+
+
+XIV
+
+Whitman gave himself to men as men and not as scholars or poets, and gave
+himself purely as a man. While not specially averse to meeting people on
+literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was more to his taste to meet on
+the broadest, commonest, human grounds. What you had seen or felt or
+suffered or done was of much more interest to him than what you had read
+or thought; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the
+last person you had met, or the last chore you had done.
+
+Any glimpse of the farm, the shop, the household--any bit of real life,
+anything that carried the flavor and quality of concrete reality--was very
+welcome to him; herein, no doubt, showing the healthy, objective, artist
+mind. He never tired of hearing me talk about the birds or wild animals,
+or my experiences in camp in the woods, the kind of characters I had met
+there, and the flavor of the life of remote settlements in Maine or
+Canada. His inward, subjective life was ample of itself; he was familiar
+with all your thoughts and speculations beforehand: what he craved was
+wider experience,--to see what you had seen, and feel what you had felt.
+He was fond of talking with returned travelers and explorers, and with
+sailors, soldiers, mechanics; much of his vast stores of information upon
+all manner of subjects was acquired at firsthand, in the old way, from the
+persons who had seen or done or been what they described or related.
+
+He had almost a passion for simple, unlettered humanity,--an attraction
+which specially intellectual persons will hardly understand. Schooling and
+culture are so often purchased at such an expense to the innate,
+fundamental human qualities! Ignorance, with sound instincts and the
+quality which converse with real things imparts to men, was more
+acceptable to him than so much of our sophisticated knowledge, or our
+studied wit, or our artificial poetry.
+
+
+XV
+
+At the time of Whitman's death, one of our leading literary journals
+charged him with having brought on premature decay by leading a riotous
+and debauched life. I hardly need say that there was no truth in the
+charge. The tremendous emotional strain of writing his "Leaves," followed
+by his years of service in the army hospitals, where he contracted
+blood-poison, resulted at the age of fifty-four in the rupture of a small
+blood-vessel in the brain, which brought on partial paralysis. A sunstroke
+during his earlier manhood also played its part in the final break-down.
+
+That, tried by the standard of the lives of our New England poets,
+Whitman's life was a blameless one, I do not assert; but that it was a
+sane, temperate, manly one, free from excesses, free from the perversions
+and morbidities of a mammonish, pampered, over-stimulated age, I do
+believe. Indeed, I may say I know. The one impression he never failed to
+make--physically, morally, intellectually--on young and old, women and
+men, was that of health, sanity, sweetness. This is the impression he
+seems to have made upon Mr. Howells, when he met the poet at Pfaff's early
+in the sixties.
+
+The critic I have alluded to inferred license in the man from liberty in
+the poet. He did not have the gumption to see that Whitman made the
+experience of all men his own, and that his scheme included the evil as
+well as the good; that especially did he exploit the unloosed, all-loving,
+all-accepting natural man,--the man who is done with conventions,
+illusions and all morbid pietisms, and who gives himself lavishly to all
+that begets and sustains life. Yet not the natural or carnal man for his
+own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual meanings and values to which
+he is the key. Indeed, Whitman is about the most uncompromising
+spiritualist in literature; with him, all things exist by and for the
+soul. He felt the tie of universal brotherhood, also, as few have felt it.
+It was not a theory with him, but a fact that shaped his life and colored
+his poems. "Whoever degrades another degrades me," and the thought fired
+his imagination.
+
+
+XVI
+
+The student of Whitman's life and works will be early struck by three
+things,--his sudden burst into song, the maturity of his work from the
+first, and his self-knowledge and self-estimate. The fit of inspiration
+came upon him suddenly; it was like the flowering of the orchards in
+spring; there was little or no hint of it till almost the very hour of
+the event. Up to the time of the appearance of the first edition of
+"Leaves of Grass," he had produced nothing above mediocrity. A hack writer
+on newspapers and magazines, then a carpenter and house-builder in a small
+way, then that astounding revelation "Leaves of Grass," the very audacity
+of it a gospel in itself. How dare he do it? how could he do it, and not
+betray hesitation or self-consciousness? It is one of the exceptional
+events in literary history. The main body of his work was produced in five
+or six years, or between 1854 and 1859. Of course it was a sudden
+flowering, which, consciously or unconsciously, must have been long
+preparing in his mind. His work must have had a long foreground, as
+Emerson suggested. Dr. Bucke, his biographer, thinks it was a special
+inspiration,--something analogous to Paul's conversion, a sudden opening
+of what the doctor calls "cosmic consciousness."
+
+Another student and lover of Whitman says: "It is certain that some time
+about his thirty-fifth year [probably a little earlier] there came over
+him a decided change: he seemed immensely to broaden and deepen; he became
+less interested in what are usually regarded as the more practical affairs
+of life. He lost what little ambition he ever had for money-making, and
+permitted good business opportunities to pass unheeded. He ceased to write
+the somewhat interesting but altogether commonplace and respectable
+stories and verses which he had been in the habit of contributing to
+periodicals. He would take long trips into the country, no one knew where,
+and would spend more time in his favorite haunts about the city, or on the
+ferries, or the tops of omnibuses, at the theatre and opera, in picture
+galleries, and wherever he could observe men and women and art and
+nature."
+
+Then the maturity of his work from the first line of it! It seems as if he
+came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one
+bound,--never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do.
+What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint.
+He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he
+first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first poem, "Starting
+from Paumanok," and he has kept the letter and the spirit of every promise
+therein made. We never see him doubtful or hesitating; we never see him
+battling for his territory, and uncertain whether or not he is upon his
+own ground. He has an air of contentment, of mastery and triumph, from the
+start.
+
+His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.
+We should probably have to go back to sacred history to find a parallel
+case. The manner of man he was, his composite character, his relation to
+his country and times, his unlikeness to other poets, his affinity to the
+common people, how he would puzzle and elude his critics, how his words
+would itch at our ears till we understood them, etc.,--how did he know all
+this from the first?
+
+
+
+
+HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS
+
+
+I
+
+Let me here summarize some of the ideas and principles in which "Leaves of
+Grass" has its root, and from which it starts. A collection of poems in
+the usual sense, a variety of themes artistically treated and appealing to
+our æsthetic perceptibilities alone, it is not. It has, strictly speaking,
+but one theme,--personality, the personality of the poet himself. To
+exploit this is always the main purpose, and, in doing so, to make the
+book both directly and indirectly a large, impassioned utterance upon all
+the main problems of life and of nationality. It is primitive, like the
+early literature of a race or people, in that its spirit and purpose are
+essentially religious. It is like the primitive literatures also in its
+prophetic cry and in its bardic simplicity and homeliness, and unlike them
+in its faith and joy and its unconquerable optimism.
+
+It has been not inaptly called the bible of democracy. Its biblical
+features are obvious enough with the darker negative traits left out. It
+is Israel with science and the modern added.
+
+Whitman was swayed by a few great passions,--the passion for country, the
+passion for comrades, the cosmic passion, etc. His first concern seems
+always to have been for his country. He has touched no theme, named no
+man, not related in some way to America. The thought of it possessed him
+as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
+Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
+power,--the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
+suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
+cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
+all-inclusive:--
+
+  "My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
+        earth,
+  I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
+        lands;
+  I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
+
+  "O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
+        continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
+  I think I have blown with you, O winds,
+  O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."
+
+
+II
+
+The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,--of
+absolute social equality.
+
+It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
+distinguished from the old theological conception,--namely, that creation
+is good and sound in all its parts.
+
+It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
+friend and not the enemy of life.
+
+It places comradeship, manly attachment, above sex love, and indicates it
+as the cement of future states and republics.
+
+It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.
+
+It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
+trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
+sexuality,--upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
+at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
+frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.
+
+It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
+conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
+works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.
+
+It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
+man,--a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
+have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
+parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
+the heroes of land and sea.
+
+Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
+real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and
+concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore,
+the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man.
+
+Its purpose is to stimulate and arouse, rather than to soothe and satisfy.
+It addresses the character, the intuitions, the ego, more than the
+intellect or the purely æsthetic faculties. Its end is not taste, but
+growth in the manly virtues and powers.
+
+Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.
+
+It aspires to a candor and a directness like that of Nature herself.
+
+It aims to let Nature speak without check, with original energy. The only
+checks are those which health and wholeness demand.
+
+Its standards are those of the natural universal.
+
+Its method is egocentric. The poet never goes out of himself, but draws
+everything into himself and makes it all serve to illustrate his
+personality.
+
+Its form is not what is called artistic. Its suggestion is to be found in
+organic nature, in trees, clouds, and in the vital and flowing currents.
+
+In its composition the author was doubtless greatly influenced by the
+opera and the great singers, and the music of the great composers. He
+would let himself go in the same manner and seek his effects through
+multitude and the quality of the living voice.
+
+Finally, "Leaves of Grass" is an utterance out of the depths of
+primordial, aboriginal human nature. It embodies and exploits a character
+not rendered anæmic by civilization, but preserving a sweet and sane
+savagery, indebted to culture only as a means to escape culture, reaching
+back always, through books, art, civilization, to fresh, unsophisticated
+nature, and drawing his strength thence.
+
+Another of the ideas that master Whitman and rule him is the idea of
+identity,--that you are you and I am I, and that we are henceforth secure
+whatever comes or goes. He revels in this idea; it is fruitful with him;
+it begets in him the ego-enthusiasm, and is at the bottom of his
+unshakable faith in immortality. It leavens all his work. It cannot be too
+often said that the book is not merely a collection of pretty poems,
+themes elaborated and followed out at long removes from the personality of
+the poet, but a series of _sorties_ into the world of materials, the
+American world, piercing through the ostensible shows of things to the
+interior meanings, and illustrating in a free and large way the genesis
+and growth of a man, his free use of the world about him, appropriating it
+to himself, seeking his spiritual identity through its various objects and
+experiences, and giving in many direct and indirect ways the meaning and
+satisfaction of life. There is much in it that is not poetical in the
+popular sense, much that is neutral and negative, and yet is an integral
+part of the whole, as is the case in the world we inhabit. If it offends,
+it is in a wholesome way, like objects in the open air.
+
+
+III
+
+Whitman rarely celebrates exceptional characters. He loves the common
+humanity, and finds his ideals among the masses. It is not difficult to
+reconcile his attraction toward the average man, towards workingmen and
+"powerful, uneducated persons," with the ideal of a high excellence,
+because he finally rests only upon the most elevated and heroic personal
+qualities,--elevated but well grounded in the common and universal.
+
+The types upon which he dwells the most fondly are of the common people.
+
+  "I knew a man,
+  He was a common farmer--he was the father of five sons,
+  And in them were the fathers of sons--and in them were the fathers of
+        sons.
+
+  "This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
+  The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale
+        yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable
+        meaning of his black eyes,
+  These I used to go and visit him to see--he was wise also,
+  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were
+        massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
+  They and his daughters loved him--all who saw him loved him,
+  They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal love;
+  He drank water only--the blood showed like scarlet through the
+        clear-brown skin of his face,
+  He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sailed his boat himself--he had
+        a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner--he had fowling-pieces
+        presented to him by men that loved him;
+  When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you
+        would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
+  You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by him
+        in the boat, that you and he might touch each other."
+
+All the _motifs_ of his work are the near, the vital, the universal;
+nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are
+democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality,
+comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of the
+sexes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it
+sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems
+are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a
+look, a gesture, a tone of voice.
+
+"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand
+at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" requires a large perspective; you must not get your face
+too near the book. You must bring to it a magnanimity of spirit,--a
+charity and faith equal to its own. Looked at too closely, it often seems
+incoherent and meaningless; draw off a little and let the figure come out.
+The book is from first to last a most determined attempt, on the part of a
+large, reflective, loving, magnetic, rather primitive, thoroughly
+imaginative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth
+century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career
+upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiasm as to lift and
+fill it with the deepest meanings of the spirit and disclose the order of
+universal nature. The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or
+criticism, or partiality whatever, but has squarely and lovingly faced the
+oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and
+fused them in his fervid humanity, and imbued them with deepest poetic
+meanings. One of the most striking features of the book is the adequacy
+and composure, even joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence
+of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era. He
+spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no
+part; and his quality, his individuality, shines through it all, as the
+sun through vapors. The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of
+Walt Whitman. It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man
+exploited and illustrated. Walt Whitman does not write poems, strictly
+speaking,--does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel
+and carve it into a beautiful image or object, or polish and elaborate a
+thought, embodying it in pleasing tropes and pictures. His purpose is
+rather to show a towering, loving, composite personality moving amid all
+sorts of materials, taking them up but for a moment, disclosing new
+meanings and suggestions in them, passing on, bestowing himself upon
+whoever or whatever will accept him, tossing hints and clues right and
+left, provoking and stimulating the thought and imagination of his reader,
+but finishing nothing for him, leaving much to be desired, much to be
+completed by him in his turn.
+
+
+IV
+
+The reader who would get at the spirit and meaning of "Leaves of Grass"
+must remember that its animating principle, from first to last, is
+Democracy,--that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit
+of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New
+World,--and that all things characteristically American (trades, tools,
+occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places
+in it. It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the
+life of the poet fell, and to show one master personality accepting,
+absorbing all and rising superior to it,--namely, the poet himself. Yet it
+is never Whitman that speaks so much as it is Democracy that speaks
+through him. He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in
+this character launches forth his "omnivorous words." What would seem
+colossal egotism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with
+low, rude persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and
+vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the
+boundless compassion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal
+Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain
+and easy in the works of this much misunderstood poet.
+
+Perhaps the single poem that throws most light upon his aims and methods,
+and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in "Calamus," and is as
+follows:--
+
+  "Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
+  Without one thing all will be useless,
+  I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
+  I am not what you suppos'd, but far different.
+
+  "Who is he that would become my follower?
+  Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
+
+  "The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
+  You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your
+        sole and exclusive standard,
+  Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
+  The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives
+        around you would have to be abandon'd,
+  Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let
+        go your hand from my shoulders,
+  Put me down and depart on your way.
+
+  "Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
+  Or back of a rock in the open air,
+  (For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
+  And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
+  But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any
+        person for miles around approach unawares,
+  Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or
+        some quiet island,
+  Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
+  With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,
+  For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
+
+  "Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
+  Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
+  Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
+  For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
+  And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
+
+  "But these leaves conning you con at peril,
+  For these leaves and me you will not understand,
+  They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
+        certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you.
+
+  "For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
+  Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
+  Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
+  Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove
+        victorious,
+  Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps
+        more,
+  For all is useless without that for which you may guess at many times
+        and not hit, that which I hinted at,
+  Therefore release me and depart on your way."
+
+
+When one has fully mastered this poem he has got a pretty good hold upon
+Whitman's spirit and method. His open-air standards, the baffling and
+elusive character of his work, the extraordinary demand it makes, its
+radical and far-reaching effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil
+as a necessary part of the good (there was a human need of sin, said
+Margaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and
+suggestive method, that it can be fully read only through our acquaintance
+with life and real things at first hand, etc.,--all this and more is in
+the poem.
+
+
+
+
+HIS SELF-RELIANCE
+
+
+I
+
+It is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a German author was to
+be a German martyr. I presume things have changed in Germany since those
+times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and
+hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In
+Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an
+American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the
+great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Molière, or Byron, was
+Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times;
+but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and
+self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His
+unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise. It was of a kind
+that tries a man's mettle, and brings out his heroic traits if he has any.
+One almost envies him his unpopularity. It was of the kind that only the
+greatest ones have experienced, and that attests something extraordinary
+in the recipient of it. He said he was more resolute because all had
+denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:--
+
+  "I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor
+        ridicule."
+
+
+There are no more precious and tonic pages in history than the records of
+men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in
+obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature.
+Whitman's is the most striking case in our literary annals,--probably the
+most striking one in our century outside of politics and religion. The
+inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: "My commission obeying, to
+question it never daring."
+
+The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained
+it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and
+cannot be avoided.
+
+  "Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you and were tender
+        with you? and stood aside for you?
+  Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace
+        themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute
+        the passage with you?"
+
+
+Every man is a partaker in the triumph of him who is always true to
+himself and makes no compromises with customs, schools, or opinions.
+Whitman's life, underneath its easy tolerance and cheerful good-will, was
+heroic. He fought his battle against great odds and he conquered; he had
+his own way, he yielded not a hair to the enemy.
+
+The pressure brought to bear upon him by the press, by many of his
+friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to
+change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served
+as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the
+more deeply he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The
+fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and
+aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could
+have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no
+publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was
+threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy
+Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would
+omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for
+one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always
+did.
+
+Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down
+Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which
+was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable
+conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so,
+whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet
+probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had
+not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your
+own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your
+private heart is true of all men,--that is genius."
+
+In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson
+invoked and prayed for,--the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who
+should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be
+Greek, or Italian, or French, or English, but only himself; who should
+not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate,
+or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debasements of
+our times the lineaments of the same gods that so ravished the bards of
+old.
+
+The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the
+books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
+thank and revere him."
+
+Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has
+done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works
+in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a
+time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures
+itself by its contempt of some external good,"--popularity, for instance.
+"The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have chosen your
+part abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the
+world." "Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
+something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous
+age." Heroism "is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality
+in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of
+hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent
+than all actual and all possible antagonists." "A man is to carry himself
+in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and
+ephemeral but he." "Great works of art," he again says, "teach us to
+abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility, the
+more when the whole cry of voices is on the other side."
+
+These brave sayings of Emerson were all illustrated and confirmed by
+Whitman's course. The spectacle of this man sitting there by the window of
+his little house in Camden, poor and partially paralyzed, and looking out
+upon the trite and commonplace scenes and people, or looking athwart the
+years and seeing only detraction and denial, yet always serene, cheerful,
+charitable, his wisdom and tolerance ripening and mellowing with time, is
+something to treasure and profit by. He was a man who needed no
+assurances. He had the patience and the leisure of nature. He welcomed
+your friendly and sympathetic word, or with equal composure he did without
+it.
+
+I remember calling upon him shortly after Swinburne's fierce onslaught
+upon him had been published, some time in the latter part of the eighties.
+I was curious to see how Whitman took it, but I could not discover either
+in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly
+of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne's
+account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat
+upon himself as Swinburne had done. In fact I think hostile criticism,
+fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it
+not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against shadows.
+Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was
+trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think
+Whitman took any interest in it from the first.
+
+Self-reliance, or self-trust, is one of the principles Whitman announces
+in his "Laws for Creations." He saw that no first-class work is possible
+except it issue from a man's deepest, most radical self.
+
+  "What do you suppose creation is?
+  What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no
+        superior?
+  What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that
+        man or woman is as good as God?
+  And that there is no God any more divine than yourself?
+  And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
+  And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?"
+
+
+I think it probable that Whitman anticipated a long period of comparative
+oblivion for himself and his works. He knew from the first that the public
+would not be with him; he knew that the censors of taste, the critics and
+literary professors, would not be with him; he knew that the vast army of
+Philistia, the respectable, fashionable mammon-worshiping crowd, would not
+be with him,--that the timid, the pampered, the prurient, the conforming,
+the bourgeoisie spirit, the class spirit, the academic spirit, the
+Pharisaic spirit in all its forms, would all work against him; and that,
+as in the case of nearly all original, first-class men, he would have to
+wait to be understood for the growth of the taste of himself. None knew
+more clearly than he did how completely our people were under the
+illusion of the genteel and the conventional, and that, even among the
+emancipated few, the possession of anything like robust æsthetic
+perception was rare enough. America, so bold and original and independent
+in the world of practical politics and material endeavor, is, in spiritual
+and imaginative regions, timid, conforming, imitative. There is, perhaps,
+no civilized country in the world wherein the native, original man, the
+real critter, as Whitman loved to say, that underlies all our culture and
+conventions, crops out so little in manners, in literature, and in social
+usages. The fear of being unconventional is greater with us than the fear
+of death. A certain evasiveness, polish, distrust of ourselves, amounting
+to insipidity and insincerity, is spoken of by observant foreigners. In
+other words, we are perhaps the least like children of any people in the
+world. All these things were against Whitman, and will continue to be
+against him for a long time. With the first stroke he broke through the
+conventional and took his stand upon the natural. With rude hands he tore
+away the veils and concealments from the body and from the soul. He
+ignored entirely all social and conventional usages and hypocrisies, not
+by revolt against them, but by choosing a point of view from which they
+disappeared. He embraced the unrefined and the savage as well as the
+tender and human. The illusions of the past, the models and standards, he
+freed himself of at once, and declared for the beauty and the divinity of
+the now and the here. The rude realism of his "Leaves" shocked like a
+plunge in the surf, but it invigorated also, if we were strong enough to
+stand it.
+
+Out of Whitman's absolute self-trust arose his prophetic egotism,--the
+divine fervor and audacity of the simple ego. He shared the conviction of
+the old prophets that man is a part of God, and that there is nothing in
+the universe any more divine than the individual soul. "I, too," he says,
+and this line is the key to much there is in his work--
+
+  "I, too, have felt the resistless call of myself."
+
+
+With the old Biblical writers the motions of their own spirits, their
+thoughts, their dreams, were the voice of God. There is something of the
+same sort in Whitman. The voice of that inner self was final and
+authoritative with him. It was the voice of God. He could drive through
+and over all the conventions of the world in obedience to that voice. This
+call to him was as a voice from Sinai. One of his mastering thoughts was
+the thought of identity,--that you are you, and I am I. This was the final
+meaning of things, and the meaning of immortality. "Yourself, _yourself_,
+YOURSELF," he says, with swelling vehemence, "forever and ever." To be
+compacted and riveted and fortified in yourself, so as to be a law unto
+yourself, is the final word of the past and of the present.
+
+
+II
+
+The shadow of Whitman's self-reliance and heroic self-esteem--the sort of
+eddy or back-water--was undoubtedly a childlike fondness for praise and
+for seeing his name in print. In his relaxed moments, when the stress of
+his task was not upon him, he was indeed in many respects a child. He had
+a child's delight in his own picture. He enjoyed hearing himself lauded as
+Colonel Ingersoll lauded him in his lecture in Philadelphia, and as his
+friends lauded him at his birthday dinner parties during the last two or
+three years of his life; he loved to see his name in print, and items
+about himself in the newspapers; he sometimes wrote them himself and gave
+them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his
+life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in
+fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him
+dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him
+to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be
+frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men
+also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature,
+and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human
+nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be
+kept up to the heroic pitch.
+
+
+III
+
+It was difficult to appreciate his liking for the newspaper. But he had
+been a newspaper man himself; the printer's ink had struck in; he had many
+associations with the press-room and the composing-room; he loved the
+common, democratic character of the newspaper; it was the average man's
+library. The homely uses to which it was put, and the humble firesides to
+which it found its way, endeared it to him, and made him love to see his
+name in it.
+
+Whitman's vanity was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as
+tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy
+sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life
+there was none.
+
+His egotism is of the large generous species that never irritates or
+pricks into you like that of the merely conceited man. His love, his
+candor, his sympathy are on an equal scale.
+
+His egotism comes finally to affect one like the independence and
+indifference of natural law. It takes little heed of our opinion, whether
+it be for or against, and keeps to its own way whatever befall.
+
+Whitman's absolute faith in himself was a part of his faith in creation.
+He felt himself so keenly a part of the whole that he shared its soundness
+and excellence; he must be good as it is good.
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
+manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
+give rise to the charge that he was a _poseur_. He was a _poseur_ in the
+sense, and to the extent, that any man is a _poseur_ who tries to live up
+to a certain ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
+clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
+apart and looking upon himself as another person. Hence his extraordinary
+self-knowledge, and, we may also say, his extraordinary self-appreciation,
+or to use his own words, "the quite changed attitude of the ego, the one
+chanting or talking, towards himself." Of course there is danger in this
+attitude, but Whitman was large enough and strong enough to escape it. He
+saw himself to be the typical inevitable democrat that others have seen
+him to be, and with perfect candor and without ever forcing the note, he
+portrays himself as such. As his work is confessedly the poem of himself,
+himself magnified and projected, as it were, upon the canvas of a great
+age and country, all his traits and qualities stand out in heroic
+proportions, his pride and egotism as well as his love and tolerance.
+
+"How beautiful is candor," he says. "All faults may be forgiven of him who
+has perfect candor." The last thing that could ever be charged of Whitman
+is that he lacked openness, or was guilty of any deceit or concealments in
+his life or works.
+
+From the studies, notes, and scrap-books which Whitman left, it appears
+that he was long preparing and disciplining himself for the work he had in
+view. "The long foreground," to which Emerson referred in his letter, was
+of course a reality. But this self-consciousness and self-adjustment to a
+given end is an element of strength and not of weakness.
+
+In the famous vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the
+first "Leaves of Grass" he assumes an attitude and is in a sense a
+_poseur_; but the reader comes finally to wonder at the marvelous
+self-knowledge the picture displays, and how strictly typical it is of the
+poet's mental and spiritual attitude towards the world,--independent,
+unconventional, audacious, yet inquiring and sympathetic in a wonderful
+degree. In the same way he posed in other portraits. A favorite with him
+is the one in which he sits contemplating a butterfly upon his
+forefinger--typical of a man "preoccupied of his own soul." In another he
+peers out curiously as from behind a mask. In an earlier one he stands,
+hat in hand, in marked _negligé_ costume,--a little too intentional, one
+feels. The contempt of the polished ones is probably very strong within
+him at this time. I say contempt, though I doubt if Whitman ever felt
+contempt for any human being.
+
+
+V
+
+Then Whitman had a curious habit of standing apart, as it were, and
+looking upon himself and his career as of some other person. He was
+interested in his own cause, and took a hand in the discussion. From first
+to last he had the habit of regarding himself objectively. On his deathbed
+he seemed to be a spectator of his own last moments, and was seen to feel
+his pulse a few minutes before he breathed his last.
+
+He has recorded this trait in his poems:--
+
+  "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
+  Stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, waiting,
+  Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
+  Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it."
+
+As also in this from "Calamus:"--
+
+  "That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,
+        chattering, chaffering,
+  How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,
+  How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
+  But among my lovers, and caroling these songs,
+  Oh, I never doubt whether that is really me."
+
+
+Whitman always speaks as one having authority and not as a scribe, not as
+a mere man of letters. This is the privilege of the divine egoism of the
+prophet.
+
+Like the utterances of the biblical writers, without argument, without
+elaboration, his mere dictum seems the word of fate. It is not the voice
+of a man who has made his way through the world by rejecting and denying,
+but by accepting all and rising superior. What the "push of reading" or
+the push of argument could not start is often started and clinched by his
+mere authoritative "I say."
+
+  "I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery
+        draws the blood out of liberty,"...
+  "I say the human shape or face is so great it must never be made
+        ridiculous;
+  I say for ornaments nothing outré can be allowed,
+  And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,
+  And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology
+        and in other persons' physiologies also.
+
+  "Think of the past;
+  I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and
+        your times....
+  Think of spiritual results.
+  Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results.
+  Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
+  Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
+  Think of womanhood and you to be a woman;
+  The Creation is womanhood;
+  Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
+  Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
+        womanhood?"
+
+
+Egotism is usually intolerant, but Whitman was one of the most tolerant of
+men.
+
+A craving for sympathy and personal affection he certainly had; to be
+valued as a human being was more to him than to be valued as a poet. His
+strongest attachments were probably for persons who had no opinion, good
+or bad, of his poetry at all.
+
+
+VI
+
+Under close scrutiny his egotism turns out to be a kind of altru-egotism,
+which is vicarious and all-inclusive of his fellows. It is one phase of
+his democracy, and is vital and radical in his pages. It is a high,
+imperturbable pride in his manhood and in the humanity which he shares
+with all. It is the exultant and sometimes almost arrogant expression of
+the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world--the
+feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws,
+institutions, conventions, bibles, religions--that the divinity of kings,
+and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to the humblest
+person.
+
+It was a passion that united him to his fellows rather than separated him
+from them. His pride was not that of a man who sets himself up above
+others, or who claims some special advantage or privilege, but that
+godlike quality that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence
+we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for
+mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and
+follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is
+the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there
+might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that
+his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate
+the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves,"
+flowing curiously out of its pride and egotism, is the lesson of charity,
+of self-surrender, and the free bestowal of yourself upon all hands.
+
+The law of life of great art is the law of life in ethics, and was long
+ago announced.
+
+He that would lose his life shall find it; he who gives himself the most
+freely shall the most freely receive. Whitman made himself the brother and
+equal of all, not in word, but in very deed; he was in himself a compend
+of the people for which he spoke, and this breadth of sympathy and free
+giving of himself has resulted in an unexpected accession of power.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE
+
+
+I
+
+Whitman protests against his "Leaves" being judged merely as literature;
+but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends
+the matter. Still while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are
+paramount in most other poets,--certainly in all third and fourth rate
+poets, in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values.
+
+In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates
+that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary
+productions.
+
+"Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries," he says in one of the
+"Inscriptions,"--
+
+  "For that which was lacking in all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed
+        most, I bring.
+  Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
+  The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,
+  A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
+  But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."
+
+
+Not linked with the studied and scholarly productions, not open to the
+mere bookish mind, but more akin to the primitive utterances and oracles
+of historic humanity. A literary age like ours lays great stress upon the
+savor of books, art, culture, and has little taste for the savor of real
+things, the real man, which we get in Whitman.
+
+"It is the true breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit,
+that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes
+on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would
+not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is
+beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson,
+begat Browning, begat the New England poets, but it did not in the same
+sense beget Whitman, any more than it begat Homer or Job or Isaiah. The
+artist may delight in him and find his own ideals there; the critic may
+study him and find the poet master of all his weapons; the disciple of
+culture will find, as Professor Triggs has well said, that "there is no
+body of writings in literature which demands a wider conversancy with the
+best that has been thought or said in the world,"--yet the poet escapes
+from all hands that would finally hold him and monopolize him. Whitman is
+an immense solvent,--forms, theories, rules, criticisms, disappear in his
+fluid, teeming pages. Much can be deduced from him, because much went to
+the making up of his point of view. He makes no criticism, yet a
+far-reaching criticism is implied in the very start of his poems. No
+modern poet presupposes so much, or requires so much preliminary study and
+reflection. He brings a multitude of questions and problems, and, what is
+singular, he brings them in himself; they are implied in his temper, and
+in his attitude toward life and reality.
+
+Whitman says he has read his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, that he
+has tried himself by the elemental laws; and tells us in many ways, direct
+and indirect, that the standards he would be tried by are not those of art
+or books, but of absolute nature. He has been laughed at for calling
+himself a "Kosmos," but evidently he uses the term to indicate this
+elemental, dynamic character of his work,--its escape from indoor,
+artificial standards, its aspiration after the "amplitude of the earth,
+and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of
+the earth, and the equilibrium also."
+
+
+II
+
+Unless the poetic perception is fundamental in us, and can grasp the
+poetry of things, actions, characters, multitudes, heroisms, we shall read
+Whitman with very poor results. Unless America, the contemporary age,
+life, nature, are poetical to us, Whitman will not be. He has aimed at the
+larger poetry of forces, masses, persons, enthusiasms, rather than at the
+poetry of the specially rare and fine. He kindles in me the delight I have
+in space, freedom, power, the elements, the cosmic, democracy, and the
+great personal qualities of self-reliance, courage, candor, charity.
+
+Always in the literary poets are we impressed with the art of the poet as
+something distinct from the poet himself, and more or less put on. The
+poet gets himself up for the occasion; he assumes the pose and the
+language of the poet, as the priest assumes the pose and the language of
+devotion. In Whitman the artist and the man are one. He never gets himself
+up for the occasion. Our pleasure in him is rarely or never our pleasure
+in the well-dressed, the well-drilled, the cultivated, the refined, the
+orderly, but it is more akin to our pleasure in real things, in human
+qualities and powers, in freedom, health, development. Yet I never open
+his book without being struck afresh with its pictural quality, its grasp
+of the concrete, its vivid realism, its intimate sense of things, persons,
+truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such
+as we can never get in mere prose. It is as direct as a challenge, as
+personal as a handshake, and yet withal how mystical, how elusive, how
+incommensurable! To deny that Whitman belongs to the fraternity of great
+artists, the shapers and moulders of the ideal,--those who breathe the
+breath of life into the clay or stone of common facts and objects, who
+make all things plastic and the vehicles of great and human emotions,--is
+to read him very inadequately, to say the least. To get at Walt Whitman
+you must see through just as much as you do in dealing with nature; you
+are to bring the same interpretive imagination. You are not to be balked
+by what appears to be the coarse and the familiar, or his rank
+contemporaneity; after a time you will surely see the lambent spiritual
+flames that play about it all.
+
+  "Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering about me,"
+
+and his cosmic splendor, depth, and power. It is not the denial of art, it
+is a new affirmation of life. It is one phase of his democracy. It is the
+logical conclusion of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself that
+appeared in the first edition of his poems. He would give us more of the
+man, a fuller measure of personal, concrete, human qualities, than any
+poet before him. He strips away the artificial wrappings and illusions
+usual in poetry, and relies entirely upon the native and intrinsic. He
+will have no curtains, he says,--not the finest,--between himself and his
+reader.
+
+  "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
+        all poems,
+  You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of
+        suns left),
+  You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
+        through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
+  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+  You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."
+
+
+This is a hint of his democracy as applied to literature,--more direct and
+immediate contact with the primary and universal, less of the vestments
+and trappings of art and more of the push and power of original character
+and of nature.
+
+
+III
+
+It seems to me it is always in order to protest against the narrow and
+dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticism touching this
+matter of art. "The boundaries of art are jealously guarded," says a
+recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that
+had been accurately surveyed and fixed,--as if art was a fact and not a
+spirit.
+
+Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that
+art is in any sense an "enclosure,"--a province fenced off and set apart
+from the rest,--any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many
+people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human
+spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the
+sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has
+but one principle, one aim,--to produce an impression, a powerful
+impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the
+canons of taste and criticism. Name any principle, so called, and some day
+a genius shall be born who will produce his effects in defiance of it, or
+by appearing to reverse it. Such a man as Turner seemed, at first sight,
+to set at defiance all correct notions of art. The same with Wagner in
+music, the same with Whitman in poetry. The new man is impossible till he
+appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power
+does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical
+standards to him. But it is sure to do so at last. There is nothing final
+in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are
+deductions from his work, not its inspiration. We demand of the new man,
+of the overthrower of our idols, but one thing,--has he authentic
+inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded.
+If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of
+nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case. Is
+there no room for the new man? But the new man makes room for himself, and
+if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is
+appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.
+
+
+IV
+
+The trouble with most of us is that we found our taste for poetry upon
+particular authors, instead of upon literature as a whole, or, better yet,
+upon life and reality. Hence we form standards instead of principles.
+Standards are limited, rigid, uncompromising, while principles are
+flexible, expansive, creative. If we are wedded to the Miltonic standard
+of poetry, the classic standards, we shall have great difficulties with
+Whitman; but if we have founded our taste upon natural principles--if we
+have learned to approach literature through reality, instead of reality
+through literature--we shall not be the victims of any one style or model;
+we shall be made free of all. The real test of art, of any art, as Burke
+long ago said, and as quoted by Mr. Howells in his trenchant little volume
+called "Criticism and Fiction," is to be sought outside of art, namely, in
+nature. "I can judge but poorly of anything while I measure it by no other
+standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's
+power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the
+meanest, things in nature will give the truest lights." It is thought that
+the preëminence of the Greek standards is settled when we say they are
+natural. Yes, but Nature is not Greek. She is Asiatic, German, English, as
+well.
+
+
+V
+
+In poetry, in art, a man must sustain a certain vital relation to his
+work, and that work must sustain a certain vital relation to the laws of
+mind and of life. That is all, and that leaves the doors very wide. We are
+not to ask, Is it like this or like that? but, Is it vital, is it real, is
+it a consistent, well-organized whole?
+
+The poet must always interpret himself and nature after his own fashion.
+Is his fashion adequate? Is the interpretation vivid and real? Do his
+lines cut to the quick, and beget heat and joy in the soul? If we cannot
+make the poet's ideal our own by sharing his enthusiasm for it, the
+trouble is as likely to be in ourselves as in him. In any case he must be
+a law unto himself.
+
+The creative artist differs from the mere writer or thinker in this: he
+sustains a direct personal relation to his subject through emotion,
+intuition, will. The indirect, impersonal relation which works by
+reflection, comparison, and analysis is that of the critic and
+philosopher. The man is an artist when he gives us a concrete and
+immediate impression of reality: from his hands we get the thing itself;
+from the critic and thinker we get ideas _about_ the thing. The poet does
+not merely say the world is beautiful; he shows it as beautiful: he does
+not describe the flower; he places it before us. What are the enemies of
+art? Reflection, didacticism, description, the turgid, the obscure. A poet
+with a thesis to sustain is more or less barred from the freedom of pure
+art. It is by direct and unconsidered expression, says Scherer, that art
+communicates with reality. The things that make for art, then, are
+feeling, intuition, sentiment, soul, a fresh and vigorous sense of real
+things,--in fact, all that makes for life, health, and wholeness. Goethe
+is more truly an artist in the first part of Faust than in the second;
+Arnold has a more truly artistic mind than Lowell.
+
+The principles of art are always the same in the respect I have indicated,
+just as the principles of life are always the same, or of health and
+longevity are always the same. No writer is an artist who is related to
+his subject simply by mental or logical grip alone: he must have a certain
+emotional affiliation and identity with it; he does not so much convey to
+us ideas and principles as pictures, parables, impressions,--a lively
+sense of real things. When we put Whitman outside the pale of art, we must
+show his shortcomings here; we must show that he is not fluid and
+generative,--that he paints instead of interprets, that he gives us
+reasons instead of impulses, a stone when we ask for bread. "I do not
+give a little charity," he says; "when I give, I give myself." This the
+artist always does, not his mind merely, but his soul, his personality.
+"Leaves of Grass" is as direct an emanation from a central personal force
+as any book in literature, and always carries its own test and its own
+proof. It never hardens into a system, it never ceases to be penetrated
+with will and emotion, it never declines from the order of deeds to the
+order of mere thoughts. All is movement, progress, evolution, picture,
+parable, impulse.
+
+It is on these grounds that Whitman, first of all, is an artist. He has
+the artist temperament. His whole life was that of a man who lives to
+ideal ends,--who lived to bestow himself upon others, to extract from life
+its meaning and its joy.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman has let himself go, and trusted himself to the informal and
+spontaneous, to a degree unprecedented. His course required a
+self-reliance of the highest order; it required an innate cohesion and
+homogeneity, a firmness and consistency of individual outline, that few
+men have. It would seem to be much easier to face the poet's problem in
+the old, well-worn forms--forms that are so winsome and authoritative in
+themselves--than, to stand upon a basis so individual and intrinsic as
+Whitman chose to stand upon. His course goes to the quick at once. How
+much of a man are you? How vital and fundamental is your poetic gift? Can
+it go alone? Can it face us in undress?
+
+Never did the artist more cunningly conceal himself; never did he so
+completely lose himself in the man, identifying himself with the natural
+and spontaneous; never emerging and challenging attention on his own
+account, denying us when we too literally seek him, mocking us when we
+demand his credentials, and revealing himself only when we have come to
+him upon his own terms.
+
+The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no
+outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader. "This is
+no book," he says: "who touches this touches a man." In one sense Whitman
+is without art,--the impression which he always seeks to make is that of
+reality itself. He aims to give us reality without the usual literary
+veils and illusions,--the least possible amount of the artificial, the
+extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader. He banishes from
+his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,--all
+atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and
+decoration,--and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers.
+The verse does not seem to have been shaped; it might have grown: it takes
+no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular,
+rhythmical, and always fluid and real. A cry will always be raised against
+the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and
+falls back upon simple Nature, or upon himself, as Millet did in painting,
+and Wagner in music, and Whitman in poetry.
+
+Whitman's working ideas, the principles that inspired him, are all
+directly related to life and the problems of life; they are democracy,
+nature, freedom, love, personality, religion: while the ideas from which
+our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,--they are
+literary ideas, such as lucidity, form, beauty.
+
+
+VII
+
+Much light is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark
+which he once made in conversation with Dr. Bucke:--
+
+"I have aimed to make the book simple,--tasteless, or with little
+taste,--with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or
+writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is
+not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her
+productions--her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, meats--with
+faint and delicate flavor and fragrance, but these in the long run make
+the deepest impression. Man, dealing with natural things, constantly aims
+to increase their piquancy. By crossing and selection he deepens and
+intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so
+on. He pursues the same method in poetry,--that is, strives for strong
+light or shade, for high color, perfume, pungency, in all ways for the
+greatest immediate effect. In so doing he leaves the true way, the way of
+Nature, and, in the long run, comes far short of producing her effects."
+
+More light of the same kind is thrown upon his methods by the following
+passage from the preface to the first edition of his poems in 1855.
+
+"To speak in literature," he says, "with the perfect rectitude and
+insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the
+sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless
+triumph of art." And again: "The great poet has less a marked style, and
+is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution,
+and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be
+meddlesome; I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or
+originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I
+will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell,
+I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate
+or soothe, I will have purpose, as health or heat or snow has, and be as
+regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my
+composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side
+and look in the mirror with me."
+
+
+VIII
+
+But in view of the profound impression Whitman's work has made upon widely
+different types of mind on both sides of the Atlantic, and in view of the
+persistent vitality of his fame, the question whether he is inside or
+outside the pale of art amounts to very little. I quite agree with the
+late Mrs. Gilchrist, that, when "great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please."
+
+That Whitman has expressed great meanings and great emotions with adequate
+power, even his unfriendly critics admit. Thus Professor Wendell, in an
+admirable essay on American literature, says that "though Whitman is
+uncouth, inarticulate, and lacking in a grotesque degree artistic form,
+yet for all that he can make you feel for the moment how even the
+ferry-boats plying from New York to Brooklyn are fragments of God's
+eternities." In the same way Mr. William Clark, his British critic and
+expounder, says that he is wanting in discrimination and art, "flings his
+ideas at us in a heap," etc., and yet that the effect of his work is "to
+stir our emotions, widen our interests, and rally the forces of our moral
+nature."
+
+It seems to me that a man who, through the printed page, can do these
+things, must have some kind of art worth considering. If, through his
+impassioned treatment of a prosy, commonplace object like a ferry-boat, he
+can so dignify and exalt it, and so fill it with the meanings of the
+spirit, that it seems like a part of God's eternities, his methods are at
+least worth inquiring into.
+
+The truth is, Whitman's art, in its lack of extrinsic form and finish, is
+Oriental rather than Occidental, and is an offense to a taste founded upon
+the precision and finish of a mechanical age. His verse is like the
+irregular, slightly rude coin of the Greeks compared with the exact,
+machine-cut dies of our own day, or like the unfinished look of Japanese
+pottery beside the less beautiful but more perfect specimens of modern
+ceramic art.
+
+For present purposes, we may say there are two phases of art,--formal art
+and creative art. By formal art I mean that which makes a direct appeal to
+our sense of form,--our sense of the finely carved, the highly wrought,
+the deftly planned; and by creative art I mean that quickening,
+fructifying power of the masters, that heat and passion that make the
+world plastic and submissive to their hands, teeming with new meanings and
+thrilling with new life.
+
+Formal art is always in the ascendant. Formal anything--formal dress,
+formal manners, formal religion, formal this and that--always counts for
+more than the informal, the spontaneous, the original. It is easier, it
+can be put off and on.
+
+Formal art is nearly always the gift of the minor poet, and often of the
+major poet also. In such a poet as Swinburne, formal art leads by a great
+way. The content of his verse,--what is it? In Tennyson as well I should
+say formal art is in the ascendant. Creative art is his also; Tennyson
+reaches and moves the spirit, yet his skill is more noteworthy than his
+power. In Wordsworth, on the other hand, I should say creative art led:
+the content of his verse is more than its form; his spiritual and
+religious values are greater than his literary and artistic. The same is
+true of our own Emerson. Poe, again, is much more as an artist than as a
+man or a personality.
+
+I hardly need say that in Whitman formal art, the ostensibly artistic,
+counts for but very little. The intentional artist, the professional poet,
+is kept entirely in abeyance, or is completely merged and hidden in the
+man, more so undoubtedly than in any poet this side the old Oriental
+bards. We call him formless, chaotic, amorphous, etc., because he makes no
+appeal to our modern highly stimulated sense of art or artificial form. We
+must discriminate this from our sense of power, our sense of life, our
+sense of beauty, of the sublime, of the all, which clearly Whitman would
+reach and move. Whitman certainly has a form of his own: what would a
+poet, or any writer or worker in the ideal, do without some kind of form?
+some consistent and adequate vehicle of expression? But Whitman's form is
+not what is called artistic, because it is not brought within the rules of
+the prosodical system, and does not appeal to our sense of the consciously
+shaped and cultivated. It is essentially the prose form heightened and
+intensified by a deep, strong, lyric and prophetic note.
+
+The bonds and shackles of regular verse-form Whitman threw off. This
+course seemed to be demanded by the spirit to which he had dedicated
+himself,--the spirit of absolute unconstraint. The restrictions and
+hamperings of the scholastic forms did not seem to be consistent with this
+spirit, which he identified with democracy and the New World. A poet who
+sets out to let down the bars everywhere, to remove veils and
+obstructions, to emulate the freedom of the elemental forces, to effuse
+always the atmosphere of open-air growths and objects, to be as
+"regardless of observation" as the processes of nature, etc., will not be
+apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression. The
+essentially prose form which Whitman chose is far more in keeping with the
+spirit and aim of his work than any conventional metrical system could
+have been. Had he wrought solely as a conscious artist, aiming at the
+effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have chosen a
+different medium.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman threw himself with love and enthusiasm upon this great, crude,
+seething, materialistic American world. The question is, Did he master it?
+Is he adequate to absorb and digest it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is
+it plastic in his hands? Does he stamp it with his own image? I do not
+ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make
+it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because
+evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it. He is content if he
+present America and the modern to us as they are inwrought into his own
+personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character,
+passion, will, motive, conviction. He would show them subjectively and as
+living impulses in himself. Of course a great constructive, dramatic poet
+like Shakespeare would have solved his problem in a different manner, or
+through the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters. But the
+poet and prophet of democracy and of egotism shows us all things in and
+through himself.
+
+His egotism, or egocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work.
+It colors all and determines all. The poems are the direct outgrowth of
+the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it
+were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon
+the trunk. His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most
+poets. He never leads us away from himself into pleasant paths with
+enticing flowers of fancy or forms of art. He carves or shapes nothing for
+its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent
+grounds as pure art. His work is not material made precious by elaboration
+and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life.
+
+
+X
+
+Whitman was compelled to this negation of extrinsic art by the problem he
+had set before himself,--first, to arouse, to suggest, rather than to
+finish or elaborate, less to display any theme or thought than "to bring
+the reader into the atmosphere of the theme or thought;" secondly, to make
+his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that
+the dominant impression should always be that of the living, breathing
+man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see
+him and feel him in books or art,--the man in the form and garb of actual,
+concrete life, not as poet or artist, but simply as man. This is doubtless
+the meaning of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to
+the first issue of the "Leaves," to which I have referred. This portrait
+is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task. It was a
+hint that we must take this poet with very little literary tailoring; it
+was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and
+spoke in their spirit.
+
+It is never the theme treated, but always the character exploited; never
+the structure finished, but always the plan suggested; never the work
+accomplished, but always the impulse imparted,--freedom, power, growth.
+
+  "Allons! we must not stop here.
+  However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling,
+        we cannot remain here,
+  However sheltered this port, or however calm these waters, we must not
+        anchor here,
+  However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to
+        receive it but a little while.
+
+  "Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
+  Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
+  Allons! from all formulas!
+  From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!"
+
+
+This magnificent poem, "The Song of the Open Road," is one of the most
+significant in Whitman's work. He takes the open road as his type,--not an
+end in itself, not a fulfillment, but a start, a journey, a progression.
+It teaches him the profound lesson of reception, "no preference nor
+denial," and the profounder lesson of liberty and truth:--
+
+  "From this hour, freedom!
+  From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
+  Going where I list--my own master, total and absolute,
+  Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
+  Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
+  Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
+        would hold me.
+
+  "I inhale great draughts of air,
+  The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine."
+
+He will not rest with art, he will not rest with books, he will press his
+way steadily toward the largest freedom.
+
+  "Only the kernel of every object nourishes.
+  Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
+  Where is he who undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?"
+
+
+Whitman was not a builder. If he had the architectural power which the
+great poets have shown, he gave little proof of it. It was not required by
+the task he set before himself. His book is not a temple: it is a wood, a
+field, a highway; vista, vista, everywhere,--vanishing lights and shades,
+truths half disclosed, successions of objects, hints, suggestions, brief
+pictures, groups, voices, contrasts, blendings, and, above all, the tonic
+quality of the open air. The shorter poems are like bunches of herbs or
+leaves, or a handful of sprays gathered in a walk; never a thought
+carefully carved, and appealing to our sense of artistic form.
+
+The main poem of the book, "The Song of Myself," is a series of
+utterances, ejaculations, apostrophes, enumerations, associations,
+pictures, parables, incidents, suggestions, with little or no structural
+or logical connection, but all emanating from a personality whose presence
+dominates the page, and whose eye is ever upon us. Without this vivid and
+intimate sense of the man back of all, of a sane and powerful spirit
+sustaining ours, the piece would be wild and inchoate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The reader will be sure to demand of Whitman ample compensation for the
+absence from his work of those things which current poets give us in such
+full measure. Whether or not the compensation is ample, whether the music
+of his verse as of winds and waves, the long, irregular, dithyrambic
+movement, its fluid and tonic character, the vastness of conception, the
+large, biblical speech, the surging cosmic emotion, the vivid personal
+presence as of the living man looking into your eye or walking by your
+side,--whether all these things, the refreshing quality as of "harsh salt
+spray" which the poet Lanier found in the "Leaves," the electric currents
+which Mrs. Gilchrist found there, the "unexcelled imaginative justice of
+language" which Mr. Stevenson at times found, the religious liberation and
+faith which Mr. Symonds found, the "incomparable things incomparably well
+said" of Emerson, the rifle-bullets of Ruskin, the "supreme words" of
+Colonel Ingersoll, etc.,--whether qualities and effects like these, I say,
+make up to us for the absence of the traditional poetic graces and
+adornments, is a question which will undoubtedly long divide the reading
+world.
+
+In the works upon which our poetic taste is founded, artistic form is
+paramount; we have never been led to apply to such works open-air
+standards,--clouds, trees, rivers, spaces,--but the precision and
+definiteness of the cultured and the artificial. If Whitman had aimed at
+pure art and had failed, his work would be intolerable. As his French
+critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, has well said: "In the large work which Whitman
+attempted, there come no rules save those of nobility and strength of
+spirit; and these suffice amply to create a most unlooked-for and
+grandiose aspect of beauty." "Overcrowded and disorderly" as it may seem,
+"if heroic emotion and thought and enthusiasm vitalize it," the poet has
+reached his goal.
+
+
+XII
+
+Sometimes I define Whitman to myself as the poet of the open air,--not
+because he sings the praises of these things after the manner of the
+so-called nature-poets, but because he has the quality of things in the
+open air, the quality of the unhoused, the untamed, the elemental and
+aboriginal. He pleases and he offends, the same way things at large do. He
+has the brawn, the indifference, the rudeness, the virility, the
+coarseness,--something gray, unpronounced, elemental, about him, the
+effect of mass, size, distance, flowing, vanishing lines, neutral
+spaces,--something informal, multitudinous, and processional,--something
+regardless of criticism, that makes no bid for our applause, not
+calculated instantly to please, unmindful of details, prosaic if we make
+it so, common, near at hand, and yet that provokes thought and stirs our
+emotions in an unusual degree. The long lists and catalogues of objects
+and scenes in Whitman, that have so excited the mirth of the critics, are
+one phase of his out-of-doors character,--a multitude of concrete objects,
+a grove, a thicket, a field, a stretch of beach,--every object sharply
+defined, but no attempt at logical or artistic sequence, the effect of the
+whole informal, multitudinous. It may be objected to these pages that they
+consist of a mass of details that do not make a picture. But every line is
+a picture of a scene or an object. Whitman always keeps up the movement,
+he never pauses to describe; it is all action.
+
+Passing from such a poet as Tennyson to Whitman is like going from a warm,
+perfumed interior, with rich hangings, pictures, books, statuary, fine men
+and women, out into the street, or upon the beach, or upon the hill, or
+under the midnight stars. We lose something certainly, but do we not gain
+something also? Do we not gain just what Whitman had in view, namely,
+direct contact with the elements in which are the sources of our life and
+health? Do we not gain in scope and power what we lose in art and
+refinement?
+
+The title, "Leaves of Grass," is full of meaning. What self-knowledge and
+self-scrutiny it implies! The grass, perennial sprouting, universal,
+formless, common, the always spread feast of the herds, dotted with
+flowers, the herbage of the earth, so suggestive of the multitudinous,
+loosely aggregated, unelaborated character of the book; the lines
+springing directly out of the personality of the poet, the soil of his
+life.
+
+  "What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me,"
+
+says the poet, and this turns out to be the case. We only look to see if
+in the common and the cheap he discloses new values and new meanings,--if
+his leaves of grass have the old freshness and nutriment, and be not a
+mere painted greenness.
+
+  "The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
+  The carpenter dresses his plank--the tongue of his foreplane whistles
+        its wild ascending lisp,
+  The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving
+        dinner,
+  The pilot seizes the king-pin--he heaves down with a strong arm,
+  The mate stands braced in the whale-boat--lance and harpoon are ready,
+  The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
+  The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
+  The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
+  The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First Day loafe, and looks
+        at the oats and rye,
+  The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case,
+  He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
+        bedroom;
+  The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
+  He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
+  The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,
+  What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
+  The quadroon girl is sold at the stand--the drunkard nods by the
+        bar-room stove,
+  The machinist rolls up his sleeves--the policeman travels his beat--the
+        gate-keeper marks who pass,
+  The young fellow drives the express-wagon--I love him, though I do not
+        know him,
+  The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
+  The western turkey-shooting draws old and young--some lean on their
+        rifles, some sit on logs,
+  Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his
+        piece;
+  The groups of newly-come emigrants cover the wharf or levee,
+  As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them
+        from his saddle,
+  The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners,
+        the dancers bow to each other,
+  The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret, and harks to the
+        musical rain,
+  The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
+  The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and
+        the winter-grain falls in the ground,
+  Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the
+        frozen surface,
+  The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep
+        with his axe,
+  Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-wood or pekan-trees,
+  Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River, or through those
+        drained by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
+  Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,
+  Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons
+        around them,
+  In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their
+        day's sport,
+  The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
+  The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
+  The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his
+        wife;
+  And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
+  And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am."
+
+
+What is this but tufts and tussocks of grass; not branching trees, nor yet
+something framed and deftly put together, but a succession of simple
+things, objects, actions, persons; handfuls of native growths, a stretch
+of prairie or savanna; no composition, no artistic wholes, no logical
+sequence, yet all vital and real; jets of warm life that shoot and play
+over the surface of contemporary America, and that the poet uses as the
+stuff out of which to weave the song of himself.
+
+This simple aggregating or cataloguing style as it has been called, and
+which often occurs in the "Leaves," has been much criticised, but it seems
+to me in perfect keeping in a work that does not aim at total artistic
+effects, at finished structural perfection like architecture, but to
+picture the elements of a man's life and character in outward scenes and
+objects and to show how all nature tends inward to him and he outward to
+it. Whitman showers the elements of American life upon his reader until,
+so to speak, his mind is drenched with them, but never groups them into
+patterns to tickle his sense of form. It is charged that his method is
+inartistic, and it is so in a sense, but it is the Whitman art and has its
+own value in his work. Only the artist instinct could prompt to this
+succession of one line genre word painting.
+
+But this is not the way of the great artists. No, but it is Whitman's way,
+and these things have a certain artistic value in his work, a work that
+professedly aims to typify his country and times,--the value of multitude,
+processions, mass-movements, and the gathering together of elements and
+forces from wide areas.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman's relation to art, then, is primary and fundamental, just as his
+relations to religion, to culture, to politics, to democracy, are primary
+and fundamental,--through his emotion, his soul, and not merely through
+his tools, his intellect. His artistic conscience is quickly revealed to
+any searching inquiry. It is seen in his purpose to convey his message by
+suggestion and indirection, or as an informing, vitalizing breath and
+spirit. His thought and meaning are enveloped in his crowded, concrete,
+and often turbulent pages, as science is enveloped in nature. He has a
+profound ethic, a profound metaphysic, but they are not formulated; they
+are vital in his pages as hearing or eyesight.
+
+Whitman studied effects, and shaped his means to his end, weighing values
+and subordinating parts, as only the great artist does. He knew the power
+of words as few know them; he knew the value of vista, perspective,
+vanishing lights and lines. He knew how to make his words itch at your
+ears till you understood them; how to fold up and put away in his
+sentences meanings, glimpses, that did not at first reveal themselves. It
+is only the work of the great creative artist that is pervaded by will,
+and that emanates directly and inevitably from the personality of the man
+himself. As a man and an American, Whitman is as closely related to his
+work as Æschylus to his, or Dante to his. This is always a supreme
+test,--the closeness and vitality of the relation of a man to his work.
+Could any one else have done it? Is it the general intelligence that
+speaks, the culture and refinement of the age? or have we a new revelation
+of life, a new mind and soul? The lesser poets sustain only a secondary
+relation to their works. It is other poets, other experiences, the past,
+the schools, the forms, that speak through them. In all Whitman's
+recitatives, as he calls them, the free-flowing ends of the sentences, the
+loose threads of meaning, the unraveled or unknitted threads and fringes,
+are all well considered, and are one phase of _his_ art. He seeks his
+effects thus.
+
+His method is indirect, allegorical, and elliptical to an unusual degree;
+often a curious suspension and withholding in a statement, a suggestive
+incompleteness, both ends of his thought, as it were, left in the air;
+sometimes the substantive, sometimes the nominative, is wanting, and all
+for a purpose. The poet somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic
+screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are
+used to in prophecy. The forthrightness of utterance, the projectile
+force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the
+great prophetic souls, is here.
+
+Whitman is poetic in the same way in which he is democratic, in the same
+way in which he is religious, or American, or modern,--not by word merely,
+but by deed; not by the extrinsic, but by the intrinsic; not by art, but
+by life.
+
+I am never tired of saying that to put great personal qualities in a poem,
+or other literary work, not formulated or didactically stated, but in
+tone, manner, attitude, breadth of view, love, charity, good fellowship,
+etc., is the great triumph for our day. So put, they are a possession to
+the race forever; they grow and bear fruit perennially, like the grass and
+the trees. And shall it be said that the poet who does this has no worthy
+art?
+
+
+XIV
+
+Nearly all modern artificial products, when compared with the ancient, are
+characterized by greater mechanical finish and precision. Can we say,
+therefore, they are more artistic? Is a gold coin of the time of Pericles,
+so rude and simple, less artistic than the elaborate coins of our own day?
+Is Japanese pottery, the glazing often ragged and uneven, less artistic
+than the highly finished work of the moderns?
+
+Are we quite sure, after all, that what we call "artistic form" is in any
+high or fundamental sense artistic? Are the precise, the regular, the
+measured, the finished, the symmetrical, indispensable to our conception
+of art? If regular extrinsic form and measure and proportion are necessary
+elements of the artistic, then geometrical flower-beds, and trees set in
+rows or trained to some fancy pattern, ought to please the artist. But do
+they? If we look for the artistic in these things, then Addison is a
+greater artist than Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says, "Addison speaks the
+language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." Which is really the most
+artistic? The one is the coin from the die, the other the coin from the
+hand.
+
+Tennyson's faultless form and finish are not what stamp him a great
+artist. He would no doubt be glad to get rid of them if he could, at least
+to keep them in abeyance and make them less obtrusive; he would give
+anything for the freedom, raciness, and wildness of Shakespeare. But he is
+not equal to these things. The culture, the refinement, the precision of a
+correct and mechanical age have sunk too deeply into his soul. He has not
+the courage or the spring to let himself go as Shakespeare did. Tennyson,
+too, speaks the language of poets, and not of men; he savors of the
+flower-garden, and not of the forest. Tennyson knows that he is an artist.
+Shakespeare, apparently, never had such a thought; he is intent solely
+upon holding the mirror up to nature. The former lived in an age of
+criticism, and when the poets loved poetry more than they did life and
+things; the latter, in a more virile time, and in "the full stream of the
+world."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not self-advertised as a work of art. The author had
+no thought that you should lay down his book and say, "What a great
+artist!" "What a master workman!" He would rather you should say, "What a
+great man!" "What a loving comrade!" "What a real democrat!" "What a
+healing and helpful force!" He would not have you admire his poetry: he
+would have you filled with the breath of a new and larger and saner life;
+he would be a teacher and trainer of men.
+
+The love of the precise, the exact, the methodical, is characteristic of
+an age of machinery, of a commercial and industrial age like ours. These
+things are indispensable in the mill and counting-house, but why should we
+insist upon them in poetry? Why should we cling to an arbitrary form like
+the sonnet? Why should we insist upon a perfect rhyme, as if it was a cog
+in a wheel? Why not allow and even welcome the freedom of half-rhymes, or
+suggestive rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it
+into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering
+and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the
+man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an
+artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair with great laws
+and forces?
+
+Of course it is much easier for a poet to use the regular verse-forms and
+verse language than it is to dispense with them; that is, a much less
+poetic capital is required in the former case than in the latter. The
+stock forms and the stock language count for a good deal. A very small
+amount of original talent may cut quite an imposing figure in the robes of
+the great masters. Require the poet to divest himself of them, and to
+speak in the language of men and in the spirit of real things, and see how
+he fares.
+
+
+XV
+
+Whitman was afraid of what he called the beauty disease. He thought a poet
+of the first order should be sparing of the direct use of the beautiful,
+as Nature herself is. His aim should be larger, and beauty should follow
+and not lead. The poet should not say to himself, "Come, I will make
+something beautiful," but rather "I will make something true, and
+quickening, and powerful. I will not dress my verse up in fine words and
+pretty fancies, but I will breathe into it the grit and force and
+adhesiveness of real things." Beauty is the flowering of life and
+fecundity, and it must have deep root in the non-beautiful.
+
+Beauty, as the master knows it, is a spirit and not an adornment. It is
+not merely akin to flowers and gems and rainbows: it is akin to the All.
+Looking through his eyes, you shall see it in the rude and the savage
+also, in rocks and deserts and mountains, in the common as well as in the
+rare, in wrinkled age as well as in rosy youth.
+
+The non-beautiful holds the world together, holds life together and
+nourishes it, more than the beautiful. Nature is beautiful because she is
+so much else first,--yes, and last, and all the time.
+
+  "For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
+        delicates of the earth and of man,
+  And nothing endures but personal qualities."
+
+
+Is there not in field, wood, or shore something more precious and tonic
+than any special beauties we may chance to find there,--flowers, perfumes,
+sunsets,--something that we cannot do without, though we can do without
+these? Is it health, life, power, or what is it?
+
+Whatever it is, it is something analogous to this that we get in Whitman.
+There is little in his "Leaves" that one would care to quote for its mere
+beauty, though this element is there also. One may pluck a flower here and
+there in his rugged landscape, as in any other; but the flowers are always
+by the way, and never the main matter. We should not miss them if they
+were not there. What delights and invigorates us is in the air, and in the
+look of things. The flowers are like our wild blossoms growing under great
+trees or amid rocks, never the camellia or tuberose of the garden or
+hot-house,--something rude and bracing is always present, always a breath
+of the untamed and aboriginal.
+
+Whitman's work gives results, and never processes. There is no return of
+the mind upon itself; it descends constantly upon things, persons,
+realities. It is a rushing stream which will not stop to be analyzed. It
+has been urged that Whitman does not give the purely intellectual
+satisfaction that would seem to be warranted by his mental grasp and
+penetration. No, nor the æsthetic satisfaction warranted by his
+essentially artistic habit of mind. Well, he did not promise satisfaction
+in anything, but only to put us on the road to satisfaction. His book, he
+says, is not a "good lesson," but it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
+and that to another, and every one to another still.
+
+Let me repeat that the sharp, distinct intellectual note--the note of
+culture, books, clubs, etc., such as we get from so many modern writers,
+you will not get from Whitman. In my opinion, the note he sounds is deeper
+and better than that. It has been charged by an unfriendly critic that he
+strikes lower than the intellect. If it is meant by this that he misses
+the intellect, it is not true; he stimulates the intellect as few poets
+do. He strikes lower because he strikes farther. He sounds the note of
+character, personality, volition, the note of prophecy, of democracy, and
+of love. He seems unintellectual to an abnormally intellectual age; he
+seems unpoetic to a taste formed upon poetic tidbits; he seems irreligious
+to standards founded upon the old models of devotional piety; he seems
+disorderly, incoherent to all petty thumb and finger measurements. In his
+ideas and convictions, Whitman was a modern of the moderns; yet in his
+type, his tastes, his fundamental make-up, he was primitive, of an earlier
+race and age,--before, as Emerson suggests, the gods had cut Man up into
+men, with special talents of one kind or another.
+
+
+XVI
+
+Take any of Whitman's irregular-flowing lines, and clip and trim them, and
+compress them into artificial verse-forms, and what have we gained to make
+up for what we have lost? Take his lines called "Reconciliation," for
+instance:--
+
+  "Word over all beautiful as the sky,
+  Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
+        lost,
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
+  I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
+  Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."
+
+Or take his poem called "Old Ireland:"--
+
+  "Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
+  Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
+  Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
+  Her old white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,
+  At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
+  Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,
+  Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.
+
+  "Yet a word, ancient mother,
+  You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between
+        your knees,
+  Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,
+  For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
+  It was an illusion; the son you loved was not really dead,
+  The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another
+        country.
+  Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
+  What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,
+      The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,
+      And now with rosy and new blood,
+      Moves to-day in a new country."
+
+Or take these lines from "Children of Adam:"--
+
+  "I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I
+        pass'd the church,
+  Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your
+        long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,
+  I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
+        soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
+  Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the
+        wrists around my head,
+  Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last
+        night under my ear."
+
+Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
+measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
+highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
+wanted to preserve at all hazards,--vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
+free-careering forces of nature.
+
+I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
+not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
+is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
+restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
+and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
+like him best without it.
+
+
+XVII
+
+How well we know the language of the conventional poetic! In this
+language, the language of nine tenths of current poetry, the wind comes
+up out of the south and kisses the rose's crimson mouth, or it comes out
+of the wood and rumples the poppy's hood. Morning comes in glistening
+sandals, and her footsteps are jeweled with flowers. Everything is
+bedecked and bejeweled. Nothing is truly seen or truly reported. It is an
+attempt to paint the world beautiful. It is not beautiful as it is, and we
+must deck it out in the colors of the fancy. Now, I do not want the world
+painted for me. I want the grass green or brown, as the case may be; the
+sky blue, the rocks gray, the soil red; and that the sun should rise and
+set without any poetic claptrap. What I want is to see these things spin
+around a thought, or float on the current of an emotion, as they always do
+in real poetry.
+
+Beauty always follows, never leads the great poet. It arises out of the
+interior substance and structure of his work, like the bloom of health in
+the cheeks. The young poet thinks to win Beauty by direct and persistent
+wooing of her. He has not learned yet that she comes unsought to the
+truthful, the brave, the heroic. Let him think some great thought,
+experience some noble impulse, give himself with love to life and reality
+about him, and Beauty is already his. She is the reward of noble deeds.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+The modern standard in art is becoming more and more what has been called
+the canon of the characteristic, as distinguished from the Greek or
+classic canon of formal beauty. It is this canon, as Professor Triggs
+suggests, that we are to apply to Whitman. Dr. Johnson had it in mind when
+he wrote thus of Shakespeare:--
+
+"The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed
+and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers: the
+composition of Shakespeare is a forest in which oaks extend their
+branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds
+and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
+filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless
+diversity."
+
+Classic art holds to certain fixed standards; it seeks formal beauty; it
+holds to order and proportion in external parts; its ideal of natural
+beauty is the well-ordered park or grove or flower-garden. It has a horror
+of the wild and savage. Mountains and forests, and tempests and seas,
+filled the classic mind with terror. Not so with the modern romantic mind,
+which finds its best stimulus and delight in free, unhampered nature. It
+loves the element of mystery and the suggestion of uncontrollable power.
+The modern mind has a sense of the vast, the infinite, that the Greek had
+not, and it is drawn by informal beauty more than by the formal.
+
+
+XIX
+
+It is urged against Whitman that he brings us the materials of poetry, but
+not poetry: he brings us the marble block, but not the statue; or he
+brings us the brick and mortar, but not the house. False or superficial
+analogies mislead us. Poetry is not something made; it is something grown,
+it is a vital union of the fact and the spirit. If the verse awakens in us
+the poetic thrill, the material, whatever it be, must have been touched
+with the transforming spirit of poesy. Why does Whitman's material suggest
+to any reader that it is poetic material? Because it has already been
+breathed upon by the poetic spirit. A poet may bring the raw material of
+poetry in the sense that he may bring the raw material of a gold coin; the
+stamp and form you give it does not add to its value. It is doubtful if
+any of Whitman's utterances could be worked up into what is called poetry
+without a distinct loss of poetic value. What they would gain in finish
+they would lose in suggestiveness. This word "suggestiveness" affords one
+of the keys to Whitman. The objection to him I have been considering
+arises from the failure of the critic to see and appreciate his avowed
+purpose to make his page fruitful in poetic suggestion, rather than in
+samples of poetic elaboration. "I finish no specimens," he says. "I shower
+them by exhaustless laws, fresh and modern continually, as Nature does."
+He is quite content if he awaken the poetic emotion without at all
+satisfying it. He would have you more eager and hungry for poetry when you
+had finished with him than when you began. He brings the poetic stimulus,
+and brings it in fuller measure than any contemporary poet; and this is
+enough for him.
+
+An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that
+reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry
+did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in
+motion at once; he was so fruitful in themes, so suggestive of new
+harmonies and melodies. He gave the hints, and left his reader to follow
+them up. This is exactly what Whitman wanted to do. It defines his
+attitude toward poetry, towards philosophy, towards religion,--to suggest
+and set going, to arouse unanswerable questions, and to brace you to meet
+them; to bring the materials of poetry, if you will have it so, and leave
+you to make the poem; to start trains of thought, and leave you to pursue
+the flight alone. Not a thinker, several critics have urged; no, but the
+cause of thought in others to an unwonted degree. "Whether you agree with
+him or not," says an Australian essayist, "he will sting you into such an
+anguish of thought as must in the end be beneficial." It matters little to
+him whether or not you agree with him; what is important is, that you
+should think the matter out for yourself. He purposely avoids hemming you
+in by his conclusions; he would lead you in no direction but your own.
+"Once more I charge you give play to your self. I charge you leave all
+free, as I have left all free."
+
+No thought, no philosophy, no music, no poetry, in his pages; no, it is
+all character, impulse, emotion, suggestion. But the true reader of him
+experiences all these things: he finds in his pages, if he knows how to
+look for it, a profound metaphysic, a profound ethic, a profound æsthetic;
+a theory of art and poetry which is never stated, but only hinted or
+suggested, and which is much more robust and vital than what we are used
+to; a theory of good and evil; a view of character and conduct; a theory
+of the state and of politics, of the relation of the sexes, etc., to give
+ample food for thought and speculation. The Hegelian philosophy is in the
+"Leaves" as vital as the red corpuscles in the blood, so much is implied
+that is not stated, but only suggested, as in Nature herself. The really
+vast erudition of the work is adroitly concealed, hidden like its
+philosophy, as a tree hides its roots. Readers should not need to be told
+that, in the region of art as of religion, mentality is not first, but
+spirituality, personality, imagination; and that we do not expect a poet's
+thoughts to lie upon his pages like boulders in the field, but rather to
+show their presence like elements in the soil.
+
+  "Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
+  Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
+  If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
+        form, color, perfume to you,
+  If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
+        tall branches and trees."
+
+
+The early records and sacred books of most peoples contain what is called
+the materials of poetry. The Bible is full of such materials. English
+literature shows many attempts to work this material up into poetry, but
+always with a distinct loss of poetic value. The gold is simply beaten
+out thin and made to cover more surface, or it is mixed with some base
+metal. A recent English poet has attempted to work up the New Testament
+records into poetry, and the result is for the most part a thin, windy
+dilution of the original. If the record or legend is full of poetic
+suggestion, that is enough; to elaborate it, and deck it out in poetic
+finery without loss of poetic value, is next to impossible.
+
+To me the Arthurian legends as they are given in the old books, are more
+poetic, more stimulating to the imagination, than they are after they have
+gone through the verbal upholstering and polishing of such a poet as
+Swinburne or even Tennyson. These poets add little but words and flowers
+of fancy, and the heroic simplicity of the original is quite destroyed.
+
+
+XX
+
+No critic of repute has been more puzzled and misled by this unwrought
+character of our poet's verse than Mr. Edmund Gosse, the London poet and
+essayist. Mr. Gosse finds Whitman only a potential or possible poet; his
+work is literature in the condition of protoplasm. He is a maker of poems
+in solution; the structural change which should have crystallized his
+fluid and teeming pages into forms of art never came. It does not occur to
+Mr. Gosse to inquire whether or not something like this may not have been
+the poet's intention. Perhaps this is the secret of the vitality of his
+work, which, as Mr. Gosse says, now, after forty years, shows no sign of
+declining. Perhaps it was a large, fresh supply of poetic yeast that the
+poet really sought to bring us. Undoubtedly Whitman aimed to give his work
+just this fluid, generative quality, to put into it the very basic
+elements of life itself. He feared the "structural change" to which Mr.
+Gosse refers; he knew it was more or less a change from life to death: the
+cell and not the crystal; the leaf of grass, and not the gem, is the type
+of his sentences. He sacrificed fixed form; above all, did he stop short
+of that conscious intellectual elaboration so characteristic of later
+poetry, the better to give the impression and the stimulus of creative
+elemental power. It is not to the point to urge that this is not the
+method or aim of other poets; that others have used the fixed forms, and
+found them plastic and vital in their hands. It was Whitman's aim; these
+were the effects he sought. I think beyond doubt that he gives us the
+impression of something dynamic, something akin to the vital forces of the
+organic world, much more distinctly and fully than any other poet who has
+lived.
+
+Whitman always aimed to make his reader an active partner with him in his
+poetic enterprise. "I seek less," he says, "to state or display any theme
+or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
+theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." This trait is brought
+out by Mr. Gosse in a little allegory. "Every reader who comes to
+Whitman," he says, "starts upon an expedition to the virgin forest. He
+must take his conveniences with him. He will make of the excursion what
+his own spirit dictates. [We generally do, in such cases, Mr. Gosse.]
+There are solitudes, fresh air, rough landscape, and a well of water, but
+if he wishes to enjoy the latter he must bring his own cup with him." This
+phase of Whitman's work has never been more clearly defined. Mr. Gosse
+utters it as an adverse criticism. It is true exposition, however we take
+it, what we get out of Whitman depends so largely upon what we bring to
+him. Readers will not all get the same. We do not all get the same out of
+a walk or a mountain climb. We get out of him in proportion to the
+sympathetic and interpretative power of our own spirits. Have you the
+brooding, warming, vivifying mother-mind? That vague, elusive,
+incommensurable something in the "Leaves" that led Symonds to say that
+talking about Whitman was like talking about the universe,--that seems to
+challenge our pursuit and definition, that takes on so many different
+aspects to so many different minds,--it seems to be this that has led Mr.
+Gosse to persuade himself that there is no real Walt Whitman, no man whom
+we can take, as we take any other figure in literature, as an "entity of
+positive value and definite characteristics," but a mere mass of literary
+protoplasm that takes the instant impression of whatever mood approaches
+it. Stevenson finds a Stevenson in it, Mr. Symonds finds a Symonds,
+Emerson finds an Emerson, etc. Truly may our poet say, "I contain
+multitudes." In what other poet do these men, or others like them, find
+themselves?
+
+Whitman was a powerful solvent undoubtedly. He never hardens into anything
+like a system, or into mere intellectual propositions. One of his own
+phrases, "the fluid and swallowing soul," is descriptive of this trait of
+him. One source of his charm is, that we each see some phase of ourselves
+in him, as Mr. Gosse suggests. Above all things is he potential and
+indicative, bard of "flowing mouth and indicative hand." In his
+"Inscriptions" he says:--
+
+  "I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual
+        look upon you and then averts his face,
+  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
+  Expecting the main things from you."
+
+
+This withholding and half-averted glancing, then, on the part of the poet,
+is deliberate and enters into the scheme of the work. Mr. Gosse would have
+shown himself a sounder critic had he penetrated the poet's purpose in
+this respect, and shown whether or not he had violated the canons he had
+set up for his own guidance. We do not condemn a creative work when it
+departs from some rule or precedent, but when it violates its own
+principle, when it is not consistent with itself, when it hath not eyes to
+see, or ears to hear, or hands to reach what lies within its own sphere.
+Art, in the plastic realms of written language, may set its mind upon
+elaboration, upon structural finish and proportion, upon exact forms and
+compensations, as in architecture, or it may set its mind upon
+suggestion, indirection, and the flowing, changing forms of organic
+nature. It is as much art in the one case as in the other. To get rid of
+all visible artifice is, of course, the great thing in both cases. There
+is so little apparent artifice in Whitman's case that he has been accused
+of being entirely without art, and of throwing his matter together in a
+haphazard way,--"without thought, without selection," without
+"composition, evolution, vertebration of style," says Mr. Gosse. Yet his
+work more than holds its own in a field where these things alone are
+supposed to insure success. Whitman covers up his processes well, and
+knows how to hit his mark without seeming to take aim. The verdicts upon
+him are mainly contradictory, because each critic only takes in a part of
+his scheme. Mr. Stedman finds him a formalist. Mr. Gosse finds in him a
+negation of all form. The London critic says he is without thought. A
+Boston critic speaks of what he happily calls the "waves of thought" in
+his work,--vast mind-impulses that lift and sway great masses of concrete
+facts and incidents. Whitman knew from the start that he would puzzle and
+baffle his critics, and would escape from them like air when they felt
+most sure they had him in their verbal nets. So it has been from the
+first, and so it continues to be. Without one thing, he says, it is
+useless to read him; and of what that one thing needful is, he gives only
+the vaguest hint, only a "significant look."
+
+
+XXI
+
+I may here notice two objections to Whitman urged by Mr. Stedman,--a
+critic for whose opinion I have great respect, and a man for whom I have a
+genuine affection. With all his boasted breadth and tolerance, Whitman,
+says my friend, is narrow; and, with all his vaunted escape from the
+shackles of verse-form, he is a formalist: his "irregular, manneristic
+chant" is as much at the extreme of artificiality as is the sonnet. These
+certainly are faults that one does not readily associate with the work of
+Whitman. But then I remember that the French critic, Scherer, charges
+Carlyle, the apostle of the gospel of sincerity, with being insincere and
+guilty of canting about cant. If Carlyle is insincere, I think it very
+likely that Whitman may be narrow and hide-bound. These things are so much
+a matter of temperament that one cannot judge for another. Yet one ought
+not to confound narrowness and breadth, or little and big. All earnest,
+uncompromising men are more or less open to the charge of narrowness. A
+man is narrow when he concentrates himself upon a point; even a
+cannon-shot is. Whitman was narrow in the sense that he was at times
+monotonous; that he sought but few effects, that he poured himself out
+mainly in one channel, that he struck chiefly the major chords of life.
+His "Leaves" do not show a great range of artistic motifs. A versatile,
+many-sided nature he certainly was not; a large, broad, tolerant nature
+he as certainly was. He does not assume many and diverse forms like a
+purely artistic talent, sporting with and masquerading in all the elements
+of life, like Shakespeare; but in his own proper form, and in his own
+proper person, he gives a sense of vastness and power that are
+unapproached in modern literature. He asserts himself uncompromisingly,
+but he would have you do the same. "He who spreads a wider breast than my
+own proves the width of my own." "He most honors my style who learns under
+it to destroy the teacher." His highest hope is to be the soil of superior
+poems.
+
+Mr. Stedman thinks he detects in the poet a partiality for the coarser,
+commoner elements of our humanity over the finer and choicer,--for the
+"rough" over the gentleman. But when all things have been duly considered,
+it will be found, I think, that he finally rests only with great personal
+qualities and traits. He is drawn by powerful, natural persons, wherever
+found,--men and women self-poised, fully equipped on all sides:--
+
+  "I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully arm'd,
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,"--
+
+and much more to the same effect.
+
+  "I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain:
+  If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it."
+
+
+Whitman is a formalist, just as every man who has a way of his own of
+saying and doing things, no matter how natural, is a formalist; but he is
+not a stickler for form of any sort. He has his own proper form, of
+course, which he rarely departs from. At one extreme of artificiality Mr.
+Stedman apparently places the sonnet. This is an arbitrary form; its rules
+are inflexible; it is something cut and shaped and fitted together after a
+predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial. If Whitman's
+irregularity was equally studied; if it gave us the same sense of
+something cunningly planned and wrought to a particular end, clipped here,
+curbed there, folded back in this line, drawn out in that, and attaining
+to a certain mechanical proportion and balance as a whole,--then there
+would be good ground for the critic's charge. But such is not the case.
+Whitman did not have, nor claim to have, the architectonic power of the
+great constructive poets. He did not build the lofty rhyme. He did not
+build anything, strictly speaking. He let himself go. He named his book
+after the grass, which makes a carpet over the earth, and which is a sign
+and a presence rather than a form.
+
+
+XXII
+
+Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect
+from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional
+cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might
+expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or
+grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a
+little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional
+obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is
+commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy;
+from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an
+average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"
+may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc. The price paid for his
+strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination
+to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision
+with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"
+with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious,"
+will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"
+will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his
+healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk
+to flight.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+To say that Whitman is a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If
+it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of
+language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the
+saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the
+right word--for just the right word--than did Whitman. He would wait for
+days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the
+language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the
+evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language
+never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not
+consciously challenge your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is
+never on dress parade. His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so
+much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to _stumble_ upon
+them. His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial
+adjuncts of poetry,--no finery or stuck-on ornament,--nothing obtrusively
+beautiful or poetic; and because it bears itself with the freedom and
+nonchalance of a man in his every-day attire.
+
+But it is always in a measure misleading to compare language with dress,
+to say that a poet clothes his thought, etc. The language is the thought;
+it is an incarnation, not an outside tailoring. To improve the expression
+is to improve the thought. In the most vital writing, the thought is nude;
+the mind of the reader touches something alive and real. When we begin to
+hear the rustle of a pompous or highly wrought vocabulary, when the man
+begins to dress his commonplace ideas up in fine phrases, we have enough
+of him.
+
+Indeed, it is only the mechanical writer who may be said to "clothe" his
+ideas with words; the real poet thinks through words.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps
+has been made, that in him we find the big merely,--strength without
+power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this
+impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious
+things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here
+is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great
+lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires
+a large space to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and
+multitude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The
+style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling,
+cloud-like masses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me
+there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not
+only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity;
+not only breadth, there is quality and charm. He is both Dantesque and
+Darwinian, as has been said.
+
+Mr. Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whitman, and,
+despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of
+literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,--the
+symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power. Thus, "he
+is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or
+buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a
+kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the
+world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise
+mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,--all seas,
+lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal
+earth."
+
+Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and
+plains, and to the globe itself.
+
+But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only
+claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size
+and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no
+impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to
+size,--breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of
+a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists
+are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.
+
+Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast masses of
+humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the
+industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
+are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
+elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
+effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
+sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere
+the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
+significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
+contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
+forces and objects of the universe, first with reference to character and
+personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
+of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
+in his first poem:--
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.
+
+  "I tramp a perpetual journey,
+  My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
+        woods,
+  No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
+  I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
+  I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,
+  But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
+  My left hand hooking you round the waist,
+  My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public
+        road."
+
+
+He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
+effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
+and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
+the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
+before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
+views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
+disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
+disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
+things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
+His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
+in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
+bits and parts as from the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
+of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:--
+
+  "It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
+        exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the
+        untruth of a single second,
+  I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor
+        ten billions of years,
+  Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and
+        builds a house."
+
+In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
+as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.
+These are typical lines:--
+
+  "A thousand perfect men and women appear,
+  Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths,
+        with offerings."
+
+  "Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young,
+  The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young."
+
+
+"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same
+effect. Always wholes, total impressions,--always a view as of a "strong
+bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower,
+but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a
+city. The title of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might
+stand as the title of the book. When he gathers details and special
+features he masses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo
+carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always
+in the totals, the breadth, the sweep of conception. The part that is
+local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality
+is the background across which it all flits.
+
+We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give
+us,--studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects,
+rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we
+inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He
+tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and
+processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the
+orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon
+he sees a spirit kindred to his own.
+
+He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and
+what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and
+equilibrium.
+
+"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:--
+
+  "The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed
+        either,
+  They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.
+  They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,
+  Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The earth does not argue,
+  Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
+  Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
+  Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
+  Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.
+  Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."
+
+He says the best of life
+
+  "Is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"
+
+and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:--
+
+  "I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate
+        the theory of the earth,
+  No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless
+        it compares with the amplitude of the earth,
+  Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
+        earth."
+
+
+No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
+these and kindred passages:--
+
+  "The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
+  His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
+  The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
+  The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has
+        the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of
+        poems, the Answerer,
+  (Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day,
+        for all its names.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
+  The words of true poems do not merely please,
+  The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of
+        beauty;
+  The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
+        fathers,
+  The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
+
+  "Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness
+        of body, withdrawnness,
+  Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,
+  The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
+  The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all
+        these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
+  The words of the true poems give you more than poems;
+  They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
+        peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything
+        else.
+  They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;
+  They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
+  Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain,
+        love-sick.
+  They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the
+        outset,
+  They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,
+  Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to
+        learn one of the meanings,
+  To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings
+        and never be quiet again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Of these States the poet is the equable man,
+  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of
+        their full returns,
+  Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
+  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more
+        nor less,
+  He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
+  He is the equalizer of his age and land,
+  He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
+  In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
+        building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce,
+        lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality,
+        government,
+  In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as
+        the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
+  The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
+  He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),
+  He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a
+        helpless thing,
+  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
+  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
+  In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
+  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
+  He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as
+        dreams or dots.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass
+        away,
+  The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
+  Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."
+
+
+Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's
+idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the
+beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in
+centuries.
+
+We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in
+these lines of Tennyson:--
+
+  "The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."
+
+"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's
+pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.
+
+Whitman's ideal poet is the most composite man, rich in temperament, rank
+in the human attributes, embracing races and eras in himself. All men see
+themselves in him:--
+
+  "The mechanic takes him for a mechanic,
+  And the soldier supposes him to be a soldier, and the sailor that he
+        has followed the sea,
+  And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
+  And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,
+  No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has
+        followed it,
+  No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters
+        there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
+  The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
+        themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,
+  They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so
+        grown."
+
+
+Let us hold the poet to his own ideals, and not condemn him because he has
+not aimed at something foreign to himself.
+
+The questions which Whitman puts to him who would be an American poet may
+fairly be put to himself.
+
+  "Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what the land and sea, the
+        bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
+  Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
+  Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce
+        contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole
+        people?
+  Are you not of some coterie? some school, or mere religion?
+  Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to
+        life itself?
+  Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
+  Have you, too, the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  What is this you bring my America?
+  Is it uniform with my country?
+  Is it not something that has been better done or told before?
+  Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?
+  Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?--is the good old cause
+        in it?
+  Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
+        literats of enemies' lands?
+  Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
+  Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?
+  Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?
+  Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my
+        strength, gait, face?
+  Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere
+        amanuenses?
+
+
+So far as Whitman's poetry falls within any of the old divisions it is
+lyrical,--a personal and individual utterance. Open the book anywhere and
+you are face to face with a man. His eye is fixed upon you. It is a man's
+voice you hear, and it is directed to _you_. He is not elaborating a
+theme: he is suggesting a relation or hinting a meaning. He is not
+chiseling, or carving a work of art: he is roughly outlining a man; he is
+planting a seed, or tilling a field.
+
+
+XXV
+
+I believe it was the lamented Professor Clifford who first used the term
+"cosmic emotion" in connection with "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's
+atmosphere is so distinctly outside of and above that which ministers to
+our social and domestic wants,--the confined and perfumed air of an indoor
+life; his mood and temper are so habitually begotten by the contemplation
+of the orbs and the laws and processes of universal nature, that the
+phrase often comes to mind in considering him. He is not in any sense,
+except perhaps in a few minor pieces, a domestic and fireside poet,--a
+solace to our social instincts and cultivated ideals. He is too large, too
+aboriginal, too elemental, too strong for that. I seem to understand and
+appreciate him best when I keep in mind the earth as a whole, and its
+relation to the system. Any large view or thought, or survey of life or
+mankind, is a preparation for him. He demands the outdoor temper and
+habit, he demands a sense of space and power, he demands above all things
+a feeling for reality. "Vastness" is a word that applies to him; abysmal
+man, cosmic consciousness, the standards of the natural universal,--all
+hint some phase of his genius. His survey of life and duty is from a point
+not included in any four walls, or in any school or convention. It is a
+survey from out the depths of being; the breath of worlds and systems is
+in these utterances. His treatment of sex, of comradeship, of death, of
+democracy, of religion, of art, of immortality, is in the spirit of the
+great out-of-doors of the universe; the point of view is cosmic rather
+than personal or philanthropic. What charity is this!--the charity of
+sunlight that spares nothing and turns away from nothing. What "heroic
+nudity"! like the nakedness of rocks and winter trees. What sexuality!
+like the lust of spring or the push of tides. What welcome to death, as
+only the night which proves the day!
+
+
+XXVI
+
+This orbic nature which so thrills and fills Whitman is not at all akin to
+that which we get in the so-called nature-poets of Wordsworth and his
+school,--the charm of privacy, of the sequestered, the cosy,--qualities
+that belong to the art of a domestic, home-loving race, and to lovers of
+solitude. Tennyson's poetry abounds in these qualities; so does
+Wordsworth's. There is less of them in Browning, and more of them in the
+younger poets. That communing with nature, those dear friendships with
+birds and flowers, that gentle wooing of the wild and sylvan, that flavor
+of the rural, the bucolic,--all these are important features in the
+current popular poetry, but they are not to any marked extent
+characteristic of Whitman. The sentiment of domesticity, love as a
+sentiment; the attraction of children, home and fireside; the attraction
+of books, art, travel; our pleasure in the choice, the refined, the
+artificial,--these are not the things you are to demand of Whitman. You do
+not demand them of Homer or Dante or the Biblical writers. We are to
+demand of him the major things, primary things; the lift of great
+emotions; the cosmic, the universal; the joy of health, of selfhood; the
+stimulus of the real, the modern, the American; always the large, the
+virile; always perfect acceptance and triumph.
+
+Whitman's free use of the speech of the common people is doubtless
+offensive to a fastidious literary taste. Such phrases as "I will be even
+with you," "what would it amount to," "give in," "not one jot less;"
+"young fellows," "old fellows," "stuck up," "every bit as much," "week in
+and week out," and a thousand others, would jar on the page of any other
+poet more than on his.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+William Rossetti says his language has a certain ultimate quality. Another
+critic speaks of his absolute use of language. Colonel Ingersoll credits
+him with more supreme words than have been uttered by any other man of our
+time.
+
+The power to use words was in Whitman's eyes a divine power, and was
+bought with a price:--
+
+  "For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,
+        procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
+  After treading ground, and breasting river and lake,
+  After a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,
+        after knowledge, freedom, crimes,
+  After complete faith, after clarifying elevations and removing
+        obstructions,
+  After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman,
+        the divine power to speak words."
+
+
+Whitman's sense of composition and his rare artistic faculty of using
+language are seen, as John Addington Symonds says, in the "countless clear
+and perfect phrases" "which are hung, like golden medals of consummate
+workmanship and incised form, in rich clusters over every poem he
+produced. And, what he aimed at above all, these phrases are redolent of
+the very spirit of the emotions they suggest, communicate the breadth and
+largeness of the natural things they indicate, embody the essence of
+realities in living words which palpitate and burn forever."
+
+The great poet is always more or less the original, the abysmal man. He is
+face to face with universal laws and conditions. He speaks out of a
+greater exaltation of sentiment than the prose-writer. He takes liberties;
+he speaks for all men; he is a bird on "pinions free."
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+In saying or implying that Whitman's aim was not primarily literary or
+artistic, I am liable to be misunderstood; and when Whitman himself says,
+"No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
+performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward
+art or æstheticism," he exposes himself to the same misconception. It is
+the literary and poetic value of his verses alone that can save them.
+Their philosophy, their democracy, their vehement patriotism, their
+religious ardor, their spirit of comradeship, or what not, will not alone
+suffice. All depends upon the manner in which these things are presented
+to us. Do we get the reality, or words about the reality? No matter what
+the content of the verse, unless into the whole is breathed the breath of
+the true creative artist they will surely perish. Oblivion awaits every
+utterance not touched with the life of the spirit. Whitman was as
+essentially an artist as was Shakespeare or Dante; his work shows the same
+fusion of imagination, will, emotion, personality; it carries the same
+quality of real things,--not the same shaping, constructive power, but the
+same quickening, stimulating power, the same magic use of words. The
+artist in him is less conscious of itself, is less differentiated from the
+man, than in the other poets. He objected to having his work estimated for
+its literary value alone, but in so doing he used the word in a narrow
+sense.
+
+After all these ages of the assiduous cultivation of literature, there has
+grown up in men a kind of lust of the mere art of writing, just as, after
+so many generations of religious training, there has grown up a passion
+for religious forms and observances. "Mere literature" has come to be a
+current phrase in criticism, meaning, I suppose, that the production to
+which it is applied is notable only for good craftsmanship. In the same
+spirit one speaks of mere scholarship, or of a certain type of man as a
+mere gentleman. It was mere literature that Whitman was afraid of, the
+æsthetic disease, the passion for letters, for poetry, divorced from love
+of life and of things. None knew better than he that the ultimate value of
+any imaginative and emotional work, even of the Bible, is its literary
+value. Its spiritual and religious value is inseparably connected with its
+literary value.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not bookish; it is always the voice of a man, and not
+of a scholar or conventional poet, that addresses us. We all imbue words
+more or less with meanings of our own; but, from the point of view I am
+now essaying, literature is the largest fact, and embraces all inspired
+utterances. The hymn-book seeks to embody or awaken religious emotion
+alone; would its religious value be less if its poetic value were more? I
+think not. The best of the Psalms of David, from the religious point of
+view, are the best from the literary point of view. What reaches and
+thrills the soul,--that is great art. What arouses the passions--mirth,
+anger, indignation, pity--may or may not be true art. No one, for
+instance, can read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" without tears, laughter, anger; but
+no one, I fancy, could ever get from it that deep, tranquil pleasure and
+edification that the great imaginative works impart. Keble's poetry is
+more obviously religious than Wordsworth's or Arnold's, but how
+short-lived, because it is not embalmed in the true artistic spirit! In
+all the great poems, there is something as deep and calm as the light and
+the sky, and as common and universal. I find this something in Whitman. In
+saying, therefore, that his aim was ulterior to that of art, that he was
+not begotten by the literary spirit, I only mean that his aim was that of
+the largest art, and of the most vital and comprehensive literature. We
+should have heard the last of his "Leaves" long ago had they not possessed
+unmistakably the vitality of true literature, "incomparable things,
+incomparably well said," as Emerson remarked.
+
+A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary
+merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its
+literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words
+"literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital
+and imaginative use of language which is the characteristic of all true
+literature. The most effective way of saying a thing in the region of the
+sentiments and emotions,--that is the true literary way.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS
+
+
+I
+
+I have divided my subject into many chapters, and given to each a separate
+heading, yet I am aware that they are all but slight variations of a
+single theme,--viz., Whitman's reliance upon absolute nature. That there
+might be no mistake about it, and that his reader might at once be put in
+possession of his point of view, the poet declared at the outset of his
+career that at every hazard he should let nature speak.
+
+  "Creeds and schools in abeyance
+  Retiring back awhile, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
+  I harbor for good or bad,
+  I permit to speak at every hazard,
+  Nature without check, with original energy."
+
+
+The hazard of letting nature speak will, of course, be great,--the hazard
+of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and
+inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely
+passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his
+criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former
+contingency--the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser
+public--has been astounding. He has been read in a narrow, literal,
+bourgeois spirit. The personal pronoun, which he uses so freely, has been
+taken to stand for the private individual Walt Whitman, so that he has
+been looked upon as a compound of egotism and licentiousness. His
+character has been traduced, and his purpose in the "Leaves" entirely
+misunderstood.
+
+We see at a glance that his attitude towards nature, towards God, towards
+the body and the soul, reverses many of the old ascetic theological
+conceptions.
+
+All is good, all is as it should be; to abase the body is to abase the
+soul. Man is divine inside and out, and is no more divine about the head
+than about the loins. It is from this point of view that he has launched
+his work. He believed the time had come for an utterance out of radical,
+uncompromising human nature; let conventions and refinements stand back,
+let nature, let the soul, let the elemental forces speak; let the body,
+the passions, sex, be exalted; the stone rejected by the builders shall be
+the chief stone in the corner. Evil shall be shown to be a part of the
+good, and death shall be welcomed as joyously as life.
+
+Whitman says his poems will do just as much evil as good, and perhaps
+more. To many readers this confession of itself would be his condemnation.
+To others it would be an evidence of his candor and breadth of view. I
+suppose all great vital forces, whether embodied in a man or in a book,
+work evil as well as good. If they do not, they only tickle the surface
+of things. Has not the Bible worked evil also? Some think more evil than
+good. The dews and the rains and the sunshine work evil.
+
+From Whitman's point of view, there is no good without evil; evil is an
+unripe kind of good. There is no light without darkness, no life without
+death, no growth without pain and struggle. Beware the emasculated good,
+the good by exclusion rather than by victory. "Leaves of Grass" will work
+evil on evil minds,--on narrow, unbalanced minds. It is not a guide, but
+an inspiration; not a remedy, but health and strength. Art does not preach
+directly, but indirectly; it is moral by its spirit, and the mood and
+temper it begets.
+
+Whitman, in celebrating manly pride, self-reliance, the deliciousness of
+sex; in glorifying the body, the natural passions and appetites, nativity;
+in identifying himself with criminals and low or lewd persons; in frankly
+imputing to himself all sins men are guilty of, runs the risk, of course,
+of being read in a spirit less generous and redemptive than his own.
+
+The charity of the poet may stimulate the license of the libertine; the
+optimism of the seer may confirm the evil-doer; the equality of the
+democrat may foster the insolence of the rowdy. This is our lookout and
+not the poet's. We take the same chances with him that we do with nature;
+we are to trim our sails to the breeze he brings; we are to sow wheat and
+not tares for his rains to water.
+
+Whitman's glorification of the body has led some critics to say that he is
+the poet of the body only. But it is just as true to say he is the poet of
+the soul only. He always seeks the spiritual through the material. He
+treats the body and the soul as one, and he treats all things as having
+reference to the soul.
+
+  "I will not make a poem, nor the least part, of a poem, but has
+        reference to the soul,
+  Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there
+        is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul."
+
+
+The curious physiological strain which runs through the poems is to be
+considered in the light of this idea. He exalts the body because in doing
+so he exalts the soul.
+
+  "Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results."
+
+
+II
+
+The reader of Whitman must do his or her own moralizing; the poet is here
+not to deprecate or criticise, but to love and celebrate; he has no
+partialities; our notions of morality do not concern him; he exploits the
+average man just as he finds him; he _is_ the average man for the time
+being and confesses to all his sins and shortcomings, and we will make of
+the result good or evil, according to our mental horizon. That his work is
+unmixed good is the last thing the poet would claim for it. He has not,
+after the easy fashion of the moralist, set the good here and the bad
+there; he has blended them as they are in nature and in life; our profit
+and discipline begin when we have found out whither he finally tends, or
+when we have mastered him and extracted the good he holds. If we expect he
+is going to preach an austere system of morality to us, or any system of
+morality, we are doomed to disappointment. Does Nature preach such a
+system? does Nature preach at all? neither will he. He presents you the
+elements of good and evil in himself in vital fusion and play; your part
+is to see how the totals are at last good.
+
+It is objected that Whitman is too persistent in declaring himself an
+animal, when the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he is an
+animal and the thing he is least likely to remember is that he is a spirit
+and a child of God. But Whitman insists with the same determination that
+he is a spirit and an heir of immortality,--not as one who has cheated the
+devil of his due, but as one who shares the privileges and felicities of
+all, and who finds the divine in the human. Indeed it is here that he
+sounds his most joyous and triumphant note. No such faith in spiritual
+results, no such conviction of the truth of immortality, no such
+determined recognition of the unseen world as the final reality is to be
+found in modern poetry.
+
+As I have said, Whitman aimed to put his whole nature in a poem--the
+physical or physiological, the spiritual, the æsthetic and
+intellectual,--without giving any undue prominence to either. If he has
+not done so, if he has made the animal and sexual too pronounced, more so
+than nature will justify in the best proportioned man, then and then only
+is his artistic scheme vitiated and his work truly immoral.
+
+It may be true that the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he
+is an animal; what he is most likely to forget, is that the animal is just
+as sacred and important as any other part; indeed that it is the basis of
+all, and that a sane and healthful and powerful spirituality and
+intellectuality can only flow out of a sane and healthful animality.
+
+  "I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
+  And you must not be abased to the other."
+
+
+III
+
+Furthermore, Whitman's main problem is to project into literature the new
+democratic man as he conceives him,--the man of the future, intensely
+American, but in the broadest sense human and cosmopolitan; he is to
+project him on a scale large enough for all uses and conditions, ignoring
+the feudal and aristocratic types which have for the most part dominated
+literature, and matching them with a type more copious in friendship,
+charity, sympathy, religion, candor, and of equal egoism and power.
+
+It is to exploit and enforce and illustrate this type or character that
+"Leaves of Grass" is written. The poems are the drama of this new
+democratic man. This type Whitman finds in himself. He does not have to
+create it as Shakespeare did Hamlet or Lear; he has only to discover it
+in himself. He is it and he gives it free utterance. His work is,
+therefore, as he says, the poem of himself,--himself written
+large,--written as upon the face of the continent, written in the types
+and events he finds on all sides. He sees himself in all men, the bad as
+well as the good, and he sees all men in himself. All the stupendous
+claims he makes for himself he makes for others. His egotism is vicarious
+and embraces the world. It is not the private individual Walt Whitman that
+makes these stupendous claims for himself; it is Walt Whitman as the
+spokesman of the genius of American democracy. He is not to discuss a
+question. He is to outline a character, he is to incarnate a principle.
+The essayist or philosopher may discuss the value of any given idea,--may
+talk about it; the creative artist alone can give us the thing itself, the
+concrete flesh-and-blood reality. Whitman is not only to make this survey,
+to launch this criticism; he is to embody it in a living human
+personality, and enable us to see the world of man and morals through its
+eyes. What with the scientist, the philosopher, is thought, must be
+emotion and passion with him.
+
+Whitman promises that we shall share with him "two greatnesses, and a
+third one rising inclusive and more resplendent,"--
+
+  "The greatness of Love and Democracy and the greatness of Religion"--
+
+not merely as ideas, but as living impulses. He is to show the spirit of
+absolute, impartial nature, incarnated in a human being, imbued with
+love, democracy, and religion, moving amid the scenes and events of the
+New World, sounding all the joys and abandonments of life, and re-reading
+the oracles from the American point of view. And the utterance launched
+forth is to be imbued with poetic passion.
+
+Whitman always aims at a complete human synthesis, and leaves his reader
+to make of it what he can. It is not for the poet to qualify and explain.
+He seeks to reproduce his whole nature in a book,--reproduce it with all
+its contradictions and carnalities, the good and the bad, the coarse and
+the fine, the body and the soul,--to give free swing to himself, trusting
+to natural checks and compensations to ensure a good result at last, but
+not at all disturbed if you find parts of it bad as in creation itself.
+
+His method being that of the poet, and not that of the moralist or
+preacher, how shall he sort and sift, culling this virtue and that, giving
+parts and fragments instead of the entire man? He must give all, not
+abstractly, but concretely, synthetically.
+
+To a common prostitute Whitman says:--
+
+  "Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you;
+  Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle
+        for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you."
+
+
+We are housed in social usages and laws, we are sheltered and warmed and
+comforted by conventions and institutions and numberless traditions;
+their value no one disputes. But for purposes of his own Whitman ignores
+them all; he lets in upon us the free and maybe raw air of the great
+out-of-doors of absolute nature; his standards are not found inside of any
+four walls; he contemplates life, and would quicken it in its
+fundamentals; his survey is from a plane whence our arts and refinements
+and petty distinctions disappear. He sees the evil of the world no less
+necessary than the good; he sees death as a part of life itself; he sees
+the body and the soul as one; he sees the spiritual always issuing from
+the material; he sees not one result at last lamentable in the universe.
+
+
+IV
+
+Unless, as I have already said, we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself,
+we can make little of him; unless we place ourselves at his absolute point
+of view, his work is an offense and without meaning. The only question is,
+Has he a law, has he a steady and rational point of view, is his work a
+consistent and well-organized whole? Ask yourself, What is the point of
+view of absolute, uncompromising science? It is that creation is all good
+and sound; things are as they should be or must be; there are no
+conceivable failures; there is no evil in the final analysis, or, if there
+is, it is necessary, and plays its part also; there is no more beginning
+nor ending than there is now, no more heaven or hell than we find or make
+here:--
+
+  "Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and
+        rectified?"
+
+
+It has been urged that Whitman violates his own canon of the excellence of
+nature. But what he violates is more a secondary or acquired nature. He
+violates our social conventions and instincts, he exposes what we cover
+up; but the spirit of his undertaking demanded this of him. Remember that
+at all hazards he is to let nature--absolute nature--speak; that he is to
+be the poet of the body as well as of the soul, and that no part of the
+body of a man or woman, "hearty and clean," is vile, and that "none shall
+be less familiar than the rest."
+
+His glory is, that he never flinched or hesitated in following his
+principle to its logical conclusions,--"my commission obeying, to question
+it never daring."
+
+It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones for the sins of us all,--the sins
+of perverting, denying, abusing the most sacred and important organs and
+functions of our bodies.
+
+
+V
+
+In Whitman we find the most complete identification of the man with the
+subject. He always is, or becomes, the thing he portrays. Not merely does
+he portray America,--he speaks out of the American spirit, the spirit that
+has broken irrevocably with the past and turns joyously to the future; he
+does not praise equality, he illustrates it; he puts himself down beside
+the lowest and most despised person, and calls him brother.
+
+  "You felons on trial in courts,
+  You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and
+        handcuff'd with iron,
+  Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
+  Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with
+        iron, or my ankles with iron?"
+
+
+He does not give a little charity, he gives himself as freely as the
+clouds give rain, or the sun gives light; he does not write a treatise on
+democracy, he applies the democratic spirit to everything in heaven and on
+earth, and redistributes the prizes from its points of view; he does not,
+except very briefly, sing the praises of science, but he launches his
+poems always from the scientific view of the world, in contradistinction
+to the old theological and mythical point of view. It is always the
+example, it is always the thing itself, he gives us. Few precepts, no
+sermon, no reproof. Does he praise candor? No, he is candor; he confesses
+to everything; he shows us the inmost working of his mind. We know him
+better than we know our nearest friends. Does he exalt the pride of man in
+himself, or egoism? Again he illustrates it: he is egoism; he makes the
+whole universe revolve around himself; he never for a moment goes out of
+himself; he does not seek a theme; he is the theme. His egocentric method
+of treatment is what characterizes him as an artist. He elaborates no
+theme, he builds nothing, he carves nothing, but makes himself a source
+and centre of pulsing, vital energy. Wave after wave radiates from him.
+What we see and get always is Walt Whitman. Our attention is never fixed
+upon the writer, but always upon the man.
+
+Of course this method of Whitman of becoming one with his subject, and
+speaking out of it, is always the method of the creative artist. It is
+this that distinguishes the artist from the mere thinker or prose-writer.
+The latter tells us about a thing; the former gives us the thing, or the
+spirit of the thing itself.
+
+If Whitman had put his criticism of our time and civilization in an
+argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As
+an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and
+tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we
+tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a
+personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a
+theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons and a challenge,
+and will not be easily put aside.
+
+The great philosophical poets, like Lucretius, try to solve the riddles.
+Whitman's aim is only to thrust the riddles before you, to give you a new
+sense of them, and start the game afresh. He knows what a complex,
+contradictory thing the universe is, and that the most any poet can do is
+to break the old firmament up into new forms. To put his arms around it?
+No. Put your arms around your fellow-man, and then you have encompassed it
+as nearly as mortal can do.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman's attraction toward the common people was real. There is one thing
+that makes every-day humanity, the great, toiling, unlettered masses,
+forever welcome to men who unite great imagination with broad
+sympathies,--they give a sense of reality; they refresh, as nature always
+refreshes. There is a tang and a sting to the native, the spontaneous,
+that the cultivated rarely has. The farmer, the mechanic, the sailor, the
+soldier, savor of the primal and the hardy. In painting his own portrait,
+Whitman makes prominent the coarser, unrefined traits, because here the
+colors are fast,--here is the basis of all. The careful student of Whitman
+will surely come to see how all the elements of his picture--his pride,
+his candor, his democracy, his sensuality, his coarseness,--finally fit
+together, and correct and offset each other and make a perfect unity.
+
+No poet is so easily caricatured and turned into ridicule as Whitman. He
+is deficient in humor, and hence, like the Biblical writers, is sometimes
+on the verge of the grotesque without knowing it. The sense of the
+ridiculous has been enormously stimulated and developed in the modern
+mind, and--what is to be regretted--it has been mostly at the expense of
+the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this
+country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push
+and topple it over. The fear which all Americans have before their eyes,
+and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of
+appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked
+individuality of manners or dress, lest we expose ourselves to the shafts
+of ridicule. Emerson said he had heard with admiring submission the remark
+of a lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gave
+a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow;
+and what ranks before religion with us as a people is being in the mode,
+and writing our verse and cutting our coats in the approved style. Pride
+of the eye, a keen sense of the proprieties and the conventionalities, and
+a morbid feeling for the ridiculous, would have been death to Whitman's
+undertaking. He would have faltered, or betrayed self-consciousness. He
+certainly never could have spoken with that elemental aplomb and
+indifference which is so marked a feature of his work. Any hesitation, any
+knuckling, would have been his ruin. We should have seen he was not
+entirely serious, and should have laughed at him. We laugh now only for a
+moment; the spell of his earnestness and power is soon upon us.
+
+
+VII
+
+Thoreau considered Whitman's "Leaves" worth all the sermons in the country
+for preaching; and yet few poets have assumed so little the function of
+the preacher. His great cure-all is love; he gives himself instead of a
+sermon. His faith in the remedial power of affection, comradeship, is
+truly Christ-like. Lover of sinners is also his designation. The reproof
+is always indirect or implied. He brings to bear character rather than
+precept. He helps you as health, as nature, as fresh air, pure water help.
+He says to you:--
+
+  "The mockeries are not you;
+  Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
+  I pursue you where none else has pursued you:
+  Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed
+        routine,--if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they
+        do not conceal you from me.
+  The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion,--if these balk
+        others, they do not balk me.
+  The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature
+        death,--all these I part aside.
+  I track through your windings and turnings,--I come upon you where you
+        thought eye should never come upon you."
+
+
+Whitman said, in the now famous preface of 1855, that "the greatest poet
+does not moralize, or make applications of morals,--he knows the soul."
+There is no preaching or reproof in the "Leaves."
+
+  "I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
+        oppression and shame;
+  I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
+        remorseful after deeds done;
+  I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,
+        gaunt, desperate;
+  I see the wife misused by her husband; I see the treacherous seducer of
+        the young woman;
+  I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
+        hid,--I see these sights on the earth,
+  I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and
+        prisoners,
+  I observe a famine at sea,--I observe the sailors casting lots who shall
+        be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest,
+  I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
+        laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
+  All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out
+        upon,
+  See, hear, and am silent."
+
+
+Only once does he shame and rebuke the offender; then he holds up to him
+"a hand-mirror."
+
+  "Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (who is it? is it you?)
+  Outside fair costume,--within, ashes and filth.
+  No more a flashing eye,--no more a sonorous voice or springy step,
+  Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
+  A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,
+  Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
+  Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
+  Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
+  Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
+  No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
+  Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
+  Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!"
+
+
+The poet's way is so different from the moralist's way! The poet confesses
+all, loves all,--has no preferences. He is moral only in his results. We
+ask ourselves, Does he breathe the air of health? Can he stand the test of
+nature? Is he tonic and inspiring? That he shocks us is nothing. The first
+touch of the sea is a shock. Does he toughen us, does he help make
+arterial blood?
+
+All that men do and are guilty of attracts him. Their vices and
+excesses,--he would make these his own also. He is jealous lest he be
+thought better than other men,--lest he seem to stand apart from even
+criminals and offenders. When the passion for human brotherhood is upon
+him, he is balked by nothing; he goes down into the social mire to find
+his lovers and equals. In the pride of our morality and civic well-being,
+this phase of his work shocks us; but there are moods when the soul says
+it is good, and we rejoice in the strong man that can do it.
+
+The restrictions, denials, and safeguards put upon us by the social order,
+and the dictates of worldly prudence, fall only before a still more fervid
+humanism, or a still more vehement love.
+
+The vital question is, Where does he leave us? On firmer ground, or in the
+mire? Depleted and enervated, or full and joyous? In the gloom of
+pessimism, or in the sunlight of its opposite?---
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a man or woman coming--perhaps you are the one;
+  I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully armed.
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
+  And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its
+        translation.
+
+  "I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded;
+  I announce a race of splendid and savage old men."
+
+
+There is no contradiction here. The poet sounds all the experiences of
+life, and he gives out the true note at last.
+
+  "No specification is necessary,--all that a male or female does, that is
+        vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her, in
+        the unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope
+        of it forever."
+
+
+VIII
+
+Nothing but the most uncompromising religious purpose can justify certain
+things in the "Leaves;" nothing but the most buoyant and pervasive
+spirituality can justify its overwhelming materiality; nothing but the
+most creative imagination can offset its tremendous realism; nothing but
+the note of universal brotherhood can atone for its vehement Americanism;
+nothing but the primal spirit of poesy itself can make amends for this
+open flouting of the routine poetic, and this endless procession before us
+of the common and the familiar.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman loved the word "unrefined." It was one of the words he would have
+us apply to himself. He was unrefined, as the air, the soil, the water,
+and all sweet natural things are unrefined (fine but not _re_fined). He
+applies the word to himself two or three times in the course of his poems.
+He loved the words sun-tan, air-sweetness, brawn, etc. He speaks of his
+"savage song," not to call forth the bards of the past, he says, but to
+invoke the bards of the future.
+
+  "Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage songs?"
+
+
+The thought that his poems might help contribute to the production of a
+"race of splendid and savage old men" was dear to him. He feared the
+depleting and emasculating effects of our culture and conventions. The
+decay of maternity and paternity in this country, the falling off of the
+native populations, were facts full of evil omen. His ideal of manly or
+womanly character is rich in all the purely human qualities and
+attributes; rich in sex, in sympathy, in temperament; physiologically
+sound and clean, as well as mentally and morally so.
+
+  "Fear grace, fear delicatesse;
+  Fear the mellow-sweet, the sucking of honey-juice:
+  Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!
+  Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men."
+
+
+He was himself the savage old man he invoked. It was no part of his plan
+to preach, in refined and euphonious terms, hygiene and the value of the
+natural man, but to project into literature the thing itself, to exploit a
+character coarse as well as fine, and to imbue his poems with a
+physiological quality as well as a psychological and intellectual.
+
+  "I will scatter the new roughness and gladness among them."
+
+He says to the pale, impotent victim of over-refinement, with intentional
+rudeness,
+
+  "Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you."
+
+
+X
+
+One of the key-words to Whitman both as a man and a poet is the word
+"composite." He was probably the most composite man this century has
+produced, and in this respect at least is representative of the American
+of the future, who must be the result of the blending of more diverse
+racial elements than any man of history. He seems to have had an
+intuition of his composite character when he said in his first poem:--
+
+  "I am large,--I contain multitudes."
+
+
+The London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," in reluctantly
+conceding at the time of the poet's death something to the British
+admiration of him, said he was "rich in temperament." The phrase is well
+chosen. An English expert on the subject of temperament, who visited
+Whitman some years ago, said he had all four temperaments, the sanguine,
+the nervous, the melancholic, and the lymphatic, while most persons have
+but two temperaments, and rarely three.
+
+It was probably the composite character of Whitman that caused him to
+attract such diverse and opposite types of men,--scholars and workingmen,
+lawyers, doctors, scientists, and men of the world,--and that made him
+personally such a puzzle to most people,--so impossible to classify. On
+the street the promenaders would turn and look after him, and I have often
+heard them ask each other, "What man was that?" He has often been taken
+for a doctor, and during his services in the army hospitals various myths
+were floating about concerning him. Now he was a benevolent Catholic
+priest,--then some unknown army general, or retired sea captain; at one
+time he was reputed to be one of the owners of the Cunard line of
+steamers. To be taken for a Californian was common. One recalls the
+composite character of the poet whom he outlines in his poems (see
+quotation, page 159).
+
+The book is as composite as the man. It is all things to all men; it lends
+itself to a multitude of interpretations. Every earnest reader of it will
+find some clew or suggestion by the aid of which he fancies he can unlock
+the whole book, but in the end he will be pretty sure to discover that one
+key is not enough. To one critic, his book is the "hoarse song of a man,"
+its manly and masculine element attracts him; to another he is the poet of
+joy, to another the poet of health, to still another he is the bard of
+personality; others read him as the poet of nature, or the poet of
+democracy. His French critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, calls him an apostle,--the
+apostle of the idea that man is an indivisible fragment of the universal
+Divinity.
+
+
+XI
+
+What has a poet of Whitman's aims to do with decency or indecency, with
+modesty or immodesty? These are social or conventional virtues; he
+represents mainly primary qualities and forces. Does life, does death,
+does nature, respect our proprieties, our conventional veils and
+illusions? Neither will he. He will strip them all away. He will act and
+speak as if all things in the universe were equally sacred and divine; as
+if all men were really his brothers, all women his sisters; as if all
+parts of the human body were equally beautiful and wonderful; as if
+fatherhood and motherhood, birth and begetting, were sacred acts. Of
+course it is easy to see that this course will speedily bring him in
+collision with the guardians of taste and social morality. But what of
+that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I
+behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question
+is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or
+betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and
+thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than
+the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he assumes to speak.
+
+Nothing is easier than to convict Walt Whitman of what is called
+indecency; he laughs indifferent when you have done so. It is not your
+gods that he serves. He says he would be as indifferent of observation as
+the trees or rocks. And it is here that we must look for his
+justification, upon ethical rather than upon the grounds of conventional
+art. He has taken our sins upon himself. He has applied to the morbid
+sex-consciousness, that has eaten so deeply into our social system, the
+heroic treatment; he has fairly turned it naked into the street. He has
+not merely in words denied the inherent vileness of sex; he has denied it
+in very deed. We should not have taken offense had he confined himself to
+words,--had he said sex is pure, the body is as clean about the loins as
+about the head; but being an artist, a creator, and not a mere thinker or
+preacher, he was compelled to act,--to do the thing instead of saying it.
+
+The same in other matters. Being an artist, he could not merely say all
+men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and
+sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must
+make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of
+the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the
+concrete and not with the abstract,--fraternity and equality as a reality,
+not as a sentiment.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the phase in which we are now considering him, Whitman appears as the
+Adamic man re-born here in the nineteenth century, or with science and the
+modern added, and fully and fearlessly embodying himself in a poem. It is
+stronger than we can stand, but it is good for us, and one of these days,
+or one of these centuries, we shall be able to stand it and enjoy it.
+
+  "To the garden the world anew ascending,
+  Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
+  The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
+  Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber,
+  The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, having brought me again,
+  Amorous, mature--all beautiful to me--all wondrous,
+  My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
+        reasons most wondrous;
+  Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
+  Content with the present--content with the past,
+  By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
+  Or in front, and I following her just the same."
+
+
+The critics perpetually misread Whitman because they fail to see this
+essentially composite and dramatic character of his work,--that it is not
+the song of Walt Whitman the private individual, but of Walt Whitman as
+representative of, and speaking for, all types and conditions of men; in
+fact, that it is the drama of a new democratic personality, a character
+outlined on a larger, more copious, more vehement scale than has yet
+appeared in the world. The germs of this character he would sow broadcast
+over the land.
+
+In this drama of personality the poet always identifies himself with the
+scene, incident, experience, or person he delineates, or for whom he
+speaks. He says to the New Englander, or to the man of the South and the
+West, "I depict you as myself." In the same way he depicts offenders,
+roughs, criminals, and low and despised persons as himself; he lays claim
+to every sin of omission and commission men are guilty of, because, he
+says, "the germs are in all men." Men dare not tell their faults. He will
+make them all his own, and then tell them; there shall be full confession
+for once.
+
+  "If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;
+  If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think I cannot
+        remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?"
+
+
+It will not do to read this poet, or any great poet, in a narrow and
+exacting spirit. As Whitman himself says: "The messages of great poems to
+each man and woman are: Come to us on equal terms, only then can you
+understand us."
+
+In the much misunderstood group of poems called "Children of Adam" the
+poet speaks for the male generative principle, and all the excesses and
+abuses that grow out of it he unblushingly imputes to himself. What men
+have done and still do, while under the intoxication of the sexual
+passion, he does, he makes it all his own experience.
+
+That we have here a revelation of his own personal taste and experiences
+may or may not be the case, but we have no more right to assume it than we
+have to assume that all other poets speak from experience when they use
+the first person singular. When John Brown mounted the scaffold in
+Virginia, in 1860, the poet says:--
+
+  "I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,
+  I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling
+        with age and your unheal'd wounds, you mounted the scaffold,"--
+
+very near him he stood in spirit; very near him he stood in the person of
+others, but not in his own proper person.
+
+If we take this poet literally, we shall believe he has been in California
+and Oregon; that he has set foot in every city on the continent; that he
+grew up in Virginia; that every Southern State has been by turns his home;
+that he has been a soldier, a sailor, a miner; that he has lived in
+Dakota's woods, his "diet meat, his drink from the spring;" that he has
+lived on the plains with hunters and ranchmen, etc. He lays claim to all
+these characters, all these experiences, because what others do, what
+others assume, or suffer, or enjoy, that he appropriates to himself.
+
+  "I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+  Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+  I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of
+        my skin,
+  I fall on the weeds and stones,
+  The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+  Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whipstocks.
+
+  "Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
+  I do not ask the wounded person how he feels--I myself become the wounded
+        person,
+  My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
+
+  "I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
+  See myself in prison shaped like another man,
+  And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
+
+  "For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
+  It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.
+  Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him
+        and walk by his side."
+
+
+XIII
+
+It is charged against Whitman that he does not celebrate love at all, and
+very justly. He had no purpose to celebrate the sentiment of love.
+Literature is vastly overloaded with this element already. He celebrates
+fatherhood and motherhood, and the need of well-begotten, physiologically
+well-begotten, offspring. Of that veiled prurient suggestion which readers
+so delight in--of "bosoms mutinously fair," and "the soul-lingering loops
+of perfumed hair," as one of our latest poets puts it--there is no hint
+in his volume. He would have fallen from grace the moment he had attempted
+such a thing. Any trifling or dalliance on his part would have been his
+ruin. Love as a sentiment has fairly run riot in literature. From
+Whitman's point of view, it would have been positively immoral for him
+either to have vied with the lascivious poets in painting it as the
+forbidden, or with the sentimental poets in depicting it as a charm. Woman
+with him is always the mate and equal of the man, never his plaything.
+
+Whitman is seldom or never the poet of a sentiment, at least of the
+domestic and social sentiments. His is more the voice of the eternal,
+abysmal man.
+
+The home, the fireside, the domestic allurements, are not in him; love, as
+we find it in other poets, is not in him; the idyllic, except in touches
+here and there, is not in him; the choice, the finished, the perfumed, the
+romantic, the charm of art and the delight of form, are not to be looked
+for in his pages. The cosmic takes the place of the idyllic; the begetter,
+the Adamic man, takes the place of the lover; patriotism takes the place
+of family affection; charity takes the place of piety; love of kind is
+more than love of neighbor; the poet and the artist are swallowed up in
+the seer and the prophet.
+
+The poet evidently aimed to put in his sex poems a rank and healthful
+animality, and to make them as frank as the shedding of pollen by the
+trees, strong even to the point of offense. He could not make it pleasing,
+a sweet morsel to be rolled under the tongue; that would have been levity
+and sin, as in Byron and the other poets. It must be direct and rank,
+healthfully so. The courage that did it, and showed no wavering or
+self-consciousness, was more than human. Man is a begetter. How shall a
+poet in our day and land treat this fact? With levity and by throwing over
+it the lure of the forbidden, the attraction of the erotic? That is one
+way, the way of nearly all the poets of the past. But that is not
+Whitman's way. He would sooner be bestial than Byronic, he would sooner
+shock by his frankness than inflame by his suggestion. And this in the
+interest of health and longevity, not in the interest of a prurient and
+effeminate "art." In these poems Whitman for a moment emphasizes sex, the
+need of sex, and the power of sex. "All were lacking if sex were lacking."
+He says to men and women, Here is where you live after all, here is the
+seat of empire. You are at the top of your condition when you are fullest
+and sanest there. Fearful consequences follow any corrupting or abusing or
+perverting of sex. The poet stands in the garden of the world naked and
+not ashamed. It is a great comfort that he could do it in this age of
+hectic lust and Swinburnian impotence,--that he could do it and not be
+ridiculous. To have done it without offense would have been proof that he
+had failed utterly. Let us be shocked; it is a wholesome shock, like the
+douse of the sea, or the buffet of the wind. We shall be all the better
+for it by and by.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The lover of Whitman comes inevitably to associate him with character and
+personal qualities. I sometimes meet women whom I say are of the Whitman
+type--the kind of woman he invoked and predicted. They bear children, and
+are not ashamed; motherhood is their pride and their joy: they are
+cheerful, tolerant, friendly, think no evil, meet high and low on equal
+terms; they walk, row, climb mountains; they reach forth into the actual
+world of questions and events, open-minded, sympathetic, frank, natural,
+good-natured; the mates and companions of their husbands, keeping pace
+with them in all matters; home-makers, but larger than home, considerate,
+forgiving, unceremonious,--in short, the large, fresh, wholesome open-air
+natures whose ideal so completely possessed Walt Whitman.
+
+A British critic wisely says the gift of Whitman to us is the gift of life
+rather than of literature, but it is the gift of life through literature.
+Indeed, Whitman means a life as much as Christianity means a life. He
+says:--
+
+  "Writing and talk do not prove me."
+
+Nothing but the test of reality finally proves him:--
+
+  "The proof of the poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country has
+        absorbed him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."
+
+
+The proof of Whitman shall be deferred till he has borne fruit in actual,
+concrete life.
+
+He knew that merely intellectual and artistic tests did not settle matters
+in his case, or that we would not reach his final value by making a
+dead-set at him through the purely æsthetic faculties. Is he animating to
+life itself? Can we absorb and assimilate him? Does he nourish the manly
+and heroic virtues? Does he make us more religious, more tolerant, more
+charitable, more candid, more self-reliant? If not, he fails of his chief
+end. It is doubtful if the purely scholarly and literary poets, like
+Milton, say, or like our own Poe, are ever absorbed in the sense above
+implied; while there is little doubt that poets like Homer, like
+Shakespeare, are absorbed and modify a people's manners and ideals. Only
+that which we love affects our lives. Our admiration for art and
+literature as such is something entirely outside the sources of character
+and power of action.
+
+Whitman identifies himself with our lives. We associate him with reality,
+with days, scenes, persons, events. The youth who reads Poe or Lowell
+wants to be a scholar, a wit, a poet, a writer; the youth who reads
+Whitman wants to be a man, and to get at the meaning and value of life.
+Our author's bent towards real things, real men and women, and his power
+to feed and foster personality, are unmistakable.
+
+Life, reality, alone proves him; a saner and more robust fatherhood and
+motherhood, more practical democracy, more charity, more love, more
+comradeship, more social equality, more robust ideals of womanly and manly
+character, prove him. When we are more tolerant and patient and
+long-suffering, when the strain of our worldly, commercial spirit relaxes,
+then is he justified. Whitman means a letting-up of the strain all along
+the line,--less hurry, less greed, less rivalry, more leisure, more
+charity, more fraternalism and altruism, more religion, less formality and
+convention.
+
+  "When America does what was promised,
+  When each part is peopled with free people,
+  When there is no city on earth to lead my city, the city of young men,
+        the Mannahatta city--but when the Mannahatta leads all the cities
+        of the earth,
+  When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,
+  When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
+  When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,
+  When fathers, firm, unconstrained, open-eyed--when breeds of the most
+        perfect mothers denote America,
+  Then to me ripeness and conclusion."
+
+
+XV
+
+After all I think it matters little whether we call him poet or not. Grant
+that he is not a poet in the usual or technical sense, but poet-prophet,
+or poet-seer, or all combined. He is a poet plus something else. It is
+when he is judged less than poet, or no poet at all, that we feel
+injustice is done him. Grant that his work is not art, that it does not
+give off the perfume, the atmosphere of the highly wrought artistic works
+like those of Tennyson, but of something quite different.
+
+We have all been slow to see that his cherished ends were religious rather
+than literary; that, over and above all else, he was a great religious
+teacher and prophet. Had he been strictly a literary poet, like Lowell, or
+Longfellow, or Tennyson,--that is, a writer working for purely artistic
+effects,--we should be compelled to judge him quite differently.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is a gospel--glad tidings of great joy to those who are
+prepared to receive it. Its final value lies in its direct, intense,
+personal appeal; in what it did for Symonds, who said it made a man of
+him; in what it did for Stevenson, who said it dispelled a thousand
+illusions; in what it did for Mrs. Gilchrist, who said it enabled her to
+find her own soul; in what it does for all earnest readers of it in
+blending with the inmost current of their lives. Whitman is the life-giver
+of our time. How shall a poet give us life but by making us share his
+larger measure of life, his larger hope, his larger love, his larger
+charity, his saner and wider outlook? What are the three great life-giving
+principles? Can we name them better than St. Paul named them eighteen
+hundred years ago,--faith, hope, charity? And these are the cornerstones
+of Whitman's work,--a faith so broad and fervent that it accepts death as
+joyously as life, and sees all things at last issue in spiritual results;
+a hope that sees the golden age ahead of us, not behind us; and a charity
+that balks at nothing, that makes him identify himself with offenders and
+outlaws; a charity as great as his who said to the thief on the cross,
+"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."
+
+To cry up faith, hope, and charity is not to make men partakers of them;
+but to exemplify them in a survey of the whole problem of life, to make
+them vital as hearing, or eyesight in a work of the imagination, to show
+them as motives and impulses controlling all the rest, is to beget and
+foster them in the mind of the beholder.
+
+He is more and he is less than the best of the other poets. The popular,
+the conventional poets are mainly occupied with the artistic side of
+things,--with that which refines, solaces, beautifies. Whitman is mainly
+occupied with the cosmic and universal side of things, and the human and
+spiritual values that may be extracted from them. His poetry is not the
+result of the same kind of selection and partiality as that we are more
+familiar with.
+
+Hence, while the message of Tennyson and his kind is the message of
+beauty, the message of Whitman is, in a much fuller sense, the message of
+life. He speaks the word of faith and power. This is his distinction; he
+is the life-giver. Such a man comes that we may have life, and have it
+more abundantly.
+
+The message of beauty,--who would undervalue it? The least poet and
+poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples
+and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of
+life, there is danger that we shall not know it when we hear it. It is a
+harsher and more heroic strain than the other. It calls no man to his
+ease, or to be lulled and soothed. It is a summons and a challenge. It
+lays rude, strong hands upon you. It filters and fibres your blood. It is
+more of the frost, the rains, the winds, than of cushions or parlors.
+
+The call of life is a call to battle always. We are stronger by the
+strength of every obstacle or enemy overcome.
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
+  These are the days that must happen to you:
+
+  "You shall not heap up what is called riches,
+  You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;
+  You but arrive at the city to which you were destined--you hardly settle
+        yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an irresistible
+        call to depart.
+  You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
+        remain behind you;
+  What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with
+        passionate kisses of parting,
+  You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands
+        toward you.
+
+  "Allons! After the GREAT COMPANIONS! and to belong to them!"
+
+
+XVI
+
+Whitman always avails himself of the poet's privilege and magnifies
+himself. He magnifies others in the same ratio, he magnifies all things.
+"Magnifying and applying come I," he says, "outbidding at the start the
+old cautious hucksters." Indeed, the character which speaks throughout
+"Leaves of Grass" is raised to the highest degree of personal exaltation.
+To it nothing is trivial, nothing is mean; all is good, all is divine. The
+usual distinctions disappear, burned up, the poet says, for religion's
+sake. All the human attributes are heightened and enlarged; sympathy as
+wide as the world; love that balks at nothing; charity as embracing as the
+sky; egotism like the force of gravity; religious fervor that consumes the
+coarsest facts like stubble; spirituality that finds God everywhere every
+hour of the day; faith that welcomes death as cheerfully as life;
+comradeship that would weld the nation into a family of brothers;
+sexuality that makes prudes shudder; poetic enthusiasm that scornfully
+dispenses with all the usual adventitious aids; and in general a
+largeness, coarseness, and vehemence that are quite appalling to the
+general reader. Lovers of poetry will of necessity be very slow in
+adjusting their notions to the standards of "Leaves of Grass." It is a
+survey of life and of the world from the cosmic rather than from the
+conventional standpoint. It carries the standards of the natural-universal
+into all fields.
+
+Some men have accepted poverty and privation with such contentment and
+composure as to make us almost envious of their lot; and Whitman accepts
+the coarser, commoner human elements which he finds in himself, and which
+most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception
+of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes.
+If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference
+for them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an element of
+weakness.
+
+His precept and his illustration, carried out in life, would fill the land
+with strong, native, original types of men and women animated by the most
+vehement comradeship, selfism and otherism going hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO CULTURE
+
+
+I
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not the poetry of culture, but it is to be said in
+the same breath that it is not such a work as an uncultured man produces,
+or is capable of producing.
+
+The uncultured man does not think Whitman's thoughts, or propose Whitman's
+problems to himself, or understand or appreciate them at all. The "Leaves"
+are perhaps of supreme interest only to men of deepest culture, because
+they contain in such ample measure that without which all culture is mere
+varnish or veneer. They are indirectly a tremendous criticism of American
+life and civilization, and they imply that breadth of view and that
+liberation of spirit--that complete disillusioning--which is the best
+result of culture, and which all great souls have reached, no matter who
+or what their schoolmasters may have been.
+
+Our reading public probably does not and cannot see itself in Whitman at
+all. He must be a great shock to its sense of the genteel and the
+respectable. Nor can the working people and the unlettered, though they
+were drawn to Whitman the man, be expected to respond to any considerable
+extent to Whitman the poet. His standpoint can be reached only after
+passing through many things and freeing one's self from many illusions. He
+is more representative of the time-spirit out of which America grew, and
+which is now shaping the destiny of the race upon this continent. He
+strikes under and through our whole civilization.
+
+He despised our social gods, he distrusted our book-culture, he was
+alarmed at the tendency to the depletion and attenuation of the national
+type, and he aimed to sow broadcast the germs of more manly ideals. His
+purpose was to launch his criticism from the basic facts of human life,
+psychic and physiologic; to inject into the veins of our anæmic literature
+the reddest, healthiest kind of blood; and in doing so he has given free
+swing to the primary human traits and affections and to sexuality, and has
+charged his pages with the spirit of real things, real life.
+
+We have been so long used to verse which is the outcome of the literary
+impulse alone, which is written at so many removes from the primary human
+qualities, produced from the extreme verge of culture and artificial
+refinement, which is so innocent of the raciness and healthful coarseness
+of nature, that poetry which has these qualities, which implies the body
+as well as the mind, which is the direct outgrowth of a radical human
+personality, and which make demands like those made by real things, is
+either an offense to us or is misunderstood.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman says his book is not a good lesson, but it takes down the bars to
+a good lesson, and that to another, and that to another still. To take
+down bars rather than to put them up is always Whitman's aim; to make his
+reader free of the universe, to turn him forth into the fresh and
+inexhaustible pastures of time, space, eternity, and with a smart slap
+upon his back with the halter as a spur and send-off, is about what he
+would do. His message, first and last, is "give play to yourself;" "let
+yourself go;"--happiness is in the quest of happiness; power comes to him
+who power uses.
+
+  "Long enough have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore;
+  Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
+  To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
+        and laughingly dash with your hair."
+
+
+To hold Whitman up to ridicule, and to convict him of grossness and
+tediousness, is easy enough; first, because he is so out of relation to
+the modes and taste of his times, and, secondly, because he has somewhat
+of the uncouthness and coarseness of large bodies. Then his seriousness
+and simplicity, like that of Biblical and Oriental writers,--a kind of
+childish inaptness and homeliness,--often exposes him to our keen, almost
+abnormal sense of the ridiculous. He was deficient in humor, and he wrote
+his book in entire obliviousness of social usages and conventions, so that
+the perspective of it is not the social or indoor perspective, but that
+of life and nature at large, careering and unhampered. It is probably the
+one modern poem whose standards are not social and what are called
+artistic.
+
+Its atmosphere is always that of the large, free spaces of vast, unhoused
+nature. It has been said that the modern world could be reconstructed from
+"Leaves of Grass," so compendious and all-inclusive is it in its details;
+but of the modern world as a social organization, of man as the creature
+of social usages and prohibitions, of fashions, of dress, of
+ceremony,--the indoor, parlor and drawing-room man,--there is no hint in
+its pages. In its matter and in its spirit, in its standards and in its
+execution, in its ideals and in its processes, it belongs to and
+affiliates with open-air nature, often reaching, I think, the cosmic and
+unconditioned. In a new sense is Whitman the brother of the orbs and
+cosmic processes, "conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth." All
+his enthusiasms, all his sympathies have to do with the major and
+fundamental elements of life. He is a world-poet. We do not readily adjust
+our indoor notions to him. Our culture-standards do not fit him.
+
+
+III
+
+The problem of the poet is doubtless more difficult in our day than in any
+past day; it is harder for him to touch reality.
+
+The accumulations of our civilization are enormous: an artificial world of
+great depth and potency overlies the world of reality; especially does it
+overlie the world of man's moral and intellectual nature. Most of us live
+and thrive in this artificial world, and never know but it is the world of
+God's own creating. Only now and then a man strikes his roots down through
+this made land into fresh, virgin soil. When the religious genius strikes
+his roots through it, and insists upon a present revelation, we are apt to
+cry "heretic;" when the poet strikes his roots through it, as Whitman did,
+and insists upon giving us reality,--giving us himself before custom or
+law,--we cry "barbarian," or "art-heretic," or "outlaw of art."
+
+In the countless adjustments and accumulations, and in the oceanic
+currents of our day and land, the individual is more and more lost sight
+of,--merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See
+it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will.
+See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing
+power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a
+single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their
+types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite
+character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe
+with the old joy and contentment.
+
+
+IV
+
+  "The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
+  Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and master of it?"
+
+
+Do we not, consciously or unconsciously, ask this or a similar question of
+every poet or artist whom we pass in review before us? Is he master of his
+culture, or does it master him? Does he strike back through it to simple,
+original nature, or is he a potted plant? Does he retain the native savage
+virtues, or is he entirely built up from the outside? We constantly
+mistake culture for mere refinement, which it is not: it is a liberating
+process; it is a clearing away of obstructions, and the giving to inherent
+virtues a chance to express themselves. It makes savage nature friendly
+and considerate. The aim of culture is not to get rid of nature, but to
+utilize nature. The great poet is always a "friendly and flowing savage,"
+the master and never the slave of the complex elements of our artificial
+lives.
+
+Though our progress and civilization are a triumph over nature, yet in an
+important sense we never get away from nature or improve upon her. Her
+standards are still our standards, her sweetness and excellence are still
+our aim. Her health, her fertility, her wholeness, her freshness, her
+innocence, her evolution, we would fain copy or reproduce. We would, if we
+could, keep the pungency and aroma of her wild fruit in our cultivated
+specimens, the virtue and hardiness of the savage in our fine gentlemen,
+the joy and spontaneity of her bird-songs in our poetry, the grace and
+beauty of her forms in our sculpture and carvings.
+
+A poetic utterance from an original individual standpoint, something
+definite and characteristic,--this is always the crying need. What a fine
+talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name!
+But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a
+kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste and intelligence that
+speak. When will he redeem all these promises, and become a fixed centre
+of thought and emotion in himself? To write poems is no distinction; to be
+a poem, to be a fixed point amid the seething chaos, a rock amid the
+currents, giving your own form and character to them,--that is something.
+
+It matters little, as Whitman himself says, who contributes the mass of
+poetic verbiage upon which any given age feeds.
+
+But for a national first-class poem, or a great work of the imagination of
+any sort, the man is everything, because such works finally rest upon
+primary human qualities and special individual traits. A richly endowed
+personality is always the main dependence in such cases, or, as Goethe
+says, "in the great work the great person is always present as the great
+factor."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is as distinctly an emanation from Walt Whitman, from
+his quality and equipment as a man apart from anything he owed to books or
+to secondary influences, as a tree is an emanation from the soil. It is,
+moreover, an emanation from him as an American in the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, and as a typical democratic composite man, a man of
+the common people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but with
+an extraordinary endowment of spiritual and intellectual power, to which
+he has given full swing without abating one jot or tittle the influence of
+his heritage of the common stock.
+
+
+V
+
+There is one important quality that enters into all first-class literary
+production and into all art, which is taken little account of in current
+criticism: I mean the quality of the manly,--the pulse and pressure of
+manly virility and strength. Goethe spoke of it to Eckermann as a certain
+urgent power in which the art of his time was lacking. The producers had
+taste and skill, but were not masterful as men. Goethe always looked
+straight through the work to the man behind it; in art and poetry the
+personality was everything. The special talent of one kind or another was
+quite secondary. The greatest works are the least literary. To speak in
+literature as a man, and not merely as a scholar or professional
+litterateur, is always the crying need. The new poet has this or that
+gift, but what is the human fund back of all? What is his endowment of the
+common universal human traits? How much of a man is he? His measure in
+this respect will be the measure of the final value of his contribution.
+
+The decadence of literature sets in when there is more talent than
+character in current production; when rare literary and artistic gifts no
+longer come wedded to large human and manly gifts; when taste is
+fastidious rather than robust and hearty. When was there a man born to
+English or American literature with a large endowment of the universal
+human qualities, or with those elements that give breadth and power, and
+which lead art rather than follow it? We are living in an age of great
+purity and refinement of taste in art and letters, but destitute of power.
+Goethe spoke of Walter Scott not merely as a great talent, but as a
+"comprehensive nature." Without this comprehensive nature as a setting,
+his great talent would have amounted to but little. This gives the weight,
+the final authority. How little there was on the surface of Scott of the
+literary keenness, subtlety, knowingness of later producers, and yet how
+far his contribution surpasses theirs in real human pathos and
+suggestiveness!
+
+The same might be said of Count Tolstoï, who is also, back of all, a great
+loving nature.
+
+One has great joy in Whitman because he is beyond and over all a large and
+loving personality; his work is but a thin veil through which a great
+nature clearly shows. The urgent power of which Goethe speaks is almost
+too strong,--too strong for current taste: we want more art and less man,
+more literature and less life. It is not merely a great mind that we feel,
+but a great character. It penetrates every line, and indeed makes it true
+of the book that whoever "touches this touches a man."
+
+The lesson of the poet is all in the direction of the practical manly and
+womanly qualities and virtues,--health, temperance, sanity, power,
+endurance, aplomb,--and not at all in the direction of the literary and
+artistic qualities or culture.
+
+  "To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat,
+        to manage horses, to beget superb children,
+  To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,
+  To hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea."
+
+
+All his aims, ideas, impulses, aspirations, relate to life, to
+personality, and to power to deal with real things; and if we expect from
+him only literary ideas--form, beauty, lucidity, proportion--we shall be
+disappointed. He seeks to make the impression of concrete forces and
+objects, and not of art.
+
+  "Not for an embroiderer,
+  (There will always be plenty of embroiderers--I welcome them also),
+  But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.
+
+  "Not to chisel ornaments,
+  But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme
+        Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking."
+
+His whole work is a radiation from an exemplification of the idea that
+there is something better than to be an artist or a poet,--namely, to be a
+man. The poet's rapture springs not merely from the contemplation of the
+beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; from
+the contemplation of democracy, the common people, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors, his own body, death, sex, manly love, occupations, and the force
+and vitality of things. We are to look for the clews to him in the open
+air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forms and
+methods. He declares he will never again mention love or death inside of a
+house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay
+with him in the open air.
+
+  "If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore;
+  The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key:
+  The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words.
+
+  "No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children better than they.
+
+  "The young mechanic is closest to me--he knows me pretty well.
+  The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with
+        him all day;
+  The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my
+        voice:
+  In vessels that sail, my words sail--I go with fishermen and seamen,
+        and love them.
+
+  "My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his
+        blanket;
+  The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;
+  The young mother and old mother comprehend me;
+  The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where
+        they are:
+  They and all would resume what I have told them."
+
+
+VI
+
+So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few,
+its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness
+of man rather than his strength; so far as it expresses a shrinking from
+reality and a refuge in sentimentalism; so far as it is aristocratic as in
+Tennyson, or mocking and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and mephitic as
+in Swinburne, or regretful and reminiscent as in Arnold, or a melodious
+baying of the moon as in Shelley, or the outcome of mere scholarly and
+technical acquirements as in so many of our younger poets,--so far as
+literature or poetry, I say, stand for these things, there is little of
+either in Whitman. Whitman stands for the primary and essential; he stands
+for that which makes the body as well as the mind, which makes life sane
+and joyous and masterful. Everything that tends to depletion, satiety, the
+abnormal, the erotic and exotic, that induces the stress and fever of
+life, is foreign to his spirit. He is less beautiful than the popular
+poets, yet more beautiful. He will have to do only with the inevitable
+beauty, the beauty that comes unsought, that resides in the interior
+meanings and affiliations,--the beauty that dare turn its back upon the
+beautiful.
+
+Whitman has escaped entirely the literary disease, the characteristic
+symptoms of which, according to Renan, is that people love less things
+themselves than the literary effects which they produce. He has escaped
+the art disease which makes art all in all; the religious disease, which
+runs to maudlin piety and seeks to win heaven by denying earth; the beauty
+disease, which would make of poesy a conventional flower-garden. He brings
+heroic remedies for our morbid sex-consciousness, and for all the
+pathological conditions brought about by our excess of refinement, and the
+dyspeptic depletions of our indoor artificial lives. Whitman withstood the
+æsthetic temptation, as Amiel calls it, to which most of our poets fall a
+victim,--the lust for the merely beautiful, the epicureanism of the
+literary faculties. We can make little of him if we are in quest of
+æsthetic pleasures alone. "In order to establish those literary
+authorities which are called classic centuries," says Renan, "something
+healthy and solid is necessary. Common household bread is of more value
+here than pastry." But the vast majority of literary producers aim at
+pastry, or, worse yet, confectionery,--something especially delightful and
+titivating to the taste. No doubt Renan himself was something of a
+literary epicure, but then he imposed upon himself large and serious
+tasks, and his work as a whole is solid and nourishing; his charm of style
+does not blind and seduce us. It makes all the difference in the world
+whether we seek the beautiful through the true, or the true through the
+beautiful. Seek ye the kingdom of truth first and all things shall be
+added. The novice aims to write beautifully, but the master aims to see
+truly and to feel vitally. Beauty follows him, and is never followed by
+him.
+
+Nature is beautiful because she is something else first, yes, and last,
+too, and all the while. Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the
+whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with
+the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields
+compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuyé.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman's ideal is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger--much more
+racy and democratic--than the ideal we are familiar with in current
+literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the
+democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,--excluding all the
+old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and
+legends, etc.,--but he applies it to the form as well, excluding rhyme and
+measure and all the conventional verse architecture. His work stands or it
+falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or
+power which it holds. This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest,
+nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated. His
+influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or
+extra-cultured humanity. The spirit of his work transferred to practice
+begets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, magnetic,
+tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple,
+healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he
+opposes that which weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a
+scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature,
+and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and
+affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic
+spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our
+artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature.
+The people look askance at men who are above them without being of them,
+who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with
+unlettered humanity. Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit,
+and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Sumner.
+
+Whitman might be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned. His
+work is launched at a farther remove from our arts, conventions, usages,
+civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into
+our lives, than that of any other man. Absolute candor, absolute pride,
+absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature. It
+is not conditioned by what we deem modest or immodest, high or low, male
+or female. It is not conditioned by our notions of good and evil, by our
+notions of the refined and the select, by what we call good taste and bad
+taste. It is the voice of absolute man, sweeping away the artificial,
+throwing himself boldly, joyously, upon unconditioned nature. We are all
+engaged in upholding the correct and the conventional, and drawing the
+line sharply between good and evil, the high and the low, and it is well
+that we should; but here is a man who aims to take absolute ground, and to
+look at the world as God himself might look at it, without partiality or
+discriminating,--it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection
+in the universe and can be none:--
+
+  "Open mouth of my Soul uttering gladness,
+  Eyes of my Soul seeing perfection,
+  Natural life of me, faithfully praising things,
+  Corroborating forever the triumph of things."
+
+He does not take sides against evil, in the usual way, he does not take
+sides with the good except as nature herself does. He celebrates the All.
+
+Can we accept the world as science reveals it to us, as all significant,
+as all in ceaseless transmutation, as every atom aspiring to be man, an
+endless unfolding of primal germs, without beginning, without end, without
+failure or imperfection, the golden age ahead of us, not behind us?
+
+
+VIII
+
+Because of Whitman's glorification of pride, egoism, brawn, self-reliance,
+it is charged that the noble, the cultured, the self-denying, have no
+place in his system. What place have they in the antique bards?--in Homer,
+in Job, in Isaiah, in Dante? They have the same place in Whitman, yet it
+is to be kept in mind that Whitman does not stand for the specially social
+virtues, nor for culture, nor for the refinements which it induces, nor
+for art, nor for any conventionality. There are flowers of human life
+which we are not to look for in Walt Whitman. The note of fine manners,
+chivalrous conduct, which we get in Emerson; the sweetness and light
+gospel of Arnold; the gospel of hero-worship of Carlyle; the gracious
+scholarship of our New England poets, etc.,--we do not get in Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him at war with these things, but he is
+concerned with more primal and elemental questions. He strikes under and
+beyond all these things.
+
+What are the questions or purposes, then, in which his work has root?
+Simply put, to lead the way to larger, saner, more normal, more robust
+types of men and women on this continent; to prefigure and help develop
+the new democratic man,--to project him into literature on a scale and
+with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep
+hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and
+influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and
+for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,--the air,
+the water, the soil, the sunshine,--and the more we pervert or shut out
+these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we
+pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the
+religious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny and belittle our bodies,
+the further we are from the spirit of Walt Whitman, and from the spirit of
+the All.
+
+With all Whitman's glorification of pride, self-esteem, self-reliance,
+etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,--the
+free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential
+nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you
+possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life
+and conditions of men, charity as broad as the sunlight, standing up for
+those whom others are down upon, claiming nothing for self which others
+may not have upon the same terms,--of such nobility and fine manners, I
+say, you shall find an abundance in the life and works of Walt Whitman.
+
+The spirit of a man's work is everything; the letter, little or nothing.
+Though Whitman boasts of his affiliation with the common and near at hand,
+yet he is always saved from the vulgar, the mean, the humdrum, by the
+breadth of his charity and sympathy and his tremendous ideality.
+
+Of worldliness, materialism, commercialism, he has not a trace; his only
+values are spiritual and ideal; his only standards are the essential and
+the enduring. What Matthew Arnold called the Anglo-Saxon contagion, the
+bourgeois spirit, the worldly and sordid ideal, is entirely corrected in
+Whitman by the ascendant of the ethic and the universal. His democracy
+ends in universal brotherhood, his patriotism in the solidarity of
+nations, his glorification of the material in the final triumph of the
+spiritual, his egoism issues at last in complete otherism.
+
+A race that can produce a man of his fibre, his continental type, is yet
+at its best estate. Did one begin to see evil omen in this perpetual
+whittling away and sharpening and lightening of the American type,--grace
+without power, clearness without mass, intellect without character,--then
+take comfort from the volume and the rankness of Walt Whitman. Did one
+begin to fear that the decay of maternity and paternity in our older
+communities and the falling off in the native population presaged the
+drying up of the race in its very sources? Then welcome to the rank
+sexuality and to the athletic fatherhood and motherhood celebrated by
+Whitman. Did our skepticism, our headiness, our worldliness, threaten to
+eat us up like a cancer? did our hardness, our irreligiousness, and our
+passion for the genteel point to a fugitive, superficial race? was our
+literature threatened with the artistic degeneration,--running all to art
+and not at all to power? were our communities invaded by a dry rot of
+culture? were we fast becoming a delicate, indoor, genteel race? were our
+women sinking deeper and deeper into the "incredible sloughs of fashion
+and all kinds of dyspeptic depletion,"--the antidote for all these ills is
+in Walt Whitman. In him nature shows great fullness and fertility, and an
+immense friendliness. He supplements and corrects most of the special
+deficiencies and weaknesses toward which the American type seems to tend.
+He brings us back to nature again. The perpetuity of the race is with the
+common people. The race is constantly crying out at the top, in our times
+at least; culture and refinement beget fewer and fewer and poorer and
+poorer children. Where struggle ceases, that family or race is doomed.
+
+  "Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that
+        from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
+        something to make a greater struggle necessary."
+
+
+In more primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept
+in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest.
+War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and
+everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, power, longevity,
+manliness. The scholar poets are occupied with that which makes for
+culture, taste, refinement, ease, art.
+
+"Leaves of Grass," taken as a whole, aims to exhibit a modern, democratic,
+archetypal man, here in America, confronting and subduing our enormous
+materialism to his own purposes, putting it off and on as a garment;
+identifying himself with all forms of life and conditions of men; trying
+himself by cosmic laws and processes, exulting in the life of his body and
+the delights of his senses; and seeking to clinch, to develop, and to
+realize himself through the shows and events of the visible world. The
+poet seeks to interpret life from the central point of absolute abysmal
+man.
+
+The wild and the savage in nature with which Whitman perpetually
+identifies himself, and the hirsute, sun-tanned, and aboriginal in
+humanity, have misled many readers into looking upon him as expressive of
+these things only. Mr. Stedman thinks him guilty of a certain narrowness
+in preferring, or seeming to prefer, the laboring man to the gentleman.
+But the poet uses these elements only for checks and balances, and to keep
+our attention, in the midst of a highly refined and civilized age, fixed
+upon the fact that here are the final sources of our health, our power,
+our longevity. The need of the pre-scientific age was knowledge and
+refinement; the need of our age is health and sanity, cool heads and good
+digestion. And to this end the bitter and drastic remedies from the shore
+and the mountains are for us.
+
+
+IX
+
+The gospel of the average man, Matthew Arnold thought, was inimical to the
+ideal of a rare and high excellence. But, in holding up the average man,
+Whitman was only holding up the broad, universal human qualities, and
+showing that excellence may go with them also. As a matter of fact, are we
+not astonished almost daily by the superb qualities shown by the average
+man, the heroism shown by firemen, engineers, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors? Do we not know that true greatness, true nobility and strength of
+soul, may go and do go with commonplace, every-day humanity? Whitman would
+lift the average man to a higher average, and still to a higher, without
+at all weakening the qualities which he shares with universal humanity as
+it exists over and under all special advantages and social refinements.
+He says that one of the convictions that underlie his "Leaves" is the
+conviction that the "crowning growth of the United States is to be
+spiritual and heroic,"--a prophecy which in our times, I confess, does not
+seem very near fulfillment.
+
+He does not look longingly and anxiously toward the genteel social gods,
+but quite the contrary. In the library and parlor, he confesses he is as a
+gawk or one dumb. The great middle-class ideal, which is mainly the ideal
+of our own people, Whitman flouts and affronts. There are things to him of
+higher import than to have wealth and be respectable and in the mode.
+
+We might charge him with narrowness and partiality and with seeing only
+half truths, as Mr. Stedman has done, did he simply rest with the native
+as opposed to the cultivated, with brawn as opposed to brains. What he
+does do, what the upshot of his teaching shows, is that he identifies
+himself with the masses, with those universal human currents out of which
+alone a national spirit arises, as opposed to isolated schools and
+coteries and a privileged few. Whitman decries culture only so far as it
+cuts a man off from his fellows, clips away or effaces the sweet, native,
+healthy parts of him, and begets a bloodless, superstitious, infidelistic
+class. "The best culture," he says, "will always be that of the manly and
+courageous instincts and loving perceptions, and of self-respect." For
+the most part, our schooling is like our milling, which takes the bone
+and nerve building elements out of our bread. The bread of life demands
+the coarse as well as the fine, and this is what Whitman stands for.
+
+In his spirit and affiliation with the great mass of the people, with the
+commoner, sturdier, human traits, Whitman is more of the type of Angelo,
+or Rembrandt, or the antique bards, than he is like modern singers. He was
+not a product of the schools, but of the race.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES
+
+
+I
+
+It has been said, and justly I think, that in Whitman we see the first
+appearance in literature of the genuinely democratic spirit on anything
+like an ample scale. Plenty of men of democratic tendencies and
+affiliations have appeared, but none that have carried the temper and
+quality of the people, the masses, into the same regions, or blended the
+same humanity and commonness with the same commanding personality and
+spirituality. In recent English poetry the names of Burns and Wordsworth
+occur to mind, but neither of these men had anything like Whitman's
+breadth of relation to the mass of mankind, or expressed anything like his
+sweeping cosmic emotion. Wordsworth's muse was clad in homespun, but in no
+strict sense was his genius democratic--using the word to express, not a
+political creed, but the genius of modern civilization. He made much of
+the common man, common life, common things, but always does the poet stand
+apart, the recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, loving and contemplating
+these things for purposes of his art. Only through intellectual sympathy
+is he a part of what he surveys. In Whitman the common or average man has
+grown haughty, almost aristocratic. He coolly confronts the old types, the
+man of caste, culture, privileges, royalties, and relegates him to the
+past. He readjusts the standards, and estimates everything from the human
+and democratic point of view. In his scheme, the old traditions--the
+aristocratic, the scholastic, the ecclesiastical, the military, the social
+traditions--play no part. He dared to look at life, past and present, from
+the American and scientific standpoint. He turns to the old types a pride
+and complacency equal to their own.
+
+Indeed, we see in the character which Whitman has exploited and in the
+interest of which his poems are written, the democratic type fully
+realized,--pride and self-reliance equal to the greatest, and these
+matched with a love, a compassion, a spirit of fraternity and equality,
+that are entirely foreign to the old order of things.
+
+
+II
+
+At first sight Whitman does not seem vitally related to his own country
+and people; he seems an anomaly, an exception, or like one of those
+mammoth sports that sometimes appear in the vegetable world. The Whitman
+ideal is not, and has never been, the conscious ideal of the mass of our
+people. We have aspired more to the ideal of the traditional fine
+gentleman as he has figured in British letters. There seems to have been
+no hint or prophecy of such a man as Whitman in our New England
+literature, unless it be in Emerson, and here it is in the region of the
+abstract and not of the concrete. Emerson's prayer was for the absolutely
+self-reliant man, but when Whitman refused to follow his advice with
+regard to certain passages in the "Leaves," the sage withheld further
+approval of the work.
+
+We must look for the origins of Whitman, I think, in the deep
+world-currents that have been shaping the destinies of the race for the
+past hundred years or more; in the universal loosening, freeing, and
+removing obstructions; in the emancipation of the people, and their coming
+forward and taking possession of the world in their own right; in the
+triumph of democracy and of science; the downfall of kingcraft and
+priestcraft; the growth of individualism and non-conformity; the
+increasing disgust of the soul of man with forms and ceremonies; the
+sentiment of realism and positivism, the religious hunger that flees the
+churches; the growing conviction that life, that nature, are not failures,
+that the universe is good, that man is clean and divine inside and out,
+that God is immanent in nature,--all these things and more lie back of
+Whitman, and hold a causal relation to him.
+
+
+III
+
+Of course the essential elements of all first-class artistic and literary
+productions are always the same, just as nature, just as man, are
+essentially the same everywhere. Yet the literature of every people has a
+stamp of its own, starts from and implies antecedents and environments
+peculiar to itself.
+
+Just as ripe, mellow, storied, ivy-towered, velvet-turfed England lies
+back of Tennyson, and is vocal through him; just as canny, covenanting,
+conscience-burdened, craggy, sharp-tongued Scotland lies back of Carlyle;
+just as thrifty, well-schooled, well-housed, prudent, and moral New
+England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them,--so
+America as a whole, our turbulent democracy, our self-glorification, our
+faith in the future, our huge mass movements, our continental spirit, our
+sprawling, sublime, and unkempt nature, lie back of Whitman and are
+implied by his work.
+
+He had not the shaping, manipulating gift to carve his American material
+into forms of ideal beauty, and did not claim to have. He did not value
+beauty as an abstraction.
+
+What Whitman did that is unprecedented was, to take up the whole country
+into himself, fuse it, imbue it with soul and poetic emotion, and recast
+it as a sort of colossal Walt Whitman. He has not so much treated American
+themes as he has identified himself with everything American, and made the
+whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross
+materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses
+with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them
+with something like the breath of universal nature. His special gift is
+his magnetic and unconquerable personality, his towering egoism united
+with such a fund of human sympathy. His power is centripetal, so to
+speak,--he draws everything into himself like a maelstrom; the centrifugal
+power of the great dramatic artists, the power to get out of and away from
+himself, he has not. It was not for Whitman to write the dramas and
+tragedies of democracy, as Shakespeare wrote those of feudalism, or as
+Tennyson sang in delectable verse the swan-song of an overripe
+civilization. It was for him to voice the democratic spirit, to show it
+full-grown, athletic, haughtily taking possession of the world and
+redistributing the prizes according to its own standards. It was for him
+to sow broadcast over the land the germs of larger, more sane, more robust
+types of men and women, indicating them in himself.
+
+In him the new spirit of democracy first completely knows itself, is proud
+of itself, has faith and joy in itself, is fearless, tolerant, religious,
+aggressive, triumphant, and bestows itself lavishly upon all sides. It is
+tentative, doubtful, hesitating no longer. It is at ease in the world, it
+takes possession, it fears no rival, it advances with confident step.
+
+No man was ever more truly fathered by what is formative and expansive in
+his country and times than was Whitman. Not by the literature of his
+country was he begotten, but by the spirit that lies back of all, and
+that begat America itself,--the America that Europe loves and fears, that
+she comes to this country to see, and looks expectantly, but for the most
+part vainly, in our books to find.
+
+It seems to me he is distinctly a continental type. His sense of space, of
+magnitude, his processional pages, his unloosedness, his wide horizons,
+his vanishing boundaries,--always something unconfined and unconfinable,
+always the deferring and undemonstrable. The bad as well as the good
+traits of his country and his people are doubtless implied by his work.
+
+If he does not finally escape from our unripe Americanism, if he does not
+rise through it all and clarify it and turn it to ideal uses, draw out the
+spiritual meanings, then avaunt! we want nothing of him.
+
+  "The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell.
+  The former I graft and increase upon myself,
+  The latter I translate into a new tongue."
+
+
+The vital and the formative the true poet always engrafts and increases
+upon himself, and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the
+accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against
+Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers
+of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when
+his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the
+first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the
+modern; we see them translated into character; we see them tried by
+universal standards; we see them vivified by a powerful imagination. We
+see America as an idea, and see its relation to other ideas. We get a new
+conception of the value of the near, the common, the familiar. New light
+is thrown upon the worth and significance of the common people, and it is
+not the light of an abstract idea, but the light of a concrete example. We
+see the democratic type on a scale it has never before assumed; it is on a
+par with any of the types that have ruled the world in the past, the
+military, the aristocratic, the regal. It is at home, it has taken
+possession, it can hold its own. Henceforth the world is going its way. If
+it is over-confident, over-self-assertive, too American, that is the
+surplusage of the poet, of whom we do not want a penny prudence and
+caution; make your prophecy bold enough and it fulfills itself. Whitman
+has betrayed no doubt or hesitation in his poetry. His assumptions and
+vaticinations are tremendous, but they are uttered with an authority and
+an assurance that convince like natural law.
+
+
+IV
+
+I think he gives new meaning to democracy and America. In him we see a new
+type, rising out of new conditions, and fully able to justify itself and
+hold its own. It is the new man in the new world, no longer dependent upon
+or facing toward the old. I confess that to me America and the modern
+would not mean very much without Whitman. The final proof was wanting
+till they gave birth to a personality equal to the old types.
+
+Discussions and speculations about democracy do not carry very far, after
+all; to preach equality is not much. But when we see these things made
+into a man, and see the world through his eyes, and see new joy and new
+meaning in it, our doubts and perplexities are cleared up. Our universal
+balloting, and schooling, and material prosperity prove nothing: can your
+democracy produce a man who shall carry its spirit into loftiest regions,
+and prove as helpful and masterful under the new conditions as the by-gone
+types were under the old?
+
+
+V
+
+I predict a great future for Whitman, because the world is so unmistakably
+going his way. The three or four great currents of the century--the
+democratic current, the scientific current, the humanitarian current, the
+new religious current, and what flows out of them--are underneath all
+Whitman has written. They shape all and make all. They do not appear in
+him as mere dicta, or intellectual propositions, but as impulses, will,
+character, flesh-and-blood reality. We get these things, not as sentiments
+or yet theories, but as a man. We see life and the world as they appear to
+the inevitable democrat, the inevitable lover, the inevitable believer in
+God and immortality, the inevitable acceptor of absolute science.
+
+We are all going his way. We are more and more impatient of formalities,
+ceremonies, and make-believe; we more and more crave the essential, the
+real. More and more we want to see the thing as in itself it is; more and
+more is science opening our eyes to see the divine, the illustrious, the
+universal in the common, the near at hand; more and more do we tire of
+words and crave things; deeper and deeper sinks the conviction that
+personal qualities alone tell,--that the man is all in all, that the
+brotherhood of the race is not a dream, that love covers all and atones
+for all.
+
+Everything in our modern life and culture that tends to broaden,
+liberalize, free; that tends to make hardy, self-reliant, virile; that
+tends to widen charity, deepen affection between man and man, to foster
+sanity and self-reliance; that tends to kindle our appreciation of the
+divinity of all things; that heightens our rational enjoyment of life;
+that inspires hope in the future and faith in the unseen,--are on
+Whitman's side. All these things prepare the way for him.
+
+On the other hand, the strain and strife and hoggishness of our
+civilization, our trading politics, our worship of conventions, our
+millionaire ideals, our high-pressure lives, our pruriency, our
+sordidness, our perversions of nature, our scoffing caricaturing
+tendencies, are against him. He antagonizes all these things.
+
+The more democratic we become, the more we are prepared for Whitman; the
+more tolerant, fraternal, sympathetic we become, the more we are ready
+for Whitman; the more we inure ourselves to the open air and to real
+things, the more we value and understand our own bodies, the more the
+woman becomes the mate and equal of the man, the more social equality
+prevails,--the sooner will come to Whitman fullness and fruition.
+
+
+VI
+
+Some of our own critics have been a good deal annoyed by the fact that
+many European scholars and experts have recognized Whitman as the only
+distinctive American poet thus far. It would seem as if our reputation for
+culture and good manners is at stake. We want Europe to see America in our
+literary poets like Lowell, or Longfellow, or Whittier. And Europe may
+well see much that is truly representative of America in these and in
+other New England poets. She may see our aspiration toward her own ideals
+of culture and refinement; she may see native and patriotic themes firing
+Lowell and Whittier; she may see a certain spirit and temper begotten by
+our natural environment reflected in Bryant, our delicate and gentle
+humanities and scholarly aptitudes shining in Longfellow. But in every
+case she sees a type she has long been familiar with. All the poets'
+thoughts, moods, points of view, effects, aims, methods, are what she has
+long known. These are not the poets of a new _world_, but of a new
+_England_. The new-world book implies more than a new talent, more than a
+fresh pair of eyes, a fresh and original mind like the poets named; such
+men are required to keep up the old line of succession in English
+authorship. What is implied is a new national and continental spirit,
+which must arise and voice the old eternal truths through a large, new,
+democratic personality,--a new man, and, beyond and above him, a new
+heaven and a new earth.
+
+Our band of New England poets have carried the New England spirit into
+poetry,--its sense of fitness, order, propriety, its shrewdness,
+inventiveness, aptness, and its aspiration for the pure and noble in life.
+They have finely exemplified the best Yankee traits; but in no instance
+were these traits merged in a personality large enough, bold enough, and
+copious and democratic enough to give them national and continental
+significance. It would be absurd to claim that the pulse-beat of a great
+people or a great era is to be felt in the work of any of these poets.
+
+Whitman is responded to in Europe, because he expresses a new type with
+adequate power,--not, as has been so often urged, simply because he is
+strange, and gives the jaded literary palate over there a new fillip. He
+meets the demand for something in American literature that should not face
+toward Europe, that should joyfully stand upon its own ground and yet
+fulfill the conditions of greatness. He fully satisfies the thirst for
+individualism amid these awakening peoples, and the thirst for nationalism
+also. He realizes the democratic ideal, no longer tentative or apologetic,
+but taking possession of the world as its own and reappraising the wares
+it finds there.
+
+
+VII
+
+The American spirit is a continental spirit; there is nothing insular or
+narrow about it. It is informal, nonchalant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive,
+patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of
+particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable,
+unostentatious, inclined to exaggerate, generous, unrefined,--never
+meddlesome, never hypercritical, never hoggish, never exclusive. Whitman
+shared the hopeful optimistic temperament of his countrymen, the faith and
+confidence begotten by a great, fertile, sunny land. He expresses the
+independence of the people,--their pride, their jealousy of superiors,
+their contempt of authority (not always beautiful). Our want of reverence
+and veneration are supplemented in him with world-wide sympathies and
+good-fellowship.
+
+Emerson is our divine man, the precious quintessence of the New England
+type, invaluable for his stimulating and ennobling strain; but his genius
+is too astral, too select, too remote, to incarnate and give voice to the
+national spirit. Clothe him with flesh and blood, make his daring
+affirmations real and vital in a human personality and imbued with the
+American spirit, and we are on the way to Whitman.
+
+Moreover, the strong, undisguised man-flavor of "Leaves of Grass," the
+throb and pressure in it of those things that make life rank and make it
+masterful, and that make for the virility and perpetuity of the race, are,
+if it must be confessed, more keenly relished abroad than in this country,
+so thoroughly are we yet under the spell of the merely refined and
+conventional. We fail to see that in letters, as in life, the great prizes
+are not to the polished, but to the virile and the strong.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
+speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
+made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
+enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
+the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
+personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
+over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
+them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
+his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
+of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
+mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
+himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
+those who live in the open air, even laying claim to the "rowdyish." He is
+proud of freckles, sun-tan, brawn, and holds up the powerful and
+unrefined.
+
+  "I am enamor'd of growing out-doors,
+  Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
+  Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes
+        and mauls, and the drivers of horses;
+  I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out."
+
+
+"Nothing endures," he says, "but personal qualities." "Produce great
+persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently
+bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union?
+but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout
+at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He
+is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He
+sees all and embraces and encloses all.
+
+Then we see united and harmonized in Whitman the two great paramount
+tendencies of our time and of the modern world,--the altruistic or
+humanitarian tendency and the individualistic tendency; or, democracy and
+individualism, pride and equality, or, rather, pride in equality. These
+two forces, as they appear in separate individuals, are often
+antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman
+they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and
+uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping
+fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one
+motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his
+fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him
+with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he claims for
+himself he demands in the same terms for all. He has set such an example
+of self-trust and self-assertion as has no parallel in our literature, at
+the same time that he has set an equal example in practical democracy and
+universal brotherhood.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman's democracy is the breath of his nostrils, the light of his eyes,
+the blood in his veins. The reader does not feel that here is some fine
+scholar, some fine poet singing the praises of democracy; he feels that
+here is a democrat, probably, as Thoreau surmised, the greatest the world
+has yet seen, turning the light of a great love, a great intellect, a
+great soul, upon America, upon contemporary life and events, and upon the
+universe, and reading new lessons, new meanings, therein. He is a great
+poet and prophet, speaking through the average man, speaking as one of the
+people, and interpreting life from the point of view of absolute
+democracy.
+
+True, the people in their average taste and perceptions are crude and
+flippant and superficial, and often the victims of mountebanks and fools;
+yet, as forming the body of our social and political organism, and the
+chief factor in the world-problem of to-day, they are the exponents of
+great forces and laws, and often, in emergencies, show the wisdom and
+unimpeachableness of Nature herself. Deep-hidden currents and forces in
+them are liable to come to the surface, and when the politicians get in
+their way, or miscalculate them, as so often happens, they are crushed.
+Whitman is a projection into literature of the cosmic sense and conscience
+of the people, and their participation in the forces that are shaping the
+world in our century. Much comes to a head in him. Much comes to joyous
+speech and song, that heretofore had only come to thought and speculation.
+A towering, audacious personality has appeared which is strictly the fruit
+of the democratic spirit, and which has voiced itself in an impassioned
+utterance touching the whole problem of national and individual life.
+
+
+X
+
+The Whitman literature is democratic, not in the sense that it caters to
+the taste of the masses or to the taste of the average man; for, as a
+matter of fact, the masses and the average man are likely to be the last
+to recognize its value. The common people, the average newspaper-reading
+citizens, are much more likely to be drawn by the artificial and the
+conventional. But it is democratic because it is filled with the spirit of
+absolute human equality and brotherhood, and gives out the atmosphere of
+the universal, primary, human traits. The social, artificial, accidental
+distinctions of wealth, culture, position, etc., have not influenced the
+poet in the slightest degree. Whitman finds his joy and his triumph, not
+in being better than other people or above them, but in being one with
+them, and sharing their sins as well as their virtues.
+
+  "As if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as
+        myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that
+        others possess the same."
+
+
+This is one step further than others have taken, and makes democracy
+complete in itself. Again, his work identifies itself with the democratic
+ideal in getting rid of the professional and arbitrary elements of poetry,
+and appealing to the reader entirely through its spirit and content. It is
+as democratic in this respect as the workman in the field, or the mechanic
+at his bench.
+
+The poems are bathed and flooded with the quality of the common people;
+with the commonness and nearness which they share with real things and
+with all open-air nature,--with hunters, travelers, soldiers, workers in
+all fields, and with rocks, trees, and woods. It is only in the spirit of
+these things that a man himself can have health, sweetness, and
+proportion; and only in their spirit that he can give an essentially sound
+judgment of a work of art, no matter what the subject of it may be.
+
+This spirit of the "commonest, cheapest, nearest" is the only spirit in
+which man's concrete life can be carried forward. We do not live and
+breathe and grow and multiply, we do not have health and sanity and
+wholeness and proportion, we do not subdue and improve and possess the
+earth, in the spirit of something exclusive, exceptional, faraway,
+aristocratic, but in the spirit of the common and universal. The only
+demand is that, in a work of art, the common or universal shall be
+vitalized with poetic thought and enthusiasm, or imbued with the ideal of
+a rare and high excellence.
+
+
+XI
+
+Our critics have been fond of taunting Whitman with the fact that the
+common people, the workers, of whom he makes so much, and to whom he
+perpetually appeals, do not read him, or show any liking for his poems at
+all.
+
+Whitman's appeal to the common people, to the democratic masses, is an
+appeal to the future; it is an appeal to the universal human conscience
+and intelligence, as they exist above and beneath all special advantages
+of birth and culture and stand related to the total system of things. It
+also calls attention to the fact that the spirit in which he writes, and
+in which he is to be read, is the spirit of open-air life and nature.
+
+  "No school or shutter'd room commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children, better than they,"
+
+because the simple, unforced, unrefined elements of human nature are those
+out of which the poems sprang and with which they are charged. Their
+spirit is closer akin to unlettered humanity than to the over-intellectual
+and sophisticated products of the schools.
+
+Of course "roughs and little children" can make nothing of "Leaves of
+Grass," but unless the trained reader has that fund of fresh, simple,
+wholesome nature, and the love for real things, which unlettered humanity
+possesses, he will make nothing of it either.
+
+
+XII
+
+It has been truly said that "the noblest seer is ever over-possessed."
+This has been the case with nearly all original, first-class men. Carlyle
+furnished a good illustration of its truth in our own time. He was
+over-possessed with his idea of the hero and hero-worship. And it may be
+that Whitman was over-possessed with the idea of democracy, America,
+nationality, and the need of a radically new departure in poetic
+literature. Yet none knew better than he that in the long run the
+conditions of life and of human happiness and progress remain about the
+same; that the same price must still be paid for the same things; that
+character alone counts; that the same problem "how to live" ever confronts
+us; and that democracy, America, nationality, are only way stations, and
+by no means the end of the route. The all-leveling tendency of democracy
+is certainly not in the interest of literature. The world is not saved by
+the average man, but by the man much above the average, the rare and
+extraordinary man,--by the "remnant," as Arnold called them.
+
+No one knew this better than Whitman, and he said that "one main
+genesis-motive" of his "Leaves" was the conviction that the crowning
+growth of the United States was to be spiritual and heroic. Only "superb
+persons" can finally justify him.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE
+
+
+I
+
+The stupendous disclosures of modern science, and what they mean when
+translated into the language of man's ethical and æsthetic nature, have
+not yet furnished to any considerable extent the inspiration of poems.
+That all things are alike divine, that this earth is a star in the
+heavens, that the celestial laws and processes are here underfoot, that
+size is only relative, that good and bad are only relative, that forces
+are convertible and interchangeable, that matter is indestructible, that
+death is the law of life, that man is of animal origin, that the sum of
+forces is constant, that the universe is a complexus of powers
+inconceivably subtle and vital, that motion is the law of all things,--in
+fact, that we have got rid of the notions of the absolute, the fixed, the
+arbitrary, and the notion of origins and of the dualism of the world,--to
+what extent will these and kindred ideas modify art and all æsthetic
+production? The idea of the divine right of kings and the divine authority
+of priests is gone; that, in some other time or some other place God was
+nearer man than now and here,--this idea is gone. Indeed, the whole of
+man's spiritual and religious belief which forms the background of
+literature has changed,--a change as great as if the sky were to change
+from blue to red or to orange. The light of day is different. But
+literature deals with life, and the essential conditions of life, you say,
+always remain the same. Yes, but the expression of their artistic values
+is forever changing. If we ask where is the modern imaginative work that
+is based upon these revelations of science, the work in which they are the
+blood and vital juices, I answer, "Leaves of Grass," and no other. The
+work is the outgrowth of science and modern ideas, just as truly as Dante
+is the outgrowth of mediæval ideas and superstitions; and the imagination,
+the creative spirit, is just as unhampered in Whitman as in Dante or in
+Shakespeare. The poet finds the universe just as plastic and ductile, just
+as obedient to his will, and just as ready to take the impress of his
+spirit, as did these supreme artists. Science has not hardened it at all.
+The poet opposes himself to it, and masters it and rises superior. He is
+not balked or oppressed for a moment. He knows from the start what science
+can bring him, what it can give, and what it can take away; he knows the
+universe is not orphaned; he finds more grounds than ever for a pæan of
+thanksgiving and praise. His conviction of the identity of soul and body,
+matter and spirit, does not shake his faith in immortality in the least.
+His faith arises, not from half views, but from whole views. In him the
+idea of the soul, of humanity, of identity, easily balanced the idea of
+the material universe. Man was more than a match for nature. It was all
+for him, and not for itself. His enormous egotism, or hold upon the
+central thought or instinct of human worth and import, was an anchor that
+never gave way. Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an
+iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world
+of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as
+immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and
+anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old
+bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the
+universe is directed to one man,--to you. His anthropomorphism is not a
+projection of himself into nature, but an absorption of nature in himself.
+The tables are turned. It is not alien or superhuman beings that he sees
+and hears in nature, but his own that he finds everywhere. All gods are
+merged in himself.
+
+Not the least fear, not the least doubt or dismay, in this book. Not one
+moment's hesitation or losing of the way. And it is not merely an
+intellectual triumph, but the triumph of soul and personality. The iron
+knots are not untied, they are melted. Indeed, the poet's contentment and
+triumph in view of the fullest recognition of all the sin and sorrow of
+the world, and of all that baffles and dwarfs, is not the least of the
+remarkable features of the book.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil
+under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and
+illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties
+perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and
+exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained
+more than we have lost. The world is anew created by science and
+democracy, and he pronounces it good with the joy and fervor of the old
+faith.
+
+He shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets of note in
+our time who have drawn inspiration from this source, or viewed the
+universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern
+poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious
+compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was
+stupendous; the other childish and empty. But Whitman and Tennyson were
+fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vision that
+matches the best science can do. Tennyson drew upon science more for his
+images and illustrations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and
+appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed
+Whitman's imagination and made him bold; its effects were moral and
+spiritual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellectual; it enlarged
+his vocabulary without strengthening his faith. Indeed, one would say,
+from certain passages in "In Memoriam," that it had distinctly weakened
+his faith. Let us note for a moment the different ways these two poets use
+science. In his poem to Fitzgerald, Tennyson draws upon the nebular
+hypothesis for an image:--
+
+  "A planet equal to the sun
+  Which cast it, that large infidel
+  Your Omar."
+
+In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
+"of an earth that is dead."
+
+  "The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of
+        space,
+  Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."
+
+In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:--
+
+  "The fires that arch this dusky dot--
+    Yon myriad-worlded way--
+  The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,
+    World-isles in lonely skies,
+  Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
+    Our brief humanities."
+
+
+As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
+not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
+anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
+makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
+the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:--
+
+  "I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains,
+        esculent roots,
+  And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
+  And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
+  And call anything close again, when I desire it.
+
+  "In vain the speeding or shyness,
+  In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,
+  In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
+  In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
+  In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
+  In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
+  In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
+  In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
+  In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
+  I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.
+  My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
+  On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,
+  All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.
+
+  "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
+  Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there,
+  I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
+  And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
+
+  "Long I was hugged close--long and long.
+  Immense have been the preparations for me,
+  Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,
+  Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
+  For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
+  They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
+
+  "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me,
+  My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
+  For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
+  The long, slow strata piled to rest it in,
+  Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
+  Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with
+        care.
+  All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
+  Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.
+
+  "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
+  And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of
+        the farther systems:
+  Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
+  Outward, outward, and forever outward:
+  My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels;
+  He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
+  And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
+
+  "There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage.
+  If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the
+        palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float,
+        it would not avail in the long run.
+  We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
+  And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther.
+  A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not
+        hazard the span or make it impatient.
+  They are but parts--anything is but a part,
+  See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+  Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
+
+In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is
+always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of
+the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the
+man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality
+has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does
+not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional
+realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man
+refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the
+presence of the cosmic laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all
+directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the
+"full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
+outside of itself.
+
+  "I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
+  And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO RELIGION
+
+
+Whitman, as I have elsewhere said, was swayed by two or three great
+passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He
+thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.
+
+  "The soul,
+  Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
+        water ebbs and flows."
+
+
+He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy
+manly or womanly development, without religion.
+
+  "I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these
+        States must be their Religion,
+  Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur."
+
+All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.
+
+  "Each is not for its own sake,
+  I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's
+        sake."
+
+All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business
+pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion.
+
+  "For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
+        life of the earth,
+  Any more than such are to Religion."
+
+
+Again he says:--
+
+  "My Comrade!
+  For you to share with me two greatnesses--And a third one, rising
+        inclusive and more resplendent,
+  The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion."
+
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates
+is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It was larger than any creed that has
+yet been formulated. It was the conviction of the man of science touched
+and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his
+life its chief elements were faith, hope, charity. Its object was to
+prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind
+what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."
+
+The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse.
+Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had
+resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated.
+The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of
+the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was
+through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The
+great mass of the human race was doomed to endless perdition. Now there is
+no trace of this religion in Whitman, and it does not seem to have left
+any shadow upon him. Ecclesiasticism is dead; he clears the ground for a
+new growth. To the priests he says: "Your day is done."
+
+He sings a new song; he tastes a new joy in life. The earth is as divine
+as heaven, and there is no god more sacred than yourself. It is as if the
+world had been anew created, and Adam had once more been placed in the
+garden,--the world, with all consequences of the fall, purged from him.
+
+Hence we have in Whitman the whole human attitude towards the universe,
+towards God, towards life and death, towards good and evil, completely
+changed. We have absolute faith and acceptance in place of the fear and
+repentance of the old creeds; we have death welcomed as joyously as life,
+we have political and social equality as motifs and impulses, and not
+merely as sentiments. He would show us the muse of poetry, as impartial,
+as sweeping in its vision, as modern, as real, as free from the morbid and
+make-believe, as the muse of science. He sees good in all, beauty in all.
+It is not the old piety, it is the new faith; it is not the old worship,
+it is the new acceptance; not the old, corroding religious pessimism, but
+the new scientific optimism.
+
+He does not deny, he affirms; he does not criticise, he celebrates; his is
+not a call to repentance, it is a call to triumph:--
+
+  "I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
+  None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,
+  None has begun to think how divine he himself is, or how certain the
+        future is."
+
+He accepted science absolutely, yet science was not an end in itself: it
+was not his dwelling; he but entered by it to an area of his dwelling.
+
+The flower of science was religion. Without this religion, or something
+akin to it,--without some spiritual, emotional life that centred about an
+ideal,--Whitman urged that there could be no permanent national or
+individual development. In the past this ideal was found in the
+supernatural; for us and the future democratic ages, it must be found in
+the natural, in the now and the here.
+
+The aristocratic tradition not only largely shaped the literature of the
+past, it shaped the religion: man was a culprit, his life a rebellion; his
+proper attitude toward the unseen powers was that of a subject to his
+offended sovereign,--one of prostration and supplication. Heaven was a
+select circle reserved for the few,--the aristocracy of the pure and just.
+The religion of a democratic and scientific era, as voiced by Whitman and
+as exemplified in his life, is of quite another character,--not
+veneration, but joy and triumph; not fear, but love; not self-abasement,
+but self-exaltation; not sacrifice, but service: in fact, not religion at
+all in the old sense of the spiritual at war with the natural, the divine
+with the human, this world a vale of tears, and mundane things but filth
+and ashes, heaven for the good and hell for the bad; but in the new sense
+of the divinity of all things, of the equality of gods and men, of the
+brotherhood of the race, of the identity of the material and the
+spiritual, of the beneficence of death and the perfection of the universe.
+The poet turns his face to earth and not to heaven; he finds the
+miraculous, the spiritual, in the things about him, and gods and goddesses
+in the men and women he meets. He effaces the old distinctions; he
+establishes a sort of universal suffrage in spiritual matters; there are
+no select circles, no privileged persons. Is this the democracy of
+religion? liberty, fraternity, and equality carried out in the spiritual
+sphere? Death is the right hand of God, and evil plays a necessary part
+also. Nothing is discriminated against; there are no reprisals or
+postponements, no dualism or devilism. Everything is in its place; man's
+life and all the things of his life are well-considered.
+
+Carried out in practice, this democratic religion will not beget priests,
+or churches, or creeds, or rituals, but a life cheerful and full on all
+sides, helpful, loving, unworldly, tolerant, open-souled, temperate,
+fearless, free, and contemplating with pleasure, rather than alarm, "the
+exquisite transition of death."
+
+
+
+
+A FINAL WORD
+
+
+After all I have written about Whitman, I feel at times that the main
+thing I wanted to say about him I have not said, cannot say; the best
+about him cannot be told anyway. "My final merit I refuse you." His full
+significance in connection with the great modern movement; how he embodies
+it all and speaks out of it, and yet maintains his hold upon the
+primitive, the aboriginal; how he presupposes science and culture, yet
+draws his strength from that which antedates these things; how he glories
+in the present, and yet is sustained and justified by the past; how he is
+the poet of America and the modern, and yet translates these things into
+universal truths; how he is the poet of wickedness, while yet every fibre
+of him is sound and good; how his page is burdened with the material, the
+real, the contemporary, while yet his hold upon the ideal, the spiritual,
+never relaxes; how he is the poet of the body, while yet he is in even
+fuller measure the poet of the soul; in fact, how all contradictions are
+finally reconciled in him,--all these things and more, I say, I feel that
+I have not set forth with the clearness and emphasis the subject demanded.
+Other students of him will approach him on other lines, and will disclose
+meanings that I have missed.
+
+Writing about him, as Symonds said, is enormously difficult. At times I
+feel as if I was almost as much at sea with regard to him as when I first
+began to study him; not at sea with regard to his commanding genius and
+power, but with regard to any adequate statement and summary of him in
+current critical terms. One cannot define and classify him as he can a
+more highly specialized poetic genius. What is he like? He is like
+everything. He is like the soil which holds the germs of a thousand forms
+of life; he is like the grass, common, universal, perennial, formless; he
+is like your own heart, mystical yearning, rebellious, contradictory, but
+ever throbbing with life. He is fluid, generative, electric; he is full of
+the germs, potencies, and latencies of things; he provokes thought without
+satisfying it; he is formless without being void; he is both Darwinian and
+Dantesque. He is the great reconciler, he united and harmonized so many
+opposites in himself. As a man he united the masculine and feminine
+elements in a remarkable degree; he united the innocent vanity of the
+child with the self-reliance of a god. In his moral aspects, he united
+egoism and altruism, pride and charity, individualism and democracy,
+fierce patriotism and the cosmopolitan spirit; in his literary aspects he
+united mysticism and realism, the poet and prophet, the local and the
+universal; in his religious aspects he united faith and agnosticism, the
+glorification of the body and all objective things, with an unshakable
+trust in the reality of the invisible world.
+
+Rich in the elements of poetry, a London critic says, almost beyond any
+other poet of his time, and yet the conscious, elaborate, crystallic,
+poetic work which the critic demanded of him, carefully stopping short of,
+quite content to hold it all in solution, and give his reader an impulse
+rather than a specimen.
+
+I have accepted Whitman entire and without reservation. I could not do
+otherwise. It was clear enough to me that he was to be taken as a whole or
+not at all. We cannot cut and carve a man. The latest poet brings us
+poetic wares, curiously and beautifully carved and wrought specimens, some
+of which we accept and some of which we pass by. Whitman brings us no
+cunning handicraft of the muses: he brings us a gospel, he brings us a
+man, he brings us a new revelation of life; and either his work appeals to
+us as a whole, or it does not so appeal. He will not live in separate
+passages, or in a few brief poems, any more than Shakespeare or Homer or
+Dante, or the Bible, so lives.
+
+The chief thing about the average literary poet is his poetic gift, apart
+from any other consideration; we select from what he brings us as we
+select from a basket of fruit. The chief thing about Whitman is the
+personality which the poetic gift is engaged in exploiting; the excitement
+of our literary or artistic sense is always less than the excitement of
+our sense of life and of real things. We get in him a fixed point of view,
+a new vantage-ground of personality from which to survey life. It is less
+what he brings, and more what he is, than with other poets. To take him by
+fragments, picking out poetic tidbits here and there, rejecting all the
+rest, were like valuing a walk through the fields and woods only for the
+flowers culled here and there, or the bits of color in the grass or
+foliage. Is the air, the sunshine, the free spaces, the rocks, the soil,
+the trees, and the exhilaration of it all, nothing? There are flowers in
+Whitman, too, but they are amid the rocks or under the trees, and seem
+quite unpremeditated and by the way, and never the main concern. If our
+quest is for these alone, we shall surely be disappointed. "In order to
+appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose," says Joel Chandler Harris,
+"it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp
+in instant and express admiration the vast group of facts that make
+man,--that make liberty,--that make America. There is no poetry in the
+details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of
+the mighty forces behind them,--the inevitable, unaccountable,
+irresistible forward movement of man in the making of this republic."
+
+And again: "Those who approach Walt Whitman's poetry from the literary
+side are sure to be disappointed. Whatever else it is, it is not literary.
+Its art is its own, and the melody of it must be sought in other
+suggestions than those of metre.... Those who are merely literary will
+find little substance in the great drama of Democracy which is outlined
+by Walt Whitman in his writings,--it is no distinction to call them poems.
+But those who know nature at first hand--who know man, who see in this
+Republic something more than a political government--will find therein the
+thrill and glow of poetry and the essence of melody. Not the poetry that
+culture stands in expectation of, nor the melody that capers in verse and
+metre, but those rarer intimations and suggestions that are born in
+primeval solitudes, or come whirling from the vast funnel of the storm."
+How admirable! how true! No man has ever spoken more to the point upon
+Walt Whitman.
+
+The appearance of such a man as Whitman involves deep world-forces of race
+and time. He is rooted in the very basic structure of his age. After what
+I have already said, my reader will not be surprised when I tell him that
+I look upon Whitman as the one mountain thus far in our literary
+landscape. To me he changes the whole aspect, almost the very climate, of
+our literature. He adds the much-needed ruggedness, breadth, audacity,
+independence, and the elements of primal strength and health. We owe much
+to Emerson. But Emerson was much more a _made_ man than was Whitman,--much
+more the result of secondary forces, the college, the church, and of New
+England social and literary culture. With all his fervid humanity and
+deeply ingrained modernness, Whitman has the virtues of the primal and the
+savage. "Leaves of Grass" has not the charm, or the kind of charm, of the
+more highly wrought artistic works, but it has the incentive of nature and
+the charm of real things. We shall not go to it to be soothed and lulled.
+It will always remain among the difficult and heroic undertakings,
+demanding our best moments, our best strength, our morning push and power.
+Like voyaging or mountain-climbing, or facing any danger or hardship by
+land or sea, it fosters manly endeavor and the great virtues of sanity and
+self-reliance.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as
+presented in the original text.
+
+The following misprint has been corrected:
+  "differentation" corrected to "differentiation" (page 18)
+
+Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
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diff --git a/30342-8.zip b/30342-8.zip
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Whitman: A Study, by John Burroughs.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {  margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;}
+
+    hr { width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    body{margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;}
+
+    .pagenum  {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;}
+
+    .poem {margin-left:15%;}
+
+    .right {text-align: right;}
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    p.dropcap:first-letter{float: left; padding-right: 3px; font-size: 200%; line-height: 83%; width:auto;}
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+    a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none}
+    a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none}
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+
+    .spacer  {padding-left: 2em; padding-right: 2em;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30342 ***</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover01.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table class="bbox" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="advertisement">
+<tr><td align="center"><b>Books by John Burroughs.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WORKS. 14 vols., uniform, 16mo, gilt top, $17.10;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">half calf, $34.10; half polished morocco, $37.45.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Wake-Robin.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Winter Sunshine.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Locusts and Wild Honey.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Fresh Fields.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Indoor Studies.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Birds and Poets</span>, with Other Papers.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Pepacton</span>, and Other Sketches.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Signs and Seasons.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Riverby.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Whitman: A Study.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">The Light of Day</span>: Religious Discussions and Criticisms from</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 6em;"> the Standpoint of a Naturalist.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Each of the above, $1.25.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Literary Values.</span> A Series of Literary Essays.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Far and Near.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Ways of Nature.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Each of the above, $1.10, <i>net</i>. Postage extra.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>WAYS OF NATURE. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>. Postage extra.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FAR AND NEAR. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>. Postage 11 cents.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to each season of the year,<br/><span style="margin-left: 4em;">from the writings of John Burroughs. Illustrated from
+Photographs</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">by <span class="smcap">Clifton Johnson</span>. 12mo, $1.50.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>WHITMAN: A Study. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and Criticisms from the<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">Standpoint of a Naturalist. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>LITERARY VALUES. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>. Postage,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">11 cents.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>WINTER SUNSHINE. <i>Cambridge Classics Series.</i> Crown 8vo, $1.00.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WAKE-ROBIN. <i>Riverside Aldine Series.</i> 16mo, $1.00.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illustrated. Square 12mo,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">$1.00. <i>School Edition</i>, 60 cents, <i>net</i>.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Boston and New York</span></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis01.jpg" alt="Walt Whitman" /></div>
+<p class="center">WALT WHITMAN</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<h2>WHITMAN</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3><i>A STUDY</i></h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h5>BY</h5>
+<h3>JOHN BURROUGHS</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/tp01.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br />
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge</h4>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h5>Copyright, 1896,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By john burroughs.</span></h5>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#preliminary"><span class="smcap">Preliminary</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#BIOGRAPHICAL_AND_PERSONAL"><span class="smcap">Biographical and Personal</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RULING_IDEAS_AND_AIMS"><span class="smcap">His Ruling Ideas and Aims</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_SELF-RELIANCE"><span class="smcap">His Self-Reliance</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_ART"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Art and Literature</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_LIFE"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Life and Morals</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_CULTURE"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Culture</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_HIS_COUNTRY"><span class="smcap">His Relation to his Country and his Times</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_SCIENCE"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Science</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_RELIGION"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Religion</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#A_FINAL_WORD"><span class="smcap">A Final Word</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>"<i>All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
+from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
+from elsewhere.</i>"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Taine.</span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>If you want to tell good Gothic, see if it has the sort of roughness and
+largeness and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness
+which seems always to be the sign manual of the broad vision and massy
+power of men who can see</i> past <i>the work they are doing, and betray here and
+there something like disdain for it.</i>"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ruskin.</span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Formerly, during the period termed classic, when literature was governed
+by recognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the
+most perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the
+most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,&mdash;the &AElig;neid,
+the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day something else is wanted. For us
+the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
+imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
+The greatest poet is not he who has done the best, it is he who suggests
+the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves
+you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your
+turn.</i>"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sainte-Beuve.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="preliminary" id="preliminary"></a>WHITMAN</h2>
+
+<h3>PRELIMINARY</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">The</span> writing of this preliminary chapter, and the final survey and revision
+of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild
+place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place
+Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,&mdash;an
+amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth
+of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site of
+an ancient lake, now a garden of unknown depth and fertility. Elemental
+ruggedness, savageness, and grandeur, combined with wonderful tenderness,
+modernness, and geniality. There rise the gray scarred cliffs, crowned
+here and there with a dead hemlock or pine, where, morning after morning,
+I have seen the bald-eagle perch, and here at their feet this level area
+of tender humus, with three perennial springs of delicious cold water
+flowing in its margin; a huge granite bowl filled with the elements and
+potencies of life. The scene has a strange fascination for me, and holds
+me here day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> after day. From the highest point of rocks I can overlook a
+long stretch of the river and of the farming country beyond; I can hear
+owls hoot, hawks scream, and roosters crow. Birds of the garden and
+orchard meet birds of the forest upon the shaggy cedar posts that uphold
+my porch. At dusk the call of the whippoorwill mingles with the chorus of
+the pickerel frogs, and in the morning I hear through the robins' cheerful
+burst the sombre plaint of the mourning-dove. When I tire of my
+manuscript, I walk in the woods, or climb the rocks, or help the men clear
+up the ground, piling and burning the stumps and rubbish. This scene and
+situation, so primitive and secluded, yet so touched with and adapted to
+civilization, responding to the moods of both sides of the life and
+imagination of a modern man, seems, I repeat, typical in many ways of my
+poet, and is a veritable Whitman land. Whitman does not to me suggest the
+wild and unkempt as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the
+elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my
+dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to
+him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and
+placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some
+of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and
+primitive aspects.</p>
+
+<p>His wildness is only the wildness of the great primary forces from which
+we draw our health and strength. Underneath all his unloosedness, or free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+launching forth of himself, is the sanity and repose of nature.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>I first became acquainted with Whitman's poetry through the columns of the
+old "Saturday Press" when I was twenty or twenty-one years old (1858 or
+1859). The first things I remember to have read were "There was a child
+went forth," "This Compost," "As I ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Old
+Ireland," and maybe a few others. I was attracted by the new poet's work
+from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found
+in the current poetry. Meeting Bayard Taylor about this time, I spoke to
+him about Whitman. "Yes," he said, "there is something in him, but he is a
+man of colossal egotism."</p>
+
+<p>A few years later a friend sent me a copy of the Thayer &amp; Eldridge edition
+of "Leaves of Grass" of 1860. It proved a fascinating but puzzling book to
+me. I grazed upon it like a colt upon a mountain, taking what tasted good
+to me, and avoiding what displeased me, but having little or no conception
+of the purport of the work as a whole. I found passages and whole poems
+here and there that I never tired of reading, and that gave a strange
+fillip to my moral and intellectual nature, but nearly as many passages
+and poems puzzled or repelled me. My absorption of Emerson had prepared me
+in a measure for Whitman's philosophy of life, but not for the ideals of
+character and conduct which he held up to me, nor for the standards in art
+to which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the poet perpetually appealed. Whitman was Emerson translated
+from the abstract into the concrete. There was no privacy with Whitman; he
+never sat me down in a corner with a cozy, comfortable shut-in feeling,
+but he set me upon a hill or started me upon an endless journey.
+Wordsworth had been my poet of nature, of the sequestered and the idyllic;
+but I saw that here was a poet of a larger, more fundamental nature,
+indeed of the Cosmos itself. Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the
+earth and the orbs. This much soon appeared to me, but I was troubled by
+the poet's apparent "colossal egotism," by his attitude towards evil,
+declaring himself "to be the poet of wickedness also;" by his seeming
+attraction toward the turbulent and the disorderly; and, at times, by what
+the critics had called his cataloguing style of treatment.</p>
+
+<p>When I came to meet the poet himself, which was in the fall of 1863, I
+felt less concern about these features of his work; he was so sound and
+sweet and gentle and attractive as a man, and withal so wise and tolerant,
+that I soon came to feel the same confidence in the book that I at once
+placed in its author, even in the parts which I did not understand. I saw
+that the work and the man were one, and that the former must be good as
+the latter was good. There was something in the manner in which both the
+book and its author carried themselves under the sun, and in the way they
+confronted America and the present time, that convinced beyond the power
+of logic or criticism.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>The more I saw of Whitman, and the more I studied his "Leaves," the more
+significance I found in both, and the clearer it became to me that a new
+type of a man and a new departure in poetic literature were here
+foreshadowed. There was something forbidding, but there was something
+vital and grand back of it. I found to be true what the poet said of
+himself,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,<br />
+To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,<br />
+For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I have persevered in my study of the poet, though balked many times, and
+the effect upon my own mental and spiritual nature has been great; no such
+"solid prizes" in the way of a broader outlook upon life and nature, and,
+I may say, upon art, has any poet of my time afforded me. There are
+passages or whole poems in the "Leaves" which I do not yet understand
+("Sleep-Chasings" is one of them), though the language is as clear as
+daylight; they are simply too subtle or elusive for me; but my confidence
+in the logical soundness of the book is so complete that I do not trouble
+myself at all about these things.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>I would fain make these introductory remarks to my essay a sort of window
+through which the reader may get a fairly good view of what lies beyond.
+If he does not here get any glimpse or suggestion of what pleases him, or
+of what he is look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>ing for, it will hardly be worth while for him to
+trouble himself further.</p>
+
+<p>A great many readers, perhaps three fourths of the readers of current
+poetry, and not a few of the writers thereof, cannot stand Whitman at all,
+or see any reason for his being. To such my essay, if it ever comes to
+their notice, will be a curiosity, may be an offense. But I trust it will
+meet with a different reception at the hands of the smaller but rapidly
+growing circle of those who are beginning to turn to Whitman as the most
+imposing and significant figure in our literary annals.</p>
+
+<p>The rapidly growing Whitman literature attests the increasing interest to
+which I refer. Indeed, it seems likely that by the end of the century the
+literature which will have grown up around the name of this man will
+surpass in bulk and value that which has grown up around the name of any
+other man of letters born within the century.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Stedman wrote his essay upon the poet early in the eighties, he
+referred to the mass of this literature. It has probably more than doubled
+in volume in the intervening years: since Whitman's death in the spring of
+'92, it has been added to by William Clark's book upon the poet, Professor
+Trigg's study of Browning and Whitman, and the work of that accomplished
+critic and scholar, so lately gone to his rest, John Addington Symonds.
+This last is undoubtedly the most notable contribution that has yet been
+made, or is likely very soon to be made, to the Whitman literature. Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+Symonds declares that "Leaves of Grass," which he first read at the age of
+twenty-five, influenced him more than any other book has done, except the
+Bible,&mdash;more than Plato, more than Goethe.</p>
+
+<p>When we remember that the man who made this statement was eminently a man
+of books, deeply read in all literatures, his testimony may well offset
+that of a score of our home critics who find nothing worthy or helpful in
+Whitman's work. One positive witness in such a matter outweighs any number
+of negative ones.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>For making another addition to the growing Whitman literature, I have no
+apology to offer. I know well enough that "writing and talk" cannot
+"prove" a poet; that he must be his own proof or be forgotten; and my main
+purpose in writing about Whitman, as in writing about nature, is to tell
+readers what I have found there, with the hope of inducing them to look
+for themselves. At the same time, I may say that I think no modern poet so
+much needs to be surrounded by an atmosphere of comment and
+interpretation, through which readers may approach him, as does Whitman.
+His work sprang from a habit or attitude of mind quite foreign to that
+with which current literature makes us familiar,&mdash;so germinal is it, and
+so little is it beholden to the formal art we so assiduously cultivate.
+The poet says his work "connects lovingly with precedents," but it does
+not connect lovingly with any body of poetry of this century. "Leaves of
+Grass" is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> bound to be a shock to the timid and pampered taste of the
+majority of current readers. I would fain lessen this shock by interposing
+my own pages of comment between the book and the public. The critic can
+say so many things the poet cannot. He can explain and qualify and
+analyze, whereas the creative artist can only hint or project. The poet
+must hasten on, he must infold and bind together, he must be direct and
+synthetic in every act. Reflection and qualification are not for him, but
+action, emotion, volition, the procreant blending and surrender. He works
+as Nature does, and gives us reality in every line.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The type of mind of Whitman's, which seldom or never emerges as a mere
+mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a
+personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself,
+because its operations are synthetic and not analytic, its mainspring is
+love and not mere knowledge. In his prose essay called "A Backward Glance
+o'er Travel'd Roads," appended to the final edition of his poems, Whitman
+has not so much sought to expound himself as to put his reader in
+possession of his point of view, and of the considerations that lie back
+of his work. This chapter might render much that I have written
+superfluous, were there not always a distinct gain in seeing an author
+through another medium, or in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> getting the equivalents of him in the
+thoughts and ideals of a kindred and sympathetic mind. But I have not
+consciously sought to expound Whitman, any more than in my other books I
+have sought to expound the birds or wild nature. I have written out some
+things that he means to me, and the pleasure and profit I have found in
+his pages.</p>
+
+<p>There is no end to what can be drawn out of him. It has been said and
+repeated that he was not a thinker, and yet I find more food for thought
+in him than in all other poets. It has been often said and repeated that
+he is not a poet, and yet the readers that respond to him the most fully
+appear to be those in whom the poetic temperament is paramount. I believe
+he supplies in fuller measure that pristine element, something akin to the
+unbreathed air of mountain and shore, which makes the arterial blood of
+poetry and literature, than any other modern writer.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>We can make little of Whitman unless we allow him to be a law unto
+himself, and seek him through the clews which he himself brings. When we
+try him by current modes, current taste, and demand of him formal beauty,
+formal art, we are disappointed. But when we try him by what we may call
+the scientific standard, the standard of organic nature, and demand of him
+the vital and the characteristic,&mdash;demand of him that he have a law of his
+own, and fulfill that law in the poetic sphere,&mdash;the result is quite
+different.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other
+poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies, rather than
+in what he portrays; and more than any other poet must he wait to be
+understood by the growth of the taste of himself. "I make the only growth
+by which I can be appreciated," he truly says.</p>
+
+<p>His words are like the manna that descended upon the Israelites, "in which
+were all manner of tastes; and every one found in it what his palate was
+chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the young
+men tasted bread; the old men honey; and the children oil." Many young
+men,&mdash;poets, artists, teachers, preachers,&mdash;have testified that they have
+found bread in Whitman, the veritable bread of life; others have found
+honey, sweet poetic morsels; and not a few report having found only gall.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>In considering an original work like "Leaves of Grass," the search is
+always for the grounds upon which it is to be justified and explained.
+These grounds in this work are not easy to find; they lie deeper than the
+grounds upon which the popular poets rest. Because they are not at once
+seen, many readers have denied that there are any such grounds. But to
+deny a basis of reality to a work with the history of "Leaves of Grass,"
+and a basis well grounded on &aelig;sthetic and artistic principles, is not to
+be thought of.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>The more the poet eludes us, the more we know he has his hiding-place
+somewhere. The more he denies our standards, the more we know he has
+standards of his own which we must discover; the more he flouts at our
+literary conventions, the more we must press him for his own principles
+and methods. How does he justify himself to himself? Could any sane man
+have written the Children of Adam poems who was not sustained by deepest
+moral and &aelig;sthetic convictions? It is the business of the critic to search
+for these principles and convictions, and not shirk the task by ridicule
+and denial.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>If there was never any change in taste, if it always ran in the same
+channels,&mdash;indeed, if it did not at times run in precisely opposite
+channels,&mdash;there would be little hope that Walt Whitman's poetry would
+ever find any considerable number of readers. But one of the laws that
+dominate the progress of literature, as Edmond Sh&eacute;rer says, is incessant
+change, not only in thought and ideas, but in taste and the
+starting-points of art. A radical and almost violent change in these
+respects is indicated by Whitman,&mdash;a change which is in unison with many
+things in modern life and morals, but which fairly crosses the prevailing
+taste in poetry and in art. No such dose of realism and individualism
+under the guise of poetry has been administered to the reading public in
+this century. No such break with literary traditions&mdash;no such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> audacious
+attempt to tally, in a printed page, the living concrete man, an actual
+human presence, instead of the conscious, made-up poet&mdash;is to be found in
+modern literary records.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>The much that I have said in the following pages about Whitman's radical
+differences from other poets&mdash;his changed attitude towards the universe,
+his unwonted methods and aims, etc.,&mdash;might seem to place him upon a
+ground so unique and individual as to contradict my claims for his breadth
+and universality. The great poets stand upon common ground; they excel
+along familiar lines, they touch us, and touch us deeply, at many points.
+What always saves Whitman is his enormous endowment of what is "commonest,
+nearest, easiest,"&mdash;his atmosphere of the common day, the common life, and
+his fund of human sympathy and love. He is strange because he gives us the
+familiar in such a direct, unexpected manner. His "Leaves" are like some
+new fruit that we have never before tasted. It is the product of another
+clime, another hemisphere. The same old rains and dews, the same old sun
+and soil, nursed it, yet in so many ways how novel and strange! We
+certainly have to serve a certain apprenticeship to this poet, familiarize
+ourselves with his point of view and with his democratic spirit, before we
+can make much of him. The spirit in which we come to him from the other
+poets&mdash;the poets of art and culture&mdash;is for the most part unfriendly to
+him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> There is something rude, strange, and unpoetic about him at first
+sight that is sure to give most readers of poetry a shock. I think one
+might come to him from the Greek poets, or the old Hebrew or Oriental
+bards, with less shock than from our modern delicate and refined singers;
+because the old poets were more simple and elemental, and aimed less at
+the distilled dainties of poetry, than the modern. They were full of
+action, too, and volition,&mdash;of that which begets and sustains life.
+Whitman's poetry is almost entirely the expression of will and
+personality, and runs very little to intellectual subtleties and
+refinements. It fulfills itself in our wills and character, rather than in
+our taste.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country's
+poets, and among English poets generally,&mdash;a cropping out again, after so
+many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain. Had he dropped upon us
+from some other sphere, he could hardly have been a greater surprise and
+puzzle to the average reader or critic. Into a literature that was timid,
+imitative, conventional, he fell like leviathan into a duck-pond, and the
+commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All
+the reigning poets in this country except Emerson denied him, and many of
+our minor poets still keep up a hostile sissing and cackling. He will
+probably always be more or less a stumbling-block to the minor poet,
+because of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> indifference to the things which to the minor poet are all
+in all. He was a poet without what is called artistic form, and without
+technique, as that word is commonly understood. His method was analogous
+to the dynamic method of organic nature, rather than to the mechanical or
+constructive method of the popular poets.</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>Of course the first thing that strikes the reader in "Leaves of Grass" is
+its seeming oddity and strangeness. If a man were to come into a dress
+reception in shirt sleeves and with his hat on, the feature would strike
+us at once, and would be magnified in our eyes; we should quite forget
+that he was a man, and in essentials differed but little from the rest of
+us, after all. The exterior habiliments on such occasions count for nearly
+everything; and in the popular poetry rhyme, measure, and the language and
+manners of the poets are much more than anything else. If Whitman did not
+do anything so outr&eacute; as to come into a dress reception with his coat off
+and his hat on, he did come into the circle of the poets without the usual
+poetic habiliments. He was not dressed up at all, and he was not at all
+abashed or apologetic. His air was confident and self-satisfied, if it did
+not at times suggest the insolent and aggressive. It was the dress circle
+that was on trial, and not Walt Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>We could forgive a man in real life for such an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> audacious proceeding only
+on the ground of his being something extraordinary as a person, with an
+extraordinary message to convey; and we can pardon the poet only on
+precisely like grounds. He must make us forget his unwonted garb by his
+unique and lovable personality, and the power and wisdom of his utterance.
+If he cannot do this we shall soon tire of him.</p>
+
+<p>That Whitman was a personality the like of which the world has not often
+seen, and that his message to his country and to his race was of prime
+importance, are conclusions at which more and more thinking persons are
+surely arriving.</p>
+
+<p>His want of art, of which we have heard so much, is, it seems to me, just
+this want of the usual trappings and dress uniform of the poets. In the
+essentials of art, the creative imagination, the plastic and quickening
+spirit, the power of identification with the thing contemplated, and the
+absolute use of words, he has few rivals.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
+Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
+colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
+such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
+is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
+appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
+violently for him or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> violently against, and it will require the
+perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
+significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
+show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.</p>
+
+<p>"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
+has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
+this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
+interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
+up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
+and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
+vanity."</p>
+
+<p>To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
+one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
+not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
+follows, I shall be more than content.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>In the world of literature, as in the world of physical forces, things
+adjust themselves after a while, and no impetus can be given to any man's
+name or fame that will finally carry it beyond the limit of his real
+worth. However "one-sided" my enthusiasm for Whitman may be, or that of
+any of his friends may be, there is no danger but that in time he will
+find exactly his proper place and level. My opinion, or any man's opinion,
+of the works of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> another, is like a wind that blows for a moment across
+the water, heaping it up a little on the shore or else beating it down,
+but not in any way permanently affecting its proper level.</p>
+
+<p>The adverse winds that have blown over Whitman's work have been many and
+persistent, and yet the tide has surely risen, his fame has slowly
+increased.</p>
+
+<p>It will soon be forty years since he issued the first thin quarto edition
+of "Leaves of Grass," and, though the opposition to him has been the most
+fierce and determined ever recorded in our literary history, often
+degenerating into persecution and willful misrepresentation, yet his fame
+has steadily grown both at home and abroad. The impression he early made
+upon such men as Emerson, Thoreau, William O'Connor, Mr. Stedman, Colonel
+Ingersoll, and others in this country, and upon Professors Dowden and
+Clifford, upon Symonds, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti, Lord Lytton, Mrs.
+Gilchrist, George Eliot, in England, has been followed by an equally deep
+or deeper impression upon many of the younger and bolder spirits of both
+hemispheres. In fact Whitman saw his battle essentially won in his own
+lifetime, though his complete triumph is of course a matter of the distant
+future.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>But let me give without further delay a fuller hint of the attitude these
+pages assume and hold towards the subject they discuss.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>There are always, or nearly always, a few men born to each generation who
+embody the best thought and culture of that generation, and express it in
+approved literary forms. From Petrarch down to Lowell, the lives and works
+of these men fill the literary annals; they uphold the literary and
+scholarly traditions; they are the true men of letters; they are justly
+honored and beloved in their day and land. We in this country have
+recently, in the death of Dr. Holmes, mourned the loss of the last of the
+New England band of such men. We are all indebted to them for solace, and
+for moral and intellectual stimulus.</p>
+
+<p>Then, much more rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like
+an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who
+bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are
+not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times
+for the most part decry and disown,&mdash;the primal, original, elemental men.
+It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the
+minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He
+is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets,&mdash;nearer the
+founders and discoverers, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic,
+patriarchal men who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with
+the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the
+seer, the prophet. The specialization and <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'differentation'">differentiation</ins> of our latter
+ages of science and cul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>ture is less marked in him than in other poets.
+Poetry, philosophy, religion, are all inseparably blended in his pages. He
+is in many ways a reversion to an earlier type. Dr. Brinton has remarked
+that his attitude toward the principle of sex and his use of sexual
+imagery in his poems, are the same as in the more primitive religions.
+Whitman was not a poet by elaboration, but by suggestion; not an artist by
+formal presentation, but by spirit and conception; not a philosopher by
+system and afterthought, but by vision and temper.</p>
+
+<p>In his "Leaves," we again hear the note of destiny,&mdash;again see the
+universal laws and forces exemplified in the human personality, and turned
+upon life with love and triumph.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>The world always has trouble with its primary men, or with the men who
+have any primary gifts, like Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Tolstoi,
+Ibsen. The idols of an age are nearly always secondary men: they break no
+new ground; they make no extraordinary demands; our tastes and wants are
+already adjusted to their type; we understand and approve of them at once.
+The primary men disturb us; they are a summons and a challenge; they break
+up the old order; they open up new territory which we are to subdue and
+occupy; the next age and the next make more of them. In my opinion, the
+next age and the next will make more of Whitman, and the next still more,
+because he is in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> great world-current, in the line of the evolutionary
+movement of our time. Is it at all probable that Tennyson can ever be to
+any other age what he has been to this? Tennyson marks an expiring age,
+the sunset of the feudal world. He did not share the spirit to which the
+future belongs. There was not one drop of democratic blood in his veins.
+To him, the people were an hundred-headed beast.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>If my essay seems like one continual strain to attain the unattainable, to
+compass and define Whitman, who will not be compassed and defined, I can
+only say that I regret it, but could not well help it. Talking about
+Whitman, Symonds said, was like talking about the universe, and it is so.
+There is somewhat incommensurable in his works. One may not hope to speak
+the final word about him, to sum him up in a sentence. He is so palpable,
+so real, so near at hand, that the critic or expounder of him promises
+himself an easy victory; but before one can close with him he is gone. He
+is, after all, as subtle and baffling as air or light.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">... "I will certainly elude you,</span><br />
+Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!<br />
+Already you see I have escaped from you."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It is probably this characteristic which makes Whitman an irrepressible
+figure in literature; he will not down for friend or foe. He escapes from
+all classification, and is larger than any definition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> of him that has yet
+been given. How many times has he been exploded by British and American
+critics; how many times has he been labeled and put upon the shelf, only
+to reappear again as vigorous and untranslatable as ever!</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+<p>So far as Whitman stands merely for the spirit of revolt, or of reaction
+against current modes in life and literature, I have little interest in
+him. As the "apostle of the rough, the uncouth," to use Mr. Howells's
+words, the world would long ago have tired of him. The irruption into
+letters of the wild and lawless, or of the strained and eccentric, can
+amuse and interest us only for a moment. It is because these are only
+momentary phases of him, as it were, and because underneath all he
+embraces the whole of life and ministers to it, that his fame and
+influence are still growing in the world. One hesitates even to call
+Whitman the poet of "democracy," or of "personality," or of "the modern,"
+because such terms only half define him. He quickly escapes into that
+large and universal air which all great art breathes. We cannot sum him up
+in a phrase. He flows out on all sides, and his sympathies embrace all
+types and conditions of men. He is a great democrat, but, first and last
+and over all, he is a great man, a great nature, and deep world-currents
+course through him. He is distinctively an American poet, but his
+Americanism is only the door through which he enters upon the universal.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XVII</h4>
+
+<p>Call his work poetry or prose, or what you will: that it is an inspired
+utterance of some sort, any competent person ought to be able to see. And
+what else do we finally demand of any work than that it be inspired? How
+all questions of form and art, and all other questions, sink into
+insignificance beside that! The exaltation of mind and spirit shown in the
+main body of Whitman's work, the genuine, prophetic fervor, the
+intensification and amplification of the simple ego, and the resultant
+raising of all human values, seem to me as plain as daylight.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman is to be classed among the great names by the breadth and
+all-inclusiveness of his theme and by his irrepressible personality. I
+think it highly probable that future scholars and critics will find his
+work fully as significant and era-marking as that of any of the few
+supreme names of the past. It is the culmination of an age of
+individualism, and, as opposites meet, it is also the best lesson in
+nationalism and universal charity that this century has seen.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="BIOGRAPHICAL_AND_PERSONAL" id="BIOGRAPHICAL_AND_PERSONAL"></a>BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">Walt Whitman</span> was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 30, 1819, and died
+at Camden, N. J., March 26, 1892. Though born in the country, most of his
+life was passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New
+Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is
+buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,&mdash;free, unhampered,
+unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of
+money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole,
+joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter
+through the world,&mdash;no hurry, no fever, no strife; hence no bitterness, no
+depletion, no wasted energies. A farm boy, then a school-teacher, then a
+printer, editor, writer, traveler, mechanic, nurse in the army hospitals,
+and lastly government clerk; large and picturesque of figure, slow of
+movement; tolerant, passive, receptive, and democratic,&mdash;of the people; in
+all his tastes and attractions, always aiming to walk abreast with the
+great laws and forces, and to live thoroughly in the free, nonchalant
+spirit of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> own day and land. His strain was mingled Dutch and English,
+with a decided Quaker tinge, which came from his mother's side, and which
+had a marked influence upon his work.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit that led him to devote his time and substance to the sick and
+wounded soldiers during the war may be seen in that earlier incident in
+his life when he drove a Broadway stage all one winter, that a disabled
+driver might lie by without starving his family. It is from this episode
+that the tradition of his having been a New York stage-driver comes. He
+seems always to have had a special liking for this class of workmen. One
+of the house surgeons of the old New York Hospital relates that in the
+latter part of the fifties Whitman was a frequent visitor to that
+institution, looking after and ministering to disabled stage-drivers.
+"These drivers," says the doctor, "like those of the omnibuses in London,
+were a set of men by themselves. A good deal of strength, intelligence,
+and skillful management of horses was required of a Broadway stage-driver.
+He seems to have been decidedly a higher order of man than the driver of
+the present horse-cars. He usually had his primary education in the
+country, and graduated as a thorough expert in managing a very difficult
+machine, in an exceptionally busy thoroughfare.</p>
+
+<p>"It was this kind of a man that so attracted Walt Whitman that he was
+constantly to be seen perched on the box alongside one of them going up
+and down Broadway. I often watched the poet and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> driver, as probably did
+many another New Yorker in those days.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wonder as much now as I did in 1860 that a man like Walt Whitman
+became interested in these drivers. He was not interested in the news of
+every-day life&mdash;the murders and accidents and political convulsions&mdash;but
+he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not
+had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now
+that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then
+been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote
+them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said
+much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had satisfied
+himself of the nature of the injury and of the prospect of recovery.</p>
+
+<p>"Whitman appeared to be about forty years of age at that time. He was
+always dressed in a blue flannel coat and vest, with gray and baggy
+trousers. He wore a woolen shirt, with a Byronic collar, low in the neck,
+without a cravat, as I remember, and a large felt hat. His hair was iron
+gray, and he had a full beard and mustache of the same color. His face and
+neck were bronzed by exposure to the sun and air. He was large, and gave
+the impression of being a vigorous man. He was scrupulously careful of his
+simple attire, and his hands were soft and hairy."</p>
+
+<p>During the early inception of "Leaves of Grass" he was a carpenter in
+Brooklyn, building and sell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>ing small frame-houses to working people. He
+frequently knocked off work to write his poems. In his life Whitman was
+never one of the restless, striving sort. In this respect he was not
+typical of his countrymen. All his urgency and strenuousness he reserved
+for his book. He seems always to have been a sort of visitor in life,
+noting, observing, absorbing, keeping aloof from all ties that would hold
+him, and making the most of the hour and the place in which he happened to
+be. He was in no sense a typical literary man. During his life in New York
+and Brooklyn, we see him moving entirely outside the fashionable circles,
+the learned circles, the literary circles, the money-getting circles. He
+belongs to no set or club. He is seen more with the laboring
+classes,&mdash;drivers, boatmen, mechanics, printers,&mdash;and I suspect may often
+be found with publicans and sinners. He is fond of the ferries and of the
+omnibuses. He is a frequenter of the theatre and of the Italian opera.
+Alboni makes a deep and lasting impression upon him. It is probably to her
+that he writes these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Here take this gift,<br />
+I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, general,<br />
+One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress and freedom of the race,<br />
+Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;<br />
+But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Elsewhere he refers to Alboni by name and speaks of her as</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>"The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,<br />
+Sister of loftiest gods."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Some of his poems were written at the opera. The great singers evidently
+gave him clews and suggestions that were applicable to his own art.</p>
+
+<p>His study was out of doors. He wrote on the street, on the ferry, at the
+seaside, in the fields, at the opera,&mdash;always from living impulses arising
+at the moment, and always with his eye upon the fact. He says he has read
+his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, and tried them by the realities
+of life and nature about him. Were they as real and alive as they?&mdash;this
+was the only question with him.</p>
+
+<p>At home in his father's family in Brooklyn we see him gentle, patient,
+conciliatory, much looked up to by all. Neighbors seek his advice. He is
+cool, deliberate, impartial. A marked trait is his indifference to money
+matters; his people are often troubled because he lets opportunities to
+make money pass by. When his "Leaves" appear, his family are puzzled, do
+not know what to make of it. His mother thinks that, if "Hiawatha" is
+poetry, may be Walt's book is, too. He never counsels with any one, and is
+utterly indifferent as to what people may say or think. He is not a
+stirring and punctual man, is always a little late; not an early riser,
+not prompt at dinner; always has ample time, and will not be hurried; the
+business gods do not receive his homage. He is gray at thirty, and is said
+to have had a look of age in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> youth, as he had a look of youth in age. He
+has few books, cares little for sport, never uses a gun; has no bad
+habits; has no entanglements with women, and apparently never contemplates
+marriage. It is said that during his earliest years of manhood he kept
+quite aloof from the "girls."</p>
+
+<p>At the age of nineteen he edited "The Long Islander," published at
+Huntington. A recent visitor to these early haunts of Whitman gathered
+some reminiscences of him at this date:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Amid the deep revery of nature, on that mild October afternoon, we
+returned to the village of Huntington, there to meet the few, the very
+few, survivors who recall Walt's first appearance in the literary world as
+the editor of 'The Long Islander,' nigh sixty years ago (1838). Two of
+these forefathers of the hamlet clearly remembered his powerful
+personality, brimful of life, reveling in strength, careless of time and
+the world, of money and of toil; a lover of books and of jokes; delighting
+to gather round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of
+evenings, and tell them stories and read them poetry, his own and others'.
+That of his own he called his 'Yawps,' a word which he afterwards made
+famous. Both remembered him as a delightful companion, generous to a
+fault, glorying in youth, negligent of his affairs, issuing 'The Long
+Islander' at random intervals,&mdash;once a week, once in two weeks, once in
+three,&mdash;until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him
+out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> himself was editor,
+publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all in one."</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Few men were so deeply impressed by our Civil War as was Whitman. It
+aroused all his patriotism, all his sympathies, and, as a poet, tested his
+power to deal with great contemporary events and scenes. He was first
+drawn to the seat of war on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel
+George W. Whitman, 51st New York Volunteers, who was wounded by the
+fragment of a shell at Fredericksburg. This was in the fall of 1862. This
+brought him in contact with the sick and wounded soldiers, and henceforth,
+as long as the war lasts and longer, he devoted his time and substance to
+ministering to them. The first two or three years of his life in
+Washington he supported himself by correspondence with Northern
+newspapers, mainly with the "New York Times." These letters, as well as
+the weekly letters to his mother during the same period, form an intensely
+pathetic and interesting record.</p>
+
+<p>They contain such revelations of himself, and such pictures of the scenes
+he moved among, that I shall here quote freely from them. The following
+extract is from a letter written from Fredericksburg the third or fourth
+day after the battle of December, 1862:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Spent a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the
+Rappahannock, immediately opposite Fredericksburg. It is used as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> a
+hospital since the battle, and seems to have received only the worst
+cases. Out of doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front
+of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.,
+about a load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each
+covered with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, toward the river,
+are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of
+barrel-staves, or broken board, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies
+were subsequently taken up and transported North to their friends.)</p>
+
+<p>"The house is quite crowded, everything impromptu, no system, all bad
+enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds
+pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and
+bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a
+Mississippian,&mdash;a captain,&mdash;hit badly in leg, I talked with some time; he
+asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward
+in Washington, with leg amputated, doing well.)</p>
+
+<p>"I went through the rooms, down stairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
+I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks
+home, mothers, etc. Also talked to three or four who seemed most
+susceptible to it, and needing it."</p>
+
+<p>"December 22 to 31.&mdash;Am among the regimental, brigade, and division
+hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and
+sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> ground, lucky if their
+blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No
+cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around
+from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I
+cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me
+convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and
+sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
+camps, talking with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups
+around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get
+acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well
+used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best."</p>
+
+<p>After continuing in front through the winter, he returns to Washington,
+where the wounded and sick have mainly been concentrated. The Capital
+city, truly, is now one huge hospital; and there Whitman establishes
+himself, and thenceforward, for several years, has but one daily and
+nightly avocation.</p>
+
+<p>He alludes to writing letters by the bedside, and says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I do a good deal of this, of course, writing all kinds, including
+love-letters. Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written home to
+parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives, for one reason or another, for
+a long, long time. Some are poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> writers, some cannot get paper and
+envelopes; many have an aversion to writing, because they dread to worry
+the folks at home,&mdash;the facts about them are so sad to tell. I always
+encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them."</p>
+
+<p>A glimpse of the scenes after Chancellorsville:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"As I write this, in May, 1863, the wounded have begun to arrive from
+Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first
+arrivals. The men in charge of them told me the bad cases were yet to
+come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
+see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here foot of Sixth
+Street at night. Two boat-loads came about half past seven last night. A
+little after eight, it rained a long and violent shower. The poor, pale,
+helpless soldiers had been debarked, and lay around on the wharf and
+neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any
+rate they were exposed to it.</p>
+
+<p>"The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the
+ground, out on side places, etc., the men are lying on blankets and old
+quilts, with the bloody rags bound round heads, arms, legs, etc. The
+attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also,&mdash;only a few
+hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
+common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
+there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by
+the ambulances are now arriving in clus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>ters, and one after another is
+called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on
+stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their
+sufferings,&mdash;a few groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a
+scream of pain, as they lift a man into the ambulance.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the
+next day more, and so on for many days.</p>
+
+<p>"The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
+generally supposed,&mdash;I should say nine tenths are native-born. Among the
+arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
+and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
+are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
+a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was, perhaps,
+worse than usual. Amputations are going on,&mdash;the attendants are dressing
+wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw,
+the other day, a gentleman&mdash;a visitor, apparently, from curiosity&mdash;in one
+of the wards stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were
+probing, etc. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and
+fallen on the floor."</p>
+
+<p>An episode,&mdash;the death of a New York soldier:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
+have been with a good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
+company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrh&oelig;a, and a bad wound
+also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
+and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
+opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
+the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
+crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
+chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
+feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
+me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
+mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It is my chief
+reliance.' He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: 'Why,
+Oscar, don't you think you will get well?' He said: 'I may, but it is not
+probable.' He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
+discharged much. Then the diarrh&oelig;a had prostrated him, and I felt that
+he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
+affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned
+fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
+post-office, Cattaraugus County, New York. I had several such interviews
+with him. He died a few days after the one just described."</p>
+
+<p>And here, also, a characteristic scene in another of those long
+barracks:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>"It is Sunday afternoon (middle of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and
+very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now
+lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
+8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
+wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well.
+Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on,
+sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
+yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so
+handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over
+to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
+Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan."</p>
+
+<p>In a letter to his mother in 1863 he says, in reference to his hospital
+services: "I have got in the way, after going lightly, as it were, all
+through the wards of a hospital, and trying to give a word of cheer, if
+nothing else, to every one, then confining my special attention to the few
+where the investment seems to tell best, and who want it most.... Mother,
+I have real pride in telling you that I have the consciousness of saving
+quite a number of lives by keeping the men from giving up, and being a
+good deal with them. The men say it is so, and the doctors say it is so;
+and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I say it myself.
+I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>Again he says: "I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity; I go
+among the smallpox, etc., just the same. I feel to go without
+apprehension, and so I go: nobody else goes; but, as the darkey said there
+at Charleston when the boat ran on a flat and the rebel sharpshooters were
+peppering them, '<i>somebody</i> must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"</p>
+
+<p>In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
+wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
+hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
+large and well,&mdash;indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
+the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
+not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."</p>
+
+<p>As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
+letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
+Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
+a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
+do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
+secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,&mdash;a
+regular Carolina or Virginia planter."</p>
+
+<p>The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
+deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
+used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> seen so many
+cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
+hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
+and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
+health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
+trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
+but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
+Hospital),&mdash;about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
+probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
+stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
+Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
+'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
+knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
+composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
+o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
+blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I told you,
+last letter, I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young
+men I knew well, especially two of whom I had strong hopes of their
+getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are
+crowded here in Washington in immense numbers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and all those that came up
+from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such
+plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from
+Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the
+largest proportion of worst cases get little or no attention.</p>
+
+<p>"We receive them here with their wounds full of worms,&mdash;some all swelled
+and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new
+feature is, that many of the poor, afflicted young men are crazy; every
+ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and
+it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is
+most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it; but I
+suppose it is because I have not felt firstrate myself."</p>
+
+<p>Of the Ohio soldier above referred to, Whitman had written a few days
+before: "You remember I told you of him a year ago, when he was first
+brought in. I thought him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I
+had seen. A real giant in size, and always with a smile on his face. Oh,
+what a change! He has long been very irritable to every one but me, and
+his frame is all wasted away."</p>
+
+<p>To his brother Jeff he wrote: "Of the many I have seen die, or known of
+the past year, I have not seen or known of one who met death with any
+terror. Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of
+seventeen named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
+Ar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>tillery, Battery M. He was brought into one of the hospitals mortally
+wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it
+ought to be a relief to his folks, after all, if they could see how little
+he suffered. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed;
+it was very warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat.
+At length he opened his eyes quite wide and clear, and looked inquiringly
+around. I said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said
+quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking
+around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he
+lay so peaceful in his dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England
+country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
+fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."</p>
+
+<p>Another extract from a letter to his mother in April, 1864:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
+active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
+gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,&mdash;the flag, the
+tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
+never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
+pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,&mdash;it belonged to one
+of our cavalry regiments,&mdash;presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
+taken by the rebs in a cavalry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
+little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
+four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
+rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
+again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
+it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
+he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
+I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
+a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."</p>
+
+<p>[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
+movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
+principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
+simple, and on a low key,&mdash;to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
+and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
+certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
+carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
+of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
+trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
+flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
+summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
+white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
+air and sunshine.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
+feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
+festival,&mdash;strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh
+underclothes. He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder,
+full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant
+pockets. He would sometimes come in summer with a good-sized basket filled
+with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing them among
+the feverish and thirsty.]</p>
+
+<p>Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses. A
+well-known correspondent of the "New York Herald" writes thus about him in
+April, 1876:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I first heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle
+there. Subsequently I saw him, time and again, in the Washington
+hospitals, or wending his way there, with basket or haversack on his arm,
+and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed
+the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kindness,
+tenderness, and thoughtfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds
+through a hospital filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism
+he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each
+cot bore its man. When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of
+affection and welcome on every face, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>ever wan, and his presence seemed
+to light up the place as it might be lighted by the presence of the God of
+Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in
+whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To
+one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to
+others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a
+sheet of paper or a postage-stamp, all of which and many other things were
+in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message
+for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an
+errand; to another, some special friend very low, he would give a manly
+farewell kiss. He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do, and
+he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The
+lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it,
+and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of
+many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!'"</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Out of that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called "Drum-Taps,"
+first published in 1865,&mdash;since merged in his "Leaves,"&mdash;were produced.
+Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, come from life. The vivid
+incidents of "The Dresser" are but daguerreotypes of the poet's own actual
+movements among the bad cases of the wounded after a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> battle. The same
+personal knowledge runs through "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and
+Dim," "Come up from the Fields, Father," etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>The reader of this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not
+the purpose of the poet to portray battles and campaigns, or to celebrate
+special leaders or military prowess, but rather to chant the human aspects
+of anguish that follow in the train of war. He perhaps feels that the
+permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a
+business, as a means of growth, has served its time; and that,
+notwithstanding the vast difference between ancient and modern warfare,
+both in the spirit and in the means, Homer's pictures are essentially true
+yet, and no additions to them can be made. War can never be to us what it
+has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never the main
+fact, the paramount condition, tyrannizing over all the affairs of
+national and individual life, but only an episode, a passing interruption;
+and the poet, who in our day would be as true to his nation and times as
+Homer was to his, must treat of it from the standpoint of peace and
+progress, and even benevolence. Vast armies rise up in a night and
+disappear in a day; a million of men, inured to battle and to blood, go
+back to the avocations of peace without a moment's confusion or
+delay,&mdash;indicating clearly the tendency that prevails.</p>
+
+<p>Apostrophizing the genius of America in the supreme hour of victory, he
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+"No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee&mdash;nor mastery's rapturous verse:&mdash;<br />
+But a little book containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds,<br />
+And psalms of the dead."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The collection is also remarkable for the absence of all sectional or
+partisan feeling. Under the head of "Reconciliation" are these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Word over all, beautiful as the sky!<br />
+Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost!<br />
+That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;<br />
+... For my enemy is dead&mdash;a man divine as myself is dead;<br />
+I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin&mdash;I draw near;<br />
+I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Perhaps the most noteworthy of Whitman's war poems is the one called "When
+Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloomed," written in commemoration of
+President Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>The main effect of this poem is of strong, solemn, and varied music; and
+it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great
+composers most work,&mdash;namely, spiritual auricular analogy. At first it
+would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect. No reference
+whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not
+even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone
+that of lamentation; but, with the intuitions of the grand art, which is
+the most complex when it seems most simple, he seizes upon three beautiful
+facts of na<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>ture, which he weaves into a wreath for the dead President's
+tomb. The central thought is of death, but around this he curiously
+twines, first, the early-blooming lilacs which the poet may have plucked
+the day the dark shadow came; next the song of the hermit thrush, the most
+sweet and solemn of all our songsters, heard at twilight in the dusky
+cedars; and with these the evening star, which, as many may remember,
+night after night in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in
+the west with unusual and tender brightness. These are the premises whence
+he starts his solemn chant.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude, therefore, is not that of being bowed down and weeping
+hopeless tears, but of singing a commemorative hymn, in which the voices
+of nature join, and fits that exalted condition of the soul which serious
+events and the presence of death induce. There are no words of mere
+eulogy, no statistics, and no story or narrative; but there are pictures,
+processions, and a strange mingling of darkness and light, of grief and
+triumph: now the voice of the bird, or the drooping lustrous star, or the
+sombre thought of death; then a recurrence to the open scenery of the land
+as it lay in the April light, "the summer approaching with richness and
+the fields all busy with labor," presently dashed in upon by a spectral
+vision of armies with torn and bloody battle-flags, and, again, of the
+white skeletons of young men long afterward strewing the ground. Hence the
+piece has little or nothing of the character of the usual productions on
+such oc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>casions. It is dramatic; yet there is no development of plot, but
+a constant interplay, a turning and returning of images and sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>The poet breaks a sprig of lilac from the bush in the door-yard,&mdash;the dark
+cloud falls on the land,&mdash;the long funeral sets out,&mdash;and then the
+apostrophe:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,<br />
+Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,<br />
+With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities draped in black,<br />
+With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women, standing,<br />
+With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,<br />
+With the countless torches lit&mdash;with the silent sea of faces, and the unbared heads,<br />
+With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,<br />
+With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn;<br />
+With all the mournful voices of the dirges, pour'd around the coffin,<br />
+To dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs&mdash;Where amid these you journey,<br />
+With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;<br />
+Here! coffin that slowly passes,<br />
+I give you my sprig of lilac.<br />
+<br />
+"(Nor for you, for one alone;<br />
+Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;<br />
+For fresh as the morning&mdash;thus would I chant a song for you, O sane and sacred death.<br />
+<br />
+"All over bouquets of roses,<br />
+O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;<br />
+But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,<br />
+Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes;<br />
+With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,<br />
+For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Then the strain goes on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+"O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?<br />
+And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?<br />
+And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?<br />
+<br />
+"Sea-winds, blown from east and west,<br />
+Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till there on the prairies meeting:<br />
+These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,<br />
+I perfume the grave of him I love."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The poem reaches, perhaps, its height in the matchless invocation to Death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Come, lovely and soothing Death,<br />
+Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,<br />
+In the day, in the night, to all, to each,<br />
+Sooner or later, delicate Death.<br />
+<br />
+"Prais'd be the fathomless universe,<br />
+For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;<br />
+And for love, sweet love&mdash;but praise! O praise and praise,<br />
+For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.<br />
+<br />
+"Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,<br />
+Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?<br />
+Then I chant it for thee&mdash;I glorify thee above all;<br />
+I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.<br />
+<br />
+"Approach, encompassing Death&mdash;strong Deliveress!<br />
+When it is so&mdash;when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,<br />
+Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,<br />
+Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.<br />
+<br />
+"From me to thee glad serenades,<br />
+Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee&mdash;adornments and feastings for thee;<br />
+And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky are fitting,<br />
+And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.<br />
+The night, in silence, under many a star;<br />
+The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;<br />
+And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death,<br />
+And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman despised riches, and all mere worldly success, as heartily as ever
+did any of the old Christians. All outward show and finery were intensely
+distasteful to him. He probably would not have accepted the finest house
+in New York on condition that he live in it. During his hospital
+experiences he cherished the purpose, as soon as the war was over, of
+returning to Brooklyn, buying an acre or two of land in some by-place on
+Long Island, and building for himself and his family a cheap house. When
+his brother Jeff contemplated building, he advised him to build merely an
+Irish shanty. After what he had seen the soldiers put up with, he thought
+anything was good enough for him or his people. In one of his letters to
+his mother, he comments upon the un-American and inappropriate
+ornamentation of the rooms in the Capitol building, "without grandeur and
+without simplicity," he says. In the state the country was in, and with
+the hospital scenes before him, the "poppy-show goddesses" and the Italian
+style of decoration, etc., sickened him, and he got away from it all as
+quickly as he could.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>During the war and after, I used to see a good deal of Whitman in
+Washington. Summer and winter he was a conspicuous figure on Pennsylvania
+Avenue, where he was wont to walk for exercise and to feed his hunger for
+faces. One would see him afar off,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> in the crowd but not of it,&mdash;a large,
+slow-moving figure, clad in gray, with broad-brimmed hat and gray
+beard,&mdash;or, quite as frequently, on the front platform of the street
+horse-cars with the driver. My eye used to single him out many blocks
+away.</p>
+
+<p>There were times during this period when his aspect was rather
+forbidding,&mdash;the physical man was too pronounced on first glance; the
+other man was hidden beneath the broad-brimmed hat. One needed to see the
+superbly domed head and classic brow crowning the rank physical man.</p>
+
+<p>In his middle manhood, judging from the photos, he had a hirsute, kindly
+look, but very far removed from the finely cut traditional poet's face.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>I have often heard Whitman say that he inherited most excellent blood from
+his mother,&mdash;the old Dutch Van Velser strain,&mdash;Long Island blood filtered
+and vitalized through generations by the breath of the sea. He was his
+mother's child unmistakably. With all his rank masculinity, there was a
+curious feminine undertone in him which revealed itself in the quality of
+his voice, the delicate texture of his skin, the gentleness of his touch
+and ways, the attraction he had for children and the common people. A lady
+in the West, writing to me about him, spoke of his "great mother-nature."
+He was receptive, sympathetic, tender, and met you, not in a positive,
+aggressive manner, but more or less in a passive or neutral mood. He did
+not give his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> friends merely his mind, he gave them himself. It is not
+merely his mind or intellect that he has put into his poems, it is
+himself. Indeed, this feminine mood or attitude might be dwelt upon at
+much length in considering his poems,&mdash;their solvent, absorbing power, and
+the way they yield themselves to diverse interpretations.</p>
+
+<p>The sea, too, had laid its hand upon him, as I have already suggested. He
+never appeared so striking and impressive as when seen upon the beach. His
+large and tall gray figure looked at home, and was at home, upon the
+shore. The simple, strong, flowing lines of his face, his always clean
+fresh air, his blue absorbing eye, his commanding presence, and something
+pristine and elemental in his whole expression, seemed at once to put him
+<i>en rapport</i> with the sea. No phase of nature seems to have impressed him
+so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was pre&euml;minently manly,&mdash;richly endowed with the universal,
+healthy human qualities and attributes. Mr. Conway relates that when
+Emerson handed him the first thin quarto edition of "Leaves of Grass,"
+while he was calling at his house in Concord, soon after the book
+appeared, he said, "Americans abroad may now come home: unto us a man is
+born."</p>
+
+<p>President Lincoln, standing one day during the war before a window in the
+White House, saw Whitman slowly saunter by. He followed him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> with his
+eyes, and, turning, said to those about him, "Well, <i>he</i> looks like a
+<i>man</i>."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>During Whitman's Western tour in 1879 or '80, at some point in Kansas, in
+company with several well-known politicians and government officials, he
+visited a lot of Indians who were being held as prisoners. The sheriff
+told the Indians who the distinguished men were who were about to see
+them, but the Indians paid little attention to them as, one after the
+other, the officials and editors passed by them. Behind all came Whitman.
+The old chief looked at him steadily, then extended his hand and said,
+"How!" All the other Indians followed, surrounding Whitman, shaking his
+hand and making the air melodious with their "Hows." The incident
+evidently pleased the old poet a good deal.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was of large mould in every way, and of bold, far-reaching
+schemes, and is very sure to fare better at the hands of large men than of
+small. The first and last impression which his personal presence always
+made upon one was of a nature wonderfully gentle, tender, and benignant.
+His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and dominated by his
+humanity, so that the impression you got from him was not that of a
+learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human
+nature,&mdash;such an impression, I fancy, only fuller, as one might have got
+from Walter Scott.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> This was perhaps the secret of the attraction he had,
+for the common, unlettered people and for children. I think that even his
+literary friends often sought his presence less for conversation than to
+bask in his physical or psychical sunshine, and to rest upon his boundless
+charity. The great service he rendered to the wounded and homesick
+soldiers in the hospitals during the war came from his copious endowment
+of this broad, sweet, tender democratic nature. He brought father and
+mother to them, and the tonic and cheering atmosphere of simple,
+affectionate home life.</p>
+
+<p>In person Whitman was large and tall, above six feet, with a breezy,
+open-air look. His temperament was sanguine; his voice was a tender
+baritone. The dominant impression he made was that of something fresh and
+clean. I remember the first time I met him, which was in Washington, in
+the fall of 1863. I was impressed by the fine grain and clean, fresh
+quality of the man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect
+something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a
+bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His
+body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar
+fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was
+undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did
+not appear till he was past sixty. After that, I have little doubt, it was
+the finest head this age or country has seen. Every artist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> who saw him
+was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch him. The lines were so
+simple, so free, and so strong. High, arching brows; straight, clear-cut
+nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized,
+but a vital part of a symmetrical, dome-shaped head; ear large, and the
+most delicately carved I have ever seen; the mouth and chin hidden by a
+soft, long, white beard. It seems to me his face steadily refined and
+strengthened with age. Time depleted him in just the right way,&mdash;softened
+his beard and took away the too florid look; subdued the carnal man, and
+brought out more fully the spiritual man. When I last saw him (December
+26, 1891), though he had been very near death for many days, I am sure I
+had never seen his face so beautiful. There was no breaking-down of the
+features, or the least sign of decrepitude, such as we usually note in old
+men. The expression was full of pathos, but it was as grand as that of a
+god. I could not think of him as near death, he looked so unconquered.</p>
+
+<p>In Washington I knew Whitman intimately from the fall of 1863 to the time
+he left in 1873. In Camden I visited him yearly after that date, usually
+in the late summer or fall. I will give one glimpse of him from my diary,
+under date of August 18, 1887. I reached his house in the morning, before
+he was up. Presently he came slowly down stairs and greeted me. "Find him
+pretty well,&mdash;looking better than last year. With<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> his light-gray suit,
+and white hair, and fresh pink face, he made a fine picture. Among other
+things, we talked of the Swinburne attack (then recently published). W.
+did not show the least feeling on the subject, and, I clearly saw, was
+absolutely undisturbed by the article. I told him I had always been more
+disturbed by S.'s admiration for him than I was now by his condemnation.
+By and by W. had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, ten
+miles distant, to see young Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a
+level farming and truck-gardening country; warm, but breezy. W. drives
+briskly, and salutes every person we meet, little and big, black and
+white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he
+knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old
+Long Island custom of his people, to speak to every one on the road, was
+strong upon him. One tipsy man in a buggy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye
+do, pap?' etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W., as
+something I had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what
+the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would
+have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the
+centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of
+Christianity to check and curb them, etc. W. knew the history of many
+prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two colored men
+to look after him; there, in that fine house among the trees, an old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+maid, who had spent a large fortune on her house and lands, and was now
+destitute, yet she was a woman of remarkable good sense, etc. We returned
+to Camden before dark, W. apparently not fatigued by the drive of twenty
+miles."</p>
+
+<p>In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry. It
+was such a face, said Mr. Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected from a
+million. "It is the face of an aged loving child. As I looked, it was with
+the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never
+heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being.
+I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an avatar, was more
+gentle to all men, women, children, and living things."</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
+to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
+visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
+which the doctor printed on his return home:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
+and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
+of his presence as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
+in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure
+white linen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt
+buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown
+open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of
+his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned
+almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned
+up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of
+the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire
+visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and
+massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong,
+white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an
+eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was
+not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is
+concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon
+his broad, square shoulders; and it is almost entirely covered with long,
+fine, straggling hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit
+snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streaming over
+and around his large but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big
+neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of
+his face, right down to the middle of his chest, like a cataract of
+materialized, white, glistening vapor, giving him a most venerable and
+patriarchal appearance. His high, massive forehead is seamed with
+wrinkles. His nose is large, strong, broad,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> and prominent, but
+beautifully chiseled and proportioned, almost straight, very slightly
+depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to
+the angles of the mouth. The eyebrows are thick and shaggy, with strong,
+white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes,
+which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, small, rather deeply set,
+calm, clear, penetrating, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness,
+kindness, and sympathy. The upper eyelids droop considerably over the
+eyeballs. The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache,
+are full. The whole face impresses one with a sense of resoluteness,
+strength, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness,
+unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly
+pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man.
+There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in
+them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But
+it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in
+his <i>tout ensemble</i>, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic
+presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and
+exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing
+an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I
+felt that I was here face to face with the living embodiment of all that
+was good, noble, and lovable in humanity."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic
+temperament, etc., but he was in no sense a muscular man, an athlete. His
+body, though superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in
+its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin. He
+took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports. He
+walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he
+always had an air of infinite leisure. For several years, while a clerk in
+the Attorney-General's Office in Washington, his exercise for an hour each
+day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round,
+smooth stone, of about one pound weight, and catching it as it fell. Later
+in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked
+to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that
+way. In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and
+sweetness of body, but none upon mere brute strength. This is what he says
+"To a Pupil:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">1. Is reform needed? Is it through you?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The greater the reform needed, the greater the <span class="smcap">Personality</span> you need to accomplish it.</span><br />
+<br />
+2. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet?<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and Soul, that when you enter the crowd,</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impressed</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">with your personality?</span><br />
+<br />
+3. O the magnet! the flesh over and over!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality,</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
+of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,&mdash;the
+freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
+perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
+several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
+face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
+was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
+majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
+looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
+seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
+friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
+would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
+all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
+upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
+identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
+poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
+poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> he says, "the body
+includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
+soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
+of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
+strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
+knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
+singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
+curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.</p>
+
+<p>The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
+to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
+the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
+distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
+power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
+face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
+face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
+face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
+mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature.
+It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow.</p>
+
+<p>And the influence of his poems is always on the side of physiological
+cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes
+morbid and mean. He says the "expression of a well-made man appears not
+only in his face: it is in his limbs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> and joints also; it is curiously in
+the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his
+neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the
+strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
+flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more.
+You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."
+He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: "To be
+surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,&mdash;I
+do not ask any more delight; I swim in it, as in a sea. There is something
+in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact
+and odor of them, that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul,
+but these please the soul well." Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he
+found in the society of the common people that satisfied him so; for his
+part, he could not find anything. The subordination by Whitman of the
+purely intellectual to the human and physical, which runs all through his
+poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, who was deficient in the
+sensuous, probably could not appreciate.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of Whitman personally was that of a large, tolerant,
+tender, sympathetic, restful man, easy of approach, indifferent to any
+special social or other distinctions and accomplishments that might be
+yours, and regarding you from the start for yourself alone.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>Children were very fond of him; and women, unless they had been prejudiced
+against him, were strongly drawn toward him. His personal magnetism was
+very great, and was warming and cheering. He was rich in temperament,
+probably beyond any other man of his generation,&mdash;rich in all the purely
+human and emotional endowments and basic qualities. Then there was a look
+about him hard to describe, and which I have seen in no other face,&mdash;a
+gray, brooding, elemental look, like the granite rock, something primitive
+and Adamic that might have belonged to the first man; or was it a
+suggestion of the gray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was
+born, and that had surely set its seal upon him? I know not, but I feel
+the man with that look is not of the day merely, but of the centuries. His
+eye was not piercing, but absorbing,&mdash;"draining" is the word happily used
+by William O'Connor; the soul back of it drew things to himself, and
+entered and possessed them through sympathy and personal force and
+magnetism, rather than through mere intellectual force.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>Walt Whitman was of the people, the common people, and always gave out
+their quality and atmosphere. His commonness, his nearness, as of the
+things you have always known,&mdash;the day, the sky, the soil, your own
+parents,&mdash;were in no way veiled, or kept in abeyance, by his culture or
+poetic gifts. He was redolent of the human and the fa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>miliar. Though
+capable, on occasions, of great pride and hauteur, yet his habitual mood
+and presence was that of simple, average, healthful humanity,&mdash;the virtue
+and flavor of sailors, soldiers, laborers, travelers, or people who live
+with real things in the open air. His commonness rose into the uncommon,
+the extraordinary, but without any hint of the exclusive or specially
+favored. He was indeed "no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women
+or apart from them."</p>
+
+<p>The spirit that animates every page of his book, and that it always
+effuses, is the spirit of common, universal humanity,&mdash;humanity apart from
+creeds, schools, conventions, from all special privileges and refinements,
+as it is in and of itself in its relations to the whole system of things,
+in contradistinction to the literature of culture which effuses the spirit
+of the select and exclusive.</p>
+
+<p>His life was the same. Walt Whitman never stood apart from or above any
+human being. The common people&mdash;workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the
+outcast&mdash;saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction
+was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity.
+Specially intellectual people rather repelled him; the wit, the scholar,
+the poet, must have a rich endowment of the common, universal, human
+attributes and qualities to pass current with him. He sought the society
+of boatmen, railroad men, farmers, mechanics, printers, teamsters, mothers
+of families, etc., rather than the society of pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>fessional men or
+scholars. Men who had the quality of things in the open air&mdash;the virtue of
+rocks, trees, hills&mdash;drew him most; and it is these qualities and virtues
+that he has aimed above all others to put into his poetry, and to put them
+there in such a way that he who reads must feel and imbibe them.</p>
+
+<p>The recognized poets put into their pages the virtue and quality of the
+fine gentleman, or of the sensitive, artistic nature: this poet of
+democracy effuses the atmosphere of fresh, strong Adamic man,&mdash;man acted
+upon at first hand by the shows and forces of universal nature.</p>
+
+<p>If our poet ever sounds the note of the crude, the loud, the exaggerated,
+he is false to himself and to his high aims. I think he may be charged
+with having done so a few times, in his earlier work, but not in his
+later. In the 1860 edition of his poems stands this portraiture, which may
+stand for himself, with one or two features rather overdrawn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"His shape arises<br />
+Arrogant, masculine, na&iuml;ve, rowdyish,<br />
+Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman,<br />
+Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea,<br />
+Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed,</span><br />
+Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">round the breast and back,<br />
+Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,</span><br />
+Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck gray and open, of slow movement on foot,<br />
+Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his friends, companion of the street,<br />
+Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches, and never their meanest.<br />
+A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the life of the wharves and the great ferries,<br />
+Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, easily understood after all,<br />
+Never offering others, always offering himself, corroborating his phrenology,<br />
+Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive, of copious friendship, sublimity,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">firmness, self-esteem, comparison, individuality, form, locality, eventuality,</span><br />
+Avowing by life, manners, words to contribute illustrations of results of These States,<br />
+Teacher of the unquenchable creed namely egotism,<br />
+Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against his."</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was determined, at whatever risk to his own reputation, to make
+the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of
+American humanity, and to do this the rowdy element could not be entirely
+ignored. Hence he unflinchingly imputes it to himself, as, for that
+matter, he has nearly every sin and dereliction mankind are guilty of.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman developed slowly and late upon the side that related him to social
+custom and usage,&mdash;to the many fictions, concealments, make-believes, and
+subterfuges of the world of parlors and drawing-rooms. He never was an
+adept in what is called "good form;" the natural man that he was shows
+crude in certain relations. His publication of Emerson's letter with its
+magnificent eulogium of "Leaves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> of Grass" has been much commented upon.
+There may be two opinions as to the propriety of his course in this
+respect: a letter from a stranger upon a matter of public interest is not
+usually looked upon as a private letter. Emerson never spoke with more
+felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for
+Whitman's own sake that we would have had him practice self-denial in the
+matter; he greatly plumed himself upon Emerson's endorsement, and was
+guilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon
+the cover of the next edition of his book. Grant that it showed a certain
+crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; later in life, he could not
+have erred in this way. Ruskin is reported saying that he never in his
+life wrote a letter to any human being that he would not be willing should
+be posted up in the market-place, or cried by the public crier through the
+town. But Emerson was a much more timid and conforming man than Ruskin,
+and was much more likely to be shocked by such a circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the publication of this letter much annoyed Emerson,
+and that he never forgave Whitman the offense. That he was disturbed by it
+and by the storm that arose there can be little doubt; but there is no
+evidence that he allowed the fact to interfere with his friendship for the
+poet. Charles W. Eldridge, who personally knew of the relations of the two
+men, says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There was not a year from 1855 (the date of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> Emerson letter and its
+publication) down to 1860 (the year Walt came to Boston to supervise the
+issue of the Thayer &amp; Eldridge edition of 'Leaves of Grass'), that Emerson
+did not personally seek out Walt at his Brooklyn home, usually that they
+might have a long symposium together at the Astor House in New York.
+Besides that, during these years Emerson sent many of his closest friends,
+including Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of
+introduction to him. This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who
+has committed an unpardonable offense.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently
+came down from Concord to see him, and that they had many walks and talks
+together, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American
+House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel. On several occasions
+they met by appointment in our counting-room. Their relations were as
+cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Emerson who sought out
+Walt, and never the other way, although, of course, Walt appreciated and
+enjoyed Emerson's companionship very much. In truth, Walt never sought the
+company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary
+society. I know that at this time Walt was invited by Emerson to Concord,
+but declined to go, probably through his fear that he would see too much
+of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around
+Emerson."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman gave himself to men as men and not as scholars or poets, and gave
+himself purely as a man. While not specially averse to meeting people on
+literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was more to his taste to meet on
+the broadest, commonest, human grounds. What you had seen or felt or
+suffered or done was of much more interest to him than what you had read
+or thought; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the
+last person you had met, or the last chore you had done.</p>
+
+<p>Any glimpse of the farm, the shop, the household&mdash;any bit of real life,
+anything that carried the flavor and quality of concrete reality&mdash;was very
+welcome to him; herein, no doubt, showing the healthy, objective, artist
+mind. He never tired of hearing me talk about the birds or wild animals,
+or my experiences in camp in the woods, the kind of characters I had met
+there, and the flavor of the life of remote settlements in Maine or
+Canada. His inward, subjective life was ample of itself; he was familiar
+with all your thoughts and speculations beforehand: what he craved was
+wider experience,&mdash;to see what you had seen, and feel what you had felt.
+He was fond of talking with returned travelers and explorers, and with
+sailors, soldiers, mechanics; much of his vast stores of information upon
+all manner of subjects was acquired at firsthand, in the old way, from the
+persons who had seen or done or been what they described or related.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>He had almost a passion for simple, unlettered humanity,&mdash;an attraction
+which specially intellectual persons will hardly understand. Schooling and
+culture are so often purchased at such an expense to the innate,
+fundamental human qualities! Ignorance, with sound instincts and the
+quality which converse with real things imparts to men, was more
+acceptable to him than so much of our sophisticated knowledge, or our
+studied wit, or our artificial poetry.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>At the time of Whitman's death, one of our leading literary journals
+charged him with having brought on premature decay by leading a riotous
+and debauched life. I hardly need say that there was no truth in the
+charge. The tremendous emotional strain of writing his "Leaves," followed
+by his years of service in the army hospitals, where he contracted
+blood-poison, resulted at the age of fifty-four in the rupture of a small
+blood-vessel in the brain, which brought on partial paralysis. A sunstroke
+during his earlier manhood also played its part in the final break-down.</p>
+
+<p>That, tried by the standard of the lives of our New England poets,
+Whitman's life was a blameless one, I do not assert; but that it was a
+sane, temperate, manly one, free from excesses, free from the perversions
+and morbidities of a mammonish, pampered, over-stimulated age, I do
+believe. Indeed, I may say I know. The one impression he never failed to
+make&mdash;physically, morally, intellectually&mdash;on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> young and old, women and
+men, was that of health, sanity, sweetness. This is the impression he
+seems to have made upon Mr. Howells, when he met the poet at Pfaff's early
+in the sixties.</p>
+
+<p>The critic I have alluded to inferred license in the man from liberty in
+the poet. He did not have the gumption to see that Whitman made the
+experience of all men his own, and that his scheme included the evil as
+well as the good; that especially did he exploit the unloosed, all-loving,
+all-accepting natural man,&mdash;the man who is done with conventions,
+illusions and all morbid pietisms, and who gives himself lavishly to all
+that begets and sustains life. Yet not the natural or carnal man for his
+own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual meanings and values to which
+he is the key. Indeed, Whitman is about the most uncompromising
+spiritualist in literature; with him, all things exist by and for the
+soul. He felt the tie of universal brotherhood, also, as few have felt it.
+It was not a theory with him, but a fact that shaped his life and colored
+his poems. "Whoever degrades another degrades me," and the thought fired
+his imagination.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+<p>The student of Whitman's life and works will be early struck by three
+things,&mdash;his sudden burst into song, the maturity of his work from the
+first, and his self-knowledge and self-estimate. The fit of inspiration
+came upon him suddenly; it was like the flowering of the orchards in
+spring; there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> little or no hint of it till almost the very hour of
+the event. Up to the time of the appearance of the first edition of
+"Leaves of Grass," he had produced nothing above mediocrity. A hack writer
+on newspapers and magazines, then a carpenter and house-builder in a small
+way, then that astounding revelation "Leaves of Grass," the very audacity
+of it a gospel in itself. How dare he do it? how could he do it, and not
+betray hesitation or self-consciousness? It is one of the exceptional
+events in literary history. The main body of his work was produced in five
+or six years, or between 1854 and 1859. Of course it was a sudden
+flowering, which, consciously or unconsciously, must have been long
+preparing in his mind. His work must have had a long foreground, as
+Emerson suggested. Dr. Bucke, his biographer, thinks it was a special
+inspiration,&mdash;something analogous to Paul's conversion, a sudden opening
+of what the doctor calls "cosmic consciousness."</p>
+
+<p>Another student and lover of Whitman says: "It is certain that some time
+about his thirty-fifth year [probably a little earlier] there came over
+him a decided change: he seemed immensely to broaden and deepen; he became
+less interested in what are usually regarded as the more practical affairs
+of life. He lost what little ambition he ever had for money-making, and
+permitted good business opportunities to pass unheeded. He ceased to write
+the somewhat interesting but altogether commonplace and respectable
+stories and verses which he had been in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> the habit of contributing to
+periodicals. He would take long trips into the country, no one knew where,
+and would spend more time in his favorite haunts about the city, or on the
+ferries, or the tops of omnibuses, at the theatre and opera, in picture
+galleries, and wherever he could observe men and women and art and
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>Then the maturity of his work from the first line of it! It seems as if he
+came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one
+bound,&mdash;never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do.
+What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint.
+He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he
+first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first poem, "Starting
+from Paumanok," and he has kept the letter and the spirit of every promise
+therein made. We never see him doubtful or hesitating; we never see him
+battling for his territory, and uncertain whether or not he is upon his
+own ground. He has an air of contentment, of mastery and triumph, from the
+start.</p>
+
+<p>His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.
+We should probably have to go back to sacred history to find a parallel
+case. The manner of man he was, his composite character, his relation to
+his country and times, his unlikeness to other poets, his affinity to the
+common people, how he would puzzle and elude his critics, how his words
+would itch at our ears till we understood them, etc.,&mdash;how did he know all
+this from the first?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RULING_IDEAS_AND_AIMS" id="HIS_RULING_IDEAS_AND_AIMS"></a>HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">Let</span> me here summarize some of the ideas and principles in which "Leaves of
+Grass" has its root, and from which it starts. A collection of poems in
+the usual sense, a variety of themes artistically treated and appealing to
+our &aelig;sthetic perceptibilities alone, it is not. It has, strictly speaking,
+but one theme,&mdash;personality, the personality of the poet himself. To
+exploit this is always the main purpose, and, in doing so, to make the
+book both directly and indirectly a large, impassioned utterance upon all
+the main problems of life and of nationality. It is primitive, like the
+early literature of a race or people, in that its spirit and purpose are
+essentially religious. It is like the primitive literatures also in its
+prophetic cry and in its bardic simplicity and homeliness, and unlike them
+in its faith and joy and its unconquerable optimism.</p>
+
+<p>It has been not inaptly called the bible of democracy. Its biblical
+features are obvious enough with the darker negative traits left out. It
+is Israel with science and the modern added.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman was swayed by a few great passions,&mdash;the passion for country, the
+passion for comrades, the cosmic passion, etc. His first concern seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+always to have been for his country. He has touched no theme, named no
+man, not related in some way to America. The thought of it possessed him
+as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
+Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
+power,&mdash;the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
+suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
+cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
+all-inclusive:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth,<br />
+I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands;<br />
+I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.<br />
+<br />
+"O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">for reasons,</span><br />
+I think I have blown with you, O winds,<br />
+O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,&mdash;of
+absolute social equality.</p>
+
+<p>It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
+distinguished from the old theological conception,&mdash;namely, that creation
+is good and sound in all its parts.</p>
+
+<p>It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
+friend and not the enemy of life.</p>
+
+<p>It places comradeship, manly attachment, above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> sex love, and indicates it
+as the cement of future states and republics.</p>
+
+<p>It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.</p>
+
+<p>It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
+trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
+sexuality,&mdash;upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
+at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
+frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.</p>
+
+<p>It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
+conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
+works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.</p>
+
+<p>It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
+man,&mdash;a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
+have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
+parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
+the heroes of land and sea.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
+real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and
+concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore,
+the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man.</p>
+
+<p>Its purpose is to stimulate and arouse, rather than to soothe and satisfy.
+It addresses the character, the intuitions, the ego, more than the
+intel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>lect or the purely &aelig;sthetic faculties. Its end is not taste, but
+growth in the manly virtues and powers.</p>
+
+<p>Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.</p>
+
+<p>It aspires to a candor and a directness like that of Nature herself.</p>
+
+<p>It aims to let Nature speak without check, with original energy. The only
+checks are those which health and wholeness demand.</p>
+
+<p>Its standards are those of the natural universal.</p>
+
+<p>Its method is egocentric. The poet never goes out of himself, but draws
+everything into himself and makes it all serve to illustrate his
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>Its form is not what is called artistic. Its suggestion is to be found in
+organic nature, in trees, clouds, and in the vital and flowing currents.</p>
+
+<p>In its composition the author was doubtless greatly influenced by the
+opera and the great singers, and the music of the great composers. He
+would let himself go in the same manner and seek his effects through
+multitude and the quality of the living voice.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, "Leaves of Grass" is an utterance out of the depths of
+primordial, aboriginal human nature. It embodies and exploits a character
+not rendered an&aelig;mic by civilization, but preserving a sweet and sane
+savagery, indebted to culture only as a means to escape culture, reaching
+back always, through books, art, civilization, to fresh, unsophisticated
+nature, and drawing his strength thence.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>Another of the ideas that master Whitman and rule him is the idea of
+identity,&mdash;that you are you and I am I, and that we are henceforth secure
+whatever comes or goes. He revels in this idea; it is fruitful with him;
+it begets in him the ego-enthusiasm, and is at the bottom of his
+unshakable faith in immortality. It leavens all his work. It cannot be too
+often said that the book is not merely a collection of pretty poems,
+themes elaborated and followed out at long removes from the personality of
+the poet, but a series of <i>sorties</i> into the world of materials, the
+American world, piercing through the ostensible shows of things to the
+interior meanings, and illustrating in a free and large way the genesis
+and growth of a man, his free use of the world about him, appropriating it
+to himself, seeking his spiritual identity through its various objects and
+experiences, and giving in many direct and indirect ways the meaning and
+satisfaction of life. There is much in it that is not poetical in the
+popular sense, much that is neutral and negative, and yet is an integral
+part of the whole, as is the case in the world we inhabit. If it offends,
+it is in a wholesome way, like objects in the open air.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman rarely celebrates exceptional characters. He loves the common
+humanity, and finds his ideals among the masses. It is not difficult to
+reconcile his attraction toward the average man, towards workingmen and
+"powerful, uneducated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> persons," with the ideal of a high excellence,
+because he finally rests only upon the most elevated and heroic personal
+qualities,&mdash;elevated but well grounded in the common and universal.</p>
+
+<p>The types upon which he dwells the most fondly are of the common people.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"I knew a man,<br />
+He was a common farmer&mdash;he was the father of five sons,<br />
+And in them were the fathers of sons&mdash;and in them were the fathers of sons.<br />
+<br />
+"This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,<br />
+The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">and the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes,</span><br />
+These I used to go and visit him to see&mdash;he was wise also,<br />
+He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old&mdash;his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,<br />
+They and his daughters loved him&mdash;all who saw him loved him,<br />
+They did not love him by allowance&mdash;they loved him with personal love;<br />
+He drank water only&mdash;the blood showed like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face,<br />
+He was a frequent gunner and fisher&mdash;he sailed his boat himself&mdash;he had a fine one presented to him by a<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">ship-joiner&mdash;he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him;</span><br />
+When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">beautiful and vigorous of the gang,</span><br />
+You would wish long and long to be with him&mdash;you would wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and he might<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">touch each other."</span></p>
+
+<p>All the <i>motifs</i> of his work are the near, the vital, the universal;
+nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are
+democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality,
+comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> the
+sexes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it
+sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems
+are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a
+look, a gesture, a tone of voice.</p>
+
+<p>"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand
+at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass" requires a large perspective; you must not get your face
+too near the book. You must bring to it a magnanimity of spirit,&mdash;a
+charity and faith equal to its own. Looked at too closely, it often seems
+incoherent and meaningless; draw off a little and let the figure come out.
+The book is from first to last a most determined attempt, on the part of a
+large, reflective, loving, magnetic, rather primitive, thoroughly
+imaginative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth
+century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career
+upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiasm as to lift and
+fill it with the deepest meanings of the spirit and disclose the order of
+universal nature. The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or
+criticism, or partiality whatever, but has squarely and lovingly faced the
+oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and
+fused them in his fervid humanity, and imbued them with deepest poetic
+meanings. One of the most striking features of the book is the adequacy
+and composure, even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence
+of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era. He
+spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no
+part; and his quality, his individuality, shines through it all, as the
+sun through vapors. The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of
+Walt Whitman. It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man
+exploited and illustrated. Walt Whitman does not write poems, strictly
+speaking,&mdash;does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel
+and carve it into a beautiful image or object, or polish and elaborate a
+thought, embodying it in pleasing tropes and pictures. His purpose is
+rather to show a towering, loving, composite personality moving amid all
+sorts of materials, taking them up but for a moment, disclosing new
+meanings and suggestions in them, passing on, bestowing himself upon
+whoever or whatever will accept him, tossing hints and clues right and
+left, provoking and stimulating the thought and imagination of his reader,
+but finishing nothing for him, leaving much to be desired, much to be
+completed by him in his turn.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>The reader who would get at the spirit and meaning of "Leaves of Grass"
+must remember that its animating principle, from first to last, is
+Democracy,&mdash;that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit
+of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New
+World,&mdash;and that all things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> characteristically American (trades, tools,
+occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places
+in it. It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the
+life of the poet fell, and to show one master personality accepting,
+absorbing all and rising superior to it,&mdash;namely, the poet himself. Yet it
+is never Whitman that speaks so much as it is Democracy that speaks
+through him. He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in
+this character launches forth his "omnivorous words." What would seem
+colossal egotism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with
+low, rude persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and
+vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the
+boundless compassion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal
+Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain
+and easy in the works of this much misunderstood poet.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the single poem that throws most light upon his aims and methods,
+and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in "Calamus," and is as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Whoever you are holding me now in hand,<br />
+Without one thing all will be useless,<br />
+I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,<br />
+I am not what you suppos'd, but far different.<br />
+<br />
+"Who is he that would become my follower?<br />
+Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?<br />
+<br />
+"The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard,<br />
+Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,<br />
+The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon'd,<br />
+Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders,<br />
+Put me down and depart on your way.<br />
+<br />
+"Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,<br />
+Or back of a rock in the open air,<br />
+(For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,<br />
+And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)<br />
+But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares,<br />
+Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island,<br />
+Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,<br />
+With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,<br />
+For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.<br />
+<br />
+"Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,<br />
+Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,<br />
+Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;<br />
+For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,<br />
+And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.<br />
+<br />
+"But these leaves conning you con at peril,<br />
+For these leaves and me you will not understand,<br />
+They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you,<br />
+Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!<br />
+Already you see I have escaped from you.<br />
+<br />
+"For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,<br />
+Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,<br />
+Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,<br />
+Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more,<br />
+For all is useless without that for which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at,<br />
+Therefore release me and depart on your way."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>When one has fully mastered this poem he has got a pretty good hold upon
+Whitman's spirit and method. His open-air standards, the baffling and
+elusive character of his work, the extraordinary demand it makes, its
+radical and far-reaching effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil
+as a necessary part of the good (there was a human need of sin, said
+Margaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and
+suggestive method, that it can be fully read only through our acquaintance
+with life and real things at first hand, etc.,&mdash;all this and more is in
+the poem.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_SELF-RELIANCE" id="HIS_SELF-RELIANCE"></a>HIS SELF-RELIANCE</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">It</span> is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a German author was to
+be a German martyr. I presume things have changed in Germany since those
+times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and
+hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In
+Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an
+American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the
+great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Moli&egrave;re, or Byron, was
+Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times;
+but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and
+self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His
+unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise. It was of a kind
+that tries a man's mettle, and brings out his heroic traits if he has any.
+One almost envies him his unpopularity. It was of the kind that only the
+greatest ones have experienced, and that attests something extraordinary
+in the recipient of it. He said he was more resolute because all had
+denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor ridicule."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>There are no more precious and tonic pages in history than the records of
+men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in
+obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature.
+Whitman's is the most striking case in our literary annals,&mdash;probably the
+most striking one in our century outside of politics and religion. The
+inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: "My commission obeying, to
+question it never daring."</p>
+
+<p>The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained
+it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and
+cannot be avoided.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you and were tender with you? and stood aside for you?<br />
+Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?"</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Every man is a partaker in the triumph of him who is always true to
+himself and makes no compromises with customs, schools, or opinions.
+Whitman's life, underneath its easy tolerance and cheerful good-will, was
+heroic. He fought his battle against great odds and he conquered; he had
+his own way, he yielded not a hair to the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The pressure brought to bear upon him by the press, by many of his
+friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to
+change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served
+as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the
+more deeply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The
+fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and
+aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could
+have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no
+publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was
+threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy
+Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would
+omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for
+one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always
+did.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down
+Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which
+was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable
+conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so,
+whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet
+probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had
+not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your
+own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your
+private heart is true of all men,&mdash;that is genius."</p>
+
+<p>In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson
+invoked and prayed for,&mdash;the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who
+should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be
+Greek, or Italian, or French,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> or English, but only himself; who should
+not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate,
+or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debasements of
+our times the lineaments of the same gods that so ravished the bards of
+old.</p>
+
+<p>The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the
+books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
+thank and revere him."</p>
+
+<p>Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has
+done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works
+in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a
+time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures
+itself by its contempt of some external good,"&mdash;popularity, for instance.
+"The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have chosen your
+part abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the
+world." "Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
+something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous
+age." Heroism "is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality
+in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of
+hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent
+than all actual and all possible antagonists." "A man is to carry himself
+in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and
+ephemeral but he."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> "Great works of art," he again says, "teach us to
+abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility, the
+more when the whole cry of voices is on the other side."</p>
+
+<p>These brave sayings of Emerson were all illustrated and confirmed by
+Whitman's course. The spectacle of this man sitting there by the window of
+his little house in Camden, poor and partially paralyzed, and looking out
+upon the trite and commonplace scenes and people, or looking athwart the
+years and seeing only detraction and denial, yet always serene, cheerful,
+charitable, his wisdom and tolerance ripening and mellowing with time, is
+something to treasure and profit by. He was a man who needed no
+assurances. He had the patience and the leisure of nature. He welcomed
+your friendly and sympathetic word, or with equal composure he did without it.</p>
+
+<p>I remember calling upon him shortly after Swinburne's fierce onslaught
+upon him had been published, some time in the latter part of the eighties.
+I was curious to see how Whitman took it, but I could not discover either
+in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly
+of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne's
+account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat
+upon himself as Swinburne had done. In fact I think hostile criticism,
+fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it
+not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> shadows.
+Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was
+trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think
+Whitman took any interest in it from the first.</p>
+
+<p>Self-reliance, or self-trust, is one of the principles Whitman announces
+in his "Laws for Creations." He saw that no first-class work is possible
+except it issue from a man's deepest, most radical self.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"What do you suppose creation is?<br />
+What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no superior?<br />
+What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God?<br />
+And that there is no God any more divine than yourself?<br />
+And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?<br />
+And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>I think it probable that Whitman anticipated a long period of comparative
+oblivion for himself and his works. He knew from the first that the public
+would not be with him; he knew that the censors of taste, the critics and
+literary professors, would not be with him; he knew that the vast army of
+Philistia, the respectable, fashionable mammon-worshiping crowd, would not
+be with him,&mdash;that the timid, the pampered, the prurient, the conforming,
+the bourgeoisie spirit, the class spirit, the academic spirit, the
+Pharisaic spirit in all its forms, would all work against him; and that,
+as in the case of nearly all original, first-class men, he would have to
+wait to be understood for the growth of the taste of himself. None knew
+more clearly than he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> did how completely our people were under the
+illusion of the genteel and the conventional, and that, even among the
+emancipated few, the possession of anything like robust &aelig;sthetic
+perception was rare enough. America, so bold and original and independent
+in the world of practical politics and material endeavor, is, in spiritual
+and imaginative regions, timid, conforming, imitative. There is, perhaps,
+no civilized country in the world wherein the native, original man, the
+real critter, as Whitman loved to say, that underlies all our culture and
+conventions, crops out so little in manners, in literature, and in social
+usages. The fear of being unconventional is greater with us than the fear
+of death. A certain evasiveness, polish, distrust of ourselves, amounting
+to insipidity and insincerity, is spoken of by observant foreigners. In
+other words, we are perhaps the least like children of any people in the
+world. All these things were against Whitman, and will continue to be
+against him for a long time. With the first stroke he broke through the
+conventional and took his stand upon the natural. With rude hands he tore
+away the veils and concealments from the body and from the soul. He
+ignored entirely all social and conventional usages and hypocrisies, not
+by revolt against them, but by choosing a point of view from which they
+disappeared. He embraced the unrefined and the savage as well as the
+tender and human. The illusions of the past, the models and standards, he
+freed himself of at once, and declared for the beauty and the divinity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> of
+the now and the here. The rude realism of his "Leaves" shocked like a
+plunge in the surf, but it invigorated also, if we were strong enough to
+stand it.</p>
+
+<p>Out of Whitman's absolute self-trust arose his prophetic egotism,&mdash;the
+divine fervor and audacity of the simple ego. He shared the conviction of
+the old prophets that man is a part of God, and that there is nothing in
+the universe any more divine than the individual soul. "I, too," he says,
+and this line is the key to much there is in his work&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I, too, have felt the resistless call of myself."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>With the old Biblical writers the motions of their own spirits, their
+thoughts, their dreams, were the voice of God. There is something of the
+same sort in Whitman. The voice of that inner self was final and
+authoritative with him. It was the voice of God. He could drive through
+and over all the conventions of the world in obedience to that voice. This
+call to him was as a voice from Sinai. One of his mastering thoughts was
+the thought of identity,&mdash;that you are you, and I am I. This was the final
+meaning of things, and the meaning of immortality. "Yourself, <i>yourself</i>,
+<span class="smcap">yourself</span>," he says, with swelling vehemence, "forever and ever." To be
+compacted and riveted and fortified in yourself, so as to be a law unto
+yourself, is the final word of the past and of the present.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The shadow of Whitman's self-reliance and heroic self-esteem&mdash;the sort of
+eddy or back-water&mdash;was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> undoubtedly a childlike fondness for praise and
+for seeing his name in print. In his relaxed moments, when the stress of
+his task was not upon him, he was indeed in many respects a child. He had
+a child's delight in his own picture. He enjoyed hearing himself lauded as
+Colonel Ingersoll lauded him in his lecture in Philadelphia, and as his
+friends lauded him at his birthday dinner parties during the last two or
+three years of his life; he loved to see his name in print, and items
+about himself in the newspapers; he sometimes wrote them himself and gave
+them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his
+life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in
+fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him
+dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him
+to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be
+frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men
+also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature,
+and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human
+nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be
+kept up to the heroic pitch.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>It was difficult to appreciate his liking for the newspaper. But he had
+been a newspaper man himself; the printer's ink had struck in; he had many
+associations with the press-room and the com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>posing-room; he loved the
+common, democratic character of the newspaper; it was the average man's
+library. The homely uses to which it was put, and the humble firesides to
+which it found its way, endeared it to him, and made him love to see his
+name in it.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's vanity was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as
+tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy
+sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life
+there was none.</p>
+
+<p>His egotism is of the large generous species that never irritates or
+pricks into you like that of the merely conceited man. His love, his
+candor, his sympathy are on an equal scale.</p>
+
+<p>His egotism comes finally to affect one like the independence and
+indifference of natural law. It takes little heed of our opinion, whether
+it be for or against, and keeps to its own way whatever befall.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's absolute faith in himself was a part of his faith in creation.
+He felt himself so keenly a part of the whole that he shared its soundness
+and excellence; he must be good as it is good.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
+manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
+give rise to the charge that he was a <i>poseur</i>. He was a <i>poseur</i> in the
+sense, and to the extent, that any man is a <i>poseur</i> who tries to live up
+to a certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
+clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
+apart and looking upon himself as another person. Hence his extraordinary
+self-knowledge, and, we may also say, his extraordinary self-appreciation,
+or to use his own words, "the quite changed attitude of the ego, the one
+chanting or talking, towards himself." Of course there is danger in this
+attitude, but Whitman was large enough and strong enough to escape it. He
+saw himself to be the typical inevitable democrat that others have seen
+him to be, and with perfect candor and without ever forcing the note, he
+portrays himself as such. As his work is confessedly the poem of himself,
+himself magnified and projected, as it were, upon the canvas of a great
+age and country, all his traits and qualities stand out in heroic
+proportions, his pride and egotism as well as his love and tolerance.</p>
+
+<p>"How beautiful is candor," he says. "All faults may be forgiven of him who
+has perfect candor." The last thing that could ever be charged of Whitman
+is that he lacked openness, or was guilty of any deceit or concealments in
+his life or works.</p>
+
+<p>From the studies, notes, and scrap-books which Whitman left, it appears
+that he was long preparing and disciplining himself for the work he had in
+view. "The long foreground," to which Emerson referred in his letter, was
+of course a reality. But this self-consciousness and self-adjustment to a
+given end is an element of strength and not of weakness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>In the famous vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the
+first "Leaves of Grass" he assumes an attitude and is in a sense a
+<i>poseur</i>; but the reader comes finally to wonder at the marvelous
+self-knowledge the picture displays, and how strictly typical it is of the
+poet's mental and spiritual attitude towards the world,&mdash;independent,
+unconventional, audacious, yet inquiring and sympathetic in a wonderful
+degree. In the same way he posed in other portraits. A favorite with him
+is the one in which he sits contemplating a butterfly upon his
+forefinger&mdash;typical of a man "preoccupied of his own soul." In another he
+peers out curiously as from behind a mask. In an earlier one he stands,
+hat in hand, in marked <i>neglig&eacute;</i> costume,&mdash;a little too intentional, one
+feels. The contempt of the polished ones is probably very strong within
+him at this time. I say contempt, though I doubt if Whitman ever felt
+contempt for any human being.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Then Whitman had a curious habit of standing apart, as it were, and
+looking upon himself and his career as of some other person. He was
+interested in his own cause, and took a hand in the discussion. From first
+to last he had the habit of regarding himself objectively. On his deathbed
+he seemed to be a spectator of his own last moments, and was seen to feel
+his pulse a few minutes before he breathed his last.</p>
+
+<p>He has recorded this trait in his poems:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+"Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,<br />
+Stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, waiting,<br />
+Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,<br />
+Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it."</p>
+
+<p>As also in this from "Calamus:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood, chattering, chaffering,<br />
+How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,<br />
+How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;<br />
+But among my lovers, and caroling these songs,<br />
+Oh, I never doubt whether that is really me."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman always speaks as one having authority and not as a scribe, not as
+a mere man of letters. This is the privilege of the divine egoism of the
+prophet.</p>
+
+<p>Like the utterances of the biblical writers, without argument, without
+elaboration, his mere dictum seems the word of fate. It is not the voice
+of a man who has made his way through the world by rejecting and denying,
+but by accepting all and rising superior. What the "push of reading" or
+the push of argument could not start is often started and clinched by his
+mere authoritative "I say."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery draws the blood out of liberty,"...<br />
+"I say the human shape or face is so great it must never be made ridiculous;<br />
+I say for ornaments nothing outr&eacute; can be allowed,<br />
+And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,<br />
+And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology and in other persons' physiologies also.<br />
+<br />
+"Think of the past;<br />
+I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and your times....<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>Think of spiritual results.<br />
+Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results.<br />
+Think of manhood, and you to be a man;<br />
+Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?<br />
+Think of womanhood and you to be a woman;<br />
+The Creation is womanhood;<br />
+Have I not said that womanhood involves all?<br />
+Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Egotism is usually intolerant, but Whitman was one of the most tolerant of men.</p>
+
+<p>A craving for sympathy and personal affection he certainly had; to be
+valued as a human being was more to him than to be valued as a poet. His
+strongest attachments were probably for persons who had no opinion, good
+or bad, of his poetry at all.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Under close scrutiny his egotism turns out to be a kind of altru-egotism,
+which is vicarious and all-inclusive of his fellows. It is one phase of
+his democracy, and is vital and radical in his pages. It is a high,
+imperturbable pride in his manhood and in the humanity which he shares
+with all. It is the exultant and sometimes almost arrogant expression of
+the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world&mdash;the
+feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws,
+institutions, conventions, bibles, religions&mdash;that the divinity of kings,
+and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to the humblest
+person.</p>
+
+<p>It was a passion that united him to his fellows rather than separated him
+from them. His pride<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> was not that of a man who sets himself up above
+others, or who claims some special advantage or privilege, but that
+godlike quality that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence
+we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for
+mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and
+follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is
+the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there
+might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that
+his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate
+the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves,"
+flowing curiously out of its pride and egotism, is the lesson of charity,
+of self-surrender, and the free bestowal of yourself upon all hands.</p>
+
+<p>The law of life of great art is the law of life in ethics, and was long
+ago announced.</p>
+
+<p>He that would lose his life shall find it; he who gives himself the most
+freely shall the most freely receive. Whitman made himself the brother and
+equal of all, not in word, but in very deed; he was in himself a compend
+of the people for which he spoke, and this breadth of sympathy and free
+giving of himself has resulted in an unexpected accession of power.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_ART" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_ART"></a>HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">Whitman</span> protests against his "Leaves" being judged merely as literature;
+but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends
+the matter. Still while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are
+paramount in most other poets,&mdash;certainly in all third and fourth rate
+poets, in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values.</p>
+
+<p>In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates
+that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary
+productions.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries," he says in one of the
+"Inscriptions,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"For that which was lacking in all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring.<br />
+Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,<br />
+The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,<br />
+A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,<br />
+But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Not linked with the studied and scholarly productions, not open to the
+mere bookish mind, but more akin to the primitive utterances and oracles
+of historic humanity. A literary age like ours lays<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> great stress upon the
+savor of books, art, culture, and has little taste for the savor of real
+things, the real man, which we get in Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the true breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit,
+that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes
+on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would
+not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is
+beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson,
+begat Browning, begat the New England poets, but it did not in the same
+sense beget Whitman, any more than it begat Homer or Job or Isaiah. The
+artist may delight in him and find his own ideals there; the critic may
+study him and find the poet master of all his weapons; the disciple of
+culture will find, as Professor Triggs has well said, that "there is no
+body of writings in literature which demands a wider conversancy with the
+best that has been thought or said in the world,"&mdash;yet the poet escapes
+from all hands that would finally hold him and monopolize him. Whitman is
+an immense solvent,&mdash;forms, theories, rules, criticisms, disappear in his
+fluid, teeming pages. Much can be deduced from him, because much went to
+the making up of his point of view. He makes no criticism, yet a
+far-reaching criticism is implied in the very start of his poems. No
+modern poet presupposes so much, or requires so much preliminary study and
+reflection. He brings a multitude of questions and problems, and, what is
+singular, he brings them in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> himself; they are implied in his temper, and
+in his attitude toward life and reality.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman says he has read his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, that he
+has tried himself by the elemental laws; and tells us in many ways, direct
+and indirect, that the standards he would be tried by are not those of art
+or books, but of absolute nature. He has been laughed at for calling
+himself a "Kosmos," but evidently he uses the term to indicate this
+elemental, dynamic character of his work,&mdash;its escape from indoor,
+artificial standards, its aspiration after the "amplitude of the earth,
+and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of
+the earth, and the equilibrium also."</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Unless the poetic perception is fundamental in us, and can grasp the
+poetry of things, actions, characters, multitudes, heroisms, we shall read
+Whitman with very poor results. Unless America, the contemporary age,
+life, nature, are poetical to us, Whitman will not be. He has aimed at the
+larger poetry of forces, masses, persons, enthusiasms, rather than at the
+poetry of the specially rare and fine. He kindles in me the delight I have
+in space, freedom, power, the elements, the cosmic, democracy, and the
+great personal qualities of self-reliance, courage, candor, charity.</p>
+
+<p>Always in the literary poets are we impressed with the art of the poet as
+something distinct from the poet himself, and more or less put on. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+poet gets himself up for the occasion; he assumes the pose and the
+language of the poet, as the priest assumes the pose and the language of
+devotion. In Whitman the artist and the man are one. He never gets himself
+up for the occasion. Our pleasure in him is rarely or never our pleasure
+in the well-dressed, the well-drilled, the cultivated, the refined, the
+orderly, but it is more akin to our pleasure in real things, in human
+qualities and powers, in freedom, health, development. Yet I never open
+his book without being struck afresh with its pictural quality, its grasp
+of the concrete, its vivid realism, its intimate sense of things, persons,
+truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such
+as we can never get in mere prose. It is as direct as a challenge, as
+personal as a handshake, and yet withal how mystical, how elusive, how
+incommensurable! To deny that Whitman belongs to the fraternity of great
+artists, the shapers and moulders of the ideal,&mdash;those who breathe the
+breath of life into the clay or stone of common facts and objects, who
+make all things plastic and the vehicles of great and human emotions,&mdash;is
+to read him very inadequately, to say the least. To get at Walt Whitman
+you must see through just as much as you do in dealing with nature; you
+are to bring the same interpretive imagination. You are not to be balked
+by what appears to be the coarse and the familiar, or his rank
+contemporaneity; after a time you will surely see the lambent spiritual
+flames that play about it all.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+"Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering about me,"</p>
+
+<p>and his cosmic splendor, depth, and power. It is not the denial of art, it
+is a new affirmation of life. It is one phase of his democracy. It is the
+logical conclusion of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself that
+appeared in the first edition of his poems. He would give us more of the
+man, a fuller measure of personal, concrete, human qualities, than any
+poet before him. He strips away the artificial wrappings and illusions
+usual in poetry, and relies entirely upon the native and intrinsic. He
+will have no curtains, he says,&mdash;not the finest,&mdash;between himself and his
+reader.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,<br />
+You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of suns left),<br />
+You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">nor feed on the spectres in books,</span><br />
+You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,<br />
+You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This is a hint of his democracy as applied to literature,&mdash;more direct and
+immediate contact with the primary and universal, less of the vestments
+and trappings of art and more of the push and power of original character
+and of nature.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>It seems to me it is always in order to protest against the narrow and
+dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticism touching this
+matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of art. "The boundaries of art are jealously guarded," says a
+recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that
+had been accurately surveyed and fixed,&mdash;as if art was a fact and not a
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that
+art is in any sense an "enclosure,"&mdash;a province fenced off and set apart
+from the rest,&mdash;any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many
+people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human
+spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the
+sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has
+but one principle, one aim,&mdash;to produce an impression, a powerful
+impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the
+canons of taste and criticism. Name any principle, so called, and some day
+a genius shall be born who will produce his effects in defiance of it, or
+by appearing to reverse it. Such a man as Turner seemed, at first sight,
+to set at defiance all correct notions of art. The same with Wagner in
+music, the same with Whitman in poetry. The new man is impossible till he
+appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power
+does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical
+standards to him. But it is sure to do so at last. There is nothing final
+in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are
+deductions from his work, not its inspiration. We demand of the new man,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+of the overthrower of our idols, but one thing,&mdash;has he authentic
+inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded.
+If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of
+nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case. Is
+there no room for the new man? But the new man makes room for himself, and
+if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is
+appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>The trouble with most of us is that we found our taste for poetry upon
+particular authors, instead of upon literature as a whole, or, better yet,
+upon life and reality. Hence we form standards instead of principles.
+Standards are limited, rigid, uncompromising, while principles are
+flexible, expansive, creative. If we are wedded to the Miltonic standard
+of poetry, the classic standards, we shall have great difficulties with
+Whitman; but if we have founded our taste upon natural principles&mdash;if we
+have learned to approach literature through reality, instead of reality
+through literature&mdash;we shall not be the victims of any one style or model;
+we shall be made free of all. The real test of art, of any art, as Burke
+long ago said, and as quoted by Mr. Howells in his trenchant little volume
+called "Criticism and Fiction," is to be sought outside of art, namely, in
+nature. "I can judge but poorly of anything while I measure it by no other
+standard than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's
+power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the
+meanest, things in nature will give the truest lights." It is thought that
+the pre&euml;minence of the Greek standards is settled when we say they are
+natural. Yes, but Nature is not Greek. She is Asiatic, German, English, as
+well.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>In poetry, in art, a man must sustain a certain vital relation to his
+work, and that work must sustain a certain vital relation to the laws of
+mind and of life. That is all, and that leaves the doors very wide. We are
+not to ask, Is it like this or like that? but, Is it vital, is it real, is
+it a consistent, well-organized whole?</p>
+
+<p>The poet must always interpret himself and nature after his own fashion.
+Is his fashion adequate? Is the interpretation vivid and real? Do his
+lines cut to the quick, and beget heat and joy in the soul? If we cannot
+make the poet's ideal our own by sharing his enthusiasm for it, the
+trouble is as likely to be in ourselves as in him. In any case he must be
+a law unto himself.</p>
+
+<p>The creative artist differs from the mere writer or thinker in this: he
+sustains a direct personal relation to his subject through emotion,
+intuition, will. The indirect, impersonal relation which works by
+reflection, comparison, and analysis is that of the critic and
+philosopher. The man is an artist when he gives us a concrete and
+immediate impression of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> reality: from his hands we get the thing itself;
+from the critic and thinker we get ideas <i>about</i> the thing. The poet does
+not merely say the world is beautiful; he shows it as beautiful: he does
+not describe the flower; he places it before us. What are the enemies of
+art? Reflection, didacticism, description, the turgid, the obscure. A poet
+with a thesis to sustain is more or less barred from the freedom of pure
+art. It is by direct and unconsidered expression, says Scherer, that art
+communicates with reality. The things that make for art, then, are
+feeling, intuition, sentiment, soul, a fresh and vigorous sense of real
+things,&mdash;in fact, all that makes for life, health, and wholeness. Goethe
+is more truly an artist in the first part of Faust than in the second;
+Arnold has a more truly artistic mind than Lowell.</p>
+
+<p>The principles of art are always the same in the respect I have indicated,
+just as the principles of life are always the same, or of health and
+longevity are always the same. No writer is an artist who is related to
+his subject simply by mental or logical grip alone: he must have a certain
+emotional affiliation and identity with it; he does not so much convey to
+us ideas and principles as pictures, parables, impressions,&mdash;a lively
+sense of real things. When we put Whitman outside the pale of art, we must
+show his shortcomings here; we must show that he is not fluid and
+generative,&mdash;that he paints instead of interprets, that he gives us
+reasons instead of impulses, a stone when we ask for bread.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> "I do not
+give a little charity," he says; "when I give, I give myself." This the
+artist always does, not his mind merely, but his soul, his personality.
+"Leaves of Grass" is as direct an emanation from a central personal force
+as any book in literature, and always carries its own test and its own
+proof. It never hardens into a system, it never ceases to be penetrated
+with will and emotion, it never declines from the order of deeds to the
+order of mere thoughts. All is movement, progress, evolution, picture,
+parable, impulse.</p>
+
+<p>It is on these grounds that Whitman, first of all, is an artist. He has
+the artist temperament. His whole life was that of a man who lives to
+ideal ends,&mdash;who lived to bestow himself upon others, to extract from life
+its meaning and its joy.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman has let himself go, and trusted himself to the informal and
+spontaneous, to a degree unprecedented. His course required a
+self-reliance of the highest order; it required an innate cohesion and
+homogeneity, a firmness and consistency of individual outline, that few
+men have. It would seem to be much easier to face the poet's problem in
+the old, well-worn forms&mdash;forms that are so winsome and authoritative in
+themselves&mdash;than, to stand upon a basis so individual and intrinsic as
+Whitman chose to stand upon. His course goes to the quick at once. How
+much of a man are you? How vital and fundamental is your poetic gift? Can
+it go alone? Can it face us in undress?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>Never did the artist more cunningly conceal himself; never did he so
+completely lose himself in the man, identifying himself with the natural
+and spontaneous; never emerging and challenging attention on his own
+account, denying us when we too literally seek him, mocking us when we
+demand his credentials, and revealing himself only when we have come to
+him upon his own terms.</p>
+
+<p>The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no
+outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader. "This is
+no book," he says: "who touches this touches a man." In one sense Whitman
+is without art,&mdash;the impression which he always seeks to make is that of
+reality itself. He aims to give us reality without the usual literary
+veils and illusions,&mdash;the least possible amount of the artificial, the
+extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader. He banishes from
+his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,&mdash;all
+atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and
+decoration,&mdash;and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers.
+The verse does not seem to have been shaped; it might have grown: it takes
+no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular,
+rhythmical, and always fluid and real. A cry will always be raised against
+the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and
+falls back upon simple Nature, or upon himself, as Millet did in painting,
+and Wagner in music, and Whitman in poetry.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>Whitman's working ideas, the principles that inspired him, are all
+directly related to life and the problems of life; they are democracy,
+nature, freedom, love, personality, religion: while the ideas from which
+our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,&mdash;they are
+literary ideas, such as lucidity, form, beauty.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>Much light is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark
+which he once made in conversation with Dr. Bucke:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have aimed to make the book simple,&mdash;tasteless, or with little
+taste,&mdash;with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or
+writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is
+not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her
+productions&mdash;her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, meats&mdash;with
+faint and delicate flavor and fragrance, but these in the long run make
+the deepest impression. Man, dealing with natural things, constantly aims
+to increase their piquancy. By crossing and selection he deepens and
+intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so
+on. He pursues the same method in poetry,&mdash;that is, strives for strong
+light or shade, for high color, perfume, pungency, in all ways for the
+greatest immediate effect. In so doing he leaves the true way, the way of
+Nature, and, in the long run, comes far short of producing her effects."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>More light of the same kind is thrown upon his methods by the following
+passage from the preface to the first edition of his poems in 1855.</p>
+
+<p>"To speak in literature," he says, "with the perfect rectitude and
+insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the
+sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless
+triumph of art." And again: "The great poet has less a marked style, and
+is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution,
+and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be
+meddlesome; I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or
+originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I
+will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell,
+I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate
+or soothe, I will have purpose, as health or heat or snow has, and be as
+regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my
+composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side
+and look in the mirror with me."</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>But in view of the profound impression Whitman's work has made upon widely
+different types of mind on both sides of the Atlantic, and in view of the
+persistent vitality of his fame, the question whether he is inside or
+outside the pale of art amounts to very little. I quite agree with the
+late<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Mrs. Gilchrist, that, when "great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please."</p>
+
+<p>That Whitman has expressed great meanings and great emotions with adequate
+power, even his unfriendly critics admit. Thus Professor Wendell, in an
+admirable essay on American literature, says that "though Whitman is
+uncouth, inarticulate, and lacking in a grotesque degree artistic form,
+yet for all that he can make you feel for the moment how even the
+ferry-boats plying from New York to Brooklyn are fragments of God's
+eternities." In the same way Mr. William Clark, his British critic and
+expounder, says that he is wanting in discrimination and art, "flings his
+ideas at us in a heap," etc., and yet that the effect of his work is "to
+stir our emotions, widen our interests, and rally the forces of our moral
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that a man who, through the printed page, can do these
+things, must have some kind of art worth considering. If, through his
+impassioned treatment of a prosy, commonplace object like a ferry-boat, he
+can so dignify and exalt it, and so fill it with the meanings of the
+spirit, that it seems like a part of God's eternities, his methods are at
+least worth inquiring into.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, Whitman's art, in its lack of extrinsic form and finish, is
+Oriental rather than Occidental, and is an offense to a taste founded upon
+the precision and finish of a mechanical age. His verse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> is like the
+irregular, slightly rude coin of the Greeks compared with the exact,
+machine-cut dies of our own day, or like the unfinished look of Japanese
+pottery beside the less beautiful but more perfect specimens of modern
+ceramic art.</p>
+
+<p>For present purposes, we may say there are two phases of art,&mdash;formal art
+and creative art. By formal art I mean that which makes a direct appeal to
+our sense of form,&mdash;our sense of the finely carved, the highly wrought,
+the deftly planned; and by creative art I mean that quickening,
+fructifying power of the masters, that heat and passion that make the
+world plastic and submissive to their hands, teeming with new meanings and
+thrilling with new life.</p>
+
+<p>Formal art is always in the ascendant. Formal anything&mdash;formal dress,
+formal manners, formal religion, formal this and that&mdash;always counts for
+more than the informal, the spontaneous, the original. It is easier, it
+can be put off and on.</p>
+
+<p>Formal art is nearly always the gift of the minor poet, and often of the
+major poet also. In such a poet as Swinburne, formal art leads by a great
+way. The content of his verse,&mdash;what is it? In Tennyson as well I should
+say formal art is in the ascendant. Creative art is his also; Tennyson
+reaches and moves the spirit, yet his skill is more noteworthy than his
+power. In Wordsworth, on the other hand, I should say creative art led:
+the content of his verse is more than its form; his spiritual and
+religious values are greater than his literary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> and artistic. The same is
+true of our own Emerson. Poe, again, is much more as an artist than as a
+man or a personality.</p>
+
+<p>I hardly need say that in Whitman formal art, the ostensibly artistic,
+counts for but very little. The intentional artist, the professional poet,
+is kept entirely in abeyance, or is completely merged and hidden in the
+man, more so undoubtedly than in any poet this side the old Oriental
+bards. We call him formless, chaotic, amorphous, etc., because he makes no
+appeal to our modern highly stimulated sense of art or artificial form. We
+must discriminate this from our sense of power, our sense of life, our
+sense of beauty, of the sublime, of the all, which clearly Whitman would
+reach and move. Whitman certainly has a form of his own: what would a
+poet, or any writer or worker in the ideal, do without some kind of form?
+some consistent and adequate vehicle of expression? But Whitman's form is
+not what is called artistic, because it is not brought within the rules of
+the prosodical system, and does not appeal to our sense of the consciously
+shaped and cultivated. It is essentially the prose form heightened and
+intensified by a deep, strong, lyric and prophetic note.</p>
+
+<p>The bonds and shackles of regular verse-form Whitman threw off. This
+course seemed to be demanded by the spirit to which he had dedicated
+himself,&mdash;the spirit of absolute unconstraint. The restrictions and
+hamperings of the scholastic forms did not seem to be consistent with this
+spirit, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> he identified with democracy and the New World. A poet who
+sets out to let down the bars everywhere, to remove veils and
+obstructions, to emulate the freedom of the elemental forces, to effuse
+always the atmosphere of open-air growths and objects, to be as
+"regardless of observation" as the processes of nature, etc., will not be
+apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression. The
+essentially prose form which Whitman chose is far more in keeping with the
+spirit and aim of his work than any conventional metrical system could
+have been. Had he wrought solely as a conscious artist, aiming at the
+effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have chosen a
+different medium.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman threw himself with love and enthusiasm upon this great, crude,
+seething, materialistic American world. The question is, Did he master it?
+Is he adequate to absorb and digest it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is
+it plastic in his hands? Does he stamp it with his own image? I do not
+ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make
+it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because
+evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it. He is content if he
+present America and the modern to us as they are inwrought into his own
+personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character,
+passion, will, motive, conviction. He would show them subjectively and as
+living impulses in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> himself. Of course a great constructive, dramatic poet
+like Shakespeare would have solved his problem in a different manner, or
+through the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters. But the
+poet and prophet of democracy and of egotism shows us all things in and
+through himself.</p>
+
+<p>His egotism, or egocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work.
+It colors all and determines all. The poems are the direct outgrowth of
+the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it
+were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon
+the trunk. His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most
+poets. He never leads us away from himself into pleasant paths with
+enticing flowers of fancy or forms of art. He carves or shapes nothing for
+its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent
+grounds as pure art. His work is not material made precious by elaboration
+and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life.</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was compelled to this negation of extrinsic art by the problem he
+had set before himself,&mdash;first, to arouse, to suggest, rather than to
+finish or elaborate, less to display any theme or thought than "to bring
+the reader into the atmosphere of the theme or thought;" secondly, to make
+his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that
+the dominant impression should always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> be that of the living, breathing
+man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see
+him and feel him in books or art,&mdash;the man in the form and garb of actual,
+concrete life, not as poet or artist, but simply as man. This is doubtless
+the meaning of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to
+the first issue of the "Leaves," to which I have referred. This portrait
+is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task. It was a
+hint that we must take this poet with very little literary tailoring; it
+was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and
+spoke in their spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It is never the theme treated, but always the character exploited; never
+the structure finished, but always the plan suggested; never the work
+accomplished, but always the impulse imparted,&mdash;freedom, power, growth.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"Allons! we must not stop here.<br />
+However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here,<br />
+However sheltered this port, or however calm these waters, we must not anchor here,<br />
+However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.<br />
+<br />
+"Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!<br />
+Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;<br />
+Allons! from all formulas!<br />
+From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This magnificent poem, "The Song of the Open Road," is one of the most
+significant in Whitman's work. He takes the open road as his type,&mdash;not an
+end in itself, not a fulfillment, but a start,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> a journey, a progression.
+It teaches him the profound lesson of reception, "no preference nor
+denial," and the profounder lesson of liberty and truth:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"From this hour, freedom!<br />
+From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,<br />
+Going where I list&mdash;my own master, total and absolute,<br />
+Listening to others, and considering well what they say,<br />
+Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,<br />
+Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.<br />
+<br />
+"I inhale great draughts of air,<br />
+The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine."</p>
+
+<p>He will not rest with art, he will not rest with books, he will press his
+way steadily toward the largest freedom.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Only the kernel of every object nourishes.<br />
+Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?<br />
+Where is he who undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman was not a builder. If he had the architectural power which the
+great poets have shown, he gave little proof of it. It was not required by
+the task he set before himself. His book is not a temple: it is a wood, a
+field, a highway; vista, vista, everywhere,&mdash;vanishing lights and shades,
+truths half disclosed, successions of objects, hints, suggestions, brief
+pictures, groups, voices, contrasts, blendings, and, above all, the tonic
+quality of the open air. The shorter poems are like bunches of herbs or
+leaves, or a handful of sprays gathered in a walk; never a thought
+carefully carved, and appealing to our sense of artistic form.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>The main poem of the book, "The Song of Myself," is a series of
+utterances, ejaculations, apostrophes, enumerations, associations,
+pictures, parables, incidents, suggestions, with little or no structural
+or logical connection, but all emanating from a personality whose presence
+dominates the page, and whose eye is ever upon us. Without this vivid and
+intimate sense of the man back of all, of a sane and powerful spirit
+sustaining ours, the piece would be wild and inchoate.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>The reader will be sure to demand of Whitman ample compensation for the
+absence from his work of those things which current poets give us in such
+full measure. Whether or not the compensation is ample, whether the music
+of his verse as of winds and waves, the long, irregular, dithyrambic
+movement, its fluid and tonic character, the vastness of conception, the
+large, biblical speech, the surging cosmic emotion, the vivid personal
+presence as of the living man looking into your eye or walking by your
+side,&mdash;whether all these things, the refreshing quality as of "harsh salt
+spray" which the poet Lanier found in the "Leaves," the electric currents
+which Mrs. Gilchrist found there, the "unexcelled imaginative justice of
+language" which Mr. Stevenson at times found, the religious liberation and
+faith which Mr. Symonds found, the "incomparable things incomparably well
+said" of Emerson, the rifle-bullets of Ruskin, the "supreme words"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> of
+Colonel Ingersoll, etc.,&mdash;whether qualities and effects like these, I say,
+make up to us for the absence of the traditional poetic graces and
+adornments, is a question which will undoubtedly long divide the reading
+world.</p>
+
+<p>In the works upon which our poetic taste is founded, artistic form is
+paramount; we have never been led to apply to such works open-air
+standards,&mdash;clouds, trees, rivers, spaces,&mdash;but the precision and
+definiteness of the cultured and the artificial. If Whitman had aimed at
+pure art and had failed, his work would be intolerable. As his French
+critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, has well said: "In the large work which Whitman
+attempted, there come no rules save those of nobility and strength of
+spirit; and these suffice amply to create a most unlooked-for and
+grandiose aspect of beauty." "Overcrowded and disorderly" as it may seem,
+"if heroic emotion and thought and enthusiasm vitalize it," the poet has
+reached his goal.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>Sometimes I define Whitman to myself as the poet of the open air,&mdash;not
+because he sings the praises of these things after the manner of the
+so-called nature-poets, but because he has the quality of things in the
+open air, the quality of the unhoused, the untamed, the elemental and
+aboriginal. He pleases and he offends, the same way things at large do. He
+has the brawn, the indifference, the rudeness, the virility, the
+coarseness,&mdash;something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> gray, unpronounced, elemental, about him, the
+effect of mass, size, distance, flowing, vanishing lines, neutral
+spaces,&mdash;something informal, multitudinous, and processional,&mdash;something
+regardless of criticism, that makes no bid for our applause, not
+calculated instantly to please, unmindful of details, prosaic if we make
+it so, common, near at hand, and yet that provokes thought and stirs our
+emotions in an unusual degree. The long lists and catalogues of objects
+and scenes in Whitman, that have so excited the mirth of the critics, are
+one phase of his out-of-doors character,&mdash;a multitude of concrete objects,
+a grove, a thicket, a field, a stretch of beach,&mdash;every object sharply
+defined, but no attempt at logical or artistic sequence, the effect of the
+whole informal, multitudinous. It may be objected to these pages that they
+consist of a mass of details that do not make a picture. But every line is
+a picture of a scene or an object. Whitman always keeps up the movement,
+he never pauses to describe; it is all action.</p>
+
+<p>Passing from such a poet as Tennyson to Whitman is like going from a warm,
+perfumed interior, with rich hangings, pictures, books, statuary, fine men
+and women, out into the street, or upon the beach, or upon the hill, or
+under the midnight stars. We lose something certainly, but do we not gain
+something also? Do we not gain just what Whitman had in view, namely,
+direct contact with the elements in which are the sources of our life and
+health? Do we not gain in scope and power what we lose in art and
+refinement?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>The title, "Leaves of Grass," is full of meaning. What self-knowledge and
+self-scrutiny it implies! The grass, perennial sprouting, universal,
+formless, common, the always spread feast of the herds, dotted with
+flowers, the herbage of the earth, so suggestive of the multitudinous,
+loosely aggregated, unelaborated character of the book; the lines
+springing directly out of the personality of the poet, the soil of his
+life.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me,"</p>
+
+<p>says the poet, and this turns out to be the case. We only look to see if
+in the common and the cheap he discloses new values and new meanings,&mdash;if
+his leaves of grass have the old freshness and nutriment, and be not a
+mere painted greenness.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,<br />
+The carpenter dresses his plank&mdash;the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,<br />
+The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,<br />
+The pilot seizes the king-pin&mdash;he heaves down with a strong arm,<br />
+The mate stands braced in the whale-boat&mdash;lance and harpoon are ready,<br />
+The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,<br />
+The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,<br />
+The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,<br />
+The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First Day loafe, and looks at the oats and rye,<br />
+The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case,<br />
+He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom;<br />
+The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;<br />
+The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,<br />
+What is removed drops horribly in a pail;<br />
+The quadroon girl is sold at the stand&mdash;the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove,<br />
+The machinist rolls up his sleeves&mdash;the policeman travels his beat&mdash;the gate-keeper marks who pass,<br />
+The young fellow drives the express-wagon&mdash;I love him, though I do not know him,<br />
+The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,<br />
+The western turkey-shooting draws old and young&mdash;some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,<br />
+Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;<br />
+The groups of newly-come emigrants cover the wharf or levee,<br />
+As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle,<br />
+The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other,<br />
+The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret, and harks to the musical rain,<br />
+The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,<br />
+The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground,<br />
+Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,<br />
+The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,<br />
+Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-wood or pekan-trees,<br />
+Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River, or through those drained by the Tennessee, or through<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">those of the Arkansas,</span><br />
+Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,<br />
+Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them,<br />
+In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport,<br />
+The city sleeps and the country sleeps,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,<br />
+The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his wife;<br />
+And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,<br />
+And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>What is this but tufts and tussocks of grass; not branching trees, nor yet
+something framed and deftly put together, but a succession of simple
+things, objects, actions, persons; handfuls of native growths, a stretch
+of prairie or savanna; no composition, no artistic wholes, no logical
+sequence, yet all vital and real; jets of warm life that shoot and play
+over the surface of contemporary America, and that the poet uses as the
+stuff out of which to weave the song of himself.</p>
+
+<p>This simple aggregating or cataloguing style as it has been called, and
+which often occurs in the "Leaves," has been much criticised, but it seems
+to me in perfect keeping in a work that does not aim at total artistic
+effects, at finished structural perfection like architecture, but to
+picture the elements of a man's life and character in outward scenes and
+objects and to show how all nature tends inward to him and he outward to
+it. Whitman showers the elements of American life upon his reader until,
+so to speak, his mind is drenched with them, but never groups them into
+patterns to tickle his sense of form. It is charged that his method is
+inartistic, and it is so in a sense, but it is the Whitman art and has its
+own value in his work. Only the artist instinct could prompt to this
+succession of one line genre word painting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>But this is not the way of the great artists. No, but it is Whitman's way,
+and these things have a certain artistic value in his work, a work that
+professedly aims to typify his country and times,&mdash;the value of multitude,
+processions, mass-movements, and the gathering together of elements and
+forces from wide areas.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's relation to art, then, is primary and fundamental, just as his
+relations to religion, to culture, to politics, to democracy, are primary
+and fundamental,&mdash;through his emotion, his soul, and not merely through
+his tools, his intellect. His artistic conscience is quickly revealed to
+any searching inquiry. It is seen in his purpose to convey his message by
+suggestion and indirection, or as an informing, vitalizing breath and
+spirit. His thought and meaning are enveloped in his crowded, concrete,
+and often turbulent pages, as science is enveloped in nature. He has a
+profound ethic, a profound metaphysic, but they are not formulated; they
+are vital in his pages as hearing or eyesight.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman studied effects, and shaped his means to his end, weighing values
+and subordinating parts, as only the great artist does. He knew the power
+of words as few know them; he knew the value of vista, perspective,
+vanishing lights and lines. He knew how to make his words itch at your
+ears till you understood them; how to fold up and put away in his
+sentences meanings, glimpses, that did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> at first reveal themselves. It
+is only the work of the great creative artist that is pervaded by will,
+and that emanates directly and inevitably from the personality of the man
+himself. As a man and an American, Whitman is as closely related to his
+work as &AElig;schylus to his, or Dante to his. This is always a supreme
+test,&mdash;the closeness and vitality of the relation of a man to his work.
+Could any one else have done it? Is it the general intelligence that
+speaks, the culture and refinement of the age? or have we a new revelation
+of life, a new mind and soul? The lesser poets sustain only a secondary
+relation to their works. It is other poets, other experiences, the past,
+the schools, the forms, that speak through them. In all Whitman's
+recitatives, as he calls them, the free-flowing ends of the sentences, the
+loose threads of meaning, the unraveled or unknitted threads and fringes,
+are all well considered, and are one phase of <i>his</i> art. He seeks his
+effects thus.</p>
+
+<p>His method is indirect, allegorical, and elliptical to an unusual degree;
+often a curious suspension and withholding in a statement, a suggestive
+incompleteness, both ends of his thought, as it were, left in the air;
+sometimes the substantive, sometimes the nominative, is wanting, and all
+for a purpose. The poet somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic
+screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are
+used to in prophecy. The forth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>rightness of utterance, the projectile
+force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the
+great prophetic souls, is here.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman is poetic in the same way in which he is democratic, in the same
+way in which he is religious, or American, or modern,&mdash;not by word merely,
+but by deed; not by the extrinsic, but by the intrinsic; not by art, but
+by life.</p>
+
+<p>I am never tired of saying that to put great personal qualities in a poem,
+or other literary work, not formulated or didactically stated, but in
+tone, manner, attitude, breadth of view, love, charity, good fellowship,
+etc., is the great triumph for our day. So put, they are a possession to
+the race forever; they grow and bear fruit perennially, like the grass and
+the trees. And shall it be said that the poet who does this has no worthy
+art?</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>Nearly all modern artificial products, when compared with the ancient, are
+characterized by greater mechanical finish and precision. Can we say,
+therefore, they are more artistic? Is a gold coin of the time of Pericles,
+so rude and simple, less artistic than the elaborate coins of our own day?
+Is Japanese pottery, the glazing often ragged and uneven, less artistic
+than the highly finished work of the moderns?</p>
+
+<p>Are we quite sure, after all, that what we call "artistic form" is in any
+high or fundamental sense artistic? Are the precise, the regular, the
+meas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>ured, the finished, the symmetrical, indispensable to our conception
+of art? If regular extrinsic form and measure and proportion are necessary
+elements of the artistic, then geometrical flower-beds, and trees set in
+rows or trained to some fancy pattern, ought to please the artist. But do
+they? If we look for the artistic in these things, then Addison is a
+greater artist than Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says, "Addison speaks the
+language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." Which is really the most
+artistic? The one is the coin from the die, the other the coin from the
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson's faultless form and finish are not what stamp him a great
+artist. He would no doubt be glad to get rid of them if he could, at least
+to keep them in abeyance and make them less obtrusive; he would give
+anything for the freedom, raciness, and wildness of Shakespeare. But he is
+not equal to these things. The culture, the refinement, the precision of a
+correct and mechanical age have sunk too deeply into his soul. He has not
+the courage or the spring to let himself go as Shakespeare did. Tennyson,
+too, speaks the language of poets, and not of men; he savors of the
+flower-garden, and not of the forest. Tennyson knows that he is an artist.
+Shakespeare, apparently, never had such a thought; he is intent solely
+upon holding the mirror up to nature. The former lived in an age of
+criticism, and when the poets loved poetry more than they did life and
+things; the latter, in a more virile time, and in "the full stream of the
+world."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>"Leaves of Grass" is not self-advertised as a work of art. The author had
+no thought that you should lay down his book and say, "What a great
+artist!" "What a master workman!" He would rather you should say, "What a
+great man!" "What a loving comrade!" "What a real democrat!" "What a
+healing and helpful force!" He would not have you admire his poetry: he
+would have you filled with the breath of a new and larger and saner life;
+he would be a teacher and trainer of men.</p>
+
+<p>The love of the precise, the exact, the methodical, is characteristic of
+an age of machinery, of a commercial and industrial age like ours. These
+things are indispensable in the mill and counting-house, but why should we
+insist upon them in poetry? Why should we cling to an arbitrary form like
+the sonnet? Why should we insist upon a perfect rhyme, as if it was a cog
+in a wheel? Why not allow and even welcome the freedom of half-rhymes, or
+suggestive rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it
+into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering
+and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the
+man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an
+artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair with great laws
+and forces?</p>
+
+<p>Of course it is much easier for a poet to use the regular verse-forms and
+verse language than it is to dispense with them; that is, a much less
+poetic capital is required in the former case than in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> latter. The
+stock forms and the stock language count for a good deal. A very small
+amount of original talent may cut quite an imposing figure in the robes of
+the great masters. Require the poet to divest himself of them, and to
+speak in the language of men and in the spirit of real things, and see how
+he fares.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was afraid of what he called the beauty disease. He thought a poet
+of the first order should be sparing of the direct use of the beautiful,
+as Nature herself is. His aim should be larger, and beauty should follow
+and not lead. The poet should not say to himself, "Come, I will make
+something beautiful," but rather "I will make something true, and
+quickening, and powerful. I will not dress my verse up in fine words and
+pretty fancies, but I will breathe into it the grit and force and
+adhesiveness of real things." Beauty is the flowering of life and
+fecundity, and it must have deep root in the non-beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Beauty, as the master knows it, is a spirit and not an adornment. It is
+not merely akin to flowers and gems and rainbows: it is akin to the All.
+Looking through his eyes, you shall see it in the rude and the savage
+also, in rocks and deserts and mountains, in the common as well as in the
+rare, in wrinkled age as well as in rosy youth.</p>
+
+<p>The non-beautiful holds the world together, holds life together and
+nourishes it, more than the beau<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>tiful. Nature is beautiful because she is
+so much else first,&mdash;yes, and last, and all the time.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicates of the earth and of man,<br />
+And nothing endures but personal qualities."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Is there not in field, wood, or shore something more precious and tonic
+than any special beauties we may chance to find there,&mdash;flowers, perfumes,
+sunsets,&mdash;something that we cannot do without, though we can do without
+these? Is it health, life, power, or what is it?</p>
+
+<p>Whatever it is, it is something analogous to this that we get in Whitman.
+There is little in his "Leaves" that one would care to quote for its mere
+beauty, though this element is there also. One may pluck a flower here and
+there in his rugged landscape, as in any other; but the flowers are always
+by the way, and never the main matter. We should not miss them if they
+were not there. What delights and invigorates us is in the air, and in the
+look of things. The flowers are like our wild blossoms growing under great
+trees or amid rocks, never the camellia or tuberose of the garden or
+hot-house,&mdash;something rude and bracing is always present, always a breath
+of the untamed and aboriginal.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's work gives results, and never processes. There is no return of
+the mind upon itself; it descends constantly upon things, persons,
+realities. It is a rushing stream which will not stop to be analyzed. It
+has been urged that Whitman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> does not give the purely intellectual
+satisfaction that would seem to be warranted by his mental grasp and
+penetration. No, nor the &aelig;sthetic satisfaction warranted by his
+essentially artistic habit of mind. Well, he did not promise satisfaction
+in anything, but only to put us on the road to satisfaction. His book, he
+says, is not a "good lesson," but it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
+and that to another, and every one to another still.</p>
+
+<p>Let me repeat that the sharp, distinct intellectual note&mdash;the note of
+culture, books, clubs, etc., such as we get from so many modern writers,
+you will not get from Whitman. In my opinion, the note he sounds is deeper
+and better than that. It has been charged by an unfriendly critic that he
+strikes lower than the intellect. If it is meant by this that he misses
+the intellect, it is not true; he stimulates the intellect as few poets
+do. He strikes lower because he strikes farther. He sounds the note of
+character, personality, volition, the note of prophecy, of democracy, and
+of love. He seems unintellectual to an abnormally intellectual age; he
+seems unpoetic to a taste formed upon poetic tidbits; he seems irreligious
+to standards founded upon the old models of devotional piety; he seems
+disorderly, incoherent to all petty thumb and finger measurements. In his
+ideas and convictions, Whitman was a modern of the moderns; yet in his
+type, his tastes, his fundamental make-up, he was primitive, of an earlier
+race and age,&mdash;before, as Emerson suggests, the gods had cut Man up into
+men, with special talents of one kind or another.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+<p>Take any of Whitman's irregular-flowing lines, and clip and trim them, and
+compress them into artificial verse-forms, and what have we gained to make
+up for what we have lost? Take his lines called "Reconciliation," for
+instance:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Word over all beautiful as the sky,<br />
+Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,<br />
+That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;<br />
+For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,<br />
+I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin&mdash;I draw near,<br />
+Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."</p>
+
+<p>Or take his poem called "Old Ireland:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,<br />
+Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,<br />
+Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,<br />
+Her old white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,<br />
+At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,<br />
+Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,<br />
+Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.<br />
+<br />
+"Yet a word, ancient mother,<br />
+You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between your knees,<br />
+Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,<br />
+For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,<br />
+It was an illusion; the son you loved was not really dead,<br />
+The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another country.<br />
+Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And now with rosy and new blood,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Moves to-day in a new country."</span></p>
+
+<p>Or take these lines from "Children of Adam:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I pass'd the church,<br />
+Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,<br />
+I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;<br />
+Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head,<br />
+Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night under my ear."</p>
+
+<p>Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
+measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
+highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
+wanted to preserve at all hazards,&mdash;vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
+free-careering forces of nature.</p>
+
+<p>I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
+not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
+is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
+restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
+and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
+like him best without it.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVII</h4>
+
+<p>How well we know the language of the conventional poetic! In this
+language, the language of nine tenths of current poetry, the wind comes
+up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> out of the south and kisses the rose's crimson mouth, or it comes out
+of the wood and rumples the poppy's hood. Morning comes in glistening
+sandals, and her footsteps are jeweled with flowers. Everything is
+bedecked and bejeweled. Nothing is truly seen or truly reported. It is an
+attempt to paint the world beautiful. It is not beautiful as it is, and we
+must deck it out in the colors of the fancy. Now, I do not want the world
+painted for me. I want the grass green or brown, as the case may be; the
+sky blue, the rocks gray, the soil red; and that the sun should rise and
+set without any poetic claptrap. What I want is to see these things spin
+around a thought, or float on the current of an emotion, as they always do
+in real poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Beauty always follows, never leads the great poet. It arises out of the
+interior substance and structure of his work, like the bloom of health in
+the cheeks. The young poet thinks to win Beauty by direct and persistent
+wooing of her. He has not learned yet that she comes unsought to the
+truthful, the brave, the heroic. Let him think some great thought,
+experience some noble impulse, give himself with love to life and reality
+about him, and Beauty is already his. She is the reward of noble deeds.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVIII</h4>
+
+<p>The modern standard in art is becoming more and more what has been called
+the canon of the characteristic, as distinguished from the Greek or
+classic canon of formal beauty. It is this canon, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Professor Triggs
+suggests, that we are to apply to Whitman. Dr. Johnson had it in mind when
+he wrote thus of Shakespeare:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed
+and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers: the
+composition of Shakespeare is a forest in which oaks extend their
+branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds
+and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
+filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless
+diversity."</p>
+
+<p>Classic art holds to certain fixed standards; it seeks formal beauty; it
+holds to order and proportion in external parts; its ideal of natural
+beauty is the well-ordered park or grove or flower-garden. It has a horror
+of the wild and savage. Mountains and forests, and tempests and seas,
+filled the classic mind with terror. Not so with the modern romantic mind,
+which finds its best stimulus and delight in free, unhampered nature. It
+loves the element of mystery and the suggestion of uncontrollable power.
+The modern mind has a sense of the vast, the infinite, that the Greek had
+not, and it is drawn by informal beauty more than by the formal.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIX</h4>
+
+<p>It is urged against Whitman that he brings us the materials of poetry, but
+not poetry: he brings us the marble block, but not the statue; or he
+brings us the brick and mortar, but not the house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> False or superficial
+analogies mislead us. Poetry is not something made; it is something grown,
+it is a vital union of the fact and the spirit. If the verse awakens in us
+the poetic thrill, the material, whatever it be, must have been touched
+with the transforming spirit of poesy. Why does Whitman's material suggest
+to any reader that it is poetic material? Because it has already been
+breathed upon by the poetic spirit. A poet may bring the raw material of
+poetry in the sense that he may bring the raw material of a gold coin; the
+stamp and form you give it does not add to its value. It is doubtful if
+any of Whitman's utterances could be worked up into what is called poetry
+without a distinct loss of poetic value. What they would gain in finish
+they would lose in suggestiveness. This word "suggestiveness" affords one
+of the keys to Whitman. The objection to him I have been considering
+arises from the failure of the critic to see and appreciate his avowed
+purpose to make his page fruitful in poetic suggestion, rather than in
+samples of poetic elaboration. "I finish no specimens," he says. "I shower
+them by exhaustless laws, fresh and modern continually, as Nature does."
+He is quite content if he awaken the poetic emotion without at all
+satisfying it. He would have you more eager and hungry for poetry when you
+had finished with him than when you began. He brings the poetic stimulus,
+and brings it in fuller measure than any contemporary poet; and this is
+enough for him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that
+reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry
+did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in
+motion at once; he was so fruitful in themes, so suggestive of new
+harmonies and melodies. He gave the hints, and left his reader to follow
+them up. This is exactly what Whitman wanted to do. It defines his
+attitude toward poetry, towards philosophy, towards religion,&mdash;to suggest
+and set going, to arouse unanswerable questions, and to brace you to meet
+them; to bring the materials of poetry, if you will have it so, and leave
+you to make the poem; to start trains of thought, and leave you to pursue
+the flight alone. Not a thinker, several critics have urged; no, but the
+cause of thought in others to an unwonted degree. "Whether you agree with
+him or not," says an Australian essayist, "he will sting you into such an
+anguish of thought as must in the end be beneficial." It matters little to
+him whether or not you agree with him; what is important is, that you
+should think the matter out for yourself. He purposely avoids hemming you
+in by his conclusions; he would lead you in no direction but your own.
+"Once more I charge you give play to your self. I charge you leave all
+free, as I have left all free."</p>
+
+<p>No thought, no philosophy, no music, no poetry, in his pages; no, it is
+all character, impulse, emotion, suggestion. But the true reader of him
+expe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>riences all these things: he finds in his pages, if he knows how to
+look for it, a profound metaphysic, a profound ethic, a profound &aelig;sthetic;
+a theory of art and poetry which is never stated, but only hinted or
+suggested, and which is much more robust and vital than what we are used
+to; a theory of good and evil; a view of character and conduct; a theory
+of the state and of politics, of the relation of the sexes, etc., to give
+ample food for thought and speculation. The Hegelian philosophy is in the
+"Leaves" as vital as the red corpuscles in the blood, so much is implied
+that is not stated, but only suggested, as in Nature herself. The really
+vast erudition of the work is adroitly concealed, hidden like its
+philosophy, as a tree hides its roots. Readers should not need to be told
+that, in the region of art as of religion, mentality is not first, but
+spirituality, personality, imagination; and that we do not expect a poet's
+thoughts to lie upon his pages like boulders in the field, but rather to
+show their presence like elements in the soil.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,<br />
+Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,<br />
+If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume to you,<br />
+If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall branches and trees."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The early records and sacred books of most peoples contain what is called
+the materials of poetry. The Bible is full of such materials. English
+literature shows many attempts to work this material up into poetry, but
+always with a distinct loss of poetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> value. The gold is simply beaten
+out thin and made to cover more surface, or it is mixed with some base
+metal. A recent English poet has attempted to work up the New Testament
+records into poetry, and the result is for the most part a thin, windy
+dilution of the original. If the record or legend is full of poetic
+suggestion, that is enough; to elaborate it, and deck it out in poetic
+finery without loss of poetic value, is next to impossible.</p>
+
+<p>To me the Arthurian legends as they are given in the old books, are more
+poetic, more stimulating to the imagination, than they are after they have
+gone through the verbal upholstering and polishing of such a poet as
+Swinburne or even Tennyson. These poets add little but words and flowers
+of fancy, and the heroic simplicity of the original is quite destroyed.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XX</h4>
+
+<p>No critic of repute has been more puzzled and misled by this unwrought
+character of our poet's verse than Mr. Edmund Gosse, the London poet and
+essayist. Mr. Gosse finds Whitman only a potential or possible poet; his
+work is literature in the condition of protoplasm. He is a maker of poems
+in solution; the structural change which should have crystallized his
+fluid and teeming pages into forms of art never came. It does not occur to
+Mr. Gosse to inquire whether or not something like this may not have been
+the poet's intention. Perhaps this is the secret of the vitality of his
+work, which, as Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> Gosse says, now, after forty years, shows no sign of
+declining. Perhaps it was a large, fresh supply of poetic yeast that the
+poet really sought to bring us. Undoubtedly Whitman aimed to give his work
+just this fluid, generative quality, to put into it the very basic
+elements of life itself. He feared the "structural change" to which Mr.
+Gosse refers; he knew it was more or less a change from life to death: the
+cell and not the crystal; the leaf of grass, and not the gem, is the type
+of his sentences. He sacrificed fixed form; above all, did he stop short
+of that conscious intellectual elaboration so characteristic of later
+poetry, the better to give the impression and the stimulus of creative
+elemental power. It is not to the point to urge that this is not the
+method or aim of other poets; that others have used the fixed forms, and
+found them plastic and vital in their hands. It was Whitman's aim; these
+were the effects he sought. I think beyond doubt that he gives us the
+impression of something dynamic, something akin to the vital forces of the
+organic world, much more distinctly and fully than any other poet who has
+lived.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman always aimed to make his reader an active partner with him in his
+poetic enterprise. "I seek less," he says, "to state or display any theme
+or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
+theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." This trait is brought
+out by Mr. Gosse in a little allegory. "Every reader who comes to
+Whitman," he says,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> "starts upon an expedition to the virgin forest. He
+must take his conveniences with him. He will make of the excursion what
+his own spirit dictates. [We generally do, in such cases, Mr. Gosse.]
+There are solitudes, fresh air, rough landscape, and a well of water, but
+if he wishes to enjoy the latter he must bring his own cup with him." This
+phase of Whitman's work has never been more clearly defined. Mr. Gosse
+utters it as an adverse criticism. It is true exposition, however we take
+it, what we get out of Whitman depends so largely upon what we bring to
+him. Readers will not all get the same. We do not all get the same out of
+a walk or a mountain climb. We get out of him in proportion to the
+sympathetic and interpretative power of our own spirits. Have you the
+brooding, warming, vivifying mother-mind? That vague, elusive,
+incommensurable something in the "Leaves" that led Symonds to say that
+talking about Whitman was like talking about the universe,&mdash;that seems to
+challenge our pursuit and definition, that takes on so many different
+aspects to so many different minds,&mdash;it seems to be this that has led Mr.
+Gosse to persuade himself that there is no real Walt Whitman, no man whom
+we can take, as we take any other figure in literature, as an "entity of
+positive value and definite characteristics," but a mere mass of literary
+protoplasm that takes the instant impression of whatever mood approaches
+it. Stevenson finds a Stevenson in it, Mr. Symonds finds a Symonds,
+Emerson finds an Emerson, etc. Truly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> may our poet say, "I contain
+multitudes." In what other poet do these men, or others like them, find
+themselves?</p>
+
+<p>Whitman was a powerful solvent undoubtedly. He never hardens into anything
+like a system, or into mere intellectual propositions. One of his own
+phrases, "the fluid and swallowing soul," is descriptive of this trait of
+him. One source of his charm is, that we each see some phase of ourselves
+in him, as Mr. Gosse suggests. Above all things is he potential and
+indicative, bard of "flowing mouth and indicative hand." In his
+"Inscriptions" he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,<br />
+Leaving it to you to prove and define it,<br />
+Expecting the main things from you."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This withholding and half-averted glancing, then, on the part of the poet,
+is deliberate and enters into the scheme of the work. Mr. Gosse would have
+shown himself a sounder critic had he penetrated the poet's purpose in
+this respect, and shown whether or not he had violated the canons he had
+set up for his own guidance. We do not condemn a creative work when it
+departs from some rule or precedent, but when it violates its own
+principle, when it is not consistent with itself, when it hath not eyes to
+see, or ears to hear, or hands to reach what lies within its own sphere.
+Art, in the plastic realms of written language, may set its mind upon
+elaboration, upon structural finish and proportion, upon exact forms and
+compensations, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> in architecture, or it may set its mind upon
+suggestion, indirection, and the flowing, changing forms of organic
+nature. It is as much art in the one case as in the other. To get rid of
+all visible artifice is, of course, the great thing in both cases. There
+is so little apparent artifice in Whitman's case that he has been accused
+of being entirely without art, and of throwing his matter together in a
+haphazard way,&mdash;"without thought, without selection," without
+"composition, evolution, vertebration of style," says Mr. Gosse. Yet his
+work more than holds its own in a field where these things alone are
+supposed to insure success. Whitman covers up his processes well, and
+knows how to hit his mark without seeming to take aim. The verdicts upon
+him are mainly contradictory, because each critic only takes in a part of
+his scheme. Mr. Stedman finds him a formalist. Mr. Gosse finds in him a
+negation of all form. The London critic says he is without thought. A
+Boston critic speaks of what he happily calls the "waves of thought" in
+his work,&mdash;vast mind-impulses that lift and sway great masses of concrete
+facts and incidents. Whitman knew from the start that he would puzzle and
+baffle his critics, and would escape from them like air when they felt
+most sure they had him in their verbal nets. So it has been from the
+first, and so it continues to be. Without one thing, he says, it is
+useless to read him; and of what that one thing needful is, he gives only
+the vaguest hint, only a "significant look."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XXI</h4>
+
+<p>I may here notice two objections to Whitman urged by Mr. Stedman,&mdash;a
+critic for whose opinion I have great respect, and a man for whom I have a
+genuine affection. With all his boasted breadth and tolerance, Whitman,
+says my friend, is narrow; and, with all his vaunted escape from the
+shackles of verse-form, he is a formalist: his "irregular, manneristic
+chant" is as much at the extreme of artificiality as is the sonnet. These
+certainly are faults that one does not readily associate with the work of
+Whitman. But then I remember that the French critic, Scherer, charges
+Carlyle, the apostle of the gospel of sincerity, with being insincere and
+guilty of canting about cant. If Carlyle is insincere, I think it very
+likely that Whitman may be narrow and hide-bound. These things are so much
+a matter of temperament that one cannot judge for another. Yet one ought
+not to confound narrowness and breadth, or little and big. All earnest,
+uncompromising men are more or less open to the charge of narrowness. A
+man is narrow when he concentrates himself upon a point; even a
+cannon-shot is. Whitman was narrow in the sense that he was at times
+monotonous; that he sought but few effects, that he poured himself out
+mainly in one channel, that he struck chiefly the major chords of life.
+His "Leaves" do not show a great range of artistic motifs. A versatile,
+many-sided nature he certainly was not; a large, broad, tolerant nature
+he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> as certainly was. He does not assume many and diverse forms like a
+purely artistic talent, sporting with and masquerading in all the elements
+of life, like Shakespeare; but in his own proper form, and in his own
+proper person, he gives a sense of vastness and power that are
+unapproached in modern literature. He asserts himself uncompromisingly,
+but he would have you do the same. "He who spreads a wider breast than my
+own proves the width of my own." "He most honors my style who learns under
+it to destroy the teacher." His highest hope is to be the soil of superior
+poems.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stedman thinks he detects in the poet a partiality for the coarser,
+commoner elements of our humanity over the finer and choicer,&mdash;for the
+"rough" over the gentleman. But when all things have been duly considered,
+it will be found, I think, that he finally rests only with great personal
+qualities and traits. He is drawn by powerful, natural persons, wherever
+found,&mdash;men and women self-poised, fully equipped on all sides:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully arm'd,<br />
+I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>and much more to the same effect.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain:<br />
+If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman is a formalist, just as every man who has a way of his own of
+saying and doing things, no matter how natural, is a formalist; but he is
+not a stickler for form of any sort. He has his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> proper form, of
+course, which he rarely departs from. At one extreme of artificiality Mr.
+Stedman apparently places the sonnet. This is an arbitrary form; its rules
+are inflexible; it is something cut and shaped and fitted together after a
+predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial. If Whitman's
+irregularity was equally studied; if it gave us the same sense of
+something cunningly planned and wrought to a particular end, clipped here,
+curbed there, folded back in this line, drawn out in that, and attaining
+to a certain mechanical proportion and balance as a whole,&mdash;then there
+would be good ground for the critic's charge. But such is not the case.
+Whitman did not have, nor claim to have, the architectonic power of the
+great constructive poets. He did not build the lofty rhyme. He did not
+build anything, strictly speaking. He let himself go. He named his book
+after the grass, which makes a carpet over the earth, and which is a sign
+and a presence rather than a form.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect
+from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional
+cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might
+expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or
+grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a
+little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional
+obscurity; from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> mystic identification of himself with what is
+commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy;
+from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an
+average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"
+may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc. The price paid for his
+strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination
+to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision
+with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"
+with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious,"
+will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"
+will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his
+healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk
+to flight.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXIII</h4>
+
+<p>To say that Whitman is a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If
+it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of
+language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the
+saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the
+right word&mdash;for just the right word&mdash;than did Whitman. He would wait for
+days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the
+language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the
+evening call of the robin, and died without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> the sight! But his language
+never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not
+consciously challenge your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is
+never on dress parade. His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so
+much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to <i>stumble</i> upon
+them. His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial
+adjuncts of poetry,&mdash;no finery or stuck-on ornament,&mdash;nothing obtrusively
+beautiful or poetic; and because it bears itself with the freedom and
+nonchalance of a man in his every-day attire.</p>
+
+<p>But it is always in a measure misleading to compare language with dress,
+to say that a poet clothes his thought, etc. The language is the thought;
+it is an incarnation, not an outside tailoring. To improve the expression
+is to improve the thought. In the most vital writing, the thought is nude;
+the mind of the reader touches something alive and real. When we begin to
+hear the rustle of a pompous or highly wrought vocabulary, when the man
+begins to dress his commonplace ideas up in fine phrases, we have enough
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it is only the mechanical writer who may be said to "clothe" his
+ideas with words; the real poet thinks through words.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXIV</h4>
+
+<p>I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps
+has been made, that in him we find the big merely,&mdash;strength without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this
+impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious
+things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here
+is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great
+lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires
+a large space to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and
+multitude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The
+style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling,
+cloud-like masses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me
+there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not
+only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity;
+not only breadth, there is quality and charm. He is both Dantesque and
+Darwinian, as has been said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whitman, and,
+despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of
+literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,&mdash;the
+symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power. Thus, "he
+is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or
+buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a
+kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the
+world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise
+mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>&mdash;all seas,
+lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal
+earth."</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and
+plains, and to the globe itself.</p>
+
+<p>But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only
+claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size
+and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no
+impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to
+size,&mdash;breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of
+a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists
+are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast masses of
+humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the
+industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
+are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
+elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
+effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
+sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,&mdash;everywhere
+the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
+significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
+contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
+forces and objects of the universe, first with refer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>ence to character and
+personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
+of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
+in his first poem:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"Listen! I will be honest with you,<br />
+I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.<br />
+<br />
+"I tramp a perpetual journey,<br />
+My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,<br />
+No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,<br />
+I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,<br />
+I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,<br />
+But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,<br />
+My left hand hooking you round the waist,<br />
+My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public road."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
+effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
+and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
+the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
+before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
+views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
+disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
+disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
+things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
+His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
+in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
+bits and parts as from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
+of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a single second,<br />
+I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years,<br />
+Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house."</p>
+
+<p>In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
+as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.
+These are typical lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"A thousand perfect men and women appear,<br />
+Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings."<br />
+<br />
+"Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young,<br />
+The young are beautiful&mdash;but the old are more beautiful than the young."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same
+effect. Always wholes, total impressions,&mdash;always a view as of a "strong
+bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower,
+but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a
+city. The title of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might
+stand as the title of the book. When he gathers details and special
+features he masses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo
+carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always
+in the totals, the breadth, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> sweep of conception. The part that is
+local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality
+is the background across which it all flits.</p>
+
+<p>We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give
+us,&mdash;studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects,
+rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we
+inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He
+tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and
+processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the
+orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon
+he sees a spirit kindred to his own.</p>
+
+<p>He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and
+what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and
+equilibrium.</p>
+
+<p>"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either,<br />
+They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.<br />
+They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,<br />
+Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth&mdash;I utter and utter!"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"The earth does not argue,<br />
+Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,<br />
+Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,<br />
+Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,<br />
+Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.<br />
+Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He says the best of life</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Is not what you anticipated&mdash;it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"</p>
+
+<p>and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth,<br />
+No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless it compares with the amplitude of the earth,<br />
+Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the earth."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
+these and kindred passages:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,<br />
+His insight and power encircle things and the human race.<br />
+The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,<br />
+The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has the day been, likewise the spot,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">
+of the birth of the maker of poems, the Answerer,</span><br />
+(Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day, for all its names.)<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,<br />
+The words of true poems do not merely please,<br />
+The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty;<br />
+The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers,<br />
+The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.<br />
+<br />
+"Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness,<br />
+Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,<br />
+The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.<br />
+The words of the true poems give you more than poems;<br />
+They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">
+and everything else.</span><br />
+They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;<br />
+They do not seek beauty, they are sought,<br />
+Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.<br />
+They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,<br />
+They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,<br />
+Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,<br />
+To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"Of these States the poet is the equable man,<br />
+Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns,<br />
+Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,<br />
+He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less,<br />
+He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,<br />
+He is the equalizer of his age and land,<br />
+He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,<br />
+In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government,</span><br />
+In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as the engineer's, he can make every<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">
+word he speaks draw blood,</span><br />
+The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,<br />
+He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),<br />
+He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a helpless thing,<br />
+As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,<br />
+His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,<br />
+In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,<br />
+He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as dreams or dots.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass away,<br />
+The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,<br />
+Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's
+idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the
+beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in
+these lines of Tennyson:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."</p>
+
+<p>"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's
+pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's ideal poet is the most composite man, rich in temperament, rank
+in the human attributes, embracing races and eras in himself. All men see
+themselves in him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The mechanic takes him for a mechanic,<br />
+And the soldier supposes him to be a soldier, and the sailor that he has followed the sea,<br />
+And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,<br />
+And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,<br />
+No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has followed it,<br />
+No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>"The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,<br />
+The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him, he strangely<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">transmutes them,</span><br />
+They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so grown."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Let us hold the poet to his own ideals, and not condemn him because he has
+not aimed at something foreign to himself.</p>
+
+<p>The questions which Whitman puts to him who would be an American poet may
+fairly be put to himself.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">amativeness, heroic angers, teach?</span><br />
+Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?<br />
+Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions? are you very strong?<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">are you really of the whole people?</span><br />
+Are you not of some coterie? some school, or mere religion?<br />
+Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to life itself?<br />
+Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?<br />
+Have you, too, the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+What is this you bring my America?<br />
+Is it uniform with my country?<br />
+Is it not something that has been better done or told before?<br />
+Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?<br />
+Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?&mdash;is the good old cause in it?<br />
+Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, literats of enemies' lands?<br />
+Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?<br />
+Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?<br />
+Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?<br />
+Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face?<br />
+Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere amanuenses?</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>So far as Whitman's poetry falls within any of the old divisions it is
+lyrical,&mdash;a personal and individual utterance. Open the book anywhere and
+you are face to face with a man. His eye is fixed upon you. It is a man's
+voice you hear, and it is directed to <i>you</i>. He is not elaborating a
+theme: he is suggesting a relation or hinting a meaning. He is not
+chiseling, or carving a work of art: he is roughly outlining a man; he is
+planting a seed, or tilling a field.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXV</h4>
+
+<p>I believe it was the lamented Professor Clifford who first used the term
+"cosmic emotion" in connection with "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's
+atmosphere is so distinctly outside of and above that which ministers to
+our social and domestic wants,&mdash;the confined and perfumed air of an indoor
+life; his mood and temper are so habitually begotten by the contemplation
+of the orbs and the laws and processes of universal nature, that the
+phrase often comes to mind in considering him. He is not in any sense,
+except perhaps in a few minor pieces, a domestic and fireside poet,&mdash;a
+solace to our social instincts and cultivated ideals. He is too large, too
+aboriginal, too elemental, too strong for that. I seem to understand and
+appreciate him best when I keep in mind the earth as a whole, and its
+relation to the system. Any large view or thought, or survey of life or
+mankind, is a preparation for him. He demands the outdoor temper and
+habit,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> he demands a sense of space and power, he demands above all things
+a feeling for reality. "Vastness" is a word that applies to him; abysmal
+man, cosmic consciousness, the standards of the natural universal,&mdash;all
+hint some phase of his genius. His survey of life and duty is from a point
+not included in any four walls, or in any school or convention. It is a
+survey from out the depths of being; the breath of worlds and systems is
+in these utterances. His treatment of sex, of comradeship, of death, of
+democracy, of religion, of art, of immortality, is in the spirit of the
+great out-of-doors of the universe; the point of view is cosmic rather
+than personal or philanthropic. What charity is this!&mdash;the charity of
+sunlight that spares nothing and turns away from nothing. What "heroic
+nudity"! like the nakedness of rocks and winter trees. What sexuality!
+like the lust of spring or the push of tides. What welcome to death, as
+only the night which proves the day!</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXVI</h4>
+
+<p>This orbic nature which so thrills and fills Whitman is not at all akin to
+that which we get in the so-called nature-poets of Wordsworth and his
+school,&mdash;the charm of privacy, of the sequestered, the cosy,&mdash;qualities
+that belong to the art of a domestic, home-loving race, and to lovers of
+solitude. Tennyson's poetry abounds in these qualities; so does
+Wordsworth's. There is less of them in Browning, and more of them in the
+younger poets. That communing with nature, those dear friendships with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+birds and flowers, that gentle wooing of the wild and sylvan, that flavor
+of the rural, the bucolic,&mdash;all these are important features in the
+current popular poetry, but they are not to any marked extent
+characteristic of Whitman. The sentiment of domesticity, love as a
+sentiment; the attraction of children, home and fireside; the attraction
+of books, art, travel; our pleasure in the choice, the refined, the
+artificial,&mdash;these are not the things you are to demand of Whitman. You do
+not demand them of Homer or Dante or the Biblical writers. We are to
+demand of him the major things, primary things; the lift of great
+emotions; the cosmic, the universal; the joy of health, of selfhood; the
+stimulus of the real, the modern, the American; always the large, the
+virile; always perfect acceptance and triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's free use of the speech of the common people is doubtless
+offensive to a fastidious literary taste. Such phrases as "I will be even
+with you," "what would it amount to," "give in," "not one jot less;"
+"young fellows," "old fellows," "stuck up," "every bit as much," "week in
+and week out," and a thousand others, would jar on the page of any other
+poet more than on his.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXVII</h4>
+
+<p>William Rossetti says his language has a certain ultimate quality. Another
+critic speaks of his absolute use of language. Colonel Ingersoll credits
+him with more supreme words than have been uttered by any other man of our
+time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The power to use words was in Whitman's eyes a divine power, and was
+bought with a price:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship, procreation, prudence, and nakedness,<br />
+After treading ground, and breasting river and lake,<br />
+After a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races, after knowledge, freedom, crimes,<br />
+After complete faith, after clarifying elevations and removing obstructions,<br />
+After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman, the divine power to speak words."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman's sense of composition and his rare artistic faculty of using
+language are seen, as John Addington Symonds says, in the "countless clear
+and perfect phrases" "which are hung, like golden medals of consummate
+workmanship and incised form, in rich clusters over every poem he
+produced. And, what he aimed at above all, these phrases are redolent of
+the very spirit of the emotions they suggest, communicate the breadth and
+largeness of the natural things they indicate, embody the essence of
+realities in living words which palpitate and burn forever."</p>
+
+<p>The great poet is always more or less the original, the abysmal man. He is
+face to face with universal laws and conditions. He speaks out of a
+greater exaltation of sentiment than the prose-writer. He takes liberties;
+he speaks for all men; he is a bird on "pinions free."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XXVIII</h4>
+
+<p>In saying or implying that Whitman's aim was not primarily literary or
+artistic, I am liable to be misunderstood; and when Whitman himself says,
+"No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
+performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward
+art or &aelig;stheticism," he exposes himself to the same misconception. It is
+the literary and poetic value of his verses alone that can save them.
+Their philosophy, their democracy, their vehement patriotism, their
+religious ardor, their spirit of comradeship, or what not, will not alone
+suffice. All depends upon the manner in which these things are presented
+to us. Do we get the reality, or words about the reality? No matter what
+the content of the verse, unless into the whole is breathed the breath of
+the true creative artist they will surely perish. Oblivion awaits every
+utterance not touched with the life of the spirit. Whitman was as
+essentially an artist as was Shakespeare or Dante; his work shows the same
+fusion of imagination, will, emotion, personality; it carries the same
+quality of real things,&mdash;not the same shaping, constructive power, but the
+same quickening, stimulating power, the same magic use of words. The
+artist in him is less conscious of itself, is less differentiated from the
+man, than in the other poets. He objected to having his work estimated for
+its literary value alone, but in so doing he used the word in a narrow
+sense.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>After all these ages of the assiduous cultivation of literature, there has
+grown up in men a kind of lust of the mere art of writing, just as, after
+so many generations of religious training, there has grown up a passion
+for religious forms and observances. "Mere literature" has come to be a
+current phrase in criticism, meaning, I suppose, that the production to
+which it is applied is notable only for good craftsmanship. In the same
+spirit one speaks of mere scholarship, or of a certain type of man as a
+mere gentleman. It was mere literature that Whitman was afraid of, the
+&aelig;sthetic disease, the passion for letters, for poetry, divorced from love
+of life and of things. None knew better than he that the ultimate value of
+any imaginative and emotional work, even of the Bible, is its literary
+value. Its spiritual and religious value is inseparably connected with its
+literary value.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass" is not bookish; it is always the voice of a man, and not
+of a scholar or conventional poet, that addresses us. We all imbue words
+more or less with meanings of our own; but, from the point of view I am
+now essaying, literature is the largest fact, and embraces all inspired
+utterances. The hymn-book seeks to embody or awaken religious emotion
+alone; would its religious value be less if its poetic value were more? I
+think not. The best of the Psalms of David, from the religious point of
+view, are the best from the literary point of view. What reaches and
+thrills the soul,&mdash;that is great art. What arouses the passions&mdash;mirth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+anger, indignation, pity&mdash;may or may not be true art. No one, for
+instance, can read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" without tears, laughter, anger; but
+no one, I fancy, could ever get from it that deep, tranquil pleasure and
+edification that the great imaginative works impart. Keble's poetry is
+more obviously religious than Wordsworth's or Arnold's, but how
+short-lived, because it is not embalmed in the true artistic spirit! In
+all the great poems, there is something as deep and calm as the light and
+the sky, and as common and universal. I find this something in Whitman. In
+saying, therefore, that his aim was ulterior to that of art, that he was
+not begotten by the literary spirit, I only mean that his aim was that of
+the largest art, and of the most vital and comprehensive literature. We
+should have heard the last of his "Leaves" long ago had they not possessed
+unmistakably the vitality of true literature, "incomparable things,
+incomparably well said," as Emerson remarked.</p>
+
+<p>A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary
+merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its
+literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words
+"literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital
+and imaginative use of language which is the characteristic of all true
+literature. The most effective way of saying a thing in the region of the
+sentiments and emotions,&mdash;that is the true literary way.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_LIFE" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_LIFE"></a>HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">I have</span> divided my subject into many chapters, and given to each a separate
+heading, yet I am aware that they are all but slight variations of a
+single theme,&mdash;viz., Whitman's reliance upon absolute nature. That there
+might be no mistake about it, and that his reader might at once be put in
+possession of his point of view, the poet declared at the outset of his
+career that at every hazard he should let nature speak.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Creeds and schools in abeyance<br />
+Retiring back awhile, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,<br />
+I harbor for good or bad,<br />
+I permit to speak at every hazard,<br />
+Nature without check, with original energy."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The hazard of letting nature speak will, of course, be great,&mdash;the hazard
+of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and
+inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely
+passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his
+criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former
+contingency&mdash;the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser
+public&mdash;has been astounding. He has been read in a narrow, literal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+bourgeois spirit. The personal pronoun, which he uses so freely, has been
+taken to stand for the private individual Walt Whitman, so that he has
+been looked upon as a compound of egotism and licentiousness. His
+character has been traduced, and his purpose in the "Leaves" entirely
+misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p>We see at a glance that his attitude towards nature, towards God, towards
+the body and the soul, reverses many of the old ascetic theological
+conceptions.</p>
+
+<p>All is good, all is as it should be; to abase the body is to abase the
+soul. Man is divine inside and out, and is no more divine about the head
+than about the loins. It is from this point of view that he has launched
+his work. He believed the time had come for an utterance out of radical,
+uncompromising human nature; let conventions and refinements stand back,
+let nature, let the soul, let the elemental forces speak; let the body,
+the passions, sex, be exalted; the stone rejected by the builders shall be
+the chief stone in the corner. Evil shall be shown to be a part of the
+good, and death shall be welcomed as joyously as life.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman says his poems will do just as much evil as good, and perhaps
+more. To many readers this confession of itself would be his condemnation.
+To others it would be an evidence of his candor and breadth of view. I
+suppose all great vital forces, whether embodied in a man or in a book,
+work evil as well as good. If they do not, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> only tickle the surface
+of things. Has not the Bible worked evil also? Some think more evil than
+good. The dews and the rains and the sunshine work evil.</p>
+
+<p>From Whitman's point of view, there is no good without evil; evil is an
+unripe kind of good. There is no light without darkness, no life without
+death, no growth without pain and struggle. Beware the emasculated good,
+the good by exclusion rather than by victory. "Leaves of Grass" will work
+evil on evil minds,&mdash;on narrow, unbalanced minds. It is not a guide, but
+an inspiration; not a remedy, but health and strength. Art does not preach
+directly, but indirectly; it is moral by its spirit, and the mood and
+temper it begets.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman, in celebrating manly pride, self-reliance, the deliciousness of
+sex; in glorifying the body, the natural passions and appetites, nativity;
+in identifying himself with criminals and low or lewd persons; in frankly
+imputing to himself all sins men are guilty of, runs the risk, of course,
+of being read in a spirit less generous and redemptive than his own.</p>
+
+<p>The charity of the poet may stimulate the license of the libertine; the
+optimism of the seer may confirm the evil-doer; the equality of the
+democrat may foster the insolence of the rowdy. This is our lookout and
+not the poet's. We take the same chances with him that we do with nature;
+we are to trim our sails to the breeze he brings; we are to sow wheat and
+not tares for his rains to water.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>Whitman's glorification of the body has led some critics to say that he is
+the poet of the body only. But it is just as true to say he is the poet of
+the soul only. He always seeks the spiritual through the material. He
+treats the body and the soul as one, and he treats all things as having
+reference to the soul.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"I will not make a poem, nor the least part, of a poem, but has reference to the soul,<br />
+Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one, nor any particle of one,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">but has reference to the soul."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The curious physiological strain which runs through the poems is to be
+considered in the light of this idea. He exalts the body because in doing
+so he exalts the soul.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results."</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The reader of Whitman must do his or her own moralizing; the poet is here
+not to deprecate or criticise, but to love and celebrate; he has no
+partialities; our notions of morality do not concern him; he exploits the
+average man just as he finds him; he <i>is</i> the average man for the time
+being and confesses to all his sins and shortcomings, and we will make of
+the result good or evil, according to our mental horizon. That his work is
+unmixed good is the last thing the poet would claim for it. He has not,
+after the easy fashion of the moralist, set the good here and the bad
+there; he has blended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> them as they are in nature and in life; our profit
+and discipline begin when we have found out whither he finally tends, or
+when we have mastered him and extracted the good he holds. If we expect he
+is going to preach an austere system of morality to us, or any system of
+morality, we are doomed to disappointment. Does Nature preach such a
+system? does Nature preach at all? neither will he. He presents you the
+elements of good and evil in himself in vital fusion and play; your part
+is to see how the totals are at last good.</p>
+
+<p>It is objected that Whitman is too persistent in declaring himself an
+animal, when the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he is an
+animal and the thing he is least likely to remember is that he is a spirit
+and a child of God. But Whitman insists with the same determination that
+he is a spirit and an heir of immortality,&mdash;not as one who has cheated the
+devil of his due, but as one who shares the privileges and felicities of
+all, and who finds the divine in the human. Indeed it is here that he
+sounds his most joyous and triumphant note. No such faith in spiritual
+results, no such conviction of the truth of immortality, no such
+determined recognition of the unseen world as the final reality is to be
+found in modern poetry.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, Whitman aimed to put his whole nature in a poem&mdash;the
+physical or physiological, the spiritual, the &aelig;sthetic and
+intellectual,&mdash;without giving any undue prominence to either. If he has
+not done so, if he has made the animal and sexual too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> pronounced, more so
+than nature will justify in the best proportioned man, then and then only
+is his artistic scheme vitiated and his work truly immoral.</p>
+
+<p>It may be true that the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he
+is an animal; what he is most likely to forget, is that the animal is just
+as sacred and important as any other part; indeed that it is the basis of
+all, and that a sane and healthful and powerful spirituality and
+intellectuality can only flow out of a sane and healthful animality.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,<br />
+And you must not be abased to the other."</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Furthermore, Whitman's main problem is to project into literature the new
+democratic man as he conceives him,&mdash;the man of the future, intensely
+American, but in the broadest sense human and cosmopolitan; he is to
+project him on a scale large enough for all uses and conditions, ignoring
+the feudal and aristocratic types which have for the most part dominated
+literature, and matching them with a type more copious in friendship,
+charity, sympathy, religion, candor, and of equal egoism and power.</p>
+
+<p>It is to exploit and enforce and illustrate this type or character that
+"Leaves of Grass" is written. The poems are the drama of this new
+democratic man. This type Whitman finds in himself. He does not have to
+create it as Shakespeare did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> Hamlet or Lear; he has only to discover it
+in himself. He is it and he gives it free utterance. His work is,
+therefore, as he says, the poem of himself,&mdash;himself written
+large,&mdash;written as upon the face of the continent, written in the types
+and events he finds on all sides. He sees himself in all men, the bad as
+well as the good, and he sees all men in himself. All the stupendous
+claims he makes for himself he makes for others. His egotism is vicarious
+and embraces the world. It is not the private individual Walt Whitman that
+makes these stupendous claims for himself; it is Walt Whitman as the
+spokesman of the genius of American democracy. He is not to discuss a
+question. He is to outline a character, he is to incarnate a principle.
+The essayist or philosopher may discuss the value of any given idea,&mdash;may
+talk about it; the creative artist alone can give us the thing itself, the
+concrete flesh-and-blood reality. Whitman is not only to make this survey,
+to launch this criticism; he is to embody it in a living human
+personality, and enable us to see the world of man and morals through its
+eyes. What with the scientist, the philosopher, is thought, must be
+emotion and passion with him.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman promises that we shall share with him "two greatnesses, and a
+third one rising inclusive and more resplendent,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The greatness of Love and Democracy and the greatness of Religion"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>not merely as ideas, but as living impulses. He is to show the spirit of
+absolute, impartial nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> incarnated in a human being, imbued with
+love, democracy, and religion, moving amid the scenes and events of the
+New World, sounding all the joys and abandonments of life, and re-reading
+the oracles from the American point of view. And the utterance launched
+forth is to be imbued with poetic passion.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman always aims at a complete human synthesis, and leaves his reader
+to make of it what he can. It is not for the poet to qualify and explain.
+He seeks to reproduce his whole nature in a book,&mdash;reproduce it with all
+its contradictions and carnalities, the good and the bad, the coarse and
+the fine, the body and the soul,&mdash;to give free swing to himself, trusting
+to natural checks and compensations to ensure a good result at last, but
+not at all disturbed if you find parts of it bad as in creation itself.</p>
+
+<p>His method being that of the poet, and not that of the moralist or
+preacher, how shall he sort and sift, culling this virtue and that, giving
+parts and fragments instead of the entire man? He must give all, not
+abstractly, but concretely, synthetically.</p>
+
+<p>To a common prostitute Whitman says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you;<br />
+Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">glisten and rustle for you."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>We are housed in social usages and laws, we are sheltered and warmed and
+comforted by conventions and institutions and numberless traditions;
+their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> value no one disputes. But for purposes of his own Whitman ignores
+them all; he lets in upon us the free and maybe raw air of the great
+out-of-doors of absolute nature; his standards are not found inside of any
+four walls; he contemplates life, and would quicken it in its
+fundamentals; his survey is from a plane whence our arts and refinements
+and petty distinctions disappear. He sees the evil of the world no less
+necessary than the good; he sees death as a part of life itself; he sees
+the body and the soul as one; he sees the spiritual always issuing from
+the material; he sees not one result at last lamentable in the universe.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Unless, as I have already said, we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself,
+we can make little of him; unless we place ourselves at his absolute point
+of view, his work is an offense and without meaning. The only question is,
+Has he a law, has he a steady and rational point of view, is his work a
+consistent and well-organized whole? Ask yourself, What is the point of
+view of absolute, uncompromising science? It is that creation is all good
+and sound; things are as they should be or must be; there are no
+conceivable failures; there is no evil in the final analysis, or, if there
+is, it is necessary, and plays its part also; there is no more beginning
+nor ending than there is now, no more heaven or hell than we find or make
+here:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and rectified?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>It has been urged that Whitman violates his own canon of the excellence of
+nature. But what he violates is more a secondary or acquired nature. He
+violates our social conventions and instincts, he exposes what we cover
+up; but the spirit of his undertaking demanded this of him. Remember that
+at all hazards he is to let nature&mdash;absolute nature&mdash;speak; that he is to
+be the poet of the body as well as of the soul, and that no part of the
+body of a man or woman, "hearty and clean," is vile, and that "none shall
+be less familiar than the rest."</p>
+
+<p>His glory is, that he never flinched or hesitated in following his
+principle to its logical conclusions,&mdash;"my commission obeying, to question
+it never daring."</p>
+
+<p>It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones for the sins of us all,&mdash;the sins
+of perverting, denying, abusing the most sacred and important organs and
+functions of our bodies.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>In Whitman we find the most complete identification of the man with the
+subject. He always is, or becomes, the thing he portrays. Not merely does
+he portray America,&mdash;he speaks out of the American spirit, the spirit that
+has broken irrevocably with the past and turns joyously to the future; he
+does not praise equality, he illustrates it; he puts himself down beside
+the lowest and most despised person, and calls him brother.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>"You felons on trial in courts,<br />
+You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and handcuff'd with iron,<br />
+Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?<br />
+Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with iron, or my ankles with iron?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>He does not give a little charity, he gives himself as freely as the
+clouds give rain, or the sun gives light; he does not write a treatise on
+democracy, he applies the democratic spirit to everything in heaven and on
+earth, and redistributes the prizes from its points of view; he does not,
+except very briefly, sing the praises of science, but he launches his
+poems always from the scientific view of the world, in contradistinction
+to the old theological and mythical point of view. It is always the
+example, it is always the thing itself, he gives us. Few precepts, no
+sermon, no reproof. Does he praise candor? No, he is candor; he confesses
+to everything; he shows us the inmost working of his mind. We know him
+better than we know our nearest friends. Does he exalt the pride of man in
+himself, or egoism? Again he illustrates it: he is egoism; he makes the
+whole universe revolve around himself; he never for a moment goes out of
+himself; he does not seek a theme; he is the theme. His egocentric method
+of treatment is what characterizes him as an artist. He elaborates no
+theme, he builds nothing, he carves nothing, but makes himself a source
+and centre of pulsing, vital energy. Wave after wave radiates from him.
+What we see and get always is Walt Whitman. Our attention is never fixed
+upon the writer, but always upon the man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>Of course this method of Whitman of becoming one with his subject, and
+speaking out of it, is always the method of the creative artist. It is
+this that distinguishes the artist from the mere thinker or prose-writer.
+The latter tells us about a thing; the former gives us the thing, or the
+spirit of the thing itself.</p>
+
+<p>If Whitman had put his criticism of our time and civilization in an
+argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As
+an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and
+tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we
+tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a
+personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a
+theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons and a challenge,
+and will not be easily put aside.</p>
+
+<p>The great philosophical poets, like Lucretius, try to solve the riddles.
+Whitman's aim is only to thrust the riddles before you, to give you a new
+sense of them, and start the game afresh. He knows what a complex,
+contradictory thing the universe is, and that the most any poet can do is
+to break the old firmament up into new forms. To put his arms around it?
+No. Put your arms around your fellow-man, and then you have encompassed it
+as nearly as mortal can do.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's attraction toward the common people was real. There is one thing
+that makes every-day humanity, the great, toiling, unlettered masses,
+forever welcome to men who unite great imagination with broad
+sympathies,&mdash;they give a sense of reality; they refresh, as nature always
+refreshes. There is a tang and a sting to the native, the spontaneous,
+that the cultivated rarely has. The farmer, the mechanic, the sailor, the
+soldier, savor of the primal and the hardy. In painting his own portrait,
+Whitman makes prominent the coarser, unrefined traits, because here the
+colors are fast,&mdash;here is the basis of all. The careful student of Whitman
+will surely come to see how all the elements of his picture&mdash;his pride,
+his candor, his democracy, his sensuality, his coarseness,&mdash;finally fit
+together, and correct and offset each other and make a perfect unity.</p>
+
+<p>No poet is so easily caricatured and turned into ridicule as Whitman. He
+is deficient in humor, and hence, like the Biblical writers, is sometimes
+on the verge of the grotesque without knowing it. The sense of the
+ridiculous has been enormously stimulated and developed in the modern
+mind, and&mdash;what is to be regretted&mdash;it has been mostly at the expense of
+the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this
+country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push
+and topple it over. The fear which all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> Americans have before their eyes,
+and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of
+appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked
+individuality of manners or dress, lest we expose ourselves to the shafts
+of ridicule. Emerson said he had heard with admiring submission the remark
+of a lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gave
+a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow;
+and what ranks before religion with us as a people is being in the mode,
+and writing our verse and cutting our coats in the approved style. Pride
+of the eye, a keen sense of the proprieties and the conventionalities, and
+a morbid feeling for the ridiculous, would have been death to Whitman's
+undertaking. He would have faltered, or betrayed self-consciousness. He
+certainly never could have spoken with that elemental aplomb and
+indifference which is so marked a feature of his work. Any hesitation, any
+knuckling, would have been his ruin. We should have seen he was not
+entirely serious, and should have laughed at him. We laugh now only for a
+moment; the spell of his earnestness and power is soon upon us.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>Thoreau considered Whitman's "Leaves" worth all the sermons in the country
+for preaching; and yet few poets have assumed so little the function of
+the preacher. His great cure-all is love; he gives himself instead of a
+sermon. His faith in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> the remedial power of affection, comradeship, is
+truly Christ-like. Lover of sinners is also his designation. The reproof
+is always indirect or implied. He brings to bear character rather than
+precept. He helps you as health, as nature, as fresh air, pure water help.
+He says to you:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The mockeries are not you;<br />
+Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;<br />
+I pursue you where none else has pursued you:<br />
+Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine,&mdash;if these conceal you from others,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me.</span><br />
+The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion,&mdash;if these balk others, they do not balk me.<br />
+The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death,&mdash;all these I part aside.<br />
+I track through your windings and turnings,&mdash;I come upon you where you thought eye should never come upon you."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman said, in the now famous preface of 1855, that "the greatest poet
+does not moralize, or make applications of morals,&mdash;he knows the soul."
+There is no preaching or reproof in the "Leaves."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;<br />
+I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;<br />
+I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;<br />
+I see the wife misused by her husband; I see the treacherous seducer of the young woman;<br />
+I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid,&mdash;I see these sights on the earth,<br />
+I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and prisoners,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>I observe a famine at sea,&mdash;I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest,<br />
+I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">and the like;</span><br />
+All these&mdash;all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,<br />
+See, hear, and am silent."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Only once does he shame and rebuke the offender; then he holds up to him
+"a hand-mirror."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (who is it? is it you?)<br />
+Outside fair costume,&mdash;within, ashes and filth.<br />
+No more a flashing eye,&mdash;no more a sonorous voice or springy step,<br />
+Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,<br />
+A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,<br />
+Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,<br />
+Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,<br />
+Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,<br />
+Words babble, hearing and touch callous,<br />
+No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;<br />
+Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,<br />
+Such a result so soon&mdash;and from such a beginning!"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The poet's way is so different from the moralist's way! The poet confesses
+all, loves all,&mdash;has no preferences. He is moral only in his results. We
+ask ourselves, Does he breathe the air of health? Can he stand the test of
+nature? Is he tonic and inspiring? That he shocks us is nothing. The first
+touch of the sea is a shock. Does he toughen us, does he help make
+arterial blood?</p>
+
+<p>All that men do and are guilty of attracts him. Their vices and
+excesses,&mdash;he would make these his own also. He is jealous lest he be
+thought better than other men,&mdash;lest he seem to stand apart from even
+criminals and offenders. When the passion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> for human brotherhood is upon
+him, he is balked by nothing; he goes down into the social mire to find
+his lovers and equals. In the pride of our morality and civic well-being,
+this phase of his work shocks us; but there are moods when the soul says
+it is good, and we rejoice in the strong man that can do it.</p>
+
+<p>The restrictions, denials, and safeguards put upon us by the social order,
+and the dictates of worldly prudence, fall only before a still more fervid
+humanism, or a still more vehement love.</p>
+
+<p>The vital question is, Where does he leave us? On firmer ground, or in the
+mire? Depleted and enervated, or full and joyous? In the gloom of
+pessimism, or in the sunlight of its opposite?&mdash;-</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"<i>So long!</i><br />
+I announce a man or woman coming&mdash;perhaps you are the one;<br />
+I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed.<br />
+<br />
+"<i>So long!</i><br />
+I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,<br />
+And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.<br />
+<br />
+"I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded;<br />
+I announce a race of splendid and savage old men."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>There is no contradiction here. The poet sounds all the experiences of
+life, and he gives out the true note at last.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"No specification is necessary,&mdash;all that a male or female does, that is vigorous, benevolent, clean,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">is so much profit to him or her, in the unshakable order of the universe, and through the</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">whole scope of it forever."</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Nothing but the most uncompromising religious purpose can justify certain
+things in the "Leaves;" nothing but the most buoyant and pervasive
+spirituality can justify its overwhelming materiality; nothing but the
+most creative imagination can offset its tremendous realism; nothing but
+the note of universal brotherhood can atone for its vehement Americanism;
+nothing but the primal spirit of poesy itself can make amends for this
+open flouting of the routine poetic, and this endless procession before us
+of the common and the familiar.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman loved the word "unrefined." It was one of the words he would have
+us apply to himself. He was unrefined, as the air, the soil, the water,
+and all sweet natural things are unrefined (fine but not <i>re</i>fined). He
+applies the word to himself two or three times in the course of his poems.
+He loved the words sun-tan, air-sweetness, brawn, etc. He speaks of his
+"savage song," not to call forth the bards of the past, he says, but to
+invoke the bards of the future.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage songs?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The thought that his poems might help contribute to the production of a
+"race of splendid and savage old men" was dear to him. He feared the
+depleting and emasculating effects of our culture and conventions. The
+decay of maternity and pater<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>nity in this country, the falling off of the
+native populations, were facts full of evil omen. His ideal of manly or
+womanly character is rich in all the purely human qualities and
+attributes; rich in sex, in sympathy, in temperament; physiologically
+sound and clean, as well as mentally and morally so.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Fear grace, fear delicatesse;<br />
+Fear the mellow-sweet, the sucking of honey-juice:<br />
+Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!<br />
+Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>He was himself the savage old man he invoked. It was no part of his plan
+to preach, in refined and euphonious terms, hygiene and the value of the
+natural man, but to project into literature the thing itself, to exploit a
+character coarse as well as fine, and to imbue his poems with a
+physiological quality as well as a psychological and intellectual.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I will scatter the new roughness and gladness among them."</p>
+
+<p>He says to the pale, impotent victim of over-refinement, with intentional rudeness,</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you."</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>One of the key-words to Whitman both as a man and a poet is the word
+"composite." He was probably the most composite man this century has
+produced, and in this respect at least is representative of the American
+of the future, who must be the result of the blending of more diverse
+racial elements than any man of history. He seems to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> had an
+intuition of his composite character when he said in his first poem:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I am large,&mdash;I contain multitudes."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," in reluctantly
+conceding at the time of the poet's death something to the British
+admiration of him, said he was "rich in temperament." The phrase is well
+chosen. An English expert on the subject of temperament, who visited
+Whitman some years ago, said he had all four temperaments, the sanguine,
+the nervous, the melancholic, and the lymphatic, while most persons have
+but two temperaments, and rarely three.</p>
+
+<p>It was probably the composite character of Whitman that caused him to
+attract such diverse and opposite types of men,&mdash;scholars and workingmen,
+lawyers, doctors, scientists, and men of the world,&mdash;and that made him
+personally such a puzzle to most people,&mdash;so impossible to classify. On
+the street the promenaders would turn and look after him, and I have often
+heard them ask each other, "What man was that?" He has often been taken
+for a doctor, and during his services in the army hospitals various myths
+were floating about concerning him. Now he was a benevolent Catholic
+priest,&mdash;then some unknown army general, or retired sea captain; at one
+time he was reputed to be one of the owners of the Cunard line of
+steamers. To be taken for a Californian was common. One recalls the
+composite character of the poet whom he outlines in his poems (see
+quotation, <a href="#Page_159">page 159</a>).</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>The book is as composite as the man. It is all things to all men; it lends
+itself to a multitude of interpretations. Every earnest reader of it will
+find some clew or suggestion by the aid of which he fancies he can unlock
+the whole book, but in the end he will be pretty sure to discover that one
+key is not enough. To one critic, his book is the "hoarse song of a man,"
+its manly and masculine element attracts him; to another he is the poet of
+joy, to another the poet of health, to still another he is the bard of
+personality; others read him as the poet of nature, or the poet of
+democracy. His French critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, calls him an apostle,&mdash;the
+apostle of the idea that man is an indivisible fragment of the universal
+Divinity.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>What has a poet of Whitman's aims to do with decency or indecency, with
+modesty or immodesty? These are social or conventional virtues; he
+represents mainly primary qualities and forces. Does life, does death,
+does nature, respect our proprieties, our conventional veils and
+illusions? Neither will he. He will strip them all away. He will act and
+speak as if all things in the universe were equally sacred and divine; as
+if all men were really his brothers, all women his sisters; as if all
+parts of the human body were equally beautiful and wonderful; as if
+fatherhood and motherhood, birth and begetting, were sacred acts. Of
+course it is easy to see that this course will speedily bring him in
+collision<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> with the guardians of taste and social morality. But what of
+that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I
+behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question
+is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or
+betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and
+thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than
+the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he assumes to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is easier than to convict Walt Whitman of what is called
+indecency; he laughs indifferent when you have done so. It is not your
+gods that he serves. He says he would be as indifferent of observation as
+the trees or rocks. And it is here that we must look for his
+justification, upon ethical rather than upon the grounds of conventional
+art. He has taken our sins upon himself. He has applied to the morbid
+sex-consciousness, that has eaten so deeply into our social system, the
+heroic treatment; he has fairly turned it naked into the street. He has
+not merely in words denied the inherent vileness of sex; he has denied it
+in very deed. We should not have taken offense had he confined himself to
+words,&mdash;had he said sex is pure, the body is as clean about the loins as
+about the head; but being an artist, a creator, and not a mere thinker or
+preacher, he was compelled to act,&mdash;to do the thing instead of saying it.</p>
+
+<p>The same in other matters. Being an artist, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> could not merely say all
+men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and
+sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must
+make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of
+the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the
+concrete and not with the abstract,&mdash;fraternity and equality as a reality,
+not as a sentiment.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>In the phase in which we are now considering him, Whitman appears as the
+Adamic man re-born here in the nineteenth century, or with science and the
+modern added, and fully and fearlessly embodying himself in a poem. It is
+stronger than we can stand, but it is good for us, and one of these days,
+or one of these centuries, we shall be able to stand it and enjoy it.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"To the garden the world anew ascending,<br />
+Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,<br />
+The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,<br />
+Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber,<br />
+The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, having brought me again,<br />
+Amorous, mature&mdash;all beautiful to me&mdash;all wondrous,<br />
+My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons most wondrous;<br />
+Existing, I peer and penetrate still,<br />
+Content with the present&mdash;content with the past,<br />
+By my side, or back of me, Eve following,<br />
+Or in front, and I following her just the same."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The critics perpetually misread Whitman because they fail to see this
+essentially composite and dra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>matic character of his work,&mdash;that it is not
+the song of Walt Whitman the private individual, but of Walt Whitman as
+representative of, and speaking for, all types and conditions of men; in
+fact, that it is the drama of a new democratic personality, a character
+outlined on a larger, more copious, more vehement scale than has yet
+appeared in the world. The germs of this character he would sow broadcast
+over the land.</p>
+
+<p>In this drama of personality the poet always identifies himself with the
+scene, incident, experience, or person he delineates, or for whom he
+speaks. He says to the New Englander, or to the man of the South and the
+West, "I depict you as myself." In the same way he depicts offenders,
+roughs, criminals, and low and despised persons as himself; he lays claim
+to every sin of omission and commission men are guilty of, because, he
+says, "the germs are in all men." Men dare not tell their faults. He will
+make them all his own, and then tell them; there shall be full confession
+for once.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;<br />
+If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">and outlaw'd deeds?"</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It will not do to read this poet, or any great poet, in a narrow and
+exacting spirit. As Whitman himself says: "The messages of great poems to
+each man and woman are: Come to us on equal terms, only then can you
+understand us."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>In the much misunderstood group of poems called "Children of Adam" the
+poet speaks for the male generative principle, and all the excesses and
+abuses that grow out of it he unblushingly imputes to himself. What men
+have done and still do, while under the intoxication of the sexual
+passion, he does, he makes it all his own experience.</p>
+
+<p>That we have here a revelation of his own personal taste and experiences
+may or may not be the case, but we have no more right to assume it than we
+have to assume that all other poets speak from experience when they use
+the first person singular. When John Brown mounted the scaffold in
+Virginia, in 1860, the poet says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,<br />
+I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">you mounted the scaffold,"&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>very near him he stood in spirit; very near him he stood in the person of
+others, but not in his own proper person.</p>
+
+<p>If we take this poet literally, we shall believe he has been in California
+and Oregon; that he has set foot in every city on the continent; that he
+grew up in Virginia; that every Southern State has been by turns his home;
+that he has been a soldier, a sailor, a miner; that he has lived in
+Dakota's woods, his "diet meat, his drink from the spring;" that he has
+lived on the plains with hunters and ranchmen, etc. He lays claim to all
+these characters, all these experiences, because what others do, what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+others assume, or suffer, or enjoy, that he appropriates to himself.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,<br />
+Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,<br />
+I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of my skin,<br />
+I fall on the weeds and stones,<br />
+The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,<br />
+Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whipstocks.<br />
+<br />
+"Agonies are one of my changes of garments,<br />
+I do not ask the wounded person how he feels&mdash;I myself become the wounded person,<br />
+My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.<br />
+<br />
+"I become any presence or truth of humanity here,<br />
+See myself in prison shaped like another man,<br />
+And feel the dull unintermitted pain.<br />
+<br />
+"For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,<br />
+It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.<br />
+Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him and walk by his side."</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>It is charged against Whitman that he does not celebrate love at all, and
+very justly. He had no purpose to celebrate the sentiment of love.
+Literature is vastly overloaded with this element already. He celebrates
+fatherhood and motherhood, and the need of well-begotten, physiologically
+well-begotten, offspring. Of that veiled prurient suggestion which readers
+so delight in&mdash;of "bosoms mutinously fair," and "the soul-lingering loops
+of perfumed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> hair," as one of our latest poets puts it&mdash;there is no hint
+in his volume. He would have fallen from grace the moment he had attempted
+such a thing. Any trifling or dalliance on his part would have been his
+ruin. Love as a sentiment has fairly run riot in literature. From
+Whitman's point of view, it would have been positively immoral for him
+either to have vied with the lascivious poets in painting it as the
+forbidden, or with the sentimental poets in depicting it as a charm. Woman
+with him is always the mate and equal of the man, never his plaything.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman is seldom or never the poet of a sentiment, at least of the
+domestic and social sentiments. His is more the voice of the eternal,
+abysmal man.</p>
+
+<p>The home, the fireside, the domestic allurements, are not in him; love, as
+we find it in other poets, is not in him; the idyllic, except in touches
+here and there, is not in him; the choice, the finished, the perfumed, the
+romantic, the charm of art and the delight of form, are not to be looked
+for in his pages. The cosmic takes the place of the idyllic; the begetter,
+the Adamic man, takes the place of the lover; patriotism takes the place
+of family affection; charity takes the place of piety; love of kind is
+more than love of neighbor; the poet and the artist are swallowed up in
+the seer and the prophet.</p>
+
+<p>The poet evidently aimed to put in his sex poems a rank and healthful
+animality, and to make them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> as frank as the shedding of pollen by the
+trees, strong even to the point of offense. He could not make it pleasing,
+a sweet morsel to be rolled under the tongue; that would have been levity
+and sin, as in Byron and the other poets. It must be direct and rank,
+healthfully so. The courage that did it, and showed no wavering or
+self-consciousness, was more than human. Man is a begetter. How shall a
+poet in our day and land treat this fact? With levity and by throwing over
+it the lure of the forbidden, the attraction of the erotic? That is one
+way, the way of nearly all the poets of the past. But that is not
+Whitman's way. He would sooner be bestial than Byronic, he would sooner
+shock by his frankness than inflame by his suggestion. And this in the
+interest of health and longevity, not in the interest of a prurient and
+effeminate "art." In these poems Whitman for a moment emphasizes sex, the
+need of sex, and the power of sex. "All were lacking if sex were lacking."
+He says to men and women, Here is where you live after all, here is the
+seat of empire. You are at the top of your condition when you are fullest
+and sanest there. Fearful consequences follow any corrupting or abusing or
+perverting of sex. The poet stands in the garden of the world naked and
+not ashamed. It is a great comfort that he could do it in this age of
+hectic lust and Swinburnian impotence,&mdash;that he could do it and not be
+ridiculous. To have done it without offense would have been proof that he
+had failed utterly. Let us be shocked; it is a wholesome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> shock, like the
+douse of the sea, or the buffet of the wind. We shall be all the better
+for it by and by.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>The lover of Whitman comes inevitably to associate him with character and
+personal qualities. I sometimes meet women whom I say are of the Whitman
+type&mdash;the kind of woman he invoked and predicted. They bear children, and
+are not ashamed; motherhood is their pride and their joy: they are
+cheerful, tolerant, friendly, think no evil, meet high and low on equal
+terms; they walk, row, climb mountains; they reach forth into the actual
+world of questions and events, open-minded, sympathetic, frank, natural,
+good-natured; the mates and companions of their husbands, keeping pace
+with them in all matters; home-makers, but larger than home, considerate,
+forgiving, unceremonious,&mdash;in short, the large, fresh, wholesome open-air
+natures whose ideal so completely possessed Walt Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>A British critic wisely says the gift of Whitman to us is the gift of life
+rather than of literature, but it is the gift of life through literature.
+Indeed, Whitman means a life as much as Christianity means a life. He
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Writing and talk do not prove me."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing but the test of reality finally proves him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The proof of the poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country has absorbed him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>The proof of Whitman shall be deferred till he has borne fruit in actual,
+concrete life.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that merely intellectual and artistic tests did not settle matters
+in his case, or that we would not reach his final value by making a
+dead-set at him through the purely &aelig;sthetic faculties. Is he animating to
+life itself? Can we absorb and assimilate him? Does he nourish the manly
+and heroic virtues? Does he make us more religious, more tolerant, more
+charitable, more candid, more self-reliant? If not, he fails of his chief
+end. It is doubtful if the purely scholarly and literary poets, like
+Milton, say, or like our own Poe, are ever absorbed in the sense above
+implied; while there is little doubt that poets like Homer, like
+Shakespeare, are absorbed and modify a people's manners and ideals. Only
+that which we love affects our lives. Our admiration for art and
+literature as such is something entirely outside the sources of character
+and power of action.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman identifies himself with our lives. We associate him with reality,
+with days, scenes, persons, events. The youth who reads Poe or Lowell
+wants to be a scholar, a wit, a poet, a writer; the youth who reads
+Whitman wants to be a man, and to get at the meaning and value of life.
+Our author's bent towards real things, real men and women, and his power
+to feed and foster personality, are unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>Life, reality, alone proves him; a saner and more robust fatherhood and
+motherhood, more practical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> democracy, more charity, more love, more
+comradeship, more social equality, more robust ideals of womanly and manly
+character, prove him. When we are more tolerant and patient and
+long-suffering, when the strain of our worldly, commercial spirit relaxes,
+then is he justified. Whitman means a letting-up of the strain all along
+the line,&mdash;less hurry, less greed, less rivalry, more leisure, more
+charity, more fraternalism and altruism, more religion, less formality and
+convention.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"When America does what was promised,<br />
+When each part is peopled with free people,<br />
+When there is no city on earth to lead my city, the city of young men, the Mannahatta city&mdash;but when the Mannahatta leads all the cities of the earth,<br />
+When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,<br />
+When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,<br />
+When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,<br />
+When fathers, firm, unconstrained, open-eyed&mdash;when breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,<br />
+Then to me ripeness and conclusion."</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>After all I think it matters little whether we call him poet or not. Grant
+that he is not a poet in the usual or technical sense, but poet-prophet,
+or poet-seer, or all combined. He is a poet plus something else. It is
+when he is judged less than poet, or no poet at all, that we feel
+injustice is done him. Grant that his work is not art, that it does not
+give off the perfume, the atmosphere of the highly wrought artistic works
+like those of Tennyson, but of something quite different.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>We have all been slow to see that his cherished ends were religious rather
+than literary; that, over and above all else, he was a great religious
+teacher and prophet. Had he been strictly a literary poet, like Lowell, or
+Longfellow, or Tennyson,&mdash;that is, a writer working for purely artistic
+effects,&mdash;we should be compelled to judge him quite differently.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass" is a gospel&mdash;glad tidings of great joy to those who are
+prepared to receive it. Its final value lies in its direct, intense,
+personal appeal; in what it did for Symonds, who said it made a man of
+him; in what it did for Stevenson, who said it dispelled a thousand
+illusions; in what it did for Mrs. Gilchrist, who said it enabled her to
+find her own soul; in what it does for all earnest readers of it in
+blending with the inmost current of their lives. Whitman is the life-giver
+of our time. How shall a poet give us life but by making us share his
+larger measure of life, his larger hope, his larger love, his larger
+charity, his saner and wider outlook? What are the three great life-giving
+principles? Can we name them better than St. Paul named them eighteen
+hundred years ago,&mdash;faith, hope, charity? And these are the cornerstones
+of Whitman's work,&mdash;a faith so broad and fervent that it accepts death as
+joyously as life, and sees all things at last issue in spiritual results;
+a hope that sees the golden age ahead of us, not behind us; and a charity
+that balks at nothing, that makes him identify himself with offenders and
+outlaws; a charity as great as his who said to the thief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> on the cross,
+"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."</p>
+
+<p>To cry up faith, hope, and charity is not to make men partakers of them;
+but to exemplify them in a survey of the whole problem of life, to make
+them vital as hearing, or eyesight in a work of the imagination, to show
+them as motives and impulses controlling all the rest, is to beget and
+foster them in the mind of the beholder.</p>
+
+<p>He is more and he is less than the best of the other poets. The popular,
+the conventional poets are mainly occupied with the artistic side of
+things,&mdash;with that which refines, solaces, beautifies. Whitman is mainly
+occupied with the cosmic and universal side of things, and the human and
+spiritual values that may be extracted from them. His poetry is not the
+result of the same kind of selection and partiality as that we are more
+familiar with.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, while the message of Tennyson and his kind is the message of
+beauty, the message of Whitman is, in a much fuller sense, the message of
+life. He speaks the word of faith and power. This is his distinction; he
+is the life-giver. Such a man comes that we may have life, and have it
+more abundantly.</p>
+
+<p>The message of beauty,&mdash;who would undervalue it? The least poet and
+poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples
+and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of
+life, there is danger that we shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> not know it when we hear it. It is a
+harsher and more heroic strain than the other. It calls no man to his
+ease, or to be lulled and soothed. It is a summons and a challenge. It
+lays rude, strong hands upon you. It filters and fibres your blood. It is
+more of the frost, the rains, the winds, than of cushions or parlors.</p>
+
+<p>The call of life is a call to battle always. We are stronger by the
+strength of every obstacle or enemy overcome.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Listen! I will be honest with you,<br />
+I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,<br />
+These are the days that must happen to you:<br />
+<br />
+"You shall not heap up what is called riches,<br />
+You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;<br />
+You but arrive at the city to which you were destined&mdash;you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">before you are called by an irresistible call to depart.</span><br />
+You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you;<br />
+What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,<br />
+You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands toward you.<br />
+<br />
+"Allons! After the <span class="smcap">Great Companions</span>! and to belong to them!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman always avails himself of the poet's privilege and magnifies
+himself. He magnifies others in the same ratio, he magnifies all things.
+"Magnifying and applying come I," he says, "outbidding at the start the
+old cautious hucksters." Indeed, the character which speaks throughout
+"Leaves of Grass" is raised to the highest degree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> of personal exaltation.
+To it nothing is trivial, nothing is mean; all is good, all is divine. The
+usual distinctions disappear, burned up, the poet says, for religion's
+sake. All the human attributes are heightened and enlarged; sympathy as
+wide as the world; love that balks at nothing; charity as embracing as the
+sky; egotism like the force of gravity; religious fervor that consumes the
+coarsest facts like stubble; spirituality that finds God everywhere every
+hour of the day; faith that welcomes death as cheerfully as life;
+comradeship that would weld the nation into a family of brothers;
+sexuality that makes prudes shudder; poetic enthusiasm that scornfully
+dispenses with all the usual adventitious aids; and in general a
+largeness, coarseness, and vehemence that are quite appalling to the
+general reader. Lovers of poetry will of necessity be very slow in
+adjusting their notions to the standards of "Leaves of Grass." It is a
+survey of life and of the world from the cosmic rather than from the
+conventional standpoint. It carries the standards of the natural-universal
+into all fields.</p>
+
+<p>Some men have accepted poverty and privation with such contentment and
+composure as to make us almost envious of their lot; and Whitman accepts
+the coarser, commoner human elements which he finds in himself, and which
+most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception
+of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes.
+If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference
+for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an element of
+weakness.</p>
+
+<p>His precept and his illustration, carried out in life, would fill the land
+with strong, native, original types of men and women animated by the most
+vehement comradeship, selfism and otherism going hand in hand.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_CULTURE" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_CULTURE"></a>HIS RELATION TO CULTURE</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">"Leaves of Grass"</span> is not the poetry of culture, but it is to be said in
+the same breath that it is not such a work as an uncultured man produces,
+or is capable of producing.</p>
+
+<p>The uncultured man does not think Whitman's thoughts, or propose Whitman's
+problems to himself, or understand or appreciate them at all. The "Leaves"
+are perhaps of supreme interest only to men of deepest culture, because
+they contain in such ample measure that without which all culture is mere
+varnish or veneer. They are indirectly a tremendous criticism of American
+life and civilization, and they imply that breadth of view and that
+liberation of spirit&mdash;that complete disillusioning&mdash;which is the best
+result of culture, and which all great souls have reached, no matter who
+or what their schoolmasters may have been.</p>
+
+<p>Our reading public probably does not and cannot see itself in Whitman at
+all. He must be a great shock to its sense of the genteel and the
+respectable. Nor can the working people and the unlettered, though they
+were drawn to Whitman the man, be expected to respond to any considerable
+extent to Whitman the poet. His standpoint can be reached<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> only after
+passing through many things and freeing one's self from many illusions. He
+is more representative of the time-spirit out of which America grew, and
+which is now shaping the destiny of the race upon this continent. He
+strikes under and through our whole civilization.</p>
+
+<p>He despised our social gods, he distrusted our book-culture, he was
+alarmed at the tendency to the depletion and attenuation of the national
+type, and he aimed to sow broadcast the germs of more manly ideals. His
+purpose was to launch his criticism from the basic facts of human life,
+psychic and physiologic; to inject into the veins of our an&aelig;mic literature
+the reddest, healthiest kind of blood; and in doing so he has given free
+swing to the primary human traits and affections and to sexuality, and has
+charged his pages with the spirit of real things, real life.</p>
+
+<p>We have been so long used to verse which is the outcome of the literary
+impulse alone, which is written at so many removes from the primary human
+qualities, produced from the extreme verge of culture and artificial
+refinement, which is so innocent of the raciness and healthful coarseness
+of nature, that poetry which has these qualities, which implies the body
+as well as the mind, which is the direct outgrowth of a radical human
+personality, and which make demands like those made by real things, is
+either an offense to us or is misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman says his book is not a good lesson, but it takes down the bars to
+a good lesson, and that to another, and that to another still. To take
+down bars rather than to put them up is always Whitman's aim; to make his
+reader free of the universe, to turn him forth into the fresh and
+inexhaustible pastures of time, space, eternity, and with a smart slap
+upon his back with the halter as a spur and send-off, is about what he
+would do. His message, first and last, is "give play to yourself;" "let
+yourself go;"&mdash;happiness is in the quest of happiness; power comes to him
+who power uses.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Long enough have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore;<br />
+Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,<br />
+To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>To hold Whitman up to ridicule, and to convict him of grossness and
+tediousness, is easy enough; first, because he is so out of relation to
+the modes and taste of his times, and, secondly, because he has somewhat
+of the uncouthness and coarseness of large bodies. Then his seriousness
+and simplicity, like that of Biblical and Oriental writers,&mdash;a kind of
+childish inaptness and homeliness,&mdash;often exposes him to our keen, almost
+abnormal sense of the ridiculous. He was deficient in humor, and he wrote
+his book in entire obliviousness of social usages and conventions, so that
+the perspective of it is not the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> social or indoor perspective, but that
+of life and nature at large, careering and unhampered. It is probably the
+one modern poem whose standards are not social and what are called
+artistic.</p>
+
+<p>Its atmosphere is always that of the large, free spaces of vast, unhoused
+nature. It has been said that the modern world could be reconstructed from
+"Leaves of Grass," so compendious and all-inclusive is it in its details;
+but of the modern world as a social organization, of man as the creature
+of social usages and prohibitions, of fashions, of dress, of
+ceremony,&mdash;the indoor, parlor and drawing-room man,&mdash;there is no hint in
+its pages. In its matter and in its spirit, in its standards and in its
+execution, in its ideals and in its processes, it belongs to and
+affiliates with open-air nature, often reaching, I think, the cosmic and
+unconditioned. In a new sense is Whitman the brother of the orbs and
+cosmic processes, "conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth." All
+his enthusiasms, all his sympathies have to do with the major and
+fundamental elements of life. He is a world-poet. We do not readily adjust
+our indoor notions to him. Our culture-standards do not fit him.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The problem of the poet is doubtless more difficult in our day than in any
+past day; it is harder for him to touch reality.</p>
+
+<p>The accumulations of our civilization are enormous: an artificial world of
+great depth and potency<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> overlies the world of reality; especially does it
+overlie the world of man's moral and intellectual nature. Most of us live
+and thrive in this artificial world, and never know but it is the world of
+God's own creating. Only now and then a man strikes his roots down through
+this made land into fresh, virgin soil. When the religious genius strikes
+his roots through it, and insists upon a present revelation, we are apt to
+cry "heretic;" when the poet strikes his roots through it, as Whitman did,
+and insists upon giving us reality,&mdash;giving us himself before custom or
+law,&mdash;we cry "barbarian," or "art-heretic," or "outlaw of art."</p>
+
+<p>In the countless adjustments and accumulations, and in the oceanic
+currents of our day and land, the individual is more and more lost sight
+of,&mdash;merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See
+it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will.
+See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing
+power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a
+single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their
+types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite
+character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe
+with the old joy and contentment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p class="poem">"The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?<br />
+Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and master of it?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Do we not, consciously or unconsciously, ask this or a similar question of
+every poet or artist whom we pass in review before us? Is he master of his
+culture, or does it master him? Does he strike back through it to simple,
+original nature, or is he a potted plant? Does he retain the native savage
+virtues, or is he entirely built up from the outside? We constantly
+mistake culture for mere refinement, which it is not: it is a liberating
+process; it is a clearing away of obstructions, and the giving to inherent
+virtues a chance to express themselves. It makes savage nature friendly
+and considerate. The aim of culture is not to get rid of nature, but to
+utilize nature. The great poet is always a "friendly and flowing savage,"
+the master and never the slave of the complex elements of our artificial
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>Though our progress and civilization are a triumph over nature, yet in an
+important sense we never get away from nature or improve upon her. Her
+standards are still our standards, her sweetness and excellence are still
+our aim. Her health, her fertility, her wholeness, her freshness, her
+innocence, her evolution, we would fain copy or reproduce. We would, if we
+could, keep the pungency and aroma of her wild fruit in our cultivated
+specimens, the virtue and hardiness of the savage in our fine gentlemen,
+the joy and spontaneity of her bird-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>songs in our poetry, the grace and
+beauty of her forms in our sculpture and carvings.</p>
+
+<p>A poetic utterance from an original individual standpoint, something
+definite and characteristic,&mdash;this is always the crying need. What a fine
+talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name!
+But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a
+kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste and intelligence that
+speak. When will he redeem all these promises, and become a fixed centre
+of thought and emotion in himself? To write poems is no distinction; to be
+a poem, to be a fixed point amid the seething chaos, a rock amid the
+currents, giving your own form and character to them,&mdash;that is something.</p>
+
+<p>It matters little, as Whitman himself says, who contributes the mass of
+poetic verbiage upon which any given age feeds.</p>
+
+<p>But for a national first-class poem, or a great work of the imagination of
+any sort, the man is everything, because such works finally rest upon
+primary human qualities and special individual traits. A richly endowed
+personality is always the main dependence in such cases, or, as Goethe
+says, "in the great work the great person is always present as the great
+factor."</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass" is as distinctly an emanation from Walt Whitman, from
+his quality and equipment as a man apart from anything he owed to books or
+to secondary influences, as a tree is an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> emanation from the soil. It is,
+moreover, an emanation from him as an American in the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, and as a typical democratic composite man, a man of
+the common people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but with
+an extraordinary endowment of spiritual and intellectual power, to which
+he has given full swing without abating one jot or tittle the influence of
+his heritage of the common stock.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>There is one important quality that enters into all first-class literary
+production and into all art, which is taken little account of in current
+criticism: I mean the quality of the manly,&mdash;the pulse and pressure of
+manly virility and strength. Goethe spoke of it to Eckermann as a certain
+urgent power in which the art of his time was lacking. The producers had
+taste and skill, but were not masterful as men. Goethe always looked
+straight through the work to the man behind it; in art and poetry the
+personality was everything. The special talent of one kind or another was
+quite secondary. The greatest works are the least literary. To speak in
+literature as a man, and not merely as a scholar or professional
+litterateur, is always the crying need. The new poet has this or that
+gift, but what is the human fund back of all? What is his endowment of the
+common universal human traits? How much of a man is he? His measure in
+this respect will be the measure of the final value of his contribution.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>The decadence of literature sets in when there is more talent than
+character in current production; when rare literary and artistic gifts no
+longer come wedded to large human and manly gifts; when taste is
+fastidious rather than robust and hearty. When was there a man born to
+English or American literature with a large endowment of the universal
+human qualities, or with those elements that give breadth and power, and
+which lead art rather than follow it? We are living in an age of great
+purity and refinement of taste in art and letters, but destitute of power.
+Goethe spoke of Walter Scott not merely as a great talent, but as a
+"comprehensive nature." Without this comprehensive nature as a setting,
+his great talent would have amounted to but little. This gives the weight,
+the final authority. How little there was on the surface of Scott of the
+literary keenness, subtlety, knowingness of later producers, and yet how
+far his contribution surpasses theirs in real human pathos and
+suggestiveness!</p>
+
+<p>The same might be said of Count Tolsto&iuml;, who is also, back of all, a great
+loving nature.</p>
+
+<p>One has great joy in Whitman because he is beyond and over all a large and
+loving personality; his work is but a thin veil through which a great
+nature clearly shows. The urgent power of which Goethe speaks is almost
+too strong,&mdash;too strong for current taste: we want more art and less man,
+more literature and less life. It is not merely a great mind that we feel,
+but a great character. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> penetrates every line, and indeed makes it true
+of the book that whoever "touches this touches a man."</p>
+
+<p>The lesson of the poet is all in the direction of the practical manly and
+womanly qualities and virtues,&mdash;health, temperance, sanity, power,
+endurance, aplomb,&mdash;and not at all in the direction of the literary and
+artistic qualities or culture.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat, to manage horses,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">to beget superb children,</span><br />
+To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,<br />
+To hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>All his aims, ideas, impulses, aspirations, relate to life, to
+personality, and to power to deal with real things; and if we expect from
+him only literary ideas&mdash;form, beauty, lucidity, proportion&mdash;we shall be
+disappointed. He seeks to make the impression of concrete forces and
+objects, and not of art.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Not for an embroiderer,<br />
+(There will always be plenty of embroiderers&mdash;I welcome them also),<br />
+But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.<br />
+<br />
+"Not to chisel ornaments,<br />
+But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme Gods, that The States may realize them,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">walking and talking."</span></p>
+
+<p>His whole work is a radiation from an exemplification of the idea that
+there is something better than to be an artist or a poet,&mdash;namely, to be a
+man. The poet's rapture springs not merely from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> the contemplation of the
+beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; from
+the contemplation of democracy, the common people, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors, his own body, death, sex, manly love, occupations, and the force
+and vitality of things. We are to look for the clews to him in the open
+air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forms and
+methods. He declares he will never again mention love or death inside of a
+house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay
+with him in the open air.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore;<br />
+The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key:<br />
+The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words.<br />
+<br />
+"No shuttered room or school can commune with me,<br />
+But roughs and little children better than they.<br />
+<br />
+"The young mechanic is closest to me&mdash;he knows me pretty well.<br />
+The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with him all day;<br />
+The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my voice:<br />
+In vessels that sail, my words sail&mdash;I go with fishermen and seamen, and love them.<br />
+<br />
+"My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket;<br />
+The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;<br />
+The young mother and old mother comprehend me;<br />
+The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where they are:<br />
+They and all would resume what I have told them."</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few,
+its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness
+of man rather than his strength; so far as it expresses a shrinking from
+reality and a refuge in sentimentalism; so far as it is aristocratic as in
+Tennyson, or mocking and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and mephitic as
+in Swinburne, or regretful and reminiscent as in Arnold, or a melodious
+baying of the moon as in Shelley, or the outcome of mere scholarly and
+technical acquirements as in so many of our younger poets,&mdash;so far as
+literature or poetry, I say, stand for these things, there is little of
+either in Whitman. Whitman stands for the primary and essential; he stands
+for that which makes the body as well as the mind, which makes life sane
+and joyous and masterful. Everything that tends to depletion, satiety, the
+abnormal, the erotic and exotic, that induces the stress and fever of
+life, is foreign to his spirit. He is less beautiful than the popular
+poets, yet more beautiful. He will have to do only with the inevitable
+beauty, the beauty that comes unsought, that resides in the interior
+meanings and affiliations,&mdash;the beauty that dare turn its back upon the
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman has escaped entirely the literary disease, the characteristic
+symptoms of which, according to Renan, is that people love less things
+themselves than the literary effects which they produce.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> He has escaped
+the art disease which makes art all in all; the religious disease, which
+runs to maudlin piety and seeks to win heaven by denying earth; the beauty
+disease, which would make of poesy a conventional flower-garden. He brings
+heroic remedies for our morbid sex-consciousness, and for all the
+pathological conditions brought about by our excess of refinement, and the
+dyspeptic depletions of our indoor artificial lives. Whitman withstood the
+&aelig;sthetic temptation, as Amiel calls it, to which most of our poets fall a
+victim,&mdash;the lust for the merely beautiful, the epicureanism of the
+literary faculties. We can make little of him if we are in quest of
+&aelig;sthetic pleasures alone. "In order to establish those literary
+authorities which are called classic centuries," says Renan, "something
+healthy and solid is necessary. Common household bread is of more value
+here than pastry." But the vast majority of literary producers aim at
+pastry, or, worse yet, confectionery,&mdash;something especially delightful and
+titivating to the taste. No doubt Renan himself was something of a
+literary epicure, but then he imposed upon himself large and serious
+tasks, and his work as a whole is solid and nourishing; his charm of style
+does not blind and seduce us. It makes all the difference in the world
+whether we seek the beautiful through the true, or the true through the
+beautiful. Seek ye the kingdom of truth first and all things shall be
+added. The novice aims to write beautifully, but the master aims to see
+truly and to feel vitally. Beauty follows him, and is never followed by
+him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>Nature is beautiful because she is something else first, yes, and last,
+too, and all the while. Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the
+whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with
+the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields
+compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuy&eacute;.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's ideal is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger&mdash;much more
+racy and democratic&mdash;than the ideal we are familiar with in current
+literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the
+democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,&mdash;excluding all the
+old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and
+legends, etc.,&mdash;but he applies it to the form as well, excluding rhyme and
+measure and all the conventional verse architecture. His work stands or it
+falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or
+power which it holds. This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest,
+nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated. His
+influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or
+extra-cultured humanity. The spirit of his work transferred to practice
+begets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, magnetic,
+tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple,
+healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he
+opposes that which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a
+scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature,
+and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and
+affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic
+spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our
+artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature.
+The people look askance at men who are above them without being of them,
+who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with
+unlettered humanity. Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit,
+and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Sumner.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman might be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned. His
+work is launched at a farther remove from our arts, conventions, usages,
+civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into
+our lives, than that of any other man. Absolute candor, absolute pride,
+absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature. It
+is not conditioned by what we deem modest or immodest, high or low, male
+or female. It is not conditioned by our notions of good and evil, by our
+notions of the refined and the select, by what we call good taste and bad
+taste. It is the voice of absolute man, sweeping away the artificial,
+throwing himself boldly, joyously, upon unconditioned nature. We are all
+engaged in upholding the correct and the conventional, and drawing the
+line sharply between good and evil, the high and the low, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> it is well
+that we should; but here is a man who aims to take absolute ground, and to
+look at the world as God himself might look at it, without partiality or
+discriminating,&mdash;it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection
+in the universe and can be none:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Open mouth of my Soul uttering gladness,<br />
+Eyes of my Soul seeing perfection,<br />
+Natural life of me, faithfully praising things,<br />
+Corroborating forever the triumph of things."</p>
+
+<p>He does not take sides against evil, in the usual way, he does not take
+sides with the good except as nature herself does. He celebrates the All.</p>
+
+<p>Can we accept the world as science reveals it to us, as all significant,
+as all in ceaseless transmutation, as every atom aspiring to be man, an
+endless unfolding of primal germs, without beginning, without end, without
+failure or imperfection, the golden age ahead of us, not behind us?</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Because of Whitman's glorification of pride, egoism, brawn, self-reliance,
+it is charged that the noble, the cultured, the self-denying, have no
+place in his system. What place have they in the antique bards?&mdash;in Homer,
+in Job, in Isaiah, in Dante? They have the same place in Whitman, yet it
+is to be kept in mind that Whitman does not stand for the specially social
+virtues, nor for culture, nor for the refinements which it induces, nor
+for art, nor for any conventionality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> There are flowers of human life
+which we are not to look for in Walt Whitman. The note of fine manners,
+chivalrous conduct, which we get in Emerson; the sweetness and light
+gospel of Arnold; the gospel of hero-worship of Carlyle; the gracious
+scholarship of our New England poets, etc.,&mdash;we do not get in Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him at war with these things, but he is
+concerned with more primal and elemental questions. He strikes under and
+beyond all these things.</p>
+
+<p>What are the questions or purposes, then, in which his work has root?
+Simply put, to lead the way to larger, saner, more normal, more robust
+types of men and women on this continent; to prefigure and help develop
+the new democratic man,&mdash;to project him into literature on a scale and
+with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep
+hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and
+influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and
+for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,&mdash;the air,
+the water, the soil, the sunshine,&mdash;and the more we pervert or shut out
+these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we
+pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the
+religious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny and belittle our bodies,
+the further we are from the spirit of Walt Whitman, and from the spirit of
+the All.</p>
+
+<p>With all Whitman's glorification of pride, self-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>esteem, self-reliance,
+etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,&mdash;the
+free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential
+nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you
+possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life
+and conditions of men, charity as broad as the sunlight, standing up for
+those whom others are down upon, claiming nothing for self which others
+may not have upon the same terms,&mdash;of such nobility and fine manners, I
+say, you shall find an abundance in the life and works of Walt Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of a man's work is everything; the letter, little or nothing.
+Though Whitman boasts of his affiliation with the common and near at hand,
+yet he is always saved from the vulgar, the mean, the humdrum, by the
+breadth of his charity and sympathy and his tremendous ideality.</p>
+
+<p>Of worldliness, materialism, commercialism, he has not a trace; his only
+values are spiritual and ideal; his only standards are the essential and
+the enduring. What Matthew Arnold called the Anglo-Saxon contagion, the
+bourgeois spirit, the worldly and sordid ideal, is entirely corrected in
+Whitman by the ascendant of the ethic and the universal. His democracy
+ends in universal brotherhood, his patriotism in the solidarity of
+nations, his glorification of the material in the final triumph of the
+spiritual, his egoism issues at last in complete otherism.</p>
+
+<p>A race that can produce a man of his fibre, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> continental type, is yet
+at its best estate. Did one begin to see evil omen in this perpetual
+whittling away and sharpening and lightening of the American type,&mdash;grace
+without power, clearness without mass, intellect without character,&mdash;then
+take comfort from the volume and the rankness of Walt Whitman. Did one
+begin to fear that the decay of maternity and paternity in our older
+communities and the falling off in the native population presaged the
+drying up of the race in its very sources? Then welcome to the rank
+sexuality and to the athletic fatherhood and motherhood celebrated by
+Whitman. Did our skepticism, our headiness, our worldliness, threaten to
+eat us up like a cancer? did our hardness, our irreligiousness, and our
+passion for the genteel point to a fugitive, superficial race? was our
+literature threatened with the artistic degeneration,&mdash;running all to art
+and not at all to power? were our communities invaded by a dry rot of
+culture? were we fast becoming a delicate, indoor, genteel race? were our
+women sinking deeper and deeper into the "incredible sloughs of fashion
+and all kinds of dyspeptic depletion,"&mdash;the antidote for all these ills is
+in Walt Whitman. In him nature shows great fullness and fertility, and an
+immense friendliness. He supplements and corrects most of the special
+deficiencies and weaknesses toward which the American type seems to tend.
+He brings us back to nature again. The perpetuity of the race is with the
+common people. The race is constantly crying out at the top, in our times
+at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> least; culture and refinement beget fewer and fewer and poorer and
+poorer children. Where struggle ceases, that family or race is doomed.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Now understand me well&mdash;it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>In more primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept
+in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest.
+War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and
+everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, power, longevity,
+manliness. The scholar poets are occupied with that which makes for
+culture, taste, refinement, ease, art.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass," taken as a whole, aims to exhibit a modern, democratic,
+archetypal man, here in America, confronting and subduing our enormous
+materialism to his own purposes, putting it off and on as a garment;
+identifying himself with all forms of life and conditions of men; trying
+himself by cosmic laws and processes, exulting in the life of his body and
+the delights of his senses; and seeking to clinch, to develop, and to
+realize himself through the shows and events of the visible world. The
+poet seeks to interpret life from the central point of absolute abysmal
+man.</p>
+
+<p>The wild and the savage in nature with which Whitman perpetually
+identifies himself, and the hirsute, sun-tanned, and aboriginal in
+humanity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> have misled many readers into looking upon him as expressive of
+these things only. Mr. Stedman thinks him guilty of a certain narrowness
+in preferring, or seeming to prefer, the laboring man to the gentleman.
+But the poet uses these elements only for checks and balances, and to keep
+our attention, in the midst of a highly refined and civilized age, fixed
+upon the fact that here are the final sources of our health, our power,
+our longevity. The need of the pre-scientific age was knowledge and
+refinement; the need of our age is health and sanity, cool heads and good
+digestion. And to this end the bitter and drastic remedies from the shore
+and the mountains are for us.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>The gospel of the average man, Matthew Arnold thought, was inimical to the
+ideal of a rare and high excellence. But, in holding up the average man,
+Whitman was only holding up the broad, universal human qualities, and
+showing that excellence may go with them also. As a matter of fact, are we
+not astonished almost daily by the superb qualities shown by the average
+man, the heroism shown by firemen, engineers, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors? Do we not know that true greatness, true nobility and strength of
+soul, may go and do go with commonplace, every-day humanity? Whitman would
+lift the average man to a higher average, and still to a higher, without
+at all weakening the qualities which he shares with universal humanity as
+it exists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> over and under all special advantages and social refinements.
+He says that one of the convictions that underlie his "Leaves" is the
+conviction that the "crowning growth of the United States is to be
+spiritual and heroic,"&mdash;a prophecy which in our times, I confess, does not
+seem very near fulfillment.</p>
+
+<p>He does not look longingly and anxiously toward the genteel social gods,
+but quite the contrary. In the library and parlor, he confesses he is as a
+gawk or one dumb. The great middle-class ideal, which is mainly the ideal
+of our own people, Whitman flouts and affronts. There are things to him of
+higher import than to have wealth and be respectable and in the mode.</p>
+
+<p>We might charge him with narrowness and partiality and with seeing only
+half truths, as Mr. Stedman has done, did he simply rest with the native
+as opposed to the cultivated, with brawn as opposed to brains. What he
+does do, what the upshot of his teaching shows, is that he identifies
+himself with the masses, with those universal human currents out of which
+alone a national spirit arises, as opposed to isolated schools and
+coteries and a privileged few. Whitman decries culture only so far as it
+cuts a man off from his fellows, clips away or effaces the sweet, native,
+healthy parts of him, and begets a bloodless, superstitious, infidelistic
+class. "The best culture," he says, "will always be that of the manly and
+courageous instincts and loving perceptions, and of self-respect." For
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> most part, our schooling is like our milling, which takes the bone
+and nerve building elements out of our bread. The bread of life demands
+the coarse as well as the fine, and this is what Whitman stands for.</p>
+
+<p>In his spirit and affiliation with the great mass of the people, with the
+commoner, sturdier, human traits, Whitman is more of the type of Angelo,
+or Rembrandt, or the antique bards, than he is like modern singers. He was
+not a product of the schools, but of the race.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_HIS_COUNTRY" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_HIS_COUNTRY"></a>HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">It</span> has been said, and justly I think, that in Whitman we see the first
+appearance in literature of the genuinely democratic spirit on anything
+like an ample scale. Plenty of men of democratic tendencies and
+affiliations have appeared, but none that have carried the temper and
+quality of the people, the masses, into the same regions, or blended the
+same humanity and commonness with the same commanding personality and
+spirituality. In recent English poetry the names of Burns and Wordsworth
+occur to mind, but neither of these men had anything like Whitman's
+breadth of relation to the mass of mankind, or expressed anything like his
+sweeping cosmic emotion. Wordsworth's muse was clad in homespun, but in no
+strict sense was his genius democratic&mdash;using the word to express, not a
+political creed, but the genius of modern civilization. He made much of
+the common man, common life, common things, but always does the poet stand
+apart, the recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, loving and contemplating
+these things for purposes of his art. Only through intellectual sympathy
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> he a part of what he surveys. In Whitman the common or average man has
+grown haughty, almost aristocratic. He coolly confronts the old types, the
+man of caste, culture, privileges, royalties, and relegates him to the
+past. He readjusts the standards, and estimates everything from the human
+and democratic point of view. In his scheme, the old traditions&mdash;the
+aristocratic, the scholastic, the ecclesiastical, the military, the social
+traditions&mdash;play no part. He dared to look at life, past and present, from
+the American and scientific standpoint. He turns to the old types a pride
+and complacency equal to their own.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, we see in the character which Whitman has exploited and in the
+interest of which his poems are written, the democratic type fully
+realized,&mdash;pride and self-reliance equal to the greatest, and these
+matched with a love, a compassion, a spirit of fraternity and equality,
+that are entirely foreign to the old order of things.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>At first sight Whitman does not seem vitally related to his own country
+and people; he seems an anomaly, an exception, or like one of those
+mammoth sports that sometimes appear in the vegetable world. The Whitman
+ideal is not, and has never been, the conscious ideal of the mass of our
+people. We have aspired more to the ideal of the traditional fine
+gentleman as he has figured in British letters. There seems to have been
+no hint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> or prophecy of such a man as Whitman in our New England
+literature, unless it be in Emerson, and here it is in the region of the
+abstract and not of the concrete. Emerson's prayer was for the absolutely
+self-reliant man, but when Whitman refused to follow his advice with
+regard to certain passages in the "Leaves," the sage withheld further
+approval of the work.</p>
+
+<p>We must look for the origins of Whitman, I think, in the deep
+world-currents that have been shaping the destinies of the race for the
+past hundred years or more; in the universal loosening, freeing, and
+removing obstructions; in the emancipation of the people, and their coming
+forward and taking possession of the world in their own right; in the
+triumph of democracy and of science; the downfall of kingcraft and
+priestcraft; the growth of individualism and non-conformity; the
+increasing disgust of the soul of man with forms and ceremonies; the
+sentiment of realism and positivism, the religious hunger that flees the
+churches; the growing conviction that life, that nature, are not failures,
+that the universe is good, that man is clean and divine inside and out,
+that God is immanent in nature,&mdash;all these things and more lie back of
+Whitman, and hold a causal relation to him.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Of course the essential elements of all first-class artistic and literary
+productions are always the same, just as nature, just as man, are
+essentially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> the same everywhere. Yet the literature of every people has a
+stamp of its own, starts from and implies antecedents and environments
+peculiar to itself.</p>
+
+<p>Just as ripe, mellow, storied, ivy-towered, velvet-turfed England lies
+back of Tennyson, and is vocal through him; just as canny, covenanting,
+conscience-burdened, craggy, sharp-tongued Scotland lies back of Carlyle;
+just as thrifty, well-schooled, well-housed, prudent, and moral New
+England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them,&mdash;so
+America as a whole, our turbulent democracy, our self-glorification, our
+faith in the future, our huge mass movements, our continental spirit, our
+sprawling, sublime, and unkempt nature, lie back of Whitman and are
+implied by his work.</p>
+
+<p>He had not the shaping, manipulating gift to carve his American material
+into forms of ideal beauty, and did not claim to have. He did not value
+beauty as an abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>What Whitman did that is unprecedented was, to take up the whole country
+into himself, fuse it, imbue it with soul and poetic emotion, and recast
+it as a sort of colossal Walt Whitman. He has not so much treated American
+themes as he has identified himself with everything American, and made the
+whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross
+materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses
+with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them
+with something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> like the breath of universal nature. His special gift is
+his magnetic and unconquerable personality, his towering egoism united
+with such a fund of human sympathy. His power is centripetal, so to
+speak,&mdash;he draws everything into himself like a maelstrom; the centrifugal
+power of the great dramatic artists, the power to get out of and away from
+himself, he has not. It was not for Whitman to write the dramas and
+tragedies of democracy, as Shakespeare wrote those of feudalism, or as
+Tennyson sang in delectable verse the swan-song of an overripe
+civilization. It was for him to voice the democratic spirit, to show it
+full-grown, athletic, haughtily taking possession of the world and
+redistributing the prizes according to its own standards. It was for him
+to sow broadcast over the land the germs of larger, more sane, more robust
+types of men and women, indicating them in himself.</p>
+
+<p>In him the new spirit of democracy first completely knows itself, is proud
+of itself, has faith and joy in itself, is fearless, tolerant, religious,
+aggressive, triumphant, and bestows itself lavishly upon all sides. It is
+tentative, doubtful, hesitating no longer. It is at ease in the world, it
+takes possession, it fears no rival, it advances with confident step.</p>
+
+<p>No man was ever more truly fathered by what is formative and expansive in
+his country and times than was Whitman. Not by the literature of his
+country was he begotten, but by the spirit that lies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> back of all, and
+that begat America itself,&mdash;the America that Europe loves and fears, that
+she comes to this country to see, and looks expectantly, but for the most
+part vainly, in our books to find.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me he is distinctly a continental type. His sense of space, of
+magnitude, his processional pages, his unloosedness, his wide horizons,
+his vanishing boundaries,&mdash;always something unconfined and unconfinable,
+always the deferring and undemonstrable. The bad as well as the good
+traits of his country and his people are doubtless implied by his work.</p>
+
+<p>If he does not finally escape from our unripe Americanism, if he does not
+rise through it all and clarify it and turn it to ideal uses, draw out the
+spiritual meanings, then avaunt! we want nothing of him.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell.<br />
+The former I graft and increase upon myself,<br />
+The latter I translate into a new tongue."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The vital and the formative the true poet always engrafts and increases
+upon himself, and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the
+accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against
+Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers
+of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when
+his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the
+first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the
+modern; we see them translated into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> character; we see them tried by
+universal standards; we see them vivified by a powerful imagination. We
+see America as an idea, and see its relation to other ideas. We get a new
+conception of the value of the near, the common, the familiar. New light
+is thrown upon the worth and significance of the common people, and it is
+not the light of an abstract idea, but the light of a concrete example. We
+see the democratic type on a scale it has never before assumed; it is on a
+par with any of the types that have ruled the world in the past, the
+military, the aristocratic, the regal. It is at home, it has taken
+possession, it can hold its own. Henceforth the world is going its way. If
+it is over-confident, over-self-assertive, too American, that is the
+surplusage of the poet, of whom we do not want a penny prudence and
+caution; make your prophecy bold enough and it fulfills itself. Whitman
+has betrayed no doubt or hesitation in his poetry. His assumptions and
+vaticinations are tremendous, but they are uttered with an authority and
+an assurance that convince like natural law.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>I think he gives new meaning to democracy and America. In him we see a new
+type, rising out of new conditions, and fully able to justify itself and
+hold its own. It is the new man in the new world, no longer dependent upon
+or facing toward the old. I confess that to me America and the modern
+would not mean very much without Whitman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> The final proof was wanting
+till they gave birth to a personality equal to the old types.</p>
+
+<p>Discussions and speculations about democracy do not carry very far, after
+all; to preach equality is not much. But when we see these things made
+into a man, and see the world through his eyes, and see new joy and new
+meaning in it, our doubts and perplexities are cleared up. Our universal
+balloting, and schooling, and material prosperity prove nothing: can your
+democracy produce a man who shall carry its spirit into loftiest regions,
+and prove as helpful and masterful under the new conditions as the by-gone
+types were under the old?</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>I predict a great future for Whitman, because the world is so unmistakably
+going his way. The three or four great currents of the century&mdash;the
+democratic current, the scientific current, the humanitarian current, the
+new religious current, and what flows out of them&mdash;are underneath all
+Whitman has written. They shape all and make all. They do not appear in
+him as mere dicta, or intellectual propositions, but as impulses, will,
+character, flesh-and-blood reality. We get these things, not as sentiments
+or yet theories, but as a man. We see life and the world as they appear to
+the inevitable democrat, the inevitable lover, the inevitable believer in
+God and immortality, the inevitable acceptor of absolute science.</p>
+
+<p>We are all going his way. We are more and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> more impatient of formalities,
+ceremonies, and make-believe; we more and more crave the essential, the
+real. More and more we want to see the thing as in itself it is; more and
+more is science opening our eyes to see the divine, the illustrious, the
+universal in the common, the near at hand; more and more do we tire of
+words and crave things; deeper and deeper sinks the conviction that
+personal qualities alone tell,&mdash;that the man is all in all, that the
+brotherhood of the race is not a dream, that love covers all and atones
+for all.</p>
+
+<p>Everything in our modern life and culture that tends to broaden,
+liberalize, free; that tends to make hardy, self-reliant, virile; that
+tends to widen charity, deepen affection between man and man, to foster
+sanity and self-reliance; that tends to kindle our appreciation of the
+divinity of all things; that heightens our rational enjoyment of life;
+that inspires hope in the future and faith in the unseen,&mdash;are on
+Whitman's side. All these things prepare the way for him.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the strain and strife and hoggishness of our
+civilization, our trading politics, our worship of conventions, our
+millionaire ideals, our high-pressure lives, our pruriency, our
+sordidness, our perversions of nature, our scoffing caricaturing
+tendencies, are against him. He antagonizes all these things.</p>
+
+<p>The more democratic we become, the more we are prepared for Whitman; the
+more tolerant, fraternal, sympathetic we become, the more we are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> ready
+for Whitman; the more we inure ourselves to the open air and to real
+things, the more we value and understand our own bodies, the more the
+woman becomes the mate and equal of the man, the more social equality
+prevails,&mdash;the sooner will come to Whitman fullness and fruition.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Some of our own critics have been a good deal annoyed by the fact that
+many European scholars and experts have recognized Whitman as the only
+distinctive American poet thus far. It would seem as if our reputation for
+culture and good manners is at stake. We want Europe to see America in our
+literary poets like Lowell, or Longfellow, or Whittier. And Europe may
+well see much that is truly representative of America in these and in
+other New England poets. She may see our aspiration toward her own ideals
+of culture and refinement; she may see native and patriotic themes firing
+Lowell and Whittier; she may see a certain spirit and temper begotten by
+our natural environment reflected in Bryant, our delicate and gentle
+humanities and scholarly aptitudes shining in Longfellow. But in every
+case she sees a type she has long been familiar with. All the poets'
+thoughts, moods, points of view, effects, aims, methods, are what she has
+long known. These are not the poets of a new <i>world</i>, but of a new
+<i>England</i>. The new-world book implies more than a new talent, more than a
+fresh pair of eyes, a fresh and original mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> like the poets named; such
+men are required to keep up the old line of succession in English
+authorship. What is implied is a new national and continental spirit,
+which must arise and voice the old eternal truths through a large, new,
+democratic personality,&mdash;a new man, and, beyond and above him, a new
+heaven and a new earth.</p>
+
+<p>Our band of New England poets have carried the New England spirit into
+poetry,&mdash;its sense of fitness, order, propriety, its shrewdness,
+inventiveness, aptness, and its aspiration for the pure and noble in life.
+They have finely exemplified the best Yankee traits; but in no instance
+were these traits merged in a personality large enough, bold enough, and
+copious and democratic enough to give them national and continental
+significance. It would be absurd to claim that the pulse-beat of a great
+people or a great era is to be felt in the work of any of these poets.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman is responded to in Europe, because he expresses a new type with
+adequate power,&mdash;not, as has been so often urged, simply because he is
+strange, and gives the jaded literary palate over there a new fillip. He
+meets the demand for something in American literature that should not face
+toward Europe, that should joyfully stand upon its own ground and yet
+fulfill the conditions of greatness. He fully satisfies the thirst for
+individualism amid these awakening peoples, and the thirst for nationalism
+also. He realizes the democratic ideal, no longer tentative or apologetic,
+but taking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> possession of the world as its own and reappraising the wares
+it finds there.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>The American spirit is a continental spirit; there is nothing insular or
+narrow about it. It is informal, nonchalant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive,
+patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of
+particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable,
+unostentatious, inclined to exaggerate, generous, unrefined,&mdash;never
+meddlesome, never hypercritical, never hoggish, never exclusive. Whitman
+shared the hopeful optimistic temperament of his countrymen, the faith and
+confidence begotten by a great, fertile, sunny land. He expresses the
+independence of the people,&mdash;their pride, their jealousy of superiors,
+their contempt of authority (not always beautiful). Our want of reverence
+and veneration are supplemented in him with world-wide sympathies and
+good-fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson is our divine man, the precious quintessence of the New England
+type, invaluable for his stimulating and ennobling strain; but his genius
+is too astral, too select, too remote, to incarnate and give voice to the
+national spirit. Clothe him with flesh and blood, make his daring
+affirmations real and vital in a human personality and imbued with the
+American spirit, and we are on the way to Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the strong, undisguised man-flavor of "Leaves of Grass," the
+throb and pressure in it of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> those things that make life rank and make it
+masterful, and that make for the virility and perpetuity of the race, are,
+if it must be confessed, more keenly relished abroad than in this country,
+so thoroughly are we yet under the spell of the merely refined and
+conventional. We fail to see that in letters, as in life, the great prizes
+are not to the polished, but to the virile and the strong.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
+speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
+made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
+enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
+the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
+personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
+over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
+them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
+his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
+of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
+mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
+himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
+those who live in the open air, even laying claim to the "rowdyish." He is
+proud of freckles, sun-tan, brawn, and holds up the powerful and
+unrefined.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+"I am enamor'd of growing out-doors,<br />
+Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,<br />
+Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses;<br />
+I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>"Nothing endures," he says, "but personal qualities." "Produce great
+persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently
+bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union?
+but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout
+at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He
+is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He
+sees all and embraces and encloses all.</p>
+
+<p>Then we see united and harmonized in Whitman the two great paramount
+tendencies of our time and of the modern world,&mdash;the altruistic or
+humanitarian tendency and the individualistic tendency; or, democracy and
+individualism, pride and equality, or, rather, pride in equality. These
+two forces, as they appear in separate individuals, are often
+antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman
+they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and
+uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping
+fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one
+motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his
+fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him
+with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> claims for
+himself he demands in the same terms for all. He has set such an example
+of self-trust and self-assertion as has no parallel in our literature, at
+the same time that he has set an equal example in practical democracy and
+universal brotherhood.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's democracy is the breath of his nostrils, the light of his eyes,
+the blood in his veins. The reader does not feel that here is some fine
+scholar, some fine poet singing the praises of democracy; he feels that
+here is a democrat, probably, as Thoreau surmised, the greatest the world
+has yet seen, turning the light of a great love, a great intellect, a
+great soul, upon America, upon contemporary life and events, and upon the
+universe, and reading new lessons, new meanings, therein. He is a great
+poet and prophet, speaking through the average man, speaking as one of the
+people, and interpreting life from the point of view of absolute
+democracy.</p>
+
+<p>True, the people in their average taste and perceptions are crude and
+flippant and superficial, and often the victims of mountebanks and fools;
+yet, as forming the body of our social and political organism, and the
+chief factor in the world-problem of to-day, they are the exponents of
+great forces and laws, and often, in emergencies, show the wisdom and
+unimpeachableness of Nature herself. Deep-hidden currents and forces in
+them are liable to come to the surface, and when the politicians<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> get in
+their way, or miscalculate them, as so often happens, they are crushed.
+Whitman is a projection into literature of the cosmic sense and conscience
+of the people, and their participation in the forces that are shaping the
+world in our century. Much comes to a head in him. Much comes to joyous
+speech and song, that heretofore had only come to thought and speculation.
+A towering, audacious personality has appeared which is strictly the fruit
+of the democratic spirit, and which has voiced itself in an impassioned
+utterance touching the whole problem of national and individual life.</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>The Whitman literature is democratic, not in the sense that it caters to
+the taste of the masses or to the taste of the average man; for, as a
+matter of fact, the masses and the average man are likely to be the last
+to recognize its value. The common people, the average newspaper-reading
+citizens, are much more likely to be drawn by the artificial and the
+conventional. But it is democratic because it is filled with the spirit of
+absolute human equality and brotherhood, and gives out the atmosphere of
+the universal, primary, human traits. The social, artificial, accidental
+distinctions of wealth, culture, position, etc., have not influenced the
+poet in the slightest degree. Whitman finds his joy and his triumph, not
+in being better than other people or above them, but in being one with
+them, and sharing their sins as well as their virtues.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+"As if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself&mdash;as if it were not indispensable<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">to my own rights that others possess the same."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This is one step further than others have taken, and makes democracy
+complete in itself. Again, his work identifies itself with the democratic
+ideal in getting rid of the professional and arbitrary elements of poetry,
+and appealing to the reader entirely through its spirit and content. It is
+as democratic in this respect as the workman in the field, or the mechanic
+at his bench.</p>
+
+<p>The poems are bathed and flooded with the quality of the common people;
+with the commonness and nearness which they share with real things and
+with all open-air nature,&mdash;with hunters, travelers, soldiers, workers in
+all fields, and with rocks, trees, and woods. It is only in the spirit of
+these things that a man himself can have health, sweetness, and
+proportion; and only in their spirit that he can give an essentially sound
+judgment of a work of art, no matter what the subject of it may be.</p>
+
+<p>This spirit of the "commonest, cheapest, nearest" is the only spirit in
+which man's concrete life can be carried forward. We do not live and
+breathe and grow and multiply, we do not have health and sanity and
+wholeness and proportion, we do not subdue and improve and possess the
+earth, in the spirit of something exclusive, exceptional, faraway,
+aristocratic, but in the spirit of the common and universal. The only
+demand is that, in a work of art, the common or universal shall be
+vitalized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> with poetic thought and enthusiasm, or imbued with the ideal of
+a rare and high excellence.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>Our critics have been fond of taunting Whitman with the fact that the
+common people, the workers, of whom he makes so much, and to whom he
+perpetually appeals, do not read him, or show any liking for his poems at all.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's appeal to the common people, to the democratic masses, is an
+appeal to the future; it is an appeal to the universal human conscience
+and intelligence, as they exist above and beneath all special advantages
+of birth and culture and stand related to the total system of things. It
+also calls attention to the fact that the spirit in which he writes, and
+in which he is to be read, is the spirit of open-air life and nature.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"No school or shutter'd room commune with me,<br />
+But roughs and little children, better than they,"</p>
+
+<p>because the simple, unforced, unrefined elements of human nature are those
+out of which the poems sprang and with which they are charged. Their
+spirit is closer akin to unlettered humanity than to the over-intellectual
+and sophisticated products of the schools.</p>
+
+<p>Of course "roughs and little children" can make nothing of "Leaves of
+Grass," but unless the trained reader has that fund of fresh, simple,
+wholesome nature, and the love for real things, which unlettered humanity
+possesses, he will make nothing of it either.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>It has been truly said that "the noblest seer is ever over-possessed."
+This has been the case with nearly all original, first-class men. Carlyle
+furnished a good illustration of its truth in our own time. He was
+over-possessed with his idea of the hero and hero-worship. And it may be
+that Whitman was over-possessed with the idea of democracy, America,
+nationality, and the need of a radically new departure in poetic
+literature. Yet none knew better than he that in the long run the
+conditions of life and of human happiness and progress remain about the
+same; that the same price must still be paid for the same things; that
+character alone counts; that the same problem "how to live" ever confronts
+us; and that democracy, America, nationality, are only way stations, and
+by no means the end of the route. The all-leveling tendency of democracy
+is certainly not in the interest of literature. The world is not saved by
+the average man, but by the man much above the average, the rare and
+extraordinary man,&mdash;by the "remnant," as Arnold called them.</p>
+
+<p>No one knew this better than Whitman, and he said that "one main
+genesis-motive" of his "Leaves" was the conviction that the crowning
+growth of the United States was to be spiritual and heroic. Only "superb
+persons" can finally justify him.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_SCIENCE" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_SCIENCE"></a>HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">The</span> stupendous disclosures of modern science, and what they mean when
+translated into the language of man's ethical and &aelig;sthetic nature, have
+not yet furnished to any considerable extent the inspiration of poems.
+That all things are alike divine, that this earth is a star in the
+heavens, that the celestial laws and processes are here underfoot, that
+size is only relative, that good and bad are only relative, that forces
+are convertible and interchangeable, that matter is indestructible, that
+death is the law of life, that man is of animal origin, that the sum of
+forces is constant, that the universe is a complexus of powers
+inconceivably subtle and vital, that motion is the law of all things,&mdash;in
+fact, that we have got rid of the notions of the absolute, the fixed, the
+arbitrary, and the notion of origins and of the dualism of the world,&mdash;to
+what extent will these and kindred ideas modify art and all &aelig;sthetic
+production? The idea of the divine right of kings and the divine authority
+of priests is gone; that, in some other time or some other place God was
+nearer man than now and here,&mdash;this idea is gone. Indeed, the whole of
+man's spiritual and religious belief which forms the background of
+literature has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> changed,&mdash;a change as great as if the sky were to change
+from blue to red or to orange. The light of day is different. But
+literature deals with life, and the essential conditions of life, you say,
+always remain the same. Yes, but the expression of their artistic values
+is forever changing. If we ask where is the modern imaginative work that
+is based upon these revelations of science, the work in which they are the
+blood and vital juices, I answer, "Leaves of Grass," and no other. The
+work is the outgrowth of science and modern ideas, just as truly as Dante
+is the outgrowth of medi&aelig;val ideas and superstitions; and the imagination,
+the creative spirit, is just as unhampered in Whitman as in Dante or in
+Shakespeare. The poet finds the universe just as plastic and ductile, just
+as obedient to his will, and just as ready to take the impress of his
+spirit, as did these supreme artists. Science has not hardened it at all.
+The poet opposes himself to it, and masters it and rises superior. He is
+not balked or oppressed for a moment. He knows from the start what science
+can bring him, what it can give, and what it can take away; he knows the
+universe is not orphaned; he finds more grounds than ever for a p&aelig;an of
+thanksgiving and praise. His conviction of the identity of soul and body,
+matter and spirit, does not shake his faith in immortality in the least.
+His faith arises, not from half views, but from whole views. In him the
+idea of the soul, of humanity, of identity, easily balanced the idea of
+the material universe. Man was more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> than a match for nature. It was all
+for him, and not for itself. His enormous egotism, or hold upon the
+central thought or instinct of human worth and import, was an anchor that
+never gave way. Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an
+iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world
+of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as
+immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and
+anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old
+bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the
+universe is directed to one man,&mdash;to you. His anthropomorphism is not a
+projection of himself into nature, but an absorption of nature in himself.
+The tables are turned. It is not alien or superhuman beings that he sees
+and hears in nature, but his own that he finds everywhere. All gods are
+merged in himself.</p>
+
+<p>Not the least fear, not the least doubt or dismay, in this book. Not one
+moment's hesitation or losing of the way. And it is not merely an
+intellectual triumph, but the triumph of soul and personality. The iron
+knots are not untied, they are melted. Indeed, the poet's contentment and
+triumph in view of the fullest recognition of all the sin and sorrow of
+the world, and of all that baffles and dwarfs, is not the least of the
+remarkable features of the book.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil
+under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and
+illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties
+perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and
+exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained
+more than we have lost. The world is anew created by science and
+democracy, and he pronounces it good with the joy and fervor of the old
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>He shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets of note in
+our time who have drawn inspiration from this source, or viewed the
+universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern
+poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious
+compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was
+stupendous; the other childish and empty. But Whitman and Tennyson were
+fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vision that
+matches the best science can do. Tennyson drew upon science more for his
+images and illustrations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and
+appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed
+Whitman's imagination and made him bold; its effects were moral and
+spiritual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellectual; it enlarged
+his vocabulary with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>out strengthening his faith. Indeed, one would say,
+from certain passages in "In Memoriam," that it had distinctly weakened
+his faith. Let us note for a moment the different ways these two poets use
+science. In his poem to Fitzgerald, Tennyson draws upon the nebular
+hypothesis for an image:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"A planet equal to the sun<br />
+Which cast it, that large infidel<br />
+Your Omar."</p>
+
+<p>In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
+"of an earth that is dead."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space,<br />
+Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."</p>
+
+<p>In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The fires that arch this dusky dot&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yon myriad-worlded way&mdash;</span><br />
+The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">World-isles in lonely skies,</span><br />
+Whole heavens within themselves, amaze<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our brief humanities."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
+not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
+anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
+makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
+the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,<br />
+And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,<br />
+And call anything close again, when I desire it.<br />
+<br />
+"In vain the speeding or shyness,<br />
+In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,<br />
+In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,<br />
+In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,<br />
+In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,<br />
+In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,<br />
+In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,<br />
+In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,<br />
+In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,<br />
+I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.<br />
+My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,<br />
+On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,<br />
+All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.<br />
+<br />
+"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,<br />
+Afar down I see the huge first Nothing&mdash;I know I was even there,<br />
+I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,<br />
+And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.<br />
+<br />
+"Long I was hugged close&mdash;long and long.<br />
+Immense have been the preparations for me,<br />
+Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,<br />
+Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,<br />
+For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,<br />
+They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.<br />
+<br />
+"Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me,<br />
+My embryo has never been torpid&mdash;nothing could overlay it.<br />
+For it the nebula cohered to an orb,<br />
+The long, slow strata piled to rest it in,<br />
+Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care.<br />
+All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,<br />
+Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.<br />
+<br />
+"I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,<br />
+And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems:<br />
+Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,<br />
+Outward, outward, and forever outward:<br />
+My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels;<br />
+He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,<br />
+And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.<br />
+<br />
+"There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage.<br />
+If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run.<br />
+We should surely bring up again where we now stand,<br />
+And as surely go as much farther&mdash;and then farther and farther.<br />
+A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make it impatient.<br />
+They are but parts&mdash;anything is but a part,<br />
+See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,<br />
+Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."</p>
+
+<p>In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is
+always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of
+the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the
+man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality
+has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does
+not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional
+realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man
+refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the
+presence of the cosmic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all
+directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the
+"full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
+outside of itself.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,<br />
+And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_RELIGION" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_RELIGION"></a>HIS RELATION TO RELIGION</h3>
+
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">Whitman,</span> as I have elsewhere said, was swayed by two or three great
+passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He
+thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The soul,<br />
+Forever and forever&mdash;longer than soil is brown and solid&mdash;longer than water ebbs and flows."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy
+manly or womanly development, without religion.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their Religion,<br />
+Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur."</p>
+
+<p>All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Each is not for its own sake,<br />
+I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's sake."</p>
+
+<p>All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business
+pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth,<br />
+Any more than such are to Religion."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Again he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"My Comrade!<br />
+For you to share with me two greatnesses&mdash;And a third one, rising inclusive and more resplendent,<br />
+The greatness of Love and Democracy&mdash;and the greatness of Religion."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates
+is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It was larger than any creed that has
+yet been formulated. It was the conviction of the man of science touched
+and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his
+life its chief elements were faith, hope, charity. Its object was to
+prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind
+what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."</p>
+
+<p>The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse.
+Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had
+resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated.
+The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of
+the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was
+through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The
+great mass of the human race was doomed to endless perdition. Now there is
+no trace of this religion in Whitman, and it does not seem to have left
+any shadow upon him. Ecclesiasticism is dead; he clears the ground for a
+new growth. To the priests he says: "Your day is done."</p>
+
+<p>He sings a new song; he tastes a new joy in life. The earth is as divine
+as heaven, and there is no god more sacred than yourself. It is as if the
+world had been anew created, and Adam had once more been placed in the
+garden,&mdash;the world, with all consequences of the fall, purged from him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>Hence we have in Whitman the whole human attitude towards the universe,
+towards God, towards life and death, towards good and evil, completely
+changed. We have absolute faith and acceptance in place of the fear and
+repentance of the old creeds; we have death welcomed as joyously as life,
+we have political and social equality as motifs and impulses, and not
+merely as sentiments. He would show us the muse of poetry, as impartial,
+as sweeping in its vision, as modern, as real, as free from the morbid and
+make-believe, as the muse of science. He sees good in all, beauty in all.
+It is not the old piety, it is the new faith; it is not the old worship,
+it is the new acceptance; not the old, corroding religious pessimism, but
+the new scientific optimism.</p>
+
+<p>He does not deny, he affirms; he does not criticise, he celebrates; his is
+not a call to repentance, it is a call to triumph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,<br />
+None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,<br />
+None has begun to think how divine he himself is, or how certain the future is."</p>
+
+<p>He accepted science absolutely, yet science was not an end in itself: it
+was not his dwelling; he but entered by it to an area of his dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>The flower of science was religion. Without this religion, or something
+akin to it,&mdash;without some spiritual, emotional life that centred about an
+ideal,&mdash;Whitman urged that there could be no permanent national or
+individual development. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> past this ideal was found in the
+supernatural; for us and the future democratic ages, it must be found in
+the natural, in the now and the here.</p>
+
+<p>The aristocratic tradition not only largely shaped the literature of the
+past, it shaped the religion: man was a culprit, his life a rebellion; his
+proper attitude toward the unseen powers was that of a subject to his
+offended sovereign,&mdash;one of prostration and supplication. Heaven was a
+select circle reserved for the few,&mdash;the aristocracy of the pure and just.
+The religion of a democratic and scientific era, as voiced by Whitman and
+as exemplified in his life, is of quite another character,&mdash;not
+veneration, but joy and triumph; not fear, but love; not self-abasement,
+but self-exaltation; not sacrifice, but service: in fact, not religion at
+all in the old sense of the spiritual at war with the natural, the divine
+with the human, this world a vale of tears, and mundane things but filth
+and ashes, heaven for the good and hell for the bad; but in the new sense
+of the divinity of all things, of the equality of gods and men, of the
+brotherhood of the race, of the identity of the material and the
+spiritual, of the beneficence of death and the perfection of the universe.
+The poet turns his face to earth and not to heaven; he finds the
+miraculous, the spiritual, in the things about him, and gods and goddesses
+in the men and women he meets. He effaces the old distinctions; he
+establishes a sort of universal suffrage in spiritual matters; there are
+no select circles, no privileged persons. Is this the democracy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> of
+religion? liberty, fraternity, and equality carried out in the spiritual
+sphere? Death is the right hand of God, and evil plays a necessary part
+also. Nothing is discriminated against; there are no reprisals or
+postponements, no dualism or devilism. Everything is in its place; man's
+life and all the things of his life are well-considered.</p>
+
+<p>Carried out in practice, this democratic religion will not beget priests,
+or churches, or creeds, or rituals, but a life cheerful and full on all
+sides, helpful, loving, unworldly, tolerant, open-souled, temperate,
+fearless, free, and contemplating with pleasure, rather than alarm, "the
+exquisite transition of death."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="A_FINAL_WORD" id="A_FINAL_WORD"></a>A FINAL WORD</h3>
+
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">After</span> all I have written about Whitman, I feel at times that the main
+thing I wanted to say about him I have not said, cannot say; the best
+about him cannot be told anyway. "My final merit I refuse you." His full
+significance in connection with the great modern movement; how he embodies
+it all and speaks out of it, and yet maintains his hold upon the
+primitive, the aboriginal; how he presupposes science and culture, yet
+draws his strength from that which antedates these things; how he glories
+in the present, and yet is sustained and justified by the past; how he is
+the poet of America and the modern, and yet translates these things into
+universal truths; how he is the poet of wickedness, while yet every fibre
+of him is sound and good; how his page is burdened with the material, the
+real, the contemporary, while yet his hold upon the ideal, the spiritual,
+never relaxes; how he is the poet of the body, while yet he is in even
+fuller measure the poet of the soul; in fact, how all contradictions are
+finally reconciled in him,&mdash;all these things and more, I say, I feel that
+I have not set forth with the clearness and emphasis the subject demanded.
+Other students of him will approach him on other lines, and will disclose
+meanings that I have missed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>Writing about him, as Symonds said, is enormously difficult. At times I
+feel as if I was almost as much at sea with regard to him as when I first
+began to study him; not at sea with regard to his commanding genius and
+power, but with regard to any adequate statement and summary of him in
+current critical terms. One cannot define and classify him as he can a
+more highly specialized poetic genius. What is he like? He is like
+everything. He is like the soil which holds the germs of a thousand forms
+of life; he is like the grass, common, universal, perennial, formless; he
+is like your own heart, mystical yearning, rebellious, contradictory, but
+ever throbbing with life. He is fluid, generative, electric; he is full of
+the germs, potencies, and latencies of things; he provokes thought without
+satisfying it; he is formless without being void; he is both Darwinian and
+Dantesque. He is the great reconciler, he united and harmonized so many
+opposites in himself. As a man he united the masculine and feminine
+elements in a remarkable degree; he united the innocent vanity of the
+child with the self-reliance of a god. In his moral aspects, he united
+egoism and altruism, pride and charity, individualism and democracy,
+fierce patriotism and the cosmopolitan spirit; in his literary aspects he
+united mysticism and realism, the poet and prophet, the local and the
+universal; in his religious aspects he united faith and agnosticism, the
+glorification of the body and all objective things, with an unshakable
+trust in the reality of the invisible world.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>Rich in the elements of poetry, a London critic says, almost beyond any
+other poet of his time, and yet the conscious, elaborate, crystallic,
+poetic work which the critic demanded of him, carefully stopping short of,
+quite content to hold it all in solution, and give his reader an impulse
+rather than a specimen.</p>
+
+<p>I have accepted Whitman entire and without reservation. I could not do
+otherwise. It was clear enough to me that he was to be taken as a whole or
+not at all. We cannot cut and carve a man. The latest poet brings us
+poetic wares, curiously and beautifully carved and wrought specimens, some
+of which we accept and some of which we pass by. Whitman brings us no
+cunning handicraft of the muses: he brings us a gospel, he brings us a
+man, he brings us a new revelation of life; and either his work appeals to
+us as a whole, or it does not so appeal. He will not live in separate
+passages, or in a few brief poems, any more than Shakespeare or Homer or
+Dante, or the Bible, so lives.</p>
+
+<p>The chief thing about the average literary poet is his poetic gift, apart
+from any other consideration; we select from what he brings us as we
+select from a basket of fruit. The chief thing about Whitman is the
+personality which the poetic gift is engaged in exploiting; the excitement
+of our literary or artistic sense is always less than the excitement of
+our sense of life and of real things. We get in him a fixed point of view,
+a new vantage-ground of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> personality from which to survey life. It is less
+what he brings, and more what he is, than with other poets. To take him by
+fragments, picking out poetic tidbits here and there, rejecting all the
+rest, were like valuing a walk through the fields and woods only for the
+flowers culled here and there, or the bits of color in the grass or
+foliage. Is the air, the sunshine, the free spaces, the rocks, the soil,
+the trees, and the exhilaration of it all, nothing? There are flowers in
+Whitman, too, but they are amid the rocks or under the trees, and seem
+quite unpremeditated and by the way, and never the main concern. If our
+quest is for these alone, we shall surely be disappointed. "In order to
+appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose," says Joel Chandler Harris,
+"it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp
+in instant and express admiration the vast group of facts that make
+man,&mdash;that make liberty,&mdash;that make America. There is no poetry in the
+details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of
+the mighty forces behind them,&mdash;the inevitable, unaccountable,
+irresistible forward movement of man in the making of this republic."</p>
+
+<p>And again: "Those who approach Walt Whitman's poetry from the literary
+side are sure to be disappointed. Whatever else it is, it is not literary.
+Its art is its own, and the melody of it must be sought in other
+suggestions than those of metre.... Those who are merely literary will
+find little substance in the great drama of Democracy which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> outlined
+by Walt Whitman in his writings,&mdash;it is no distinction to call them poems.
+But those who know nature at first hand&mdash;who know man, who see in this
+Republic something more than a political government&mdash;will find therein the
+thrill and glow of poetry and the essence of melody. Not the poetry that
+culture stands in expectation of, nor the melody that capers in verse and
+metre, but those rarer intimations and suggestions that are born in
+primeval solitudes, or come whirling from the vast funnel of the storm."
+How admirable! how true! No man has ever spoken more to the point upon
+Walt Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of such a man as Whitman involves deep world-forces of race
+and time. He is rooted in the very basic structure of his age. After what
+I have already said, my reader will not be surprised when I tell him that
+I look upon Whitman as the one mountain thus far in our literary
+landscape. To me he changes the whole aspect, almost the very climate, of
+our literature. He adds the much-needed ruggedness, breadth, audacity,
+independence, and the elements of primal strength and health. We owe much
+to Emerson. But Emerson was much more a <i>made</i> man than was Whitman,&mdash;much
+more the result of secondary forces, the college, the church, and of New
+England social and literary culture. With all his fervid humanity and
+deeply ingrained modernness, Whitman has the virtues of the primal and the
+savage. "Leaves of Grass" has not the charm, or the kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> of charm, of the
+more highly wrought artistic works, but it has the incentive of nature and
+the charm of real things. We shall not go to it to be soothed and lulled.
+It will always remain among the difficult and heroic undertakings,
+demanding our best moments, our best strength, our morning push and power.
+Like voyaging or mountain-climbing, or facing any danger or hardship by
+land or sea, it fosters manly endeavor and the great virtues of sanity and
+self-reliance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><b>Transcriber's Notes:</b></p>
+
+<p>Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.</p>
+
+<p>Printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphen usage have been retained.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30342 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Whitman
+       A Study
+
+Author: John Burroughs
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2009 [EBook #30342]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Books by John Burroughs.
+
+  WORKS. 14 vols., uniform, 16mo, gilt top, $17.10;
+  half calf, $34.10; half polished morocco, $37.45.
+
+    WAKE-ROBIN.
+
+    WINTER SUNSHINE.
+
+    LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY.
+
+    FRESH FIELDS.
+
+    INDOOR STUDIES.
+
+    BIRDS AND POETS, with Other Papers.
+
+    PEPACTON, and Other Sketches.
+
+    SIGNS AND SEASONS.
+
+    RIVERBY.
+
+    WHITMAN: A STUDY.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.25.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. A Series of Literary Essays.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.10, _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage 11 cents.
+
+  A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to
+  each season of the year, from the writings of John
+  Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON
+  JOHNSON. 12mo, $1.50.
+
+  WHITMAN: A Study. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+  _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50, _net_.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_. Postage, 11 cents.
+
+  WINTER SUNSHINE. _Cambridge Classics Series._
+  Crown 8vo, $1.00.
+
+  WAKE-ROBIN. _Riverside Aldine Series._ 16mo, $1.00.
+
+  SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illustrated.
+  Square 12mo, $1.00. _School Edition_, 60
+  cents, _net_.
+
+
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: WALT WHITMAN]
+
+
+
+
+  WHITMAN
+  _A STUDY_
+
+  BY
+  JOHN BURROUGHS
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1896,
+  BY JOHN BURROUGHS.
+
+  _All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+  PRELIMINARY                                    1
+
+  BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL                     23
+
+  HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS                     73
+
+  HIS SELF-RELIANCE                             85
+
+  HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE           101
+
+  HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS              169
+
+  HIS RELATION TO CULTURE                      205
+
+  HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES    229
+
+  HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE                      249
+
+  HIS RELATION TO RELIGION                     257
+
+  A FINAL WORD                                 263
+
+
+
+
+"_All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
+from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
+from elsewhere._"--TAINE.
+
+"_If you want to tell good Gothic, see if it has the sort of roughness and
+largeness and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness
+which seems always to be the sign manual of the broad vision and massy
+power of men who can see_ past _the work they are doing, and betray here
+and there something like disdain for it._"--RUSKIN.
+
+"_Formerly, during the period termed classic, when literature was governed
+by recognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the
+most perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the
+most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,--the AEneid,
+the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day something else is wanted. For us
+the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
+imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
+The greatest poet is not he who has done the best, it is he who suggests
+the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves
+you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your
+turn._"--SAINTE-BEUVE.
+
+
+
+
+WHITMAN
+
+
+PRELIMINARY
+
+
+I
+
+The writing of this preliminary chapter, and the final survey and revision
+of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild
+place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place
+Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,--an
+amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth
+of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site of
+an ancient lake, now a garden of unknown depth and fertility. Elemental
+ruggedness, savageness, and grandeur, combined with wonderful tenderness,
+modernness, and geniality. There rise the gray scarred cliffs, crowned
+here and there with a dead hemlock or pine, where, morning after morning,
+I have seen the bald-eagle perch, and here at their feet this level area
+of tender humus, with three perennial springs of delicious cold water
+flowing in its margin; a huge granite bowl filled with the elements and
+potencies of life. The scene has a strange fascination for me, and holds
+me here day after day. From the highest point of rocks I can overlook a
+long stretch of the river and of the farming country beyond; I can hear
+owls hoot, hawks scream, and roosters crow. Birds of the garden and
+orchard meet birds of the forest upon the shaggy cedar posts that uphold
+my porch. At dusk the call of the whippoorwill mingles with the chorus of
+the pickerel frogs, and in the morning I hear through the robins' cheerful
+burst the sombre plaint of the mourning-dove. When I tire of my
+manuscript, I walk in the woods, or climb the rocks, or help the men clear
+up the ground, piling and burning the stumps and rubbish. This scene and
+situation, so primitive and secluded, yet so touched with and adapted to
+civilization, responding to the moods of both sides of the life and
+imagination of a modern man, seems, I repeat, typical in many ways of my
+poet, and is a veritable Whitman land. Whitman does not to me suggest the
+wild and unkempt as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the
+elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my
+dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to
+him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and
+placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some
+of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and
+primitive aspects.
+
+His wildness is only the wildness of the great primary forces from which
+we draw our health and strength. Underneath all his unloosedness, or free
+launching forth of himself, is the sanity and repose of nature.
+
+
+II
+
+I first became acquainted with Whitman's poetry through the columns of the
+old "Saturday Press" when I was twenty or twenty-one years old (1858 or
+1859). The first things I remember to have read were "There was a child
+went forth," "This Compost," "As I ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Old
+Ireland," and maybe a few others. I was attracted by the new poet's work
+from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found
+in the current poetry. Meeting Bayard Taylor about this time, I spoke to
+him about Whitman. "Yes," he said, "there is something in him, but he is a
+man of colossal egotism."
+
+A few years later a friend sent me a copy of the Thayer & Eldridge edition
+of "Leaves of Grass" of 1860. It proved a fascinating but puzzling book to
+me. I grazed upon it like a colt upon a mountain, taking what tasted good
+to me, and avoiding what displeased me, but having little or no conception
+of the purport of the work as a whole. I found passages and whole poems
+here and there that I never tired of reading, and that gave a strange
+fillip to my moral and intellectual nature, but nearly as many passages
+and poems puzzled or repelled me. My absorption of Emerson had prepared me
+in a measure for Whitman's philosophy of life, but not for the ideals of
+character and conduct which he held up to me, nor for the standards in art
+to which the poet perpetually appealed. Whitman was Emerson translated
+from the abstract into the concrete. There was no privacy with Whitman; he
+never sat me down in a corner with a cozy, comfortable shut-in feeling,
+but he set me upon a hill or started me upon an endless journey.
+Wordsworth had been my poet of nature, of the sequestered and the idyllic;
+but I saw that here was a poet of a larger, more fundamental nature,
+indeed of the Cosmos itself. Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the
+earth and the orbs. This much soon appeared to me, but I was troubled by
+the poet's apparent "colossal egotism," by his attitude towards evil,
+declaring himself "to be the poet of wickedness also;" by his seeming
+attraction toward the turbulent and the disorderly; and, at times, by what
+the critics had called his cataloguing style of treatment.
+
+When I came to meet the poet himself, which was in the fall of 1863, I
+felt less concern about these features of his work; he was so sound and
+sweet and gentle and attractive as a man, and withal so wise and tolerant,
+that I soon came to feel the same confidence in the book that I at once
+placed in its author, even in the parts which I did not understand. I saw
+that the work and the man were one, and that the former must be good as
+the latter was good. There was something in the manner in which both the
+book and its author carried themselves under the sun, and in the way they
+confronted America and the present time, that convinced beyond the power
+of logic or criticism.
+
+The more I saw of Whitman, and the more I studied his "Leaves," the more
+significance I found in both, and the clearer it became to me that a new
+type of a man and a new departure in poetic literature were here
+foreshadowed. There was something forbidding, but there was something
+vital and grand back of it. I found to be true what the poet said of
+himself,--
+
+  "Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,
+  To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
+  For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them,"--
+
+I have persevered in my study of the poet, though balked many times, and
+the effect upon my own mental and spiritual nature has been great; no such
+"solid prizes" in the way of a broader outlook upon life and nature, and,
+I may say, upon art, has any poet of my time afforded me. There are
+passages or whole poems in the "Leaves" which I do not yet understand
+("Sleep-Chasings" is one of them), though the language is as clear as
+daylight; they are simply too subtle or elusive for me; but my confidence
+in the logical soundness of the book is so complete that I do not trouble
+myself at all about these things.
+
+
+III
+
+I would fain make these introductory remarks to my essay a sort of window
+through which the reader may get a fairly good view of what lies beyond.
+If he does not here get any glimpse or suggestion of what pleases him, or
+of what he is looking for, it will hardly be worth while for him to
+trouble himself further.
+
+A great many readers, perhaps three fourths of the readers of current
+poetry, and not a few of the writers thereof, cannot stand Whitman at all,
+or see any reason for his being. To such my essay, if it ever comes to
+their notice, will be a curiosity, may be an offense. But I trust it will
+meet with a different reception at the hands of the smaller but rapidly
+growing circle of those who are beginning to turn to Whitman as the most
+imposing and significant figure in our literary annals.
+
+The rapidly growing Whitman literature attests the increasing interest to
+which I refer. Indeed, it seems likely that by the end of the century the
+literature which will have grown up around the name of this man will
+surpass in bulk and value that which has grown up around the name of any
+other man of letters born within the century.
+
+When Mr. Stedman wrote his essay upon the poet early in the eighties, he
+referred to the mass of this literature. It has probably more than doubled
+in volume in the intervening years: since Whitman's death in the spring of
+'92, it has been added to by William Clark's book upon the poet, Professor
+Trigg's study of Browning and Whitman, and the work of that accomplished
+critic and scholar, so lately gone to his rest, John Addington Symonds.
+This last is undoubtedly the most notable contribution that has yet been
+made, or is likely very soon to be made, to the Whitman literature. Mr.
+Symonds declares that "Leaves of Grass," which he first read at the age of
+twenty-five, influenced him more than any other book has done, except the
+Bible,--more than Plato, more than Goethe.
+
+When we remember that the man who made this statement was eminently a man
+of books, deeply read in all literatures, his testimony may well offset
+that of a score of our home critics who find nothing worthy or helpful in
+Whitman's work. One positive witness in such a matter outweighs any number
+of negative ones.
+
+
+IV
+
+For making another addition to the growing Whitman literature, I have no
+apology to offer. I know well enough that "writing and talk" cannot
+"prove" a poet; that he must be his own proof or be forgotten; and my main
+purpose in writing about Whitman, as in writing about nature, is to tell
+readers what I have found there, with the hope of inducing them to look
+for themselves. At the same time, I may say that I think no modern poet so
+much needs to be surrounded by an atmosphere of comment and
+interpretation, through which readers may approach him, as does Whitman.
+His work sprang from a habit or attitude of mind quite foreign to that
+with which current literature makes us familiar,--so germinal is it, and
+so little is it beholden to the formal art we so assiduously cultivate.
+The poet says his work "connects lovingly with precedents," but it does
+not connect lovingly with any body of poetry of this century. "Leaves of
+Grass" is bound to be a shock to the timid and pampered taste of the
+majority of current readers. I would fain lessen this shock by interposing
+my own pages of comment between the book and the public. The critic can
+say so many things the poet cannot. He can explain and qualify and
+analyze, whereas the creative artist can only hint or project. The poet
+must hasten on, he must infold and bind together, he must be direct and
+synthetic in every act. Reflection and qualification are not for him, but
+action, emotion, volition, the procreant blending and surrender. He works
+as Nature does, and gives us reality in every line.
+
+Whitman says:--
+
+  "I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot
+        expound myself."
+
+
+The type of mind of Whitman's, which seldom or never emerges as a mere
+mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a
+personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself,
+because its operations are synthetic and not analytic, its mainspring is
+love and not mere knowledge. In his prose essay called "A Backward Glance
+o'er Travel'd Roads," appended to the final edition of his poems, Whitman
+has not so much sought to expound himself as to put his reader in
+possession of his point of view, and of the considerations that lie back
+of his work. This chapter might render much that I have written
+superfluous, were there not always a distinct gain in seeing an author
+through another medium, or in getting the equivalents of him in the
+thoughts and ideals of a kindred and sympathetic mind. But I have not
+consciously sought to expound Whitman, any more than in my other books I
+have sought to expound the birds or wild nature. I have written out some
+things that he means to me, and the pleasure and profit I have found in
+his pages.
+
+There is no end to what can be drawn out of him. It has been said and
+repeated that he was not a thinker, and yet I find more food for thought
+in him than in all other poets. It has been often said and repeated that
+he is not a poet, and yet the readers that respond to him the most fully
+appear to be those in whom the poetic temperament is paramount. I believe
+he supplies in fuller measure that pristine element, something akin to the
+unbreathed air of mountain and shore, which makes the arterial blood of
+poetry and literature, than any other modern writer.
+
+
+V
+
+We can make little of Whitman unless we allow him to be a law unto
+himself, and seek him through the clews which he himself brings. When we
+try him by current modes, current taste, and demand of him formal beauty,
+formal art, we are disappointed. But when we try him by what we may call
+the scientific standard, the standard of organic nature, and demand of him
+the vital and the characteristic,--demand of him that he have a law of his
+own, and fulfill that law in the poetic sphere,--the result is quite
+different.
+
+More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other
+poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies, rather than
+in what he portrays; and more than any other poet must he wait to be
+understood by the growth of the taste of himself. "I make the only growth
+by which I can be appreciated," he truly says.
+
+His words are like the manna that descended upon the Israelites, "in which
+were all manner of tastes; and every one found in it what his palate was
+chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the young
+men tasted bread; the old men honey; and the children oil." Many young
+men,--poets, artists, teachers, preachers,--have testified that they have
+found bread in Whitman, the veritable bread of life; others have found
+honey, sweet poetic morsels; and not a few report having found only gall.
+
+
+VI
+
+In considering an original work like "Leaves of Grass," the search is
+always for the grounds upon which it is to be justified and explained.
+These grounds in this work are not easy to find; they lie deeper than the
+grounds upon which the popular poets rest. Because they are not at once
+seen, many readers have denied that there are any such grounds. But to
+deny a basis of reality to a work with the history of "Leaves of Grass,"
+and a basis well grounded on aesthetic and artistic principles, is not to
+be thought of.
+
+The more the poet eludes us, the more we know he has his hiding-place
+somewhere. The more he denies our standards, the more we know he has
+standards of his own which we must discover; the more he flouts at our
+literary conventions, the more we must press him for his own principles
+and methods. How does he justify himself to himself? Could any sane man
+have written the Children of Adam poems who was not sustained by deepest
+moral and aesthetic convictions? It is the business of the critic to search
+for these principles and convictions, and not shirk the task by ridicule
+and denial.
+
+
+VII
+
+If there was never any change in taste, if it always ran in the same
+channels,--indeed, if it did not at times run in precisely opposite
+channels,--there would be little hope that Walt Whitman's poetry would
+ever find any considerable number of readers. But one of the laws that
+dominate the progress of literature, as Edmond Sherer says, is incessant
+change, not only in thought and ideas, but in taste and the
+starting-points of art. A radical and almost violent change in these
+respects is indicated by Whitman,--a change which is in unison with many
+things in modern life and morals, but which fairly crosses the prevailing
+taste in poetry and in art. No such dose of realism and individualism
+under the guise of poetry has been administered to the reading public in
+this century. No such break with literary traditions--no such audacious
+attempt to tally, in a printed page, the living concrete man, an actual
+human presence, instead of the conscious, made-up poet--is to be found in
+modern literary records.
+
+
+VIII
+
+The much that I have said in the following pages about Whitman's radical
+differences from other poets--his changed attitude towards the universe,
+his unwonted methods and aims, etc.,--might seem to place him upon a
+ground so unique and individual as to contradict my claims for his breadth
+and universality. The great poets stand upon common ground; they excel
+along familiar lines, they touch us, and touch us deeply, at many points.
+What always saves Whitman is his enormous endowment of what is "commonest,
+nearest, easiest,"--his atmosphere of the common day, the common life, and
+his fund of human sympathy and love. He is strange because he gives us the
+familiar in such a direct, unexpected manner. His "Leaves" are like some
+new fruit that we have never before tasted. It is the product of another
+clime, another hemisphere. The same old rains and dews, the same old sun
+and soil, nursed it, yet in so many ways how novel and strange! We
+certainly have to serve a certain apprenticeship to this poet, familiarize
+ourselves with his point of view and with his democratic spirit, before we
+can make much of him. The spirit in which we come to him from the other
+poets--the poets of art and culture--is for the most part unfriendly to
+him. There is something rude, strange, and unpoetic about him at first
+sight that is sure to give most readers of poetry a shock. I think one
+might come to him from the Greek poets, or the old Hebrew or Oriental
+bards, with less shock than from our modern delicate and refined singers;
+because the old poets were more simple and elemental, and aimed less at
+the distilled dainties of poetry, than the modern. They were full of
+action, too, and volition,--of that which begets and sustains life.
+Whitman's poetry is almost entirely the expression of will and
+personality, and runs very little to intellectual subtleties and
+refinements. It fulfills itself in our wills and character, rather than in
+our taste.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country's
+poets, and among English poets generally,--a cropping out again, after so
+many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain. Had he dropped upon us
+from some other sphere, he could hardly have been a greater surprise and
+puzzle to the average reader or critic. Into a literature that was timid,
+imitative, conventional, he fell like leviathan into a duck-pond, and the
+commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All
+the reigning poets in this country except Emerson denied him, and many of
+our minor poets still keep up a hostile sissing and cackling. He will
+probably always be more or less a stumbling-block to the minor poet,
+because of his indifference to the things which to the minor poet are all
+in all. He was a poet without what is called artistic form, and without
+technique, as that word is commonly understood. His method was analogous
+to the dynamic method of organic nature, rather than to the mechanical or
+constructive method of the popular poets.
+
+
+X
+
+Of course the first thing that strikes the reader in "Leaves of Grass" is
+its seeming oddity and strangeness. If a man were to come into a dress
+reception in shirt sleeves and with his hat on, the feature would strike
+us at once, and would be magnified in our eyes; we should quite forget
+that he was a man, and in essentials differed but little from the rest of
+us, after all. The exterior habiliments on such occasions count for nearly
+everything; and in the popular poetry rhyme, measure, and the language and
+manners of the poets are much more than anything else. If Whitman did not
+do anything so outre as to come into a dress reception with his coat off
+and his hat on, he did come into the circle of the poets without the usual
+poetic habiliments. He was not dressed up at all, and he was not at all
+abashed or apologetic. His air was confident and self-satisfied, if it did
+not at times suggest the insolent and aggressive. It was the dress circle
+that was on trial, and not Walt Whitman.
+
+We could forgive a man in real life for such an audacious proceeding only
+on the ground of his being something extraordinary as a person, with an
+extraordinary message to convey; and we can pardon the poet only on
+precisely like grounds. He must make us forget his unwonted garb by his
+unique and lovable personality, and the power and wisdom of his utterance.
+If he cannot do this we shall soon tire of him.
+
+That Whitman was a personality the like of which the world has not often
+seen, and that his message to his country and to his race was of prime
+importance, are conclusions at which more and more thinking persons are
+surely arriving.
+
+His want of art, of which we have heard so much, is, it seems to me, just
+this want of the usual trappings and dress uniform of the poets. In the
+essentials of art, the creative imagination, the plastic and quickening
+spirit, the power of identification with the thing contemplated, and the
+absolute use of words, he has few rivals.
+
+
+XI
+
+I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
+Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
+colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
+such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
+is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
+appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
+violently for him or violently against, and it will require the
+perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
+significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
+show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.
+
+"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
+has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
+this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
+interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
+up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
+and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
+vanity."
+
+To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
+one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
+not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
+follows, I shall be more than content.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the world of literature, as in the world of physical forces, things
+adjust themselves after a while, and no impetus can be given to any man's
+name or fame that will finally carry it beyond the limit of his real
+worth. However "one-sided" my enthusiasm for Whitman may be, or that of
+any of his friends may be, there is no danger but that in time he will
+find exactly his proper place and level. My opinion, or any man's opinion,
+of the works of another, is like a wind that blows for a moment across
+the water, heaping it up a little on the shore or else beating it down,
+but not in any way permanently affecting its proper level.
+
+The adverse winds that have blown over Whitman's work have been many and
+persistent, and yet the tide has surely risen, his fame has slowly
+increased.
+
+It will soon be forty years since he issued the first thin quarto edition
+of "Leaves of Grass," and, though the opposition to him has been the most
+fierce and determined ever recorded in our literary history, often
+degenerating into persecution and willful misrepresentation, yet his fame
+has steadily grown both at home and abroad. The impression he early made
+upon such men as Emerson, Thoreau, William O'Connor, Mr. Stedman, Colonel
+Ingersoll, and others in this country, and upon Professors Dowden and
+Clifford, upon Symonds, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti, Lord Lytton, Mrs.
+Gilchrist, George Eliot, in England, has been followed by an equally deep
+or deeper impression upon many of the younger and bolder spirits of both
+hemispheres. In fact Whitman saw his battle essentially won in his own
+lifetime, though his complete triumph is of course a matter of the distant
+future.
+
+
+XIII
+
+But let me give without further delay a fuller hint of the attitude these
+pages assume and hold towards the subject they discuss.
+
+There are always, or nearly always, a few men born to each generation who
+embody the best thought and culture of that generation, and express it in
+approved literary forms. From Petrarch down to Lowell, the lives and works
+of these men fill the literary annals; they uphold the literary and
+scholarly traditions; they are the true men of letters; they are justly
+honored and beloved in their day and land. We in this country have
+recently, in the death of Dr. Holmes, mourned the loss of the last of the
+New England band of such men. We are all indebted to them for solace, and
+for moral and intellectual stimulus.
+
+Then, much more rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like
+an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who
+bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are
+not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times
+for the most part decry and disown,--the primal, original, elemental men.
+It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the
+minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He
+is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets,--nearer the
+founders and discoverers, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic,
+patriarchal men who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with
+the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the
+seer, the prophet. The specialization and differentiation of our latter
+ages of science and culture is less marked in him than in other poets.
+Poetry, philosophy, religion, are all inseparably blended in his pages. He
+is in many ways a reversion to an earlier type. Dr. Brinton has remarked
+that his attitude toward the principle of sex and his use of sexual
+imagery in his poems, are the same as in the more primitive religions.
+Whitman was not a poet by elaboration, but by suggestion; not an artist by
+formal presentation, but by spirit and conception; not a philosopher by
+system and afterthought, but by vision and temper.
+
+In his "Leaves," we again hear the note of destiny,--again see the
+universal laws and forces exemplified in the human personality, and turned
+upon life with love and triumph.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The world always has trouble with its primary men, or with the men who
+have any primary gifts, like Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Tolstoi,
+Ibsen. The idols of an age are nearly always secondary men: they break no
+new ground; they make no extraordinary demands; our tastes and wants are
+already adjusted to their type; we understand and approve of them at once.
+The primary men disturb us; they are a summons and a challenge; they break
+up the old order; they open up new territory which we are to subdue and
+occupy; the next age and the next make more of them. In my opinion, the
+next age and the next will make more of Whitman, and the next still more,
+because he is in the great world-current, in the line of the evolutionary
+movement of our time. Is it at all probable that Tennyson can ever be to
+any other age what he has been to this? Tennyson marks an expiring age,
+the sunset of the feudal world. He did not share the spirit to which the
+future belongs. There was not one drop of democratic blood in his veins.
+To him, the people were an hundred-headed beast.
+
+
+XV
+
+If my essay seems like one continual strain to attain the unattainable, to
+compass and define Whitman, who will not be compassed and defined, I can
+only say that I regret it, but could not well help it. Talking about
+Whitman, Symonds said, was like talking about the universe, and it is so.
+There is somewhat incommensurable in his works. One may not hope to speak
+the final word about him, to sum him up in a sentence. He is so palpable,
+so real, so near at hand, that the critic or expounder of him promises
+himself an easy victory; but before one can close with him he is gone. He
+is, after all, as subtle and baffling as air or light.
+
+                    ... "I will certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you."
+
+
+It is probably this characteristic which makes Whitman an irrepressible
+figure in literature; he will not down for friend or foe. He escapes from
+all classification, and is larger than any definition of him that has yet
+been given. How many times has he been exploded by British and American
+critics; how many times has he been labeled and put upon the shelf, only
+to reappear again as vigorous and untranslatable as ever!
+
+
+XVI
+
+So far as Whitman stands merely for the spirit of revolt, or of reaction
+against current modes in life and literature, I have little interest in
+him. As the "apostle of the rough, the uncouth," to use Mr. Howells's
+words, the world would long ago have tired of him. The irruption into
+letters of the wild and lawless, or of the strained and eccentric, can
+amuse and interest us only for a moment. It is because these are only
+momentary phases of him, as it were, and because underneath all he
+embraces the whole of life and ministers to it, that his fame and
+influence are still growing in the world. One hesitates even to call
+Whitman the poet of "democracy," or of "personality," or of "the modern,"
+because such terms only half define him. He quickly escapes into that
+large and universal air which all great art breathes. We cannot sum him up
+in a phrase. He flows out on all sides, and his sympathies embrace all
+types and conditions of men. He is a great democrat, but, first and last
+and over all, he is a great man, a great nature, and deep world-currents
+course through him. He is distinctively an American poet, but his
+Americanism is only the door through which he enters upon the universal.
+
+
+XVII
+
+Call his work poetry or prose, or what you will: that it is an inspired
+utterance of some sort, any competent person ought to be able to see. And
+what else do we finally demand of any work than that it be inspired? How
+all questions of form and art, and all other questions, sink into
+insignificance beside that! The exaltation of mind and spirit shown in the
+main body of Whitman's work, the genuine, prophetic fervor, the
+intensification and amplification of the simple ego, and the resultant
+raising of all human values, seem to me as plain as daylight.
+
+Whitman is to be classed among the great names by the breadth and
+all-inclusiveness of his theme and by his irrepressible personality. I
+think it highly probable that future scholars and critics will find his
+work fully as significant and era-marking as that of any of the few
+supreme names of the past. It is the culmination of an age of
+individualism, and, as opposites meet, it is also the best lesson in
+nationalism and universal charity that this century has seen.
+
+
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL
+
+
+I
+
+Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 30, 1819, and died
+at Camden, N. J., March 26, 1892. Though born in the country, most of his
+life was passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New
+Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is
+buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,--free, unhampered,
+unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of
+money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole,
+joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter
+through the world,--no hurry, no fever, no strife; hence no bitterness, no
+depletion, no wasted energies. A farm boy, then a school-teacher, then a
+printer, editor, writer, traveler, mechanic, nurse in the army hospitals,
+and lastly government clerk; large and picturesque of figure, slow of
+movement; tolerant, passive, receptive, and democratic,--of the people; in
+all his tastes and attractions, always aiming to walk abreast with the
+great laws and forces, and to live thoroughly in the free, nonchalant
+spirit of his own day and land. His strain was mingled Dutch and English,
+with a decided Quaker tinge, which came from his mother's side, and which
+had a marked influence upon his work.
+
+The spirit that led him to devote his time and substance to the sick and
+wounded soldiers during the war may be seen in that earlier incident in
+his life when he drove a Broadway stage all one winter, that a disabled
+driver might lie by without starving his family. It is from this episode
+that the tradition of his having been a New York stage-driver comes. He
+seems always to have had a special liking for this class of workmen. One
+of the house surgeons of the old New York Hospital relates that in the
+latter part of the fifties Whitman was a frequent visitor to that
+institution, looking after and ministering to disabled stage-drivers.
+"These drivers," says the doctor, "like those of the omnibuses in London,
+were a set of men by themselves. A good deal of strength, intelligence,
+and skillful management of horses was required of a Broadway stage-driver.
+He seems to have been decidedly a higher order of man than the driver of
+the present horse-cars. He usually had his primary education in the
+country, and graduated as a thorough expert in managing a very difficult
+machine, in an exceptionally busy thoroughfare.
+
+"It was this kind of a man that so attracted Walt Whitman that he was
+constantly to be seen perched on the box alongside one of them going up
+and down Broadway. I often watched the poet and driver, as probably did
+many another New Yorker in those days.
+
+"I do not wonder as much now as I did in 1860 that a man like Walt Whitman
+became interested in these drivers. He was not interested in the news of
+every-day life--the murders and accidents and political convulsions--but
+he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not
+had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now
+that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then
+been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote
+them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said
+much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had satisfied
+himself of the nature of the injury and of the prospect of recovery.
+
+"Whitman appeared to be about forty years of age at that time. He was
+always dressed in a blue flannel coat and vest, with gray and baggy
+trousers. He wore a woolen shirt, with a Byronic collar, low in the neck,
+without a cravat, as I remember, and a large felt hat. His hair was iron
+gray, and he had a full beard and mustache of the same color. His face and
+neck were bronzed by exposure to the sun and air. He was large, and gave
+the impression of being a vigorous man. He was scrupulously careful of his
+simple attire, and his hands were soft and hairy."
+
+During the early inception of "Leaves of Grass" he was a carpenter in
+Brooklyn, building and selling small frame-houses to working people. He
+frequently knocked off work to write his poems. In his life Whitman was
+never one of the restless, striving sort. In this respect he was not
+typical of his countrymen. All his urgency and strenuousness he reserved
+for his book. He seems always to have been a sort of visitor in life,
+noting, observing, absorbing, keeping aloof from all ties that would hold
+him, and making the most of the hour and the place in which he happened to
+be. He was in no sense a typical literary man. During his life in New York
+and Brooklyn, we see him moving entirely outside the fashionable circles,
+the learned circles, the literary circles, the money-getting circles. He
+belongs to no set or club. He is seen more with the laboring
+classes,--drivers, boatmen, mechanics, printers,--and I suspect may often
+be found with publicans and sinners. He is fond of the ferries and of the
+omnibuses. He is a frequenter of the theatre and of the Italian opera.
+Alboni makes a deep and lasting impression upon him. It is probably to her
+that he writes these lines:--
+
+  "Here take this gift,
+  I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, general,
+  One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress
+        and freedom of the race,
+  Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
+  But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to
+        any."
+
+
+Elsewhere he refers to Alboni by name and speaks of her as
+
+  "The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
+  Sister of loftiest gods."
+
+
+Some of his poems were written at the opera. The great singers evidently
+gave him clews and suggestions that were applicable to his own art.
+
+His study was out of doors. He wrote on the street, on the ferry, at the
+seaside, in the fields, at the opera,--always from living impulses arising
+at the moment, and always with his eye upon the fact. He says he has read
+his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, and tried them by the realities
+of life and nature about him. Were they as real and alive as they?--this
+was the only question with him.
+
+At home in his father's family in Brooklyn we see him gentle, patient,
+conciliatory, much looked up to by all. Neighbors seek his advice. He is
+cool, deliberate, impartial. A marked trait is his indifference to money
+matters; his people are often troubled because he lets opportunities to
+make money pass by. When his "Leaves" appear, his family are puzzled, do
+not know what to make of it. His mother thinks that, if "Hiawatha" is
+poetry, may be Walt's book is, too. He never counsels with any one, and is
+utterly indifferent as to what people may say or think. He is not a
+stirring and punctual man, is always a little late; not an early riser,
+not prompt at dinner; always has ample time, and will not be hurried; the
+business gods do not receive his homage. He is gray at thirty, and is said
+to have had a look of age in youth, as he had a look of youth in age. He
+has few books, cares little for sport, never uses a gun; has no bad
+habits; has no entanglements with women, and apparently never contemplates
+marriage. It is said that during his earliest years of manhood he kept
+quite aloof from the "girls."
+
+At the age of nineteen he edited "The Long Islander," published at
+Huntington. A recent visitor to these early haunts of Whitman gathered
+some reminiscences of him at this date:--
+
+"Amid the deep revery of nature, on that mild October afternoon, we
+returned to the village of Huntington, there to meet the few, the very
+few, survivors who recall Walt's first appearance in the literary world as
+the editor of 'The Long Islander,' nigh sixty years ago (1838). Two of
+these forefathers of the hamlet clearly remembered his powerful
+personality, brimful of life, reveling in strength, careless of time and
+the world, of money and of toil; a lover of books and of jokes; delighting
+to gather round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of
+evenings, and tell them stories and read them poetry, his own and others'.
+That of his own he called his 'Yawps,' a word which he afterwards made
+famous. Both remembered him as a delightful companion, generous to a
+fault, glorying in youth, negligent of his affairs, issuing 'The Long
+Islander' at random intervals,--once a week, once in two weeks, once in
+three,--until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him
+out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt himself was editor,
+publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all in one."
+
+
+II
+
+Few men were so deeply impressed by our Civil War as was Whitman. It
+aroused all his patriotism, all his sympathies, and, as a poet, tested his
+power to deal with great contemporary events and scenes. He was first
+drawn to the seat of war on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel
+George W. Whitman, 51st New York Volunteers, who was wounded by the
+fragment of a shell at Fredericksburg. This was in the fall of 1862. This
+brought him in contact with the sick and wounded soldiers, and henceforth,
+as long as the war lasts and longer, he devoted his time and substance to
+ministering to them. The first two or three years of his life in
+Washington he supported himself by correspondence with Northern
+newspapers, mainly with the "New York Times." These letters, as well as
+the weekly letters to his mother during the same period, form an intensely
+pathetic and interesting record.
+
+They contain such revelations of himself, and such pictures of the scenes
+he moved among, that I shall here quote freely from them. The following
+extract is from a letter written from Fredericksburg the third or fourth
+day after the battle of December, 1862:--
+
+"Spent a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the
+Rappahannock, immediately opposite Fredericksburg. It is used as a
+hospital since the battle, and seems to have received only the worst
+cases. Out of doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front
+of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.,
+about a load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each
+covered with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, toward the river,
+are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of
+barrel-staves, or broken board, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies
+were subsequently taken up and transported North to their friends.)
+
+"The house is quite crowded, everything impromptu, no system, all bad
+enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds
+pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and
+bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a
+Mississippian,--a captain,--hit badly in leg, I talked with some time; he
+asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward
+in Washington, with leg amputated, doing well.)
+
+"I went through the rooms, down stairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
+I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks
+home, mothers, etc. Also talked to three or four who seemed most
+susceptible to it, and needing it."
+
+"December 22 to 31.--Am among the regimental, brigade, and division
+hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and
+sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their
+blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No
+cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around
+from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I
+cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me
+convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and
+sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.
+
+"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
+camps, talking with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups
+around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get
+acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well
+used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best."
+
+After continuing in front through the winter, he returns to Washington,
+where the wounded and sick have mainly been concentrated. The Capital
+city, truly, is now one huge hospital; and there Whitman establishes
+himself, and thenceforward, for several years, has but one daily and
+nightly avocation.
+
+He alludes to writing letters by the bedside, and says:--
+
+"I do a good deal of this, of course, writing all kinds, including
+love-letters. Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written home to
+parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives, for one reason or another, for
+a long, long time. Some are poor writers, some cannot get paper and
+envelopes; many have an aversion to writing, because they dread to worry
+the folks at home,--the facts about them are so sad to tell. I always
+encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them."
+
+A glimpse of the scenes after Chancellorsville:--
+
+"As I write this, in May, 1863, the wounded have begun to arrive from
+Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first
+arrivals. The men in charge of them told me the bad cases were yet to
+come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
+see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here foot of Sixth
+Street at night. Two boat-loads came about half past seven last night. A
+little after eight, it rained a long and violent shower. The poor, pale,
+helpless soldiers had been debarked, and lay around on the wharf and
+neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any
+rate they were exposed to it.
+
+"The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the
+ground, out on side places, etc., the men are lying on blankets and old
+quilts, with the bloody rags bound round heads, arms, legs, etc. The
+attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also,--only a few
+hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
+common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
+there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by
+the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is
+called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on
+stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their
+sufferings,--a few groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a
+scream of pain, as they lift a man into the ambulance.
+
+"To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the
+next day more, and so on for many days.
+
+"The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
+generally supposed,--I should say nine tenths are native-born. Among the
+arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
+and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
+are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
+a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was, perhaps,
+worse than usual. Amputations are going on,--the attendants are dressing
+wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw,
+the other day, a gentleman--a visitor, apparently, from curiosity--in one
+of the wards stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were
+probing, etc. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and
+fallen on the floor."
+
+An episode,--the death of a New York soldier:--
+
+"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
+have been with a good deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
+company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound
+also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
+and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
+opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
+the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
+crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
+chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
+feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
+me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
+mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It is my chief
+reliance.' He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: 'Why,
+Oscar, don't you think you will get well?' He said: 'I may, but it is not
+probable.' He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
+discharged much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that
+he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
+affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned
+fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
+post-office, Cattaraugus County, New York. I had several such interviews
+with him. He died a few days after the one just described."
+
+And here, also, a characteristic scene in another of those long
+barracks:--
+
+"It is Sunday afternoon (middle of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and
+very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now
+lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
+8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
+wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well.
+Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on,
+sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
+yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so
+handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over
+to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
+Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan."
+
+In a letter to his mother in 1863 he says, in reference to his hospital
+services: "I have got in the way, after going lightly, as it were, all
+through the wards of a hospital, and trying to give a word of cheer, if
+nothing else, to every one, then confining my special attention to the few
+where the investment seems to tell best, and who want it most.... Mother,
+I have real pride in telling you that I have the consciousness of saving
+quite a number of lives by keeping the men from giving up, and being a
+good deal with them. The men say it is so, and the doctors say it is so;
+and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I say it myself.
+I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you."
+
+Again he says: "I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity; I go
+among the smallpox, etc., just the same. I feel to go without
+apprehension, and so I go: nobody else goes; but, as the darkey said there
+at Charleston when the boat ran on a flat and the rebel sharpshooters were
+peppering them, '_somebody_ must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"
+
+In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
+wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
+hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
+large and well,--indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
+the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
+not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."
+
+As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
+letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
+Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
+a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
+do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
+secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,--a
+regular Carolina or Virginia planter."
+
+The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
+deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
+used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have seen so many
+cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
+hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
+and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."
+
+Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
+health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
+trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
+but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:--
+
+"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
+Hospital),--about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
+probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
+stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
+Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
+'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
+knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
+composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
+o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
+blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I told you,
+last letter, I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young
+men I knew well, especially two of whom I had strong hopes of their
+getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are
+crowded here in Washington in immense numbers, and all those that came up
+from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such
+plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from
+Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the
+largest proportion of worst cases get little or no attention.
+
+"We receive them here with their wounds full of worms,--some all swelled
+and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new
+feature is, that many of the poor, afflicted young men are crazy; every
+ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and
+it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is
+most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it; but I
+suppose it is because I have not felt firstrate myself."
+
+Of the Ohio soldier above referred to, Whitman had written a few days
+before: "You remember I told you of him a year ago, when he was first
+brought in. I thought him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I
+had seen. A real giant in size, and always with a smile on his face. Oh,
+what a change! He has long been very irritable to every one but me, and
+his frame is all wasted away."
+
+To his brother Jeff he wrote: "Of the many I have seen die, or known of
+the past year, I have not seen or known of one who met death with any
+terror. Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of
+seventeen named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
+Artillery, Battery M. He was brought into one of the hospitals mortally
+wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it
+ought to be a relief to his folks, after all, if they could see how little
+he suffered. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed;
+it was very warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat.
+At length he opened his eyes quite wide and clear, and looked inquiringly
+around. I said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said
+quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking
+around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he
+lay so peaceful in his dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England
+country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
+fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."
+
+Another extract from a letter to his mother in April, 1864:--
+
+"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
+active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
+gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,--the flag, the
+tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
+never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
+pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,--it belonged to one
+of our cavalry regiments,--presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
+taken by the rebs in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
+little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
+four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
+rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
+again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
+it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
+he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
+I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
+a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."
+
+[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
+movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
+principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
+simple, and on a low key,--to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
+and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
+certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
+carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
+of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
+trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
+flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
+summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
+white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
+air and sunshine.
+
+When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
+feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
+festival,--strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh
+underclothes. He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder,
+full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant
+pockets. He would sometimes come in summer with a good-sized basket filled
+with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing them among
+the feverish and thirsty.]
+
+Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses. A
+well-known correspondent of the "New York Herald" writes thus about him in
+April, 1876:--
+
+"I first heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle
+there. Subsequently I saw him, time and again, in the Washington
+hospitals, or wending his way there, with basket or haversack on his arm,
+and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed
+the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kindness,
+tenderness, and thoughtfulness.
+
+"Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds
+through a hospital filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism
+he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each
+cot bore its man. When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of
+affection and welcome on every face, however wan, and his presence seemed
+to light up the place as it might be lighted by the presence of the God of
+Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in
+whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To
+one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to
+others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a
+sheet of paper or a postage-stamp, all of which and many other things were
+in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message
+for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an
+errand; to another, some special friend very low, he would give a manly
+farewell kiss. He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do, and
+he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The
+lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it,
+and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of
+many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!'"
+
+
+III
+
+Out of that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called "Drum-Taps,"
+first published in 1865,--since merged in his "Leaves,"--were produced.
+Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, come from life. The vivid
+incidents of "The Dresser" are but daguerreotypes of the poet's own actual
+movements among the bad cases of the wounded after a battle. The same
+personal knowledge runs through "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and
+Dim," "Come up from the Fields, Father," etc., etc.
+
+The reader of this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not
+the purpose of the poet to portray battles and campaigns, or to celebrate
+special leaders or military prowess, but rather to chant the human aspects
+of anguish that follow in the train of war. He perhaps feels that the
+permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a
+business, as a means of growth, has served its time; and that,
+notwithstanding the vast difference between ancient and modern warfare,
+both in the spirit and in the means, Homer's pictures are essentially true
+yet, and no additions to them can be made. War can never be to us what it
+has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never the main
+fact, the paramount condition, tyrannizing over all the affairs of
+national and individual life, but only an episode, a passing interruption;
+and the poet, who in our day would be as true to his nation and times as
+Homer was to his, must treat of it from the standpoint of peace and
+progress, and even benevolence. Vast armies rise up in a night and
+disappear in a day; a million of men, inured to battle and to blood, go
+back to the avocations of peace without a moment's confusion or
+delay,--indicating clearly the tendency that prevails.
+
+Apostrophizing the genius of America in the supreme hour of victory, he
+says:--
+
+  "No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee--nor mastery's rapturous
+        verse:--
+  But a little book containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds,
+  And psalms of the dead."
+
+
+The collection is also remarkable for the absence of all sectional or
+partisan feeling. Under the head of "Reconciliation" are these lines:--
+
+  "Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
+  Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be
+        utterly lost!
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  ... For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
+  I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near;
+  I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the
+        coffin."
+
+
+Perhaps the most noteworthy of Whitman's war poems is the one called "When
+Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloomed," written in commemoration of
+President Lincoln.
+
+The main effect of this poem is of strong, solemn, and varied music; and
+it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great
+composers most work,--namely, spiritual auricular analogy. At first it
+would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect. No reference
+whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not
+even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone
+that of lamentation; but, with the intuitions of the grand art, which is
+the most complex when it seems most simple, he seizes upon three beautiful
+facts of nature, which he weaves into a wreath for the dead President's
+tomb. The central thought is of death, but around this he curiously
+twines, first, the early-blooming lilacs which the poet may have plucked
+the day the dark shadow came; next the song of the hermit thrush, the most
+sweet and solemn of all our songsters, heard at twilight in the dusky
+cedars; and with these the evening star, which, as many may remember,
+night after night in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in
+the west with unusual and tender brightness. These are the premises whence
+he starts his solemn chant.
+
+The attitude, therefore, is not that of being bowed down and weeping
+hopeless tears, but of singing a commemorative hymn, in which the voices
+of nature join, and fits that exalted condition of the soul which serious
+events and the presence of death induce. There are no words of mere
+eulogy, no statistics, and no story or narrative; but there are pictures,
+processions, and a strange mingling of darkness and light, of grief and
+triumph: now the voice of the bird, or the drooping lustrous star, or the
+sombre thought of death; then a recurrence to the open scenery of the land
+as it lay in the April light, "the summer approaching with richness and
+the fields all busy with labor," presently dashed in upon by a spectral
+vision of armies with torn and bloody battle-flags, and, again, of the
+white skeletons of young men long afterward strewing the ground. Hence the
+piece has little or nothing of the character of the usual productions on
+such occasions. It is dramatic; yet there is no development of plot, but
+a constant interplay, a turning and returning of images and sentiments.
+
+The poet breaks a sprig of lilac from the bush in the door-yard,--the dark
+cloud falls on the land,--the long funeral sets out,--and then the
+apostrophe:--
+
+  "Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
+  Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,
+  With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities draped in black,
+  With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women,
+        standing,
+  With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,
+  With the countless torches lit--with the silent sea of faces, and the
+        unbared heads,
+  With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
+  With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
+        and solemn;
+  With all the mournful voices of the dirges, pour'd around the coffin,
+  To dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--Where amid these you
+        journey,
+  With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;
+  Here! coffin that slowly passes,
+  I give you my sprig of lilac.
+
+  "(Nor for you, for one alone;
+  Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
+  For fresh as the morning--thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
+        and sacred death.
+
+  "All over bouquets of roses,
+  O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;
+  But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
+  Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes;
+  With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
+  For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)"
+
+
+Then the strain goes on:--
+
+  "O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
+  And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
+  And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?
+
+  "Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
+  Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till
+        there on the prairies meeting:
+  These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
+  I perfume the grave of him I love."
+
+
+The poem reaches, perhaps, its height in the matchless invocation to
+Death:--
+
+  "Come, lovely and soothing Death,
+  Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
+  In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
+  Sooner or later, delicate Death.
+
+  "Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
+  For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;
+  And for love, sweet love--but praise! O praise and praise,
+  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
+
+  "Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
+  Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
+  Then I chant it for thee--I glorify thee above all;
+  I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
+
+  "Approach, encompassing Death--strong Deliveress!
+  When it is so--when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
+  Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
+  Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
+
+  "From me to thee glad serenades,
+  Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee--adornments and feastings for
+        thee;
+  And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky are
+        fitting,
+  And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
+  The night, in silence, under many a star;
+  The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;
+  And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death,
+  And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman despised riches, and all mere worldly success, as heartily as ever
+did any of the old Christians. All outward show and finery were intensely
+distasteful to him. He probably would not have accepted the finest house
+in New York on condition that he live in it. During his hospital
+experiences he cherished the purpose, as soon as the war was over, of
+returning to Brooklyn, buying an acre or two of land in some by-place on
+Long Island, and building for himself and his family a cheap house. When
+his brother Jeff contemplated building, he advised him to build merely an
+Irish shanty. After what he had seen the soldiers put up with, he thought
+anything was good enough for him or his people. In one of his letters to
+his mother, he comments upon the un-American and inappropriate
+ornamentation of the rooms in the Capitol building, "without grandeur and
+without simplicity," he says. In the state the country was in, and with
+the hospital scenes before him, the "poppy-show goddesses" and the Italian
+style of decoration, etc., sickened him, and he got away from it all as
+quickly as he could.
+
+
+V
+
+During the war and after, I used to see a good deal of Whitman in
+Washington. Summer and winter he was a conspicuous figure on Pennsylvania
+Avenue, where he was wont to walk for exercise and to feed his hunger for
+faces. One would see him afar off, in the crowd but not of it,--a large,
+slow-moving figure, clad in gray, with broad-brimmed hat and gray
+beard,--or, quite as frequently, on the front platform of the street
+horse-cars with the driver. My eye used to single him out many blocks
+away.
+
+There were times during this period when his aspect was rather
+forbidding,--the physical man was too pronounced on first glance; the
+other man was hidden beneath the broad-brimmed hat. One needed to see the
+superbly domed head and classic brow crowning the rank physical man.
+
+In his middle manhood, judging from the photos, he had a hirsute, kindly
+look, but very far removed from the finely cut traditional poet's face.
+
+
+VI
+
+I have often heard Whitman say that he inherited most excellent blood from
+his mother,--the old Dutch Van Velser strain,--Long Island blood filtered
+and vitalized through generations by the breath of the sea. He was his
+mother's child unmistakably. With all his rank masculinity, there was a
+curious feminine undertone in him which revealed itself in the quality of
+his voice, the delicate texture of his skin, the gentleness of his touch
+and ways, the attraction he had for children and the common people. A lady
+in the West, writing to me about him, spoke of his "great mother-nature."
+He was receptive, sympathetic, tender, and met you, not in a positive,
+aggressive manner, but more or less in a passive or neutral mood. He did
+not give his friends merely his mind, he gave them himself. It is not
+merely his mind or intellect that he has put into his poems, it is
+himself. Indeed, this feminine mood or attitude might be dwelt upon at
+much length in considering his poems,--their solvent, absorbing power, and
+the way they yield themselves to diverse interpretations.
+
+The sea, too, had laid its hand upon him, as I have already suggested. He
+never appeared so striking and impressive as when seen upon the beach. His
+large and tall gray figure looked at home, and was at home, upon the
+shore. The simple, strong, flowing lines of his face, his always clean
+fresh air, his blue absorbing eye, his commanding presence, and something
+pristine and elemental in his whole expression, seemed at once to put him
+_en rapport_ with the sea. No phase of nature seems to have impressed him
+so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman was preeminently manly,--richly endowed with the universal,
+healthy human qualities and attributes. Mr. Conway relates that when
+Emerson handed him the first thin quarto edition of "Leaves of Grass,"
+while he was calling at his house in Concord, soon after the book
+appeared, he said, "Americans abroad may now come home: unto us a man is
+born."
+
+President Lincoln, standing one day during the war before a window in the
+White House, saw Whitman slowly saunter by. He followed him with his
+eyes, and, turning, said to those about him, "Well, _he_ looks like a
+_man_."
+
+  "Meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms."
+
+
+During Whitman's Western tour in 1879 or '80, at some point in Kansas, in
+company with several well-known politicians and government officials, he
+visited a lot of Indians who were being held as prisoners. The sheriff
+told the Indians who the distinguished men were who were about to see
+them, but the Indians paid little attention to them as, one after the
+other, the officials and editors passed by them. Behind all came Whitman.
+The old chief looked at him steadily, then extended his hand and said,
+"How!" All the other Indians followed, surrounding Whitman, shaking his
+hand and making the air melodious with their "Hows." The incident
+evidently pleased the old poet a good deal.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Whitman was of large mould in every way, and of bold, far-reaching
+schemes, and is very sure to fare better at the hands of large men than of
+small. The first and last impression which his personal presence always
+made upon one was of a nature wonderfully gentle, tender, and benignant.
+His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and dominated by his
+humanity, so that the impression you got from him was not that of a
+learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human
+nature,--such an impression, I fancy, only fuller, as one might have got
+from Walter Scott. This was perhaps the secret of the attraction he had,
+for the common, unlettered people and for children. I think that even his
+literary friends often sought his presence less for conversation than to
+bask in his physical or psychical sunshine, and to rest upon his boundless
+charity. The great service he rendered to the wounded and homesick
+soldiers in the hospitals during the war came from his copious endowment
+of this broad, sweet, tender democratic nature. He brought father and
+mother to them, and the tonic and cheering atmosphere of simple,
+affectionate home life.
+
+In person Whitman was large and tall, above six feet, with a breezy,
+open-air look. His temperament was sanguine; his voice was a tender
+baritone. The dominant impression he made was that of something fresh and
+clean. I remember the first time I met him, which was in Washington, in
+the fall of 1863. I was impressed by the fine grain and clean, fresh
+quality of the man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect
+something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a
+bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His
+body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar
+fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was
+undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did
+not appear till he was past sixty. After that, I have little doubt, it was
+the finest head this age or country has seen. Every artist who saw him
+was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch him. The lines were so
+simple, so free, and so strong. High, arching brows; straight, clear-cut
+nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized,
+but a vital part of a symmetrical, dome-shaped head; ear large, and the
+most delicately carved I have ever seen; the mouth and chin hidden by a
+soft, long, white beard. It seems to me his face steadily refined and
+strengthened with age. Time depleted him in just the right way,--softened
+his beard and took away the too florid look; subdued the carnal man, and
+brought out more fully the spiritual man. When I last saw him (December
+26, 1891), though he had been very near death for many days, I am sure I
+had never seen his face so beautiful. There was no breaking-down of the
+features, or the least sign of decrepitude, such as we usually note in old
+men. The expression was full of pathos, but it was as grand as that of a
+god. I could not think of him as near death, he looked so unconquered.
+
+In Washington I knew Whitman intimately from the fall of 1863 to the time
+he left in 1873. In Camden I visited him yearly after that date, usually
+in the late summer or fall. I will give one glimpse of him from my diary,
+under date of August 18, 1887. I reached his house in the morning, before
+he was up. Presently he came slowly down stairs and greeted me. "Find him
+pretty well,--looking better than last year. With his light-gray suit,
+and white hair, and fresh pink face, he made a fine picture. Among other
+things, we talked of the Swinburne attack (then recently published). W.
+did not show the least feeling on the subject, and, I clearly saw, was
+absolutely undisturbed by the article. I told him I had always been more
+disturbed by S.'s admiration for him than I was now by his condemnation.
+By and by W. had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, ten
+miles distant, to see young Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a
+level farming and truck-gardening country; warm, but breezy. W. drives
+briskly, and salutes every person we meet, little and big, black and
+white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he
+knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old
+Long Island custom of his people, to speak to every one on the road, was
+strong upon him. One tipsy man in a buggy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye
+do, pap?' etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W., as
+something I had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what
+the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would
+have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the
+centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of
+Christianity to check and curb them, etc. W. knew the history of many
+prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two colored men
+to look after him; there, in that fine house among the trees, an old
+maid, who had spent a large fortune on her house and lands, and was now
+destitute, yet she was a woman of remarkable good sense, etc. We returned
+to Camden before dark, W. apparently not fatigued by the drive of twenty
+miles."
+
+In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry. It
+was such a face, said Mr. Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected from a
+million. "It is the face of an aged loving child. As I looked, it was with
+the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never
+heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being.
+I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an avatar, was more
+gentle to all men, women, children, and living things."
+
+
+IX
+
+For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
+to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
+visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
+which the doctor printed on his return home:--
+
+"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
+and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
+of his presence as a whole.
+
+"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
+in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure
+white linen, with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt
+buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown
+open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of
+his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned
+almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned
+up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of
+the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire
+visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and
+massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong,
+white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an
+eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was
+not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is
+concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon
+his broad, square shoulders; and it is almost entirely covered with long,
+fine, straggling hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit
+snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streaming over
+and around his large but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big
+neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of
+his face, right down to the middle of his chest, like a cataract of
+materialized, white, glistening vapor, giving him a most venerable and
+patriarchal appearance. His high, massive forehead is seamed with
+wrinkles. His nose is large, strong, broad, and prominent, but
+beautifully chiseled and proportioned, almost straight, very slightly
+depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to
+the angles of the mouth. The eyebrows are thick and shaggy, with strong,
+white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes,
+which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, small, rather deeply set,
+calm, clear, penetrating, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness,
+kindness, and sympathy. The upper eyelids droop considerably over the
+eyeballs. The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache,
+are full. The whole face impresses one with a sense of resoluteness,
+strength, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness,
+unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly
+pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man.
+There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in
+them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But
+it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in
+his _tout ensemble_, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic
+presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and
+exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing
+an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I
+felt that I was here face to face with the living embodiment of all that
+was good, noble, and lovable in humanity."
+
+
+X
+
+British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic
+temperament, etc., but he was in no sense a muscular man, an athlete. His
+body, though superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in
+its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin. He
+took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports. He
+walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he
+always had an air of infinite leisure. For several years, while a clerk in
+the Attorney-General's Office in Washington, his exercise for an hour each
+day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round,
+smooth stone, of about one pound weight, and catching it as it fell. Later
+in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked
+to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that
+way. In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and
+sweetness of body, but none upon mere brute strength. This is what he says
+"To a Pupil:"--
+
+  1. Is reform needed? Is it through you?
+     The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you
+          need to accomplish it.
+
+  2. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,
+          complexion, clean and sweet?
+     Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and Soul,
+          that when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and
+          command enters with you, and every one is impressed with your
+          personality?
+
+  3. O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
+     Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to
+          inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
+          elevatedness,
+     Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
+
+
+It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
+of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,--the
+freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
+perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
+mind.
+
+A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
+several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
+face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
+was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
+majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
+looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
+seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
+friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
+would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
+all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
+upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
+identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
+poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
+poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold," he says, "the body
+includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
+soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
+of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
+strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
+knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
+singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
+curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.
+
+The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
+to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
+the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
+distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
+power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
+face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
+face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
+face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
+mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature.
+It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow.
+
+And the influence of his poems is always on the side of physiological
+cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes
+morbid and mean. He says the "expression of a well-made man appears not
+only in his face: it is in his limbs and joints also; it is curiously in
+the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his
+neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the
+strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
+flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more.
+You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."
+He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: "To be
+surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,--I
+do not ask any more delight; I swim in it, as in a sea. There is something
+in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact
+and odor of them, that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul,
+but these please the soul well." Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he
+found in the society of the common people that satisfied him so; for his
+part, he could not find anything. The subordination by Whitman of the
+purely intellectual to the human and physical, which runs all through his
+poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, who was deficient in the
+sensuous, probably could not appreciate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The atmosphere of Whitman personally was that of a large, tolerant,
+tender, sympathetic, restful man, easy of approach, indifferent to any
+special social or other distinctions and accomplishments that might be
+yours, and regarding you from the start for yourself alone.
+
+Children were very fond of him; and women, unless they had been prejudiced
+against him, were strongly drawn toward him. His personal magnetism was
+very great, and was warming and cheering. He was rich in temperament,
+probably beyond any other man of his generation,--rich in all the purely
+human and emotional endowments and basic qualities. Then there was a look
+about him hard to describe, and which I have seen in no other face,--a
+gray, brooding, elemental look, like the granite rock, something primitive
+and Adamic that might have belonged to the first man; or was it a
+suggestion of the gray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was
+born, and that had surely set its seal upon him? I know not, but I feel
+the man with that look is not of the day merely, but of the centuries. His
+eye was not piercing, but absorbing,--"draining" is the word happily used
+by William O'Connor; the soul back of it drew things to himself, and
+entered and possessed them through sympathy and personal force and
+magnetism, rather than through mere intellectual force.
+
+
+XII
+
+Walt Whitman was of the people, the common people, and always gave out
+their quality and atmosphere. His commonness, his nearness, as of the
+things you have always known,--the day, the sky, the soil, your own
+parents,--were in no way veiled, or kept in abeyance, by his culture or
+poetic gifts. He was redolent of the human and the familiar. Though
+capable, on occasions, of great pride and hauteur, yet his habitual mood
+and presence was that of simple, average, healthful humanity,--the virtue
+and flavor of sailors, soldiers, laborers, travelers, or people who live
+with real things in the open air. His commonness rose into the uncommon,
+the extraordinary, but without any hint of the exclusive or specially
+favored. He was indeed "no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women
+or apart from them."
+
+The spirit that animates every page of his book, and that it always
+effuses, is the spirit of common, universal humanity,--humanity apart from
+creeds, schools, conventions, from all special privileges and refinements,
+as it is in and of itself in its relations to the whole system of things,
+in contradistinction to the literature of culture which effuses the spirit
+of the select and exclusive.
+
+His life was the same. Walt Whitman never stood apart from or above any
+human being. The common people--workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the
+outcast--saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction
+was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity.
+Specially intellectual people rather repelled him; the wit, the scholar,
+the poet, must have a rich endowment of the common, universal, human
+attributes and qualities to pass current with him. He sought the society
+of boatmen, railroad men, farmers, mechanics, printers, teamsters, mothers
+of families, etc., rather than the society of professional men or
+scholars. Men who had the quality of things in the open air--the virtue of
+rocks, trees, hills--drew him most; and it is these qualities and virtues
+that he has aimed above all others to put into his poetry, and to put them
+there in such a way that he who reads must feel and imbibe them.
+
+The recognized poets put into their pages the virtue and quality of the
+fine gentleman, or of the sensitive, artistic nature: this poet of
+democracy effuses the atmosphere of fresh, strong Adamic man,--man acted
+upon at first hand by the shows and forces of universal nature.
+
+If our poet ever sounds the note of the crude, the loud, the exaggerated,
+he is false to himself and to his high aims. I think he may be charged
+with having done so a few times, in his earlier work, but not in his
+later. In the 1860 edition of his poems stands this portraiture, which may
+stand for himself, with one or two features rather overdrawn:--
+
+  "His shape arises
+  Arrogant, masculine, naive, rowdyish,
+  Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman,
+  Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by
+        the sea,
+  Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from
+        taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia,
+        clean-breathed,
+  Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds,
+        full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and
+        back,
+  Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,
+  Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms,
+  Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck gray and open, of slow
+        movement on foot,
+  Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his friends, companion
+        of the street,
+  Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches, and never
+        their meanest.
+  A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the
+        life of the wharves and the great ferries,
+  Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, easily understood after all,
+  Never offering others, always offering himself, corroborating his
+        phrenology,
+  Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive,
+        of copious friendship, sublimity, firmness, self-esteem,
+        comparison, individuality, form, locality, eventuality,
+  Avowing by life, manners, words to contribute illustrations of results
+        of These States,
+  Teacher of the unquenchable creed namely egotism,
+  Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against
+        his."
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman was determined, at whatever risk to his own reputation, to make
+the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of
+American humanity, and to do this the rowdy element could not be entirely
+ignored. Hence he unflinchingly imputes it to himself, as, for that
+matter, he has nearly every sin and dereliction mankind are guilty of.
+
+Whitman developed slowly and late upon the side that related him to social
+custom and usage,--to the many fictions, concealments, make-believes, and
+subterfuges of the world of parlors and drawing-rooms. He never was an
+adept in what is called "good form;" the natural man that he was shows
+crude in certain relations. His publication of Emerson's letter with its
+magnificent eulogium of "Leaves of Grass" has been much commented upon.
+There may be two opinions as to the propriety of his course in this
+respect: a letter from a stranger upon a matter of public interest is not
+usually looked upon as a private letter. Emerson never spoke with more
+felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for
+Whitman's own sake that we would have had him practice self-denial in the
+matter; he greatly plumed himself upon Emerson's endorsement, and was
+guilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon
+the cover of the next edition of his book. Grant that it showed a certain
+crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; later in life, he could not
+have erred in this way. Ruskin is reported saying that he never in his
+life wrote a letter to any human being that he would not be willing should
+be posted up in the market-place, or cried by the public crier through the
+town. But Emerson was a much more timid and conforming man than Ruskin,
+and was much more likely to be shocked by such a circumstance.
+
+It has been said that the publication of this letter much annoyed Emerson,
+and that he never forgave Whitman the offense. That he was disturbed by it
+and by the storm that arose there can be little doubt; but there is no
+evidence that he allowed the fact to interfere with his friendship for the
+poet. Charles W. Eldridge, who personally knew of the relations of the two
+men, says:--
+
+"There was not a year from 1855 (the date of the Emerson letter and its
+publication) down to 1860 (the year Walt came to Boston to supervise the
+issue of the Thayer & Eldridge edition of 'Leaves of Grass'), that Emerson
+did not personally seek out Walt at his Brooklyn home, usually that they
+might have a long symposium together at the Astor House in New York.
+Besides that, during these years Emerson sent many of his closest friends,
+including Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of
+introduction to him. This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who
+has committed an unpardonable offense.
+
+"I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently
+came down from Concord to see him, and that they had many walks and talks
+together, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American
+House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel. On several occasions
+they met by appointment in our counting-room. Their relations were as
+cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Emerson who sought out
+Walt, and never the other way, although, of course, Walt appreciated and
+enjoyed Emerson's companionship very much. In truth, Walt never sought the
+company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary
+society. I know that at this time Walt was invited by Emerson to Concord,
+but declined to go, probably through his fear that he would see too much
+of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around
+Emerson."
+
+
+XIV
+
+Whitman gave himself to men as men and not as scholars or poets, and gave
+himself purely as a man. While not specially averse to meeting people on
+literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was more to his taste to meet on
+the broadest, commonest, human grounds. What you had seen or felt or
+suffered or done was of much more interest to him than what you had read
+or thought; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the
+last person you had met, or the last chore you had done.
+
+Any glimpse of the farm, the shop, the household--any bit of real life,
+anything that carried the flavor and quality of concrete reality--was very
+welcome to him; herein, no doubt, showing the healthy, objective, artist
+mind. He never tired of hearing me talk about the birds or wild animals,
+or my experiences in camp in the woods, the kind of characters I had met
+there, and the flavor of the life of remote settlements in Maine or
+Canada. His inward, subjective life was ample of itself; he was familiar
+with all your thoughts and speculations beforehand: what he craved was
+wider experience,--to see what you had seen, and feel what you had felt.
+He was fond of talking with returned travelers and explorers, and with
+sailors, soldiers, mechanics; much of his vast stores of information upon
+all manner of subjects was acquired at firsthand, in the old way, from the
+persons who had seen or done or been what they described or related.
+
+He had almost a passion for simple, unlettered humanity,--an attraction
+which specially intellectual persons will hardly understand. Schooling and
+culture are so often purchased at such an expense to the innate,
+fundamental human qualities! Ignorance, with sound instincts and the
+quality which converse with real things imparts to men, was more
+acceptable to him than so much of our sophisticated knowledge, or our
+studied wit, or our artificial poetry.
+
+
+XV
+
+At the time of Whitman's death, one of our leading literary journals
+charged him with having brought on premature decay by leading a riotous
+and debauched life. I hardly need say that there was no truth in the
+charge. The tremendous emotional strain of writing his "Leaves," followed
+by his years of service in the army hospitals, where he contracted
+blood-poison, resulted at the age of fifty-four in the rupture of a small
+blood-vessel in the brain, which brought on partial paralysis. A sunstroke
+during his earlier manhood also played its part in the final break-down.
+
+That, tried by the standard of the lives of our New England poets,
+Whitman's life was a blameless one, I do not assert; but that it was a
+sane, temperate, manly one, free from excesses, free from the perversions
+and morbidities of a mammonish, pampered, over-stimulated age, I do
+believe. Indeed, I may say I know. The one impression he never failed to
+make--physically, morally, intellectually--on young and old, women and
+men, was that of health, sanity, sweetness. This is the impression he
+seems to have made upon Mr. Howells, when he met the poet at Pfaff's early
+in the sixties.
+
+The critic I have alluded to inferred license in the man from liberty in
+the poet. He did not have the gumption to see that Whitman made the
+experience of all men his own, and that his scheme included the evil as
+well as the good; that especially did he exploit the unloosed, all-loving,
+all-accepting natural man,--the man who is done with conventions,
+illusions and all morbid pietisms, and who gives himself lavishly to all
+that begets and sustains life. Yet not the natural or carnal man for his
+own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual meanings and values to which
+he is the key. Indeed, Whitman is about the most uncompromising
+spiritualist in literature; with him, all things exist by and for the
+soul. He felt the tie of universal brotherhood, also, as few have felt it.
+It was not a theory with him, but a fact that shaped his life and colored
+his poems. "Whoever degrades another degrades me," and the thought fired
+his imagination.
+
+
+XVI
+
+The student of Whitman's life and works will be early struck by three
+things,--his sudden burst into song, the maturity of his work from the
+first, and his self-knowledge and self-estimate. The fit of inspiration
+came upon him suddenly; it was like the flowering of the orchards in
+spring; there was little or no hint of it till almost the very hour of
+the event. Up to the time of the appearance of the first edition of
+"Leaves of Grass," he had produced nothing above mediocrity. A hack writer
+on newspapers and magazines, then a carpenter and house-builder in a small
+way, then that astounding revelation "Leaves of Grass," the very audacity
+of it a gospel in itself. How dare he do it? how could he do it, and not
+betray hesitation or self-consciousness? It is one of the exceptional
+events in literary history. The main body of his work was produced in five
+or six years, or between 1854 and 1859. Of course it was a sudden
+flowering, which, consciously or unconsciously, must have been long
+preparing in his mind. His work must have had a long foreground, as
+Emerson suggested. Dr. Bucke, his biographer, thinks it was a special
+inspiration,--something analogous to Paul's conversion, a sudden opening
+of what the doctor calls "cosmic consciousness."
+
+Another student and lover of Whitman says: "It is certain that some time
+about his thirty-fifth year [probably a little earlier] there came over
+him a decided change: he seemed immensely to broaden and deepen; he became
+less interested in what are usually regarded as the more practical affairs
+of life. He lost what little ambition he ever had for money-making, and
+permitted good business opportunities to pass unheeded. He ceased to write
+the somewhat interesting but altogether commonplace and respectable
+stories and verses which he had been in the habit of contributing to
+periodicals. He would take long trips into the country, no one knew where,
+and would spend more time in his favorite haunts about the city, or on the
+ferries, or the tops of omnibuses, at the theatre and opera, in picture
+galleries, and wherever he could observe men and women and art and
+nature."
+
+Then the maturity of his work from the first line of it! It seems as if he
+came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one
+bound,--never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do.
+What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint.
+He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he
+first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first poem, "Starting
+from Paumanok," and he has kept the letter and the spirit of every promise
+therein made. We never see him doubtful or hesitating; we never see him
+battling for his territory, and uncertain whether or not he is upon his
+own ground. He has an air of contentment, of mastery and triumph, from the
+start.
+
+His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.
+We should probably have to go back to sacred history to find a parallel
+case. The manner of man he was, his composite character, his relation to
+his country and times, his unlikeness to other poets, his affinity to the
+common people, how he would puzzle and elude his critics, how his words
+would itch at our ears till we understood them, etc.,--how did he know all
+this from the first?
+
+
+
+
+HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS
+
+
+I
+
+Let me here summarize some of the ideas and principles in which "Leaves of
+Grass" has its root, and from which it starts. A collection of poems in
+the usual sense, a variety of themes artistically treated and appealing to
+our aesthetic perceptibilities alone, it is not. It has, strictly speaking,
+but one theme,--personality, the personality of the poet himself. To
+exploit this is always the main purpose, and, in doing so, to make the
+book both directly and indirectly a large, impassioned utterance upon all
+the main problems of life and of nationality. It is primitive, like the
+early literature of a race or people, in that its spirit and purpose are
+essentially religious. It is like the primitive literatures also in its
+prophetic cry and in its bardic simplicity and homeliness, and unlike them
+in its faith and joy and its unconquerable optimism.
+
+It has been not inaptly called the bible of democracy. Its biblical
+features are obvious enough with the darker negative traits left out. It
+is Israel with science and the modern added.
+
+Whitman was swayed by a few great passions,--the passion for country, the
+passion for comrades, the cosmic passion, etc. His first concern seems
+always to have been for his country. He has touched no theme, named no
+man, not related in some way to America. The thought of it possessed him
+as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
+Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
+power,--the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
+suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
+cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
+all-inclusive:--
+
+  "My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
+        earth,
+  I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
+        lands;
+  I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
+
+  "O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
+        continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
+  I think I have blown with you, O winds,
+  O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."
+
+
+II
+
+The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,--of
+absolute social equality.
+
+It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
+distinguished from the old theological conception,--namely, that creation
+is good and sound in all its parts.
+
+It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
+friend and not the enemy of life.
+
+It places comradeship, manly attachment, above sex love, and indicates it
+as the cement of future states and republics.
+
+It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.
+
+It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
+trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
+sexuality,--upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
+at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
+frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.
+
+It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
+conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
+works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.
+
+It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
+man,--a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
+have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
+parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
+the heroes of land and sea.
+
+Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
+real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and
+concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore,
+the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man.
+
+Its purpose is to stimulate and arouse, rather than to soothe and satisfy.
+It addresses the character, the intuitions, the ego, more than the
+intellect or the purely aesthetic faculties. Its end is not taste, but
+growth in the manly virtues and powers.
+
+Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.
+
+It aspires to a candor and a directness like that of Nature herself.
+
+It aims to let Nature speak without check, with original energy. The only
+checks are those which health and wholeness demand.
+
+Its standards are those of the natural universal.
+
+Its method is egocentric. The poet never goes out of himself, but draws
+everything into himself and makes it all serve to illustrate his
+personality.
+
+Its form is not what is called artistic. Its suggestion is to be found in
+organic nature, in trees, clouds, and in the vital and flowing currents.
+
+In its composition the author was doubtless greatly influenced by the
+opera and the great singers, and the music of the great composers. He
+would let himself go in the same manner and seek his effects through
+multitude and the quality of the living voice.
+
+Finally, "Leaves of Grass" is an utterance out of the depths of
+primordial, aboriginal human nature. It embodies and exploits a character
+not rendered anaemic by civilization, but preserving a sweet and sane
+savagery, indebted to culture only as a means to escape culture, reaching
+back always, through books, art, civilization, to fresh, unsophisticated
+nature, and drawing his strength thence.
+
+Another of the ideas that master Whitman and rule him is the idea of
+identity,--that you are you and I am I, and that we are henceforth secure
+whatever comes or goes. He revels in this idea; it is fruitful with him;
+it begets in him the ego-enthusiasm, and is at the bottom of his
+unshakable faith in immortality. It leavens all his work. It cannot be too
+often said that the book is not merely a collection of pretty poems,
+themes elaborated and followed out at long removes from the personality of
+the poet, but a series of _sorties_ into the world of materials, the
+American world, piercing through the ostensible shows of things to the
+interior meanings, and illustrating in a free and large way the genesis
+and growth of a man, his free use of the world about him, appropriating it
+to himself, seeking his spiritual identity through its various objects and
+experiences, and giving in many direct and indirect ways the meaning and
+satisfaction of life. There is much in it that is not poetical in the
+popular sense, much that is neutral and negative, and yet is an integral
+part of the whole, as is the case in the world we inhabit. If it offends,
+it is in a wholesome way, like objects in the open air.
+
+
+III
+
+Whitman rarely celebrates exceptional characters. He loves the common
+humanity, and finds his ideals among the masses. It is not difficult to
+reconcile his attraction toward the average man, towards workingmen and
+"powerful, uneducated persons," with the ideal of a high excellence,
+because he finally rests only upon the most elevated and heroic personal
+qualities,--elevated but well grounded in the common and universal.
+
+The types upon which he dwells the most fondly are of the common people.
+
+  "I knew a man,
+  He was a common farmer--he was the father of five sons,
+  And in them were the fathers of sons--and in them were the fathers of
+        sons.
+
+  "This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
+  The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale
+        yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable
+        meaning of his black eyes,
+  These I used to go and visit him to see--he was wise also,
+  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were
+        massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
+  They and his daughters loved him--all who saw him loved him,
+  They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal love;
+  He drank water only--the blood showed like scarlet through the
+        clear-brown skin of his face,
+  He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sailed his boat himself--he had
+        a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner--he had fowling-pieces
+        presented to him by men that loved him;
+  When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you
+        would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
+  You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by him
+        in the boat, that you and he might touch each other."
+
+All the _motifs_ of his work are the near, the vital, the universal;
+nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are
+democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality,
+comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of the
+sexes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it
+sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems
+are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a
+look, a gesture, a tone of voice.
+
+"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand
+at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" requires a large perspective; you must not get your face
+too near the book. You must bring to it a magnanimity of spirit,--a
+charity and faith equal to its own. Looked at too closely, it often seems
+incoherent and meaningless; draw off a little and let the figure come out.
+The book is from first to last a most determined attempt, on the part of a
+large, reflective, loving, magnetic, rather primitive, thoroughly
+imaginative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth
+century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career
+upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiasm as to lift and
+fill it with the deepest meanings of the spirit and disclose the order of
+universal nature. The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or
+criticism, or partiality whatever, but has squarely and lovingly faced the
+oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and
+fused them in his fervid humanity, and imbued them with deepest poetic
+meanings. One of the most striking features of the book is the adequacy
+and composure, even joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence
+of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era. He
+spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no
+part; and his quality, his individuality, shines through it all, as the
+sun through vapors. The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of
+Walt Whitman. It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man
+exploited and illustrated. Walt Whitman does not write poems, strictly
+speaking,--does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel
+and carve it into a beautiful image or object, or polish and elaborate a
+thought, embodying it in pleasing tropes and pictures. His purpose is
+rather to show a towering, loving, composite personality moving amid all
+sorts of materials, taking them up but for a moment, disclosing new
+meanings and suggestions in them, passing on, bestowing himself upon
+whoever or whatever will accept him, tossing hints and clues right and
+left, provoking and stimulating the thought and imagination of his reader,
+but finishing nothing for him, leaving much to be desired, much to be
+completed by him in his turn.
+
+
+IV
+
+The reader who would get at the spirit and meaning of "Leaves of Grass"
+must remember that its animating principle, from first to last, is
+Democracy,--that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit
+of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New
+World,--and that all things characteristically American (trades, tools,
+occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places
+in it. It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the
+life of the poet fell, and to show one master personality accepting,
+absorbing all and rising superior to it,--namely, the poet himself. Yet it
+is never Whitman that speaks so much as it is Democracy that speaks
+through him. He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in
+this character launches forth his "omnivorous words." What would seem
+colossal egotism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with
+low, rude persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and
+vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the
+boundless compassion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal
+Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain
+and easy in the works of this much misunderstood poet.
+
+Perhaps the single poem that throws most light upon his aims and methods,
+and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in "Calamus," and is as
+follows:--
+
+  "Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
+  Without one thing all will be useless,
+  I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
+  I am not what you suppos'd, but far different.
+
+  "Who is he that would become my follower?
+  Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
+
+  "The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
+  You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your
+        sole and exclusive standard,
+  Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
+  The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives
+        around you would have to be abandon'd,
+  Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let
+        go your hand from my shoulders,
+  Put me down and depart on your way.
+
+  "Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
+  Or back of a rock in the open air,
+  (For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
+  And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
+  But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any
+        person for miles around approach unawares,
+  Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or
+        some quiet island,
+  Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
+  With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,
+  For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
+
+  "Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
+  Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
+  Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
+  For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
+  And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
+
+  "But these leaves conning you con at peril,
+  For these leaves and me you will not understand,
+  They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
+        certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you.
+
+  "For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
+  Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
+  Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
+  Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove
+        victorious,
+  Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps
+        more,
+  For all is useless without that for which you may guess at many times
+        and not hit, that which I hinted at,
+  Therefore release me and depart on your way."
+
+
+When one has fully mastered this poem he has got a pretty good hold upon
+Whitman's spirit and method. His open-air standards, the baffling and
+elusive character of his work, the extraordinary demand it makes, its
+radical and far-reaching effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil
+as a necessary part of the good (there was a human need of sin, said
+Margaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and
+suggestive method, that it can be fully read only through our acquaintance
+with life and real things at first hand, etc.,--all this and more is in
+the poem.
+
+
+
+
+HIS SELF-RELIANCE
+
+
+I
+
+It is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a German author was to
+be a German martyr. I presume things have changed in Germany since those
+times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and
+hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In
+Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an
+American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the
+great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Moliere, or Byron, was
+Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times;
+but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and
+self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His
+unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise. It was of a kind
+that tries a man's mettle, and brings out his heroic traits if he has any.
+One almost envies him his unpopularity. It was of the kind that only the
+greatest ones have experienced, and that attests something extraordinary
+in the recipient of it. He said he was more resolute because all had
+denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:--
+
+  "I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor
+        ridicule."
+
+
+There are no more precious and tonic pages in history than the records of
+men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in
+obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature.
+Whitman's is the most striking case in our literary annals,--probably the
+most striking one in our century outside of politics and religion. The
+inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: "My commission obeying, to
+question it never daring."
+
+The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained
+it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and
+cannot be avoided.
+
+  "Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you and were tender
+        with you? and stood aside for you?
+  Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace
+        themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute
+        the passage with you?"
+
+
+Every man is a partaker in the triumph of him who is always true to
+himself and makes no compromises with customs, schools, or opinions.
+Whitman's life, underneath its easy tolerance and cheerful good-will, was
+heroic. He fought his battle against great odds and he conquered; he had
+his own way, he yielded not a hair to the enemy.
+
+The pressure brought to bear upon him by the press, by many of his
+friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to
+change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served
+as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the
+more deeply he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The
+fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and
+aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could
+have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no
+publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was
+threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy
+Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would
+omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for
+one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always
+did.
+
+Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down
+Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which
+was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable
+conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so,
+whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet
+probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had
+not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your
+own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your
+private heart is true of all men,--that is genius."
+
+In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson
+invoked and prayed for,--the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who
+should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be
+Greek, or Italian, or French, or English, but only himself; who should
+not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate,
+or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debasements of
+our times the lineaments of the same gods that so ravished the bards of
+old.
+
+The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the
+books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
+thank and revere him."
+
+Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has
+done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works
+in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a
+time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures
+itself by its contempt of some external good,"--popularity, for instance.
+"The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have chosen your
+part abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the
+world." "Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
+something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous
+age." Heroism "is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality
+in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of
+hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent
+than all actual and all possible antagonists." "A man is to carry himself
+in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and
+ephemeral but he." "Great works of art," he again says, "teach us to
+abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility, the
+more when the whole cry of voices is on the other side."
+
+These brave sayings of Emerson were all illustrated and confirmed by
+Whitman's course. The spectacle of this man sitting there by the window of
+his little house in Camden, poor and partially paralyzed, and looking out
+upon the trite and commonplace scenes and people, or looking athwart the
+years and seeing only detraction and denial, yet always serene, cheerful,
+charitable, his wisdom and tolerance ripening and mellowing with time, is
+something to treasure and profit by. He was a man who needed no
+assurances. He had the patience and the leisure of nature. He welcomed
+your friendly and sympathetic word, or with equal composure he did without
+it.
+
+I remember calling upon him shortly after Swinburne's fierce onslaught
+upon him had been published, some time in the latter part of the eighties.
+I was curious to see how Whitman took it, but I could not discover either
+in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly
+of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne's
+account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat
+upon himself as Swinburne had done. In fact I think hostile criticism,
+fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it
+not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against shadows.
+Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was
+trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think
+Whitman took any interest in it from the first.
+
+Self-reliance, or self-trust, is one of the principles Whitman announces
+in his "Laws for Creations." He saw that no first-class work is possible
+except it issue from a man's deepest, most radical self.
+
+  "What do you suppose creation is?
+  What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no
+        superior?
+  What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that
+        man or woman is as good as God?
+  And that there is no God any more divine than yourself?
+  And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
+  And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?"
+
+
+I think it probable that Whitman anticipated a long period of comparative
+oblivion for himself and his works. He knew from the first that the public
+would not be with him; he knew that the censors of taste, the critics and
+literary professors, would not be with him; he knew that the vast army of
+Philistia, the respectable, fashionable mammon-worshiping crowd, would not
+be with him,--that the timid, the pampered, the prurient, the conforming,
+the bourgeoisie spirit, the class spirit, the academic spirit, the
+Pharisaic spirit in all its forms, would all work against him; and that,
+as in the case of nearly all original, first-class men, he would have to
+wait to be understood for the growth of the taste of himself. None knew
+more clearly than he did how completely our people were under the
+illusion of the genteel and the conventional, and that, even among the
+emancipated few, the possession of anything like robust aesthetic
+perception was rare enough. America, so bold and original and independent
+in the world of practical politics and material endeavor, is, in spiritual
+and imaginative regions, timid, conforming, imitative. There is, perhaps,
+no civilized country in the world wherein the native, original man, the
+real critter, as Whitman loved to say, that underlies all our culture and
+conventions, crops out so little in manners, in literature, and in social
+usages. The fear of being unconventional is greater with us than the fear
+of death. A certain evasiveness, polish, distrust of ourselves, amounting
+to insipidity and insincerity, is spoken of by observant foreigners. In
+other words, we are perhaps the least like children of any people in the
+world. All these things were against Whitman, and will continue to be
+against him for a long time. With the first stroke he broke through the
+conventional and took his stand upon the natural. With rude hands he tore
+away the veils and concealments from the body and from the soul. He
+ignored entirely all social and conventional usages and hypocrisies, not
+by revolt against them, but by choosing a point of view from which they
+disappeared. He embraced the unrefined and the savage as well as the
+tender and human. The illusions of the past, the models and standards, he
+freed himself of at once, and declared for the beauty and the divinity of
+the now and the here. The rude realism of his "Leaves" shocked like a
+plunge in the surf, but it invigorated also, if we were strong enough to
+stand it.
+
+Out of Whitman's absolute self-trust arose his prophetic egotism,--the
+divine fervor and audacity of the simple ego. He shared the conviction of
+the old prophets that man is a part of God, and that there is nothing in
+the universe any more divine than the individual soul. "I, too," he says,
+and this line is the key to much there is in his work--
+
+  "I, too, have felt the resistless call of myself."
+
+
+With the old Biblical writers the motions of their own spirits, their
+thoughts, their dreams, were the voice of God. There is something of the
+same sort in Whitman. The voice of that inner self was final and
+authoritative with him. It was the voice of God. He could drive through
+and over all the conventions of the world in obedience to that voice. This
+call to him was as a voice from Sinai. One of his mastering thoughts was
+the thought of identity,--that you are you, and I am I. This was the final
+meaning of things, and the meaning of immortality. "Yourself, _yourself_,
+YOURSELF," he says, with swelling vehemence, "forever and ever." To be
+compacted and riveted and fortified in yourself, so as to be a law unto
+yourself, is the final word of the past and of the present.
+
+
+II
+
+The shadow of Whitman's self-reliance and heroic self-esteem--the sort of
+eddy or back-water--was undoubtedly a childlike fondness for praise and
+for seeing his name in print. In his relaxed moments, when the stress of
+his task was not upon him, he was indeed in many respects a child. He had
+a child's delight in his own picture. He enjoyed hearing himself lauded as
+Colonel Ingersoll lauded him in his lecture in Philadelphia, and as his
+friends lauded him at his birthday dinner parties during the last two or
+three years of his life; he loved to see his name in print, and items
+about himself in the newspapers; he sometimes wrote them himself and gave
+them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his
+life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in
+fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him
+dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him
+to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be
+frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men
+also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature,
+and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human
+nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be
+kept up to the heroic pitch.
+
+
+III
+
+It was difficult to appreciate his liking for the newspaper. But he had
+been a newspaper man himself; the printer's ink had struck in; he had many
+associations with the press-room and the composing-room; he loved the
+common, democratic character of the newspaper; it was the average man's
+library. The homely uses to which it was put, and the humble firesides to
+which it found its way, endeared it to him, and made him love to see his
+name in it.
+
+Whitman's vanity was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as
+tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy
+sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life
+there was none.
+
+His egotism is of the large generous species that never irritates or
+pricks into you like that of the merely conceited man. His love, his
+candor, his sympathy are on an equal scale.
+
+His egotism comes finally to affect one like the independence and
+indifference of natural law. It takes little heed of our opinion, whether
+it be for or against, and keeps to its own way whatever befall.
+
+Whitman's absolute faith in himself was a part of his faith in creation.
+He felt himself so keenly a part of the whole that he shared its soundness
+and excellence; he must be good as it is good.
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
+manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
+give rise to the charge that he was a _poseur_. He was a _poseur_ in the
+sense, and to the extent, that any man is a _poseur_ who tries to live up
+to a certain ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
+clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
+apart and looking upon himself as another person. Hence his extraordinary
+self-knowledge, and, we may also say, his extraordinary self-appreciation,
+or to use his own words, "the quite changed attitude of the ego, the one
+chanting or talking, towards himself." Of course there is danger in this
+attitude, but Whitman was large enough and strong enough to escape it. He
+saw himself to be the typical inevitable democrat that others have seen
+him to be, and with perfect candor and without ever forcing the note, he
+portrays himself as such. As his work is confessedly the poem of himself,
+himself magnified and projected, as it were, upon the canvas of a great
+age and country, all his traits and qualities stand out in heroic
+proportions, his pride and egotism as well as his love and tolerance.
+
+"How beautiful is candor," he says. "All faults may be forgiven of him who
+has perfect candor." The last thing that could ever be charged of Whitman
+is that he lacked openness, or was guilty of any deceit or concealments in
+his life or works.
+
+From the studies, notes, and scrap-books which Whitman left, it appears
+that he was long preparing and disciplining himself for the work he had in
+view. "The long foreground," to which Emerson referred in his letter, was
+of course a reality. But this self-consciousness and self-adjustment to a
+given end is an element of strength and not of weakness.
+
+In the famous vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the
+first "Leaves of Grass" he assumes an attitude and is in a sense a
+_poseur_; but the reader comes finally to wonder at the marvelous
+self-knowledge the picture displays, and how strictly typical it is of the
+poet's mental and spiritual attitude towards the world,--independent,
+unconventional, audacious, yet inquiring and sympathetic in a wonderful
+degree. In the same way he posed in other portraits. A favorite with him
+is the one in which he sits contemplating a butterfly upon his
+forefinger--typical of a man "preoccupied of his own soul." In another he
+peers out curiously as from behind a mask. In an earlier one he stands,
+hat in hand, in marked _neglige_ costume,--a little too intentional, one
+feels. The contempt of the polished ones is probably very strong within
+him at this time. I say contempt, though I doubt if Whitman ever felt
+contempt for any human being.
+
+
+V
+
+Then Whitman had a curious habit of standing apart, as it were, and
+looking upon himself and his career as of some other person. He was
+interested in his own cause, and took a hand in the discussion. From first
+to last he had the habit of regarding himself objectively. On his deathbed
+he seemed to be a spectator of his own last moments, and was seen to feel
+his pulse a few minutes before he breathed his last.
+
+He has recorded this trait in his poems:--
+
+  "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
+  Stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, waiting,
+  Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
+  Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it."
+
+As also in this from "Calamus:"--
+
+  "That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,
+        chattering, chaffering,
+  How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,
+  How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
+  But among my lovers, and caroling these songs,
+  Oh, I never doubt whether that is really me."
+
+
+Whitman always speaks as one having authority and not as a scribe, not as
+a mere man of letters. This is the privilege of the divine egoism of the
+prophet.
+
+Like the utterances of the biblical writers, without argument, without
+elaboration, his mere dictum seems the word of fate. It is not the voice
+of a man who has made his way through the world by rejecting and denying,
+but by accepting all and rising superior. What the "push of reading" or
+the push of argument could not start is often started and clinched by his
+mere authoritative "I say."
+
+  "I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery
+        draws the blood out of liberty,"...
+  "I say the human shape or face is so great it must never be made
+        ridiculous;
+  I say for ornaments nothing outre can be allowed,
+  And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,
+  And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology
+        and in other persons' physiologies also.
+
+  "Think of the past;
+  I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and
+        your times....
+  Think of spiritual results.
+  Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results.
+  Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
+  Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
+  Think of womanhood and you to be a woman;
+  The Creation is womanhood;
+  Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
+  Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
+        womanhood?"
+
+
+Egotism is usually intolerant, but Whitman was one of the most tolerant of
+men.
+
+A craving for sympathy and personal affection he certainly had; to be
+valued as a human being was more to him than to be valued as a poet. His
+strongest attachments were probably for persons who had no opinion, good
+or bad, of his poetry at all.
+
+
+VI
+
+Under close scrutiny his egotism turns out to be a kind of altru-egotism,
+which is vicarious and all-inclusive of his fellows. It is one phase of
+his democracy, and is vital and radical in his pages. It is a high,
+imperturbable pride in his manhood and in the humanity which he shares
+with all. It is the exultant and sometimes almost arrogant expression of
+the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world--the
+feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws,
+institutions, conventions, bibles, religions--that the divinity of kings,
+and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to the humblest
+person.
+
+It was a passion that united him to his fellows rather than separated him
+from them. His pride was not that of a man who sets himself up above
+others, or who claims some special advantage or privilege, but that
+godlike quality that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence
+we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for
+mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and
+follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is
+the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there
+might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that
+his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate
+the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves,"
+flowing curiously out of its pride and egotism, is the lesson of charity,
+of self-surrender, and the free bestowal of yourself upon all hands.
+
+The law of life of great art is the law of life in ethics, and was long
+ago announced.
+
+He that would lose his life shall find it; he who gives himself the most
+freely shall the most freely receive. Whitman made himself the brother and
+equal of all, not in word, but in very deed; he was in himself a compend
+of the people for which he spoke, and this breadth of sympathy and free
+giving of himself has resulted in an unexpected accession of power.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE
+
+
+I
+
+Whitman protests against his "Leaves" being judged merely as literature;
+but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends
+the matter. Still while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are
+paramount in most other poets,--certainly in all third and fourth rate
+poets, in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values.
+
+In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates
+that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary
+productions.
+
+"Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries," he says in one of the
+"Inscriptions,"--
+
+  "For that which was lacking in all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed
+        most, I bring.
+  Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
+  The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,
+  A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
+  But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."
+
+
+Not linked with the studied and scholarly productions, not open to the
+mere bookish mind, but more akin to the primitive utterances and oracles
+of historic humanity. A literary age like ours lays great stress upon the
+savor of books, art, culture, and has little taste for the savor of real
+things, the real man, which we get in Whitman.
+
+"It is the true breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit,
+that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes
+on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would
+not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is
+beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson,
+begat Browning, begat the New England poets, but it did not in the same
+sense beget Whitman, any more than it begat Homer or Job or Isaiah. The
+artist may delight in him and find his own ideals there; the critic may
+study him and find the poet master of all his weapons; the disciple of
+culture will find, as Professor Triggs has well said, that "there is no
+body of writings in literature which demands a wider conversancy with the
+best that has been thought or said in the world,"--yet the poet escapes
+from all hands that would finally hold him and monopolize him. Whitman is
+an immense solvent,--forms, theories, rules, criticisms, disappear in his
+fluid, teeming pages. Much can be deduced from him, because much went to
+the making up of his point of view. He makes no criticism, yet a
+far-reaching criticism is implied in the very start of his poems. No
+modern poet presupposes so much, or requires so much preliminary study and
+reflection. He brings a multitude of questions and problems, and, what is
+singular, he brings them in himself; they are implied in his temper, and
+in his attitude toward life and reality.
+
+Whitman says he has read his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, that he
+has tried himself by the elemental laws; and tells us in many ways, direct
+and indirect, that the standards he would be tried by are not those of art
+or books, but of absolute nature. He has been laughed at for calling
+himself a "Kosmos," but evidently he uses the term to indicate this
+elemental, dynamic character of his work,--its escape from indoor,
+artificial standards, its aspiration after the "amplitude of the earth,
+and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of
+the earth, and the equilibrium also."
+
+
+II
+
+Unless the poetic perception is fundamental in us, and can grasp the
+poetry of things, actions, characters, multitudes, heroisms, we shall read
+Whitman with very poor results. Unless America, the contemporary age,
+life, nature, are poetical to us, Whitman will not be. He has aimed at the
+larger poetry of forces, masses, persons, enthusiasms, rather than at the
+poetry of the specially rare and fine. He kindles in me the delight I have
+in space, freedom, power, the elements, the cosmic, democracy, and the
+great personal qualities of self-reliance, courage, candor, charity.
+
+Always in the literary poets are we impressed with the art of the poet as
+something distinct from the poet himself, and more or less put on. The
+poet gets himself up for the occasion; he assumes the pose and the
+language of the poet, as the priest assumes the pose and the language of
+devotion. In Whitman the artist and the man are one. He never gets himself
+up for the occasion. Our pleasure in him is rarely or never our pleasure
+in the well-dressed, the well-drilled, the cultivated, the refined, the
+orderly, but it is more akin to our pleasure in real things, in human
+qualities and powers, in freedom, health, development. Yet I never open
+his book without being struck afresh with its pictural quality, its grasp
+of the concrete, its vivid realism, its intimate sense of things, persons,
+truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such
+as we can never get in mere prose. It is as direct as a challenge, as
+personal as a handshake, and yet withal how mystical, how elusive, how
+incommensurable! To deny that Whitman belongs to the fraternity of great
+artists, the shapers and moulders of the ideal,--those who breathe the
+breath of life into the clay or stone of common facts and objects, who
+make all things plastic and the vehicles of great and human emotions,--is
+to read him very inadequately, to say the least. To get at Walt Whitman
+you must see through just as much as you do in dealing with nature; you
+are to bring the same interpretive imagination. You are not to be balked
+by what appears to be the coarse and the familiar, or his rank
+contemporaneity; after a time you will surely see the lambent spiritual
+flames that play about it all.
+
+  "Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering about me,"
+
+and his cosmic splendor, depth, and power. It is not the denial of art, it
+is a new affirmation of life. It is one phase of his democracy. It is the
+logical conclusion of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself that
+appeared in the first edition of his poems. He would give us more of the
+man, a fuller measure of personal, concrete, human qualities, than any
+poet before him. He strips away the artificial wrappings and illusions
+usual in poetry, and relies entirely upon the native and intrinsic. He
+will have no curtains, he says,--not the finest,--between himself and his
+reader.
+
+  "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
+        all poems,
+  You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of
+        suns left),
+  You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
+        through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
+  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+  You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."
+
+
+This is a hint of his democracy as applied to literature,--more direct and
+immediate contact with the primary and universal, less of the vestments
+and trappings of art and more of the push and power of original character
+and of nature.
+
+
+III
+
+It seems to me it is always in order to protest against the narrow and
+dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticism touching this
+matter of art. "The boundaries of art are jealously guarded," says a
+recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that
+had been accurately surveyed and fixed,--as if art was a fact and not a
+spirit.
+
+Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that
+art is in any sense an "enclosure,"--a province fenced off and set apart
+from the rest,--any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many
+people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human
+spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the
+sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has
+but one principle, one aim,--to produce an impression, a powerful
+impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the
+canons of taste and criticism. Name any principle, so called, and some day
+a genius shall be born who will produce his effects in defiance of it, or
+by appearing to reverse it. Such a man as Turner seemed, at first sight,
+to set at defiance all correct notions of art. The same with Wagner in
+music, the same with Whitman in poetry. The new man is impossible till he
+appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power
+does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical
+standards to him. But it is sure to do so at last. There is nothing final
+in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are
+deductions from his work, not its inspiration. We demand of the new man,
+of the overthrower of our idols, but one thing,--has he authentic
+inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded.
+If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of
+nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case. Is
+there no room for the new man? But the new man makes room for himself, and
+if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is
+appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.
+
+
+IV
+
+The trouble with most of us is that we found our taste for poetry upon
+particular authors, instead of upon literature as a whole, or, better yet,
+upon life and reality. Hence we form standards instead of principles.
+Standards are limited, rigid, uncompromising, while principles are
+flexible, expansive, creative. If we are wedded to the Miltonic standard
+of poetry, the classic standards, we shall have great difficulties with
+Whitman; but if we have founded our taste upon natural principles--if we
+have learned to approach literature through reality, instead of reality
+through literature--we shall not be the victims of any one style or model;
+we shall be made free of all. The real test of art, of any art, as Burke
+long ago said, and as quoted by Mr. Howells in his trenchant little volume
+called "Criticism and Fiction," is to be sought outside of art, namely, in
+nature. "I can judge but poorly of anything while I measure it by no other
+standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's
+power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the
+meanest, things in nature will give the truest lights." It is thought that
+the preeminence of the Greek standards is settled when we say they are
+natural. Yes, but Nature is not Greek. She is Asiatic, German, English, as
+well.
+
+
+V
+
+In poetry, in art, a man must sustain a certain vital relation to his
+work, and that work must sustain a certain vital relation to the laws of
+mind and of life. That is all, and that leaves the doors very wide. We are
+not to ask, Is it like this or like that? but, Is it vital, is it real, is
+it a consistent, well-organized whole?
+
+The poet must always interpret himself and nature after his own fashion.
+Is his fashion adequate? Is the interpretation vivid and real? Do his
+lines cut to the quick, and beget heat and joy in the soul? If we cannot
+make the poet's ideal our own by sharing his enthusiasm for it, the
+trouble is as likely to be in ourselves as in him. In any case he must be
+a law unto himself.
+
+The creative artist differs from the mere writer or thinker in this: he
+sustains a direct personal relation to his subject through emotion,
+intuition, will. The indirect, impersonal relation which works by
+reflection, comparison, and analysis is that of the critic and
+philosopher. The man is an artist when he gives us a concrete and
+immediate impression of reality: from his hands we get the thing itself;
+from the critic and thinker we get ideas _about_ the thing. The poet does
+not merely say the world is beautiful; he shows it as beautiful: he does
+not describe the flower; he places it before us. What are the enemies of
+art? Reflection, didacticism, description, the turgid, the obscure. A poet
+with a thesis to sustain is more or less barred from the freedom of pure
+art. It is by direct and unconsidered expression, says Scherer, that art
+communicates with reality. The things that make for art, then, are
+feeling, intuition, sentiment, soul, a fresh and vigorous sense of real
+things,--in fact, all that makes for life, health, and wholeness. Goethe
+is more truly an artist in the first part of Faust than in the second;
+Arnold has a more truly artistic mind than Lowell.
+
+The principles of art are always the same in the respect I have indicated,
+just as the principles of life are always the same, or of health and
+longevity are always the same. No writer is an artist who is related to
+his subject simply by mental or logical grip alone: he must have a certain
+emotional affiliation and identity with it; he does not so much convey to
+us ideas and principles as pictures, parables, impressions,--a lively
+sense of real things. When we put Whitman outside the pale of art, we must
+show his shortcomings here; we must show that he is not fluid and
+generative,--that he paints instead of interprets, that he gives us
+reasons instead of impulses, a stone when we ask for bread. "I do not
+give a little charity," he says; "when I give, I give myself." This the
+artist always does, not his mind merely, but his soul, his personality.
+"Leaves of Grass" is as direct an emanation from a central personal force
+as any book in literature, and always carries its own test and its own
+proof. It never hardens into a system, it never ceases to be penetrated
+with will and emotion, it never declines from the order of deeds to the
+order of mere thoughts. All is movement, progress, evolution, picture,
+parable, impulse.
+
+It is on these grounds that Whitman, first of all, is an artist. He has
+the artist temperament. His whole life was that of a man who lives to
+ideal ends,--who lived to bestow himself upon others, to extract from life
+its meaning and its joy.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman has let himself go, and trusted himself to the informal and
+spontaneous, to a degree unprecedented. His course required a
+self-reliance of the highest order; it required an innate cohesion and
+homogeneity, a firmness and consistency of individual outline, that few
+men have. It would seem to be much easier to face the poet's problem in
+the old, well-worn forms--forms that are so winsome and authoritative in
+themselves--than, to stand upon a basis so individual and intrinsic as
+Whitman chose to stand upon. His course goes to the quick at once. How
+much of a man are you? How vital and fundamental is your poetic gift? Can
+it go alone? Can it face us in undress?
+
+Never did the artist more cunningly conceal himself; never did he so
+completely lose himself in the man, identifying himself with the natural
+and spontaneous; never emerging and challenging attention on his own
+account, denying us when we too literally seek him, mocking us when we
+demand his credentials, and revealing himself only when we have come to
+him upon his own terms.
+
+The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no
+outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader. "This is
+no book," he says: "who touches this touches a man." In one sense Whitman
+is without art,--the impression which he always seeks to make is that of
+reality itself. He aims to give us reality without the usual literary
+veils and illusions,--the least possible amount of the artificial, the
+extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader. He banishes from
+his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,--all
+atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and
+decoration,--and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers.
+The verse does not seem to have been shaped; it might have grown: it takes
+no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular,
+rhythmical, and always fluid and real. A cry will always be raised against
+the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and
+falls back upon simple Nature, or upon himself, as Millet did in painting,
+and Wagner in music, and Whitman in poetry.
+
+Whitman's working ideas, the principles that inspired him, are all
+directly related to life and the problems of life; they are democracy,
+nature, freedom, love, personality, religion: while the ideas from which
+our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,--they are
+literary ideas, such as lucidity, form, beauty.
+
+
+VII
+
+Much light is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark
+which he once made in conversation with Dr. Bucke:--
+
+"I have aimed to make the book simple,--tasteless, or with little
+taste,--with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or
+writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is
+not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her
+productions--her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, meats--with
+faint and delicate flavor and fragrance, but these in the long run make
+the deepest impression. Man, dealing with natural things, constantly aims
+to increase their piquancy. By crossing and selection he deepens and
+intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so
+on. He pursues the same method in poetry,--that is, strives for strong
+light or shade, for high color, perfume, pungency, in all ways for the
+greatest immediate effect. In so doing he leaves the true way, the way of
+Nature, and, in the long run, comes far short of producing her effects."
+
+More light of the same kind is thrown upon his methods by the following
+passage from the preface to the first edition of his poems in 1855.
+
+"To speak in literature," he says, "with the perfect rectitude and
+insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the
+sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless
+triumph of art." And again: "The great poet has less a marked style, and
+is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution,
+and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be
+meddlesome; I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or
+originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I
+will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell,
+I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate
+or soothe, I will have purpose, as health or heat or snow has, and be as
+regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my
+composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side
+and look in the mirror with me."
+
+
+VIII
+
+But in view of the profound impression Whitman's work has made upon widely
+different types of mind on both sides of the Atlantic, and in view of the
+persistent vitality of his fame, the question whether he is inside or
+outside the pale of art amounts to very little. I quite agree with the
+late Mrs. Gilchrist, that, when "great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please."
+
+That Whitman has expressed great meanings and great emotions with adequate
+power, even his unfriendly critics admit. Thus Professor Wendell, in an
+admirable essay on American literature, says that "though Whitman is
+uncouth, inarticulate, and lacking in a grotesque degree artistic form,
+yet for all that he can make you feel for the moment how even the
+ferry-boats plying from New York to Brooklyn are fragments of God's
+eternities." In the same way Mr. William Clark, his British critic and
+expounder, says that he is wanting in discrimination and art, "flings his
+ideas at us in a heap," etc., and yet that the effect of his work is "to
+stir our emotions, widen our interests, and rally the forces of our moral
+nature."
+
+It seems to me that a man who, through the printed page, can do these
+things, must have some kind of art worth considering. If, through his
+impassioned treatment of a prosy, commonplace object like a ferry-boat, he
+can so dignify and exalt it, and so fill it with the meanings of the
+spirit, that it seems like a part of God's eternities, his methods are at
+least worth inquiring into.
+
+The truth is, Whitman's art, in its lack of extrinsic form and finish, is
+Oriental rather than Occidental, and is an offense to a taste founded upon
+the precision and finish of a mechanical age. His verse is like the
+irregular, slightly rude coin of the Greeks compared with the exact,
+machine-cut dies of our own day, or like the unfinished look of Japanese
+pottery beside the less beautiful but more perfect specimens of modern
+ceramic art.
+
+For present purposes, we may say there are two phases of art,--formal art
+and creative art. By formal art I mean that which makes a direct appeal to
+our sense of form,--our sense of the finely carved, the highly wrought,
+the deftly planned; and by creative art I mean that quickening,
+fructifying power of the masters, that heat and passion that make the
+world plastic and submissive to their hands, teeming with new meanings and
+thrilling with new life.
+
+Formal art is always in the ascendant. Formal anything--formal dress,
+formal manners, formal religion, formal this and that--always counts for
+more than the informal, the spontaneous, the original. It is easier, it
+can be put off and on.
+
+Formal art is nearly always the gift of the minor poet, and often of the
+major poet also. In such a poet as Swinburne, formal art leads by a great
+way. The content of his verse,--what is it? In Tennyson as well I should
+say formal art is in the ascendant. Creative art is his also; Tennyson
+reaches and moves the spirit, yet his skill is more noteworthy than his
+power. In Wordsworth, on the other hand, I should say creative art led:
+the content of his verse is more than its form; his spiritual and
+religious values are greater than his literary and artistic. The same is
+true of our own Emerson. Poe, again, is much more as an artist than as a
+man or a personality.
+
+I hardly need say that in Whitman formal art, the ostensibly artistic,
+counts for but very little. The intentional artist, the professional poet,
+is kept entirely in abeyance, or is completely merged and hidden in the
+man, more so undoubtedly than in any poet this side the old Oriental
+bards. We call him formless, chaotic, amorphous, etc., because he makes no
+appeal to our modern highly stimulated sense of art or artificial form. We
+must discriminate this from our sense of power, our sense of life, our
+sense of beauty, of the sublime, of the all, which clearly Whitman would
+reach and move. Whitman certainly has a form of his own: what would a
+poet, or any writer or worker in the ideal, do without some kind of form?
+some consistent and adequate vehicle of expression? But Whitman's form is
+not what is called artistic, because it is not brought within the rules of
+the prosodical system, and does not appeal to our sense of the consciously
+shaped and cultivated. It is essentially the prose form heightened and
+intensified by a deep, strong, lyric and prophetic note.
+
+The bonds and shackles of regular verse-form Whitman threw off. This
+course seemed to be demanded by the spirit to which he had dedicated
+himself,--the spirit of absolute unconstraint. The restrictions and
+hamperings of the scholastic forms did not seem to be consistent with this
+spirit, which he identified with democracy and the New World. A poet who
+sets out to let down the bars everywhere, to remove veils and
+obstructions, to emulate the freedom of the elemental forces, to effuse
+always the atmosphere of open-air growths and objects, to be as
+"regardless of observation" as the processes of nature, etc., will not be
+apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression. The
+essentially prose form which Whitman chose is far more in keeping with the
+spirit and aim of his work than any conventional metrical system could
+have been. Had he wrought solely as a conscious artist, aiming at the
+effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have chosen a
+different medium.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman threw himself with love and enthusiasm upon this great, crude,
+seething, materialistic American world. The question is, Did he master it?
+Is he adequate to absorb and digest it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is
+it plastic in his hands? Does he stamp it with his own image? I do not
+ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make
+it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because
+evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it. He is content if he
+present America and the modern to us as they are inwrought into his own
+personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character,
+passion, will, motive, conviction. He would show them subjectively and as
+living impulses in himself. Of course a great constructive, dramatic poet
+like Shakespeare would have solved his problem in a different manner, or
+through the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters. But the
+poet and prophet of democracy and of egotism shows us all things in and
+through himself.
+
+His egotism, or egocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work.
+It colors all and determines all. The poems are the direct outgrowth of
+the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it
+were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon
+the trunk. His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most
+poets. He never leads us away from himself into pleasant paths with
+enticing flowers of fancy or forms of art. He carves or shapes nothing for
+its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent
+grounds as pure art. His work is not material made precious by elaboration
+and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life.
+
+
+X
+
+Whitman was compelled to this negation of extrinsic art by the problem he
+had set before himself,--first, to arouse, to suggest, rather than to
+finish or elaborate, less to display any theme or thought than "to bring
+the reader into the atmosphere of the theme or thought;" secondly, to make
+his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that
+the dominant impression should always be that of the living, breathing
+man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see
+him and feel him in books or art,--the man in the form and garb of actual,
+concrete life, not as poet or artist, but simply as man. This is doubtless
+the meaning of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to
+the first issue of the "Leaves," to which I have referred. This portrait
+is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task. It was a
+hint that we must take this poet with very little literary tailoring; it
+was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and
+spoke in their spirit.
+
+It is never the theme treated, but always the character exploited; never
+the structure finished, but always the plan suggested; never the work
+accomplished, but always the impulse imparted,--freedom, power, growth.
+
+  "Allons! we must not stop here.
+  However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling,
+        we cannot remain here,
+  However sheltered this port, or however calm these waters, we must not
+        anchor here,
+  However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to
+        receive it but a little while.
+
+  "Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
+  Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
+  Allons! from all formulas!
+  From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!"
+
+
+This magnificent poem, "The Song of the Open Road," is one of the most
+significant in Whitman's work. He takes the open road as his type,--not an
+end in itself, not a fulfillment, but a start, a journey, a progression.
+It teaches him the profound lesson of reception, "no preference nor
+denial," and the profounder lesson of liberty and truth:--
+
+  "From this hour, freedom!
+  From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
+  Going where I list--my own master, total and absolute,
+  Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
+  Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
+  Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
+        would hold me.
+
+  "I inhale great draughts of air,
+  The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine."
+
+He will not rest with art, he will not rest with books, he will press his
+way steadily toward the largest freedom.
+
+  "Only the kernel of every object nourishes.
+  Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
+  Where is he who undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?"
+
+
+Whitman was not a builder. If he had the architectural power which the
+great poets have shown, he gave little proof of it. It was not required by
+the task he set before himself. His book is not a temple: it is a wood, a
+field, a highway; vista, vista, everywhere,--vanishing lights and shades,
+truths half disclosed, successions of objects, hints, suggestions, brief
+pictures, groups, voices, contrasts, blendings, and, above all, the tonic
+quality of the open air. The shorter poems are like bunches of herbs or
+leaves, or a handful of sprays gathered in a walk; never a thought
+carefully carved, and appealing to our sense of artistic form.
+
+The main poem of the book, "The Song of Myself," is a series of
+utterances, ejaculations, apostrophes, enumerations, associations,
+pictures, parables, incidents, suggestions, with little or no structural
+or logical connection, but all emanating from a personality whose presence
+dominates the page, and whose eye is ever upon us. Without this vivid and
+intimate sense of the man back of all, of a sane and powerful spirit
+sustaining ours, the piece would be wild and inchoate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The reader will be sure to demand of Whitman ample compensation for the
+absence from his work of those things which current poets give us in such
+full measure. Whether or not the compensation is ample, whether the music
+of his verse as of winds and waves, the long, irregular, dithyrambic
+movement, its fluid and tonic character, the vastness of conception, the
+large, biblical speech, the surging cosmic emotion, the vivid personal
+presence as of the living man looking into your eye or walking by your
+side,--whether all these things, the refreshing quality as of "harsh salt
+spray" which the poet Lanier found in the "Leaves," the electric currents
+which Mrs. Gilchrist found there, the "unexcelled imaginative justice of
+language" which Mr. Stevenson at times found, the religious liberation and
+faith which Mr. Symonds found, the "incomparable things incomparably well
+said" of Emerson, the rifle-bullets of Ruskin, the "supreme words" of
+Colonel Ingersoll, etc.,--whether qualities and effects like these, I say,
+make up to us for the absence of the traditional poetic graces and
+adornments, is a question which will undoubtedly long divide the reading
+world.
+
+In the works upon which our poetic taste is founded, artistic form is
+paramount; we have never been led to apply to such works open-air
+standards,--clouds, trees, rivers, spaces,--but the precision and
+definiteness of the cultured and the artificial. If Whitman had aimed at
+pure art and had failed, his work would be intolerable. As his French
+critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, has well said: "In the large work which Whitman
+attempted, there come no rules save those of nobility and strength of
+spirit; and these suffice amply to create a most unlooked-for and
+grandiose aspect of beauty." "Overcrowded and disorderly" as it may seem,
+"if heroic emotion and thought and enthusiasm vitalize it," the poet has
+reached his goal.
+
+
+XII
+
+Sometimes I define Whitman to myself as the poet of the open air,--not
+because he sings the praises of these things after the manner of the
+so-called nature-poets, but because he has the quality of things in the
+open air, the quality of the unhoused, the untamed, the elemental and
+aboriginal. He pleases and he offends, the same way things at large do. He
+has the brawn, the indifference, the rudeness, the virility, the
+coarseness,--something gray, unpronounced, elemental, about him, the
+effect of mass, size, distance, flowing, vanishing lines, neutral
+spaces,--something informal, multitudinous, and processional,--something
+regardless of criticism, that makes no bid for our applause, not
+calculated instantly to please, unmindful of details, prosaic if we make
+it so, common, near at hand, and yet that provokes thought and stirs our
+emotions in an unusual degree. The long lists and catalogues of objects
+and scenes in Whitman, that have so excited the mirth of the critics, are
+one phase of his out-of-doors character,--a multitude of concrete objects,
+a grove, a thicket, a field, a stretch of beach,--every object sharply
+defined, but no attempt at logical or artistic sequence, the effect of the
+whole informal, multitudinous. It may be objected to these pages that they
+consist of a mass of details that do not make a picture. But every line is
+a picture of a scene or an object. Whitman always keeps up the movement,
+he never pauses to describe; it is all action.
+
+Passing from such a poet as Tennyson to Whitman is like going from a warm,
+perfumed interior, with rich hangings, pictures, books, statuary, fine men
+and women, out into the street, or upon the beach, or upon the hill, or
+under the midnight stars. We lose something certainly, but do we not gain
+something also? Do we not gain just what Whitman had in view, namely,
+direct contact with the elements in which are the sources of our life and
+health? Do we not gain in scope and power what we lose in art and
+refinement?
+
+The title, "Leaves of Grass," is full of meaning. What self-knowledge and
+self-scrutiny it implies! The grass, perennial sprouting, universal,
+formless, common, the always spread feast of the herds, dotted with
+flowers, the herbage of the earth, so suggestive of the multitudinous,
+loosely aggregated, unelaborated character of the book; the lines
+springing directly out of the personality of the poet, the soil of his
+life.
+
+  "What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me,"
+
+says the poet, and this turns out to be the case. We only look to see if
+in the common and the cheap he discloses new values and new meanings,--if
+his leaves of grass have the old freshness and nutriment, and be not a
+mere painted greenness.
+
+  "The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
+  The carpenter dresses his plank--the tongue of his foreplane whistles
+        its wild ascending lisp,
+  The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving
+        dinner,
+  The pilot seizes the king-pin--he heaves down with a strong arm,
+  The mate stands braced in the whale-boat--lance and harpoon are ready,
+  The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
+  The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
+  The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
+  The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First Day loafe, and looks
+        at the oats and rye,
+  The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case,
+  He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
+        bedroom;
+  The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
+  He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
+  The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,
+  What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
+  The quadroon girl is sold at the stand--the drunkard nods by the
+        bar-room stove,
+  The machinist rolls up his sleeves--the policeman travels his beat--the
+        gate-keeper marks who pass,
+  The young fellow drives the express-wagon--I love him, though I do not
+        know him,
+  The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
+  The western turkey-shooting draws old and young--some lean on their
+        rifles, some sit on logs,
+  Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his
+        piece;
+  The groups of newly-come emigrants cover the wharf or levee,
+  As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them
+        from his saddle,
+  The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners,
+        the dancers bow to each other,
+  The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret, and harks to the
+        musical rain,
+  The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
+  The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and
+        the winter-grain falls in the ground,
+  Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the
+        frozen surface,
+  The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep
+        with his axe,
+  Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-wood or pekan-trees,
+  Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River, or through those
+        drained by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
+  Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,
+  Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons
+        around them,
+  In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their
+        day's sport,
+  The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
+  The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
+  The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his
+        wife;
+  And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
+  And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am."
+
+
+What is this but tufts and tussocks of grass; not branching trees, nor yet
+something framed and deftly put together, but a succession of simple
+things, objects, actions, persons; handfuls of native growths, a stretch
+of prairie or savanna; no composition, no artistic wholes, no logical
+sequence, yet all vital and real; jets of warm life that shoot and play
+over the surface of contemporary America, and that the poet uses as the
+stuff out of which to weave the song of himself.
+
+This simple aggregating or cataloguing style as it has been called, and
+which often occurs in the "Leaves," has been much criticised, but it seems
+to me in perfect keeping in a work that does not aim at total artistic
+effects, at finished structural perfection like architecture, but to
+picture the elements of a man's life and character in outward scenes and
+objects and to show how all nature tends inward to him and he outward to
+it. Whitman showers the elements of American life upon his reader until,
+so to speak, his mind is drenched with them, but never groups them into
+patterns to tickle his sense of form. It is charged that his method is
+inartistic, and it is so in a sense, but it is the Whitman art and has its
+own value in his work. Only the artist instinct could prompt to this
+succession of one line genre word painting.
+
+But this is not the way of the great artists. No, but it is Whitman's way,
+and these things have a certain artistic value in his work, a work that
+professedly aims to typify his country and times,--the value of multitude,
+processions, mass-movements, and the gathering together of elements and
+forces from wide areas.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman's relation to art, then, is primary and fundamental, just as his
+relations to religion, to culture, to politics, to democracy, are primary
+and fundamental,--through his emotion, his soul, and not merely through
+his tools, his intellect. His artistic conscience is quickly revealed to
+any searching inquiry. It is seen in his purpose to convey his message by
+suggestion and indirection, or as an informing, vitalizing breath and
+spirit. His thought and meaning are enveloped in his crowded, concrete,
+and often turbulent pages, as science is enveloped in nature. He has a
+profound ethic, a profound metaphysic, but they are not formulated; they
+are vital in his pages as hearing or eyesight.
+
+Whitman studied effects, and shaped his means to his end, weighing values
+and subordinating parts, as only the great artist does. He knew the power
+of words as few know them; he knew the value of vista, perspective,
+vanishing lights and lines. He knew how to make his words itch at your
+ears till you understood them; how to fold up and put away in his
+sentences meanings, glimpses, that did not at first reveal themselves. It
+is only the work of the great creative artist that is pervaded by will,
+and that emanates directly and inevitably from the personality of the man
+himself. As a man and an American, Whitman is as closely related to his
+work as AEschylus to his, or Dante to his. This is always a supreme
+test,--the closeness and vitality of the relation of a man to his work.
+Could any one else have done it? Is it the general intelligence that
+speaks, the culture and refinement of the age? or have we a new revelation
+of life, a new mind and soul? The lesser poets sustain only a secondary
+relation to their works. It is other poets, other experiences, the past,
+the schools, the forms, that speak through them. In all Whitman's
+recitatives, as he calls them, the free-flowing ends of the sentences, the
+loose threads of meaning, the unraveled or unknitted threads and fringes,
+are all well considered, and are one phase of _his_ art. He seeks his
+effects thus.
+
+His method is indirect, allegorical, and elliptical to an unusual degree;
+often a curious suspension and withholding in a statement, a suggestive
+incompleteness, both ends of his thought, as it were, left in the air;
+sometimes the substantive, sometimes the nominative, is wanting, and all
+for a purpose. The poet somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic
+screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are
+used to in prophecy. The forthrightness of utterance, the projectile
+force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the
+great prophetic souls, is here.
+
+Whitman is poetic in the same way in which he is democratic, in the same
+way in which he is religious, or American, or modern,--not by word merely,
+but by deed; not by the extrinsic, but by the intrinsic; not by art, but
+by life.
+
+I am never tired of saying that to put great personal qualities in a poem,
+or other literary work, not formulated or didactically stated, but in
+tone, manner, attitude, breadth of view, love, charity, good fellowship,
+etc., is the great triumph for our day. So put, they are a possession to
+the race forever; they grow and bear fruit perennially, like the grass and
+the trees. And shall it be said that the poet who does this has no worthy
+art?
+
+
+XIV
+
+Nearly all modern artificial products, when compared with the ancient, are
+characterized by greater mechanical finish and precision. Can we say,
+therefore, they are more artistic? Is a gold coin of the time of Pericles,
+so rude and simple, less artistic than the elaborate coins of our own day?
+Is Japanese pottery, the glazing often ragged and uneven, less artistic
+than the highly finished work of the moderns?
+
+Are we quite sure, after all, that what we call "artistic form" is in any
+high or fundamental sense artistic? Are the precise, the regular, the
+measured, the finished, the symmetrical, indispensable to our conception
+of art? If regular extrinsic form and measure and proportion are necessary
+elements of the artistic, then geometrical flower-beds, and trees set in
+rows or trained to some fancy pattern, ought to please the artist. But do
+they? If we look for the artistic in these things, then Addison is a
+greater artist than Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says, "Addison speaks the
+language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." Which is really the most
+artistic? The one is the coin from the die, the other the coin from the
+hand.
+
+Tennyson's faultless form and finish are not what stamp him a great
+artist. He would no doubt be glad to get rid of them if he could, at least
+to keep them in abeyance and make them less obtrusive; he would give
+anything for the freedom, raciness, and wildness of Shakespeare. But he is
+not equal to these things. The culture, the refinement, the precision of a
+correct and mechanical age have sunk too deeply into his soul. He has not
+the courage or the spring to let himself go as Shakespeare did. Tennyson,
+too, speaks the language of poets, and not of men; he savors of the
+flower-garden, and not of the forest. Tennyson knows that he is an artist.
+Shakespeare, apparently, never had such a thought; he is intent solely
+upon holding the mirror up to nature. The former lived in an age of
+criticism, and when the poets loved poetry more than they did life and
+things; the latter, in a more virile time, and in "the full stream of the
+world."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not self-advertised as a work of art. The author had
+no thought that you should lay down his book and say, "What a great
+artist!" "What a master workman!" He would rather you should say, "What a
+great man!" "What a loving comrade!" "What a real democrat!" "What a
+healing and helpful force!" He would not have you admire his poetry: he
+would have you filled with the breath of a new and larger and saner life;
+he would be a teacher and trainer of men.
+
+The love of the precise, the exact, the methodical, is characteristic of
+an age of machinery, of a commercial and industrial age like ours. These
+things are indispensable in the mill and counting-house, but why should we
+insist upon them in poetry? Why should we cling to an arbitrary form like
+the sonnet? Why should we insist upon a perfect rhyme, as if it was a cog
+in a wheel? Why not allow and even welcome the freedom of half-rhymes, or
+suggestive rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it
+into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering
+and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the
+man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an
+artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair with great laws
+and forces?
+
+Of course it is much easier for a poet to use the regular verse-forms and
+verse language than it is to dispense with them; that is, a much less
+poetic capital is required in the former case than in the latter. The
+stock forms and the stock language count for a good deal. A very small
+amount of original talent may cut quite an imposing figure in the robes of
+the great masters. Require the poet to divest himself of them, and to
+speak in the language of men and in the spirit of real things, and see how
+he fares.
+
+
+XV
+
+Whitman was afraid of what he called the beauty disease. He thought a poet
+of the first order should be sparing of the direct use of the beautiful,
+as Nature herself is. His aim should be larger, and beauty should follow
+and not lead. The poet should not say to himself, "Come, I will make
+something beautiful," but rather "I will make something true, and
+quickening, and powerful. I will not dress my verse up in fine words and
+pretty fancies, but I will breathe into it the grit and force and
+adhesiveness of real things." Beauty is the flowering of life and
+fecundity, and it must have deep root in the non-beautiful.
+
+Beauty, as the master knows it, is a spirit and not an adornment. It is
+not merely akin to flowers and gems and rainbows: it is akin to the All.
+Looking through his eyes, you shall see it in the rude and the savage
+also, in rocks and deserts and mountains, in the common as well as in the
+rare, in wrinkled age as well as in rosy youth.
+
+The non-beautiful holds the world together, holds life together and
+nourishes it, more than the beautiful. Nature is beautiful because she is
+so much else first,--yes, and last, and all the time.
+
+  "For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
+        delicates of the earth and of man,
+  And nothing endures but personal qualities."
+
+
+Is there not in field, wood, or shore something more precious and tonic
+than any special beauties we may chance to find there,--flowers, perfumes,
+sunsets,--something that we cannot do without, though we can do without
+these? Is it health, life, power, or what is it?
+
+Whatever it is, it is something analogous to this that we get in Whitman.
+There is little in his "Leaves" that one would care to quote for its mere
+beauty, though this element is there also. One may pluck a flower here and
+there in his rugged landscape, as in any other; but the flowers are always
+by the way, and never the main matter. We should not miss them if they
+were not there. What delights and invigorates us is in the air, and in the
+look of things. The flowers are like our wild blossoms growing under great
+trees or amid rocks, never the camellia or tuberose of the garden or
+hot-house,--something rude and bracing is always present, always a breath
+of the untamed and aboriginal.
+
+Whitman's work gives results, and never processes. There is no return of
+the mind upon itself; it descends constantly upon things, persons,
+realities. It is a rushing stream which will not stop to be analyzed. It
+has been urged that Whitman does not give the purely intellectual
+satisfaction that would seem to be warranted by his mental grasp and
+penetration. No, nor the aesthetic satisfaction warranted by his
+essentially artistic habit of mind. Well, he did not promise satisfaction
+in anything, but only to put us on the road to satisfaction. His book, he
+says, is not a "good lesson," but it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
+and that to another, and every one to another still.
+
+Let me repeat that the sharp, distinct intellectual note--the note of
+culture, books, clubs, etc., such as we get from so many modern writers,
+you will not get from Whitman. In my opinion, the note he sounds is deeper
+and better than that. It has been charged by an unfriendly critic that he
+strikes lower than the intellect. If it is meant by this that he misses
+the intellect, it is not true; he stimulates the intellect as few poets
+do. He strikes lower because he strikes farther. He sounds the note of
+character, personality, volition, the note of prophecy, of democracy, and
+of love. He seems unintellectual to an abnormally intellectual age; he
+seems unpoetic to a taste formed upon poetic tidbits; he seems irreligious
+to standards founded upon the old models of devotional piety; he seems
+disorderly, incoherent to all petty thumb and finger measurements. In his
+ideas and convictions, Whitman was a modern of the moderns; yet in his
+type, his tastes, his fundamental make-up, he was primitive, of an earlier
+race and age,--before, as Emerson suggests, the gods had cut Man up into
+men, with special talents of one kind or another.
+
+
+XVI
+
+Take any of Whitman's irregular-flowing lines, and clip and trim them, and
+compress them into artificial verse-forms, and what have we gained to make
+up for what we have lost? Take his lines called "Reconciliation," for
+instance:--
+
+  "Word over all beautiful as the sky,
+  Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
+        lost,
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
+  I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
+  Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."
+
+Or take his poem called "Old Ireland:"--
+
+  "Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
+  Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
+  Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
+  Her old white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,
+  At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
+  Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,
+  Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.
+
+  "Yet a word, ancient mother,
+  You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between
+        your knees,
+  Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,
+  For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
+  It was an illusion; the son you loved was not really dead,
+  The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another
+        country.
+  Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
+  What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,
+      The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,
+      And now with rosy and new blood,
+      Moves to-day in a new country."
+
+Or take these lines from "Children of Adam:"--
+
+  "I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I
+        pass'd the church,
+  Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your
+        long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,
+  I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
+        soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
+  Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the
+        wrists around my head,
+  Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last
+        night under my ear."
+
+Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
+measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
+highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
+wanted to preserve at all hazards,--vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
+free-careering forces of nature.
+
+I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
+not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
+is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
+restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
+and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
+like him best without it.
+
+
+XVII
+
+How well we know the language of the conventional poetic! In this
+language, the language of nine tenths of current poetry, the wind comes
+up out of the south and kisses the rose's crimson mouth, or it comes out
+of the wood and rumples the poppy's hood. Morning comes in glistening
+sandals, and her footsteps are jeweled with flowers. Everything is
+bedecked and bejeweled. Nothing is truly seen or truly reported. It is an
+attempt to paint the world beautiful. It is not beautiful as it is, and we
+must deck it out in the colors of the fancy. Now, I do not want the world
+painted for me. I want the grass green or brown, as the case may be; the
+sky blue, the rocks gray, the soil red; and that the sun should rise and
+set without any poetic claptrap. What I want is to see these things spin
+around a thought, or float on the current of an emotion, as they always do
+in real poetry.
+
+Beauty always follows, never leads the great poet. It arises out of the
+interior substance and structure of his work, like the bloom of health in
+the cheeks. The young poet thinks to win Beauty by direct and persistent
+wooing of her. He has not learned yet that she comes unsought to the
+truthful, the brave, the heroic. Let him think some great thought,
+experience some noble impulse, give himself with love to life and reality
+about him, and Beauty is already his. She is the reward of noble deeds.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+The modern standard in art is becoming more and more what has been called
+the canon of the characteristic, as distinguished from the Greek or
+classic canon of formal beauty. It is this canon, as Professor Triggs
+suggests, that we are to apply to Whitman. Dr. Johnson had it in mind when
+he wrote thus of Shakespeare:--
+
+"The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed
+and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers: the
+composition of Shakespeare is a forest in which oaks extend their
+branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds
+and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
+filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless
+diversity."
+
+Classic art holds to certain fixed standards; it seeks formal beauty; it
+holds to order and proportion in external parts; its ideal of natural
+beauty is the well-ordered park or grove or flower-garden. It has a horror
+of the wild and savage. Mountains and forests, and tempests and seas,
+filled the classic mind with terror. Not so with the modern romantic mind,
+which finds its best stimulus and delight in free, unhampered nature. It
+loves the element of mystery and the suggestion of uncontrollable power.
+The modern mind has a sense of the vast, the infinite, that the Greek had
+not, and it is drawn by informal beauty more than by the formal.
+
+
+XIX
+
+It is urged against Whitman that he brings us the materials of poetry, but
+not poetry: he brings us the marble block, but not the statue; or he
+brings us the brick and mortar, but not the house. False or superficial
+analogies mislead us. Poetry is not something made; it is something grown,
+it is a vital union of the fact and the spirit. If the verse awakens in us
+the poetic thrill, the material, whatever it be, must have been touched
+with the transforming spirit of poesy. Why does Whitman's material suggest
+to any reader that it is poetic material? Because it has already been
+breathed upon by the poetic spirit. A poet may bring the raw material of
+poetry in the sense that he may bring the raw material of a gold coin; the
+stamp and form you give it does not add to its value. It is doubtful if
+any of Whitman's utterances could be worked up into what is called poetry
+without a distinct loss of poetic value. What they would gain in finish
+they would lose in suggestiveness. This word "suggestiveness" affords one
+of the keys to Whitman. The objection to him I have been considering
+arises from the failure of the critic to see and appreciate his avowed
+purpose to make his page fruitful in poetic suggestion, rather than in
+samples of poetic elaboration. "I finish no specimens," he says. "I shower
+them by exhaustless laws, fresh and modern continually, as Nature does."
+He is quite content if he awaken the poetic emotion without at all
+satisfying it. He would have you more eager and hungry for poetry when you
+had finished with him than when you began. He brings the poetic stimulus,
+and brings it in fuller measure than any contemporary poet; and this is
+enough for him.
+
+An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that
+reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry
+did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in
+motion at once; he was so fruitful in themes, so suggestive of new
+harmonies and melodies. He gave the hints, and left his reader to follow
+them up. This is exactly what Whitman wanted to do. It defines his
+attitude toward poetry, towards philosophy, towards religion,--to suggest
+and set going, to arouse unanswerable questions, and to brace you to meet
+them; to bring the materials of poetry, if you will have it so, and leave
+you to make the poem; to start trains of thought, and leave you to pursue
+the flight alone. Not a thinker, several critics have urged; no, but the
+cause of thought in others to an unwonted degree. "Whether you agree with
+him or not," says an Australian essayist, "he will sting you into such an
+anguish of thought as must in the end be beneficial." It matters little to
+him whether or not you agree with him; what is important is, that you
+should think the matter out for yourself. He purposely avoids hemming you
+in by his conclusions; he would lead you in no direction but your own.
+"Once more I charge you give play to your self. I charge you leave all
+free, as I have left all free."
+
+No thought, no philosophy, no music, no poetry, in his pages; no, it is
+all character, impulse, emotion, suggestion. But the true reader of him
+experiences all these things: he finds in his pages, if he knows how to
+look for it, a profound metaphysic, a profound ethic, a profound aesthetic;
+a theory of art and poetry which is never stated, but only hinted or
+suggested, and which is much more robust and vital than what we are used
+to; a theory of good and evil; a view of character and conduct; a theory
+of the state and of politics, of the relation of the sexes, etc., to give
+ample food for thought and speculation. The Hegelian philosophy is in the
+"Leaves" as vital as the red corpuscles in the blood, so much is implied
+that is not stated, but only suggested, as in Nature herself. The really
+vast erudition of the work is adroitly concealed, hidden like its
+philosophy, as a tree hides its roots. Readers should not need to be told
+that, in the region of art as of religion, mentality is not first, but
+spirituality, personality, imagination; and that we do not expect a poet's
+thoughts to lie upon his pages like boulders in the field, but rather to
+show their presence like elements in the soil.
+
+  "Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
+  Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
+  If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
+        form, color, perfume to you,
+  If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
+        tall branches and trees."
+
+
+The early records and sacred books of most peoples contain what is called
+the materials of poetry. The Bible is full of such materials. English
+literature shows many attempts to work this material up into poetry, but
+always with a distinct loss of poetic value. The gold is simply beaten
+out thin and made to cover more surface, or it is mixed with some base
+metal. A recent English poet has attempted to work up the New Testament
+records into poetry, and the result is for the most part a thin, windy
+dilution of the original. If the record or legend is full of poetic
+suggestion, that is enough; to elaborate it, and deck it out in poetic
+finery without loss of poetic value, is next to impossible.
+
+To me the Arthurian legends as they are given in the old books, are more
+poetic, more stimulating to the imagination, than they are after they have
+gone through the verbal upholstering and polishing of such a poet as
+Swinburne or even Tennyson. These poets add little but words and flowers
+of fancy, and the heroic simplicity of the original is quite destroyed.
+
+
+XX
+
+No critic of repute has been more puzzled and misled by this unwrought
+character of our poet's verse than Mr. Edmund Gosse, the London poet and
+essayist. Mr. Gosse finds Whitman only a potential or possible poet; his
+work is literature in the condition of protoplasm. He is a maker of poems
+in solution; the structural change which should have crystallized his
+fluid and teeming pages into forms of art never came. It does not occur to
+Mr. Gosse to inquire whether or not something like this may not have been
+the poet's intention. Perhaps this is the secret of the vitality of his
+work, which, as Mr. Gosse says, now, after forty years, shows no sign of
+declining. Perhaps it was a large, fresh supply of poetic yeast that the
+poet really sought to bring us. Undoubtedly Whitman aimed to give his work
+just this fluid, generative quality, to put into it the very basic
+elements of life itself. He feared the "structural change" to which Mr.
+Gosse refers; he knew it was more or less a change from life to death: the
+cell and not the crystal; the leaf of grass, and not the gem, is the type
+of his sentences. He sacrificed fixed form; above all, did he stop short
+of that conscious intellectual elaboration so characteristic of later
+poetry, the better to give the impression and the stimulus of creative
+elemental power. It is not to the point to urge that this is not the
+method or aim of other poets; that others have used the fixed forms, and
+found them plastic and vital in their hands. It was Whitman's aim; these
+were the effects he sought. I think beyond doubt that he gives us the
+impression of something dynamic, something akin to the vital forces of the
+organic world, much more distinctly and fully than any other poet who has
+lived.
+
+Whitman always aimed to make his reader an active partner with him in his
+poetic enterprise. "I seek less," he says, "to state or display any theme
+or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
+theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." This trait is brought
+out by Mr. Gosse in a little allegory. "Every reader who comes to
+Whitman," he says, "starts upon an expedition to the virgin forest. He
+must take his conveniences with him. He will make of the excursion what
+his own spirit dictates. [We generally do, in such cases, Mr. Gosse.]
+There are solitudes, fresh air, rough landscape, and a well of water, but
+if he wishes to enjoy the latter he must bring his own cup with him." This
+phase of Whitman's work has never been more clearly defined. Mr. Gosse
+utters it as an adverse criticism. It is true exposition, however we take
+it, what we get out of Whitman depends so largely upon what we bring to
+him. Readers will not all get the same. We do not all get the same out of
+a walk or a mountain climb. We get out of him in proportion to the
+sympathetic and interpretative power of our own spirits. Have you the
+brooding, warming, vivifying mother-mind? That vague, elusive,
+incommensurable something in the "Leaves" that led Symonds to say that
+talking about Whitman was like talking about the universe,--that seems to
+challenge our pursuit and definition, that takes on so many different
+aspects to so many different minds,--it seems to be this that has led Mr.
+Gosse to persuade himself that there is no real Walt Whitman, no man whom
+we can take, as we take any other figure in literature, as an "entity of
+positive value and definite characteristics," but a mere mass of literary
+protoplasm that takes the instant impression of whatever mood approaches
+it. Stevenson finds a Stevenson in it, Mr. Symonds finds a Symonds,
+Emerson finds an Emerson, etc. Truly may our poet say, "I contain
+multitudes." In what other poet do these men, or others like them, find
+themselves?
+
+Whitman was a powerful solvent undoubtedly. He never hardens into anything
+like a system, or into mere intellectual propositions. One of his own
+phrases, "the fluid and swallowing soul," is descriptive of this trait of
+him. One source of his charm is, that we each see some phase of ourselves
+in him, as Mr. Gosse suggests. Above all things is he potential and
+indicative, bard of "flowing mouth and indicative hand." In his
+"Inscriptions" he says:--
+
+  "I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual
+        look upon you and then averts his face,
+  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
+  Expecting the main things from you."
+
+
+This withholding and half-averted glancing, then, on the part of the poet,
+is deliberate and enters into the scheme of the work. Mr. Gosse would have
+shown himself a sounder critic had he penetrated the poet's purpose in
+this respect, and shown whether or not he had violated the canons he had
+set up for his own guidance. We do not condemn a creative work when it
+departs from some rule or precedent, but when it violates its own
+principle, when it is not consistent with itself, when it hath not eyes to
+see, or ears to hear, or hands to reach what lies within its own sphere.
+Art, in the plastic realms of written language, may set its mind upon
+elaboration, upon structural finish and proportion, upon exact forms and
+compensations, as in architecture, or it may set its mind upon
+suggestion, indirection, and the flowing, changing forms of organic
+nature. It is as much art in the one case as in the other. To get rid of
+all visible artifice is, of course, the great thing in both cases. There
+is so little apparent artifice in Whitman's case that he has been accused
+of being entirely without art, and of throwing his matter together in a
+haphazard way,--"without thought, without selection," without
+"composition, evolution, vertebration of style," says Mr. Gosse. Yet his
+work more than holds its own in a field where these things alone are
+supposed to insure success. Whitman covers up his processes well, and
+knows how to hit his mark without seeming to take aim. The verdicts upon
+him are mainly contradictory, because each critic only takes in a part of
+his scheme. Mr. Stedman finds him a formalist. Mr. Gosse finds in him a
+negation of all form. The London critic says he is without thought. A
+Boston critic speaks of what he happily calls the "waves of thought" in
+his work,--vast mind-impulses that lift and sway great masses of concrete
+facts and incidents. Whitman knew from the start that he would puzzle and
+baffle his critics, and would escape from them like air when they felt
+most sure they had him in their verbal nets. So it has been from the
+first, and so it continues to be. Without one thing, he says, it is
+useless to read him; and of what that one thing needful is, he gives only
+the vaguest hint, only a "significant look."
+
+
+XXI
+
+I may here notice two objections to Whitman urged by Mr. Stedman,--a
+critic for whose opinion I have great respect, and a man for whom I have a
+genuine affection. With all his boasted breadth and tolerance, Whitman,
+says my friend, is narrow; and, with all his vaunted escape from the
+shackles of verse-form, he is a formalist: his "irregular, manneristic
+chant" is as much at the extreme of artificiality as is the sonnet. These
+certainly are faults that one does not readily associate with the work of
+Whitman. But then I remember that the French critic, Scherer, charges
+Carlyle, the apostle of the gospel of sincerity, with being insincere and
+guilty of canting about cant. If Carlyle is insincere, I think it very
+likely that Whitman may be narrow and hide-bound. These things are so much
+a matter of temperament that one cannot judge for another. Yet one ought
+not to confound narrowness and breadth, or little and big. All earnest,
+uncompromising men are more or less open to the charge of narrowness. A
+man is narrow when he concentrates himself upon a point; even a
+cannon-shot is. Whitman was narrow in the sense that he was at times
+monotonous; that he sought but few effects, that he poured himself out
+mainly in one channel, that he struck chiefly the major chords of life.
+His "Leaves" do not show a great range of artistic motifs. A versatile,
+many-sided nature he certainly was not; a large, broad, tolerant nature
+he as certainly was. He does not assume many and diverse forms like a
+purely artistic talent, sporting with and masquerading in all the elements
+of life, like Shakespeare; but in his own proper form, and in his own
+proper person, he gives a sense of vastness and power that are
+unapproached in modern literature. He asserts himself uncompromisingly,
+but he would have you do the same. "He who spreads a wider breast than my
+own proves the width of my own." "He most honors my style who learns under
+it to destroy the teacher." His highest hope is to be the soil of superior
+poems.
+
+Mr. Stedman thinks he detects in the poet a partiality for the coarser,
+commoner elements of our humanity over the finer and choicer,--for the
+"rough" over the gentleman. But when all things have been duly considered,
+it will be found, I think, that he finally rests only with great personal
+qualities and traits. He is drawn by powerful, natural persons, wherever
+found,--men and women self-poised, fully equipped on all sides:--
+
+  "I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully arm'd,
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,"--
+
+and much more to the same effect.
+
+  "I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain:
+  If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it."
+
+
+Whitman is a formalist, just as every man who has a way of his own of
+saying and doing things, no matter how natural, is a formalist; but he is
+not a stickler for form of any sort. He has his own proper form, of
+course, which he rarely departs from. At one extreme of artificiality Mr.
+Stedman apparently places the sonnet. This is an arbitrary form; its rules
+are inflexible; it is something cut and shaped and fitted together after a
+predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial. If Whitman's
+irregularity was equally studied; if it gave us the same sense of
+something cunningly planned and wrought to a particular end, clipped here,
+curbed there, folded back in this line, drawn out in that, and attaining
+to a certain mechanical proportion and balance as a whole,--then there
+would be good ground for the critic's charge. But such is not the case.
+Whitman did not have, nor claim to have, the architectonic power of the
+great constructive poets. He did not build the lofty rhyme. He did not
+build anything, strictly speaking. He let himself go. He named his book
+after the grass, which makes a carpet over the earth, and which is a sign
+and a presence rather than a form.
+
+
+XXII
+
+Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect
+from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional
+cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might
+expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or
+grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a
+little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional
+obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is
+commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy;
+from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an
+average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"
+may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc. The price paid for his
+strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination
+to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision
+with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"
+with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious,"
+will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"
+will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his
+healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk
+to flight.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+To say that Whitman is a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If
+it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of
+language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the
+saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the
+right word--for just the right word--than did Whitman. He would wait for
+days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the
+language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the
+evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language
+never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not
+consciously challenge your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is
+never on dress parade. His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so
+much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to _stumble_ upon
+them. His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial
+adjuncts of poetry,--no finery or stuck-on ornament,--nothing obtrusively
+beautiful or poetic; and because it bears itself with the freedom and
+nonchalance of a man in his every-day attire.
+
+But it is always in a measure misleading to compare language with dress,
+to say that a poet clothes his thought, etc. The language is the thought;
+it is an incarnation, not an outside tailoring. To improve the expression
+is to improve the thought. In the most vital writing, the thought is nude;
+the mind of the reader touches something alive and real. When we begin to
+hear the rustle of a pompous or highly wrought vocabulary, when the man
+begins to dress his commonplace ideas up in fine phrases, we have enough
+of him.
+
+Indeed, it is only the mechanical writer who may be said to "clothe" his
+ideas with words; the real poet thinks through words.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps
+has been made, that in him we find the big merely,--strength without
+power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this
+impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious
+things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here
+is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great
+lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires
+a large space to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and
+multitude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The
+style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling,
+cloud-like masses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me
+there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not
+only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity;
+not only breadth, there is quality and charm. He is both Dantesque and
+Darwinian, as has been said.
+
+Mr. Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whitman, and,
+despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of
+literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,--the
+symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power. Thus, "he
+is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or
+buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a
+kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the
+world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise
+mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,--all seas,
+lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal
+earth."
+
+Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and
+plains, and to the globe itself.
+
+But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only
+claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size
+and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no
+impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to
+size,--breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of
+a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists
+are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.
+
+Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast masses of
+humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the
+industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
+are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
+elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
+effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
+sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere
+the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
+significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
+contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
+forces and objects of the universe, first with reference to character and
+personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
+of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
+in his first poem:--
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.
+
+  "I tramp a perpetual journey,
+  My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
+        woods,
+  No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
+  I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
+  I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,
+  But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
+  My left hand hooking you round the waist,
+  My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public
+        road."
+
+
+He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
+effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
+and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
+the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
+before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
+views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
+disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
+disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
+things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
+His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
+in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
+bits and parts as from the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
+of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:--
+
+  "It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
+        exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the
+        untruth of a single second,
+  I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor
+        ten billions of years,
+  Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and
+        builds a house."
+
+In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
+as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.
+These are typical lines:--
+
+  "A thousand perfect men and women appear,
+  Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths,
+        with offerings."
+
+  "Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young,
+  The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young."
+
+
+"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same
+effect. Always wholes, total impressions,--always a view as of a "strong
+bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower,
+but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a
+city. The title of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might
+stand as the title of the book. When he gathers details and special
+features he masses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo
+carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always
+in the totals, the breadth, the sweep of conception. The part that is
+local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality
+is the background across which it all flits.
+
+We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give
+us,--studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects,
+rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we
+inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He
+tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and
+processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the
+orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon
+he sees a spirit kindred to his own.
+
+He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and
+what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and
+equilibrium.
+
+"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:--
+
+  "The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed
+        either,
+  They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.
+  They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,
+  Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The earth does not argue,
+  Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
+  Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
+  Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
+  Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.
+  Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."
+
+He says the best of life
+
+  "Is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"
+
+and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:--
+
+  "I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate
+        the theory of the earth,
+  No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless
+        it compares with the amplitude of the earth,
+  Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
+        earth."
+
+
+No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
+these and kindred passages:--
+
+  "The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
+  His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
+  The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
+  The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has
+        the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of
+        poems, the Answerer,
+  (Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day,
+        for all its names.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
+  The words of true poems do not merely please,
+  The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of
+        beauty;
+  The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
+        fathers,
+  The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
+
+  "Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness
+        of body, withdrawnness,
+  Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,
+  The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
+  The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all
+        these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
+  The words of the true poems give you more than poems;
+  They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
+        peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything
+        else.
+  They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;
+  They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
+  Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain,
+        love-sick.
+  They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the
+        outset,
+  They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,
+  Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to
+        learn one of the meanings,
+  To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings
+        and never be quiet again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Of these States the poet is the equable man,
+  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of
+        their full returns,
+  Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
+  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more
+        nor less,
+  He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
+  He is the equalizer of his age and land,
+  He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
+  In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
+        building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce,
+        lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality,
+        government,
+  In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as
+        the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
+  The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
+  He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),
+  He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a
+        helpless thing,
+  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
+  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
+  In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
+  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
+  He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as
+        dreams or dots.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass
+        away,
+  The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
+  Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."
+
+
+Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's
+idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the
+beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in
+centuries.
+
+We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in
+these lines of Tennyson:--
+
+  "The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."
+
+"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's
+pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.
+
+Whitman's ideal poet is the most composite man, rich in temperament, rank
+in the human attributes, embracing races and eras in himself. All men see
+themselves in him:--
+
+  "The mechanic takes him for a mechanic,
+  And the soldier supposes him to be a soldier, and the sailor that he
+        has followed the sea,
+  And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
+  And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,
+  No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has
+        followed it,
+  No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters
+        there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
+  The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
+        themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,
+  They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so
+        grown."
+
+
+Let us hold the poet to his own ideals, and not condemn him because he has
+not aimed at something foreign to himself.
+
+The questions which Whitman puts to him who would be an American poet may
+fairly be put to himself.
+
+  "Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what the land and sea, the
+        bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
+  Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
+  Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce
+        contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole
+        people?
+  Are you not of some coterie? some school, or mere religion?
+  Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to
+        life itself?
+  Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
+  Have you, too, the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  What is this you bring my America?
+  Is it uniform with my country?
+  Is it not something that has been better done or told before?
+  Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?
+  Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?--is the good old cause
+        in it?
+  Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
+        literats of enemies' lands?
+  Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
+  Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?
+  Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?
+  Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my
+        strength, gait, face?
+  Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere
+        amanuenses?
+
+
+So far as Whitman's poetry falls within any of the old divisions it is
+lyrical,--a personal and individual utterance. Open the book anywhere and
+you are face to face with a man. His eye is fixed upon you. It is a man's
+voice you hear, and it is directed to _you_. He is not elaborating a
+theme: he is suggesting a relation or hinting a meaning. He is not
+chiseling, or carving a work of art: he is roughly outlining a man; he is
+planting a seed, or tilling a field.
+
+
+XXV
+
+I believe it was the lamented Professor Clifford who first used the term
+"cosmic emotion" in connection with "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's
+atmosphere is so distinctly outside of and above that which ministers to
+our social and domestic wants,--the confined and perfumed air of an indoor
+life; his mood and temper are so habitually begotten by the contemplation
+of the orbs and the laws and processes of universal nature, that the
+phrase often comes to mind in considering him. He is not in any sense,
+except perhaps in a few minor pieces, a domestic and fireside poet,--a
+solace to our social instincts and cultivated ideals. He is too large, too
+aboriginal, too elemental, too strong for that. I seem to understand and
+appreciate him best when I keep in mind the earth as a whole, and its
+relation to the system. Any large view or thought, or survey of life or
+mankind, is a preparation for him. He demands the outdoor temper and
+habit, he demands a sense of space and power, he demands above all things
+a feeling for reality. "Vastness" is a word that applies to him; abysmal
+man, cosmic consciousness, the standards of the natural universal,--all
+hint some phase of his genius. His survey of life and duty is from a point
+not included in any four walls, or in any school or convention. It is a
+survey from out the depths of being; the breath of worlds and systems is
+in these utterances. His treatment of sex, of comradeship, of death, of
+democracy, of religion, of art, of immortality, is in the spirit of the
+great out-of-doors of the universe; the point of view is cosmic rather
+than personal or philanthropic. What charity is this!--the charity of
+sunlight that spares nothing and turns away from nothing. What "heroic
+nudity"! like the nakedness of rocks and winter trees. What sexuality!
+like the lust of spring or the push of tides. What welcome to death, as
+only the night which proves the day!
+
+
+XXVI
+
+This orbic nature which so thrills and fills Whitman is not at all akin to
+that which we get in the so-called nature-poets of Wordsworth and his
+school,--the charm of privacy, of the sequestered, the cosy,--qualities
+that belong to the art of a domestic, home-loving race, and to lovers of
+solitude. Tennyson's poetry abounds in these qualities; so does
+Wordsworth's. There is less of them in Browning, and more of them in the
+younger poets. That communing with nature, those dear friendships with
+birds and flowers, that gentle wooing of the wild and sylvan, that flavor
+of the rural, the bucolic,--all these are important features in the
+current popular poetry, but they are not to any marked extent
+characteristic of Whitman. The sentiment of domesticity, love as a
+sentiment; the attraction of children, home and fireside; the attraction
+of books, art, travel; our pleasure in the choice, the refined, the
+artificial,--these are not the things you are to demand of Whitman. You do
+not demand them of Homer or Dante or the Biblical writers. We are to
+demand of him the major things, primary things; the lift of great
+emotions; the cosmic, the universal; the joy of health, of selfhood; the
+stimulus of the real, the modern, the American; always the large, the
+virile; always perfect acceptance and triumph.
+
+Whitman's free use of the speech of the common people is doubtless
+offensive to a fastidious literary taste. Such phrases as "I will be even
+with you," "what would it amount to," "give in," "not one jot less;"
+"young fellows," "old fellows," "stuck up," "every bit as much," "week in
+and week out," and a thousand others, would jar on the page of any other
+poet more than on his.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+William Rossetti says his language has a certain ultimate quality. Another
+critic speaks of his absolute use of language. Colonel Ingersoll credits
+him with more supreme words than have been uttered by any other man of our
+time.
+
+The power to use words was in Whitman's eyes a divine power, and was
+bought with a price:--
+
+  "For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,
+        procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
+  After treading ground, and breasting river and lake,
+  After a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,
+        after knowledge, freedom, crimes,
+  After complete faith, after clarifying elevations and removing
+        obstructions,
+  After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman,
+        the divine power to speak words."
+
+
+Whitman's sense of composition and his rare artistic faculty of using
+language are seen, as John Addington Symonds says, in the "countless clear
+and perfect phrases" "which are hung, like golden medals of consummate
+workmanship and incised form, in rich clusters over every poem he
+produced. And, what he aimed at above all, these phrases are redolent of
+the very spirit of the emotions they suggest, communicate the breadth and
+largeness of the natural things they indicate, embody the essence of
+realities in living words which palpitate and burn forever."
+
+The great poet is always more or less the original, the abysmal man. He is
+face to face with universal laws and conditions. He speaks out of a
+greater exaltation of sentiment than the prose-writer. He takes liberties;
+he speaks for all men; he is a bird on "pinions free."
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+In saying or implying that Whitman's aim was not primarily literary or
+artistic, I am liable to be misunderstood; and when Whitman himself says,
+"No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
+performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward
+art or aestheticism," he exposes himself to the same misconception. It is
+the literary and poetic value of his verses alone that can save them.
+Their philosophy, their democracy, their vehement patriotism, their
+religious ardor, their spirit of comradeship, or what not, will not alone
+suffice. All depends upon the manner in which these things are presented
+to us. Do we get the reality, or words about the reality? No matter what
+the content of the verse, unless into the whole is breathed the breath of
+the true creative artist they will surely perish. Oblivion awaits every
+utterance not touched with the life of the spirit. Whitman was as
+essentially an artist as was Shakespeare or Dante; his work shows the same
+fusion of imagination, will, emotion, personality; it carries the same
+quality of real things,--not the same shaping, constructive power, but the
+same quickening, stimulating power, the same magic use of words. The
+artist in him is less conscious of itself, is less differentiated from the
+man, than in the other poets. He objected to having his work estimated for
+its literary value alone, but in so doing he used the word in a narrow
+sense.
+
+After all these ages of the assiduous cultivation of literature, there has
+grown up in men a kind of lust of the mere art of writing, just as, after
+so many generations of religious training, there has grown up a passion
+for religious forms and observances. "Mere literature" has come to be a
+current phrase in criticism, meaning, I suppose, that the production to
+which it is applied is notable only for good craftsmanship. In the same
+spirit one speaks of mere scholarship, or of a certain type of man as a
+mere gentleman. It was mere literature that Whitman was afraid of, the
+aesthetic disease, the passion for letters, for poetry, divorced from love
+of life and of things. None knew better than he that the ultimate value of
+any imaginative and emotional work, even of the Bible, is its literary
+value. Its spiritual and religious value is inseparably connected with its
+literary value.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not bookish; it is always the voice of a man, and not
+of a scholar or conventional poet, that addresses us. We all imbue words
+more or less with meanings of our own; but, from the point of view I am
+now essaying, literature is the largest fact, and embraces all inspired
+utterances. The hymn-book seeks to embody or awaken religious emotion
+alone; would its religious value be less if its poetic value were more? I
+think not. The best of the Psalms of David, from the religious point of
+view, are the best from the literary point of view. What reaches and
+thrills the soul,--that is great art. What arouses the passions--mirth,
+anger, indignation, pity--may or may not be true art. No one, for
+instance, can read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" without tears, laughter, anger; but
+no one, I fancy, could ever get from it that deep, tranquil pleasure and
+edification that the great imaginative works impart. Keble's poetry is
+more obviously religious than Wordsworth's or Arnold's, but how
+short-lived, because it is not embalmed in the true artistic spirit! In
+all the great poems, there is something as deep and calm as the light and
+the sky, and as common and universal. I find this something in Whitman. In
+saying, therefore, that his aim was ulterior to that of art, that he was
+not begotten by the literary spirit, I only mean that his aim was that of
+the largest art, and of the most vital and comprehensive literature. We
+should have heard the last of his "Leaves" long ago had they not possessed
+unmistakably the vitality of true literature, "incomparable things,
+incomparably well said," as Emerson remarked.
+
+A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary
+merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its
+literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words
+"literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital
+and imaginative use of language which is the characteristic of all true
+literature. The most effective way of saying a thing in the region of the
+sentiments and emotions,--that is the true literary way.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS
+
+
+I
+
+I have divided my subject into many chapters, and given to each a separate
+heading, yet I am aware that they are all but slight variations of a
+single theme,--viz., Whitman's reliance upon absolute nature. That there
+might be no mistake about it, and that his reader might at once be put in
+possession of his point of view, the poet declared at the outset of his
+career that at every hazard he should let nature speak.
+
+  "Creeds and schools in abeyance
+  Retiring back awhile, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
+  I harbor for good or bad,
+  I permit to speak at every hazard,
+  Nature without check, with original energy."
+
+
+The hazard of letting nature speak will, of course, be great,--the hazard
+of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and
+inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely
+passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his
+criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former
+contingency--the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser
+public--has been astounding. He has been read in a narrow, literal,
+bourgeois spirit. The personal pronoun, which he uses so freely, has been
+taken to stand for the private individual Walt Whitman, so that he has
+been looked upon as a compound of egotism and licentiousness. His
+character has been traduced, and his purpose in the "Leaves" entirely
+misunderstood.
+
+We see at a glance that his attitude towards nature, towards God, towards
+the body and the soul, reverses many of the old ascetic theological
+conceptions.
+
+All is good, all is as it should be; to abase the body is to abase the
+soul. Man is divine inside and out, and is no more divine about the head
+than about the loins. It is from this point of view that he has launched
+his work. He believed the time had come for an utterance out of radical,
+uncompromising human nature; let conventions and refinements stand back,
+let nature, let the soul, let the elemental forces speak; let the body,
+the passions, sex, be exalted; the stone rejected by the builders shall be
+the chief stone in the corner. Evil shall be shown to be a part of the
+good, and death shall be welcomed as joyously as life.
+
+Whitman says his poems will do just as much evil as good, and perhaps
+more. To many readers this confession of itself would be his condemnation.
+To others it would be an evidence of his candor and breadth of view. I
+suppose all great vital forces, whether embodied in a man or in a book,
+work evil as well as good. If they do not, they only tickle the surface
+of things. Has not the Bible worked evil also? Some think more evil than
+good. The dews and the rains and the sunshine work evil.
+
+From Whitman's point of view, there is no good without evil; evil is an
+unripe kind of good. There is no light without darkness, no life without
+death, no growth without pain and struggle. Beware the emasculated good,
+the good by exclusion rather than by victory. "Leaves of Grass" will work
+evil on evil minds,--on narrow, unbalanced minds. It is not a guide, but
+an inspiration; not a remedy, but health and strength. Art does not preach
+directly, but indirectly; it is moral by its spirit, and the mood and
+temper it begets.
+
+Whitman, in celebrating manly pride, self-reliance, the deliciousness of
+sex; in glorifying the body, the natural passions and appetites, nativity;
+in identifying himself with criminals and low or lewd persons; in frankly
+imputing to himself all sins men are guilty of, runs the risk, of course,
+of being read in a spirit less generous and redemptive than his own.
+
+The charity of the poet may stimulate the license of the libertine; the
+optimism of the seer may confirm the evil-doer; the equality of the
+democrat may foster the insolence of the rowdy. This is our lookout and
+not the poet's. We take the same chances with him that we do with nature;
+we are to trim our sails to the breeze he brings; we are to sow wheat and
+not tares for his rains to water.
+
+Whitman's glorification of the body has led some critics to say that he is
+the poet of the body only. But it is just as true to say he is the poet of
+the soul only. He always seeks the spiritual through the material. He
+treats the body and the soul as one, and he treats all things as having
+reference to the soul.
+
+  "I will not make a poem, nor the least part, of a poem, but has
+        reference to the soul,
+  Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there
+        is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul."
+
+
+The curious physiological strain which runs through the poems is to be
+considered in the light of this idea. He exalts the body because in doing
+so he exalts the soul.
+
+  "Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results."
+
+
+II
+
+The reader of Whitman must do his or her own moralizing; the poet is here
+not to deprecate or criticise, but to love and celebrate; he has no
+partialities; our notions of morality do not concern him; he exploits the
+average man just as he finds him; he _is_ the average man for the time
+being and confesses to all his sins and shortcomings, and we will make of
+the result good or evil, according to our mental horizon. That his work is
+unmixed good is the last thing the poet would claim for it. He has not,
+after the easy fashion of the moralist, set the good here and the bad
+there; he has blended them as they are in nature and in life; our profit
+and discipline begin when we have found out whither he finally tends, or
+when we have mastered him and extracted the good he holds. If we expect he
+is going to preach an austere system of morality to us, or any system of
+morality, we are doomed to disappointment. Does Nature preach such a
+system? does Nature preach at all? neither will he. He presents you the
+elements of good and evil in himself in vital fusion and play; your part
+is to see how the totals are at last good.
+
+It is objected that Whitman is too persistent in declaring himself an
+animal, when the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he is an
+animal and the thing he is least likely to remember is that he is a spirit
+and a child of God. But Whitman insists with the same determination that
+he is a spirit and an heir of immortality,--not as one who has cheated the
+devil of his due, but as one who shares the privileges and felicities of
+all, and who finds the divine in the human. Indeed it is here that he
+sounds his most joyous and triumphant note. No such faith in spiritual
+results, no such conviction of the truth of immortality, no such
+determined recognition of the unseen world as the final reality is to be
+found in modern poetry.
+
+As I have said, Whitman aimed to put his whole nature in a poem--the
+physical or physiological, the spiritual, the aesthetic and
+intellectual,--without giving any undue prominence to either. If he has
+not done so, if he has made the animal and sexual too pronounced, more so
+than nature will justify in the best proportioned man, then and then only
+is his artistic scheme vitiated and his work truly immoral.
+
+It may be true that the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he
+is an animal; what he is most likely to forget, is that the animal is just
+as sacred and important as any other part; indeed that it is the basis of
+all, and that a sane and healthful and powerful spirituality and
+intellectuality can only flow out of a sane and healthful animality.
+
+  "I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
+  And you must not be abased to the other."
+
+
+III
+
+Furthermore, Whitman's main problem is to project into literature the new
+democratic man as he conceives him,--the man of the future, intensely
+American, but in the broadest sense human and cosmopolitan; he is to
+project him on a scale large enough for all uses and conditions, ignoring
+the feudal and aristocratic types which have for the most part dominated
+literature, and matching them with a type more copious in friendship,
+charity, sympathy, religion, candor, and of equal egoism and power.
+
+It is to exploit and enforce and illustrate this type or character that
+"Leaves of Grass" is written. The poems are the drama of this new
+democratic man. This type Whitman finds in himself. He does not have to
+create it as Shakespeare did Hamlet or Lear; he has only to discover it
+in himself. He is it and he gives it free utterance. His work is,
+therefore, as he says, the poem of himself,--himself written
+large,--written as upon the face of the continent, written in the types
+and events he finds on all sides. He sees himself in all men, the bad as
+well as the good, and he sees all men in himself. All the stupendous
+claims he makes for himself he makes for others. His egotism is vicarious
+and embraces the world. It is not the private individual Walt Whitman that
+makes these stupendous claims for himself; it is Walt Whitman as the
+spokesman of the genius of American democracy. He is not to discuss a
+question. He is to outline a character, he is to incarnate a principle.
+The essayist or philosopher may discuss the value of any given idea,--may
+talk about it; the creative artist alone can give us the thing itself, the
+concrete flesh-and-blood reality. Whitman is not only to make this survey,
+to launch this criticism; he is to embody it in a living human
+personality, and enable us to see the world of man and morals through its
+eyes. What with the scientist, the philosopher, is thought, must be
+emotion and passion with him.
+
+Whitman promises that we shall share with him "two greatnesses, and a
+third one rising inclusive and more resplendent,"--
+
+  "The greatness of Love and Democracy and the greatness of Religion"--
+
+not merely as ideas, but as living impulses. He is to show the spirit of
+absolute, impartial nature, incarnated in a human being, imbued with
+love, democracy, and religion, moving amid the scenes and events of the
+New World, sounding all the joys and abandonments of life, and re-reading
+the oracles from the American point of view. And the utterance launched
+forth is to be imbued with poetic passion.
+
+Whitman always aims at a complete human synthesis, and leaves his reader
+to make of it what he can. It is not for the poet to qualify and explain.
+He seeks to reproduce his whole nature in a book,--reproduce it with all
+its contradictions and carnalities, the good and the bad, the coarse and
+the fine, the body and the soul,--to give free swing to himself, trusting
+to natural checks and compensations to ensure a good result at last, but
+not at all disturbed if you find parts of it bad as in creation itself.
+
+His method being that of the poet, and not that of the moralist or
+preacher, how shall he sort and sift, culling this virtue and that, giving
+parts and fragments instead of the entire man? He must give all, not
+abstractly, but concretely, synthetically.
+
+To a common prostitute Whitman says:--
+
+  "Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you;
+  Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle
+        for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you."
+
+
+We are housed in social usages and laws, we are sheltered and warmed and
+comforted by conventions and institutions and numberless traditions;
+their value no one disputes. But for purposes of his own Whitman ignores
+them all; he lets in upon us the free and maybe raw air of the great
+out-of-doors of absolute nature; his standards are not found inside of any
+four walls; he contemplates life, and would quicken it in its
+fundamentals; his survey is from a plane whence our arts and refinements
+and petty distinctions disappear. He sees the evil of the world no less
+necessary than the good; he sees death as a part of life itself; he sees
+the body and the soul as one; he sees the spiritual always issuing from
+the material; he sees not one result at last lamentable in the universe.
+
+
+IV
+
+Unless, as I have already said, we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself,
+we can make little of him; unless we place ourselves at his absolute point
+of view, his work is an offense and without meaning. The only question is,
+Has he a law, has he a steady and rational point of view, is his work a
+consistent and well-organized whole? Ask yourself, What is the point of
+view of absolute, uncompromising science? It is that creation is all good
+and sound; things are as they should be or must be; there are no
+conceivable failures; there is no evil in the final analysis, or, if there
+is, it is necessary, and plays its part also; there is no more beginning
+nor ending than there is now, no more heaven or hell than we find or make
+here:--
+
+  "Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and
+        rectified?"
+
+
+It has been urged that Whitman violates his own canon of the excellence of
+nature. But what he violates is more a secondary or acquired nature. He
+violates our social conventions and instincts, he exposes what we cover
+up; but the spirit of his undertaking demanded this of him. Remember that
+at all hazards he is to let nature--absolute nature--speak; that he is to
+be the poet of the body as well as of the soul, and that no part of the
+body of a man or woman, "hearty and clean," is vile, and that "none shall
+be less familiar than the rest."
+
+His glory is, that he never flinched or hesitated in following his
+principle to its logical conclusions,--"my commission obeying, to question
+it never daring."
+
+It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones for the sins of us all,--the sins
+of perverting, denying, abusing the most sacred and important organs and
+functions of our bodies.
+
+
+V
+
+In Whitman we find the most complete identification of the man with the
+subject. He always is, or becomes, the thing he portrays. Not merely does
+he portray America,--he speaks out of the American spirit, the spirit that
+has broken irrevocably with the past and turns joyously to the future; he
+does not praise equality, he illustrates it; he puts himself down beside
+the lowest and most despised person, and calls him brother.
+
+  "You felons on trial in courts,
+  You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and
+        handcuff'd with iron,
+  Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
+  Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with
+        iron, or my ankles with iron?"
+
+
+He does not give a little charity, he gives himself as freely as the
+clouds give rain, or the sun gives light; he does not write a treatise on
+democracy, he applies the democratic spirit to everything in heaven and on
+earth, and redistributes the prizes from its points of view; he does not,
+except very briefly, sing the praises of science, but he launches his
+poems always from the scientific view of the world, in contradistinction
+to the old theological and mythical point of view. It is always the
+example, it is always the thing itself, he gives us. Few precepts, no
+sermon, no reproof. Does he praise candor? No, he is candor; he confesses
+to everything; he shows us the inmost working of his mind. We know him
+better than we know our nearest friends. Does he exalt the pride of man in
+himself, or egoism? Again he illustrates it: he is egoism; he makes the
+whole universe revolve around himself; he never for a moment goes out of
+himself; he does not seek a theme; he is the theme. His egocentric method
+of treatment is what characterizes him as an artist. He elaborates no
+theme, he builds nothing, he carves nothing, but makes himself a source
+and centre of pulsing, vital energy. Wave after wave radiates from him.
+What we see and get always is Walt Whitman. Our attention is never fixed
+upon the writer, but always upon the man.
+
+Of course this method of Whitman of becoming one with his subject, and
+speaking out of it, is always the method of the creative artist. It is
+this that distinguishes the artist from the mere thinker or prose-writer.
+The latter tells us about a thing; the former gives us the thing, or the
+spirit of the thing itself.
+
+If Whitman had put his criticism of our time and civilization in an
+argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As
+an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and
+tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we
+tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a
+personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a
+theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons and a challenge,
+and will not be easily put aside.
+
+The great philosophical poets, like Lucretius, try to solve the riddles.
+Whitman's aim is only to thrust the riddles before you, to give you a new
+sense of them, and start the game afresh. He knows what a complex,
+contradictory thing the universe is, and that the most any poet can do is
+to break the old firmament up into new forms. To put his arms around it?
+No. Put your arms around your fellow-man, and then you have encompassed it
+as nearly as mortal can do.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman's attraction toward the common people was real. There is one thing
+that makes every-day humanity, the great, toiling, unlettered masses,
+forever welcome to men who unite great imagination with broad
+sympathies,--they give a sense of reality; they refresh, as nature always
+refreshes. There is a tang and a sting to the native, the spontaneous,
+that the cultivated rarely has. The farmer, the mechanic, the sailor, the
+soldier, savor of the primal and the hardy. In painting his own portrait,
+Whitman makes prominent the coarser, unrefined traits, because here the
+colors are fast,--here is the basis of all. The careful student of Whitman
+will surely come to see how all the elements of his picture--his pride,
+his candor, his democracy, his sensuality, his coarseness,--finally fit
+together, and correct and offset each other and make a perfect unity.
+
+No poet is so easily caricatured and turned into ridicule as Whitman. He
+is deficient in humor, and hence, like the Biblical writers, is sometimes
+on the verge of the grotesque without knowing it. The sense of the
+ridiculous has been enormously stimulated and developed in the modern
+mind, and--what is to be regretted--it has been mostly at the expense of
+the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this
+country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push
+and topple it over. The fear which all Americans have before their eyes,
+and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of
+appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked
+individuality of manners or dress, lest we expose ourselves to the shafts
+of ridicule. Emerson said he had heard with admiring submission the remark
+of a lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gave
+a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow;
+and what ranks before religion with us as a people is being in the mode,
+and writing our verse and cutting our coats in the approved style. Pride
+of the eye, a keen sense of the proprieties and the conventionalities, and
+a morbid feeling for the ridiculous, would have been death to Whitman's
+undertaking. He would have faltered, or betrayed self-consciousness. He
+certainly never could have spoken with that elemental aplomb and
+indifference which is so marked a feature of his work. Any hesitation, any
+knuckling, would have been his ruin. We should have seen he was not
+entirely serious, and should have laughed at him. We laugh now only for a
+moment; the spell of his earnestness and power is soon upon us.
+
+
+VII
+
+Thoreau considered Whitman's "Leaves" worth all the sermons in the country
+for preaching; and yet few poets have assumed so little the function of
+the preacher. His great cure-all is love; he gives himself instead of a
+sermon. His faith in the remedial power of affection, comradeship, is
+truly Christ-like. Lover of sinners is also his designation. The reproof
+is always indirect or implied. He brings to bear character rather than
+precept. He helps you as health, as nature, as fresh air, pure water help.
+He says to you:--
+
+  "The mockeries are not you;
+  Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
+  I pursue you where none else has pursued you:
+  Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed
+        routine,--if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they
+        do not conceal you from me.
+  The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion,--if these balk
+        others, they do not balk me.
+  The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature
+        death,--all these I part aside.
+  I track through your windings and turnings,--I come upon you where you
+        thought eye should never come upon you."
+
+
+Whitman said, in the now famous preface of 1855, that "the greatest poet
+does not moralize, or make applications of morals,--he knows the soul."
+There is no preaching or reproof in the "Leaves."
+
+  "I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
+        oppression and shame;
+  I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
+        remorseful after deeds done;
+  I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,
+        gaunt, desperate;
+  I see the wife misused by her husband; I see the treacherous seducer of
+        the young woman;
+  I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
+        hid,--I see these sights on the earth,
+  I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and
+        prisoners,
+  I observe a famine at sea,--I observe the sailors casting lots who shall
+        be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest,
+  I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
+        laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
+  All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out
+        upon,
+  See, hear, and am silent."
+
+
+Only once does he shame and rebuke the offender; then he holds up to him
+"a hand-mirror."
+
+  "Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (who is it? is it you?)
+  Outside fair costume,--within, ashes and filth.
+  No more a flashing eye,--no more a sonorous voice or springy step,
+  Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
+  A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,
+  Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
+  Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
+  Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
+  Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
+  No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
+  Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
+  Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!"
+
+
+The poet's way is so different from the moralist's way! The poet confesses
+all, loves all,--has no preferences. He is moral only in his results. We
+ask ourselves, Does he breathe the air of health? Can he stand the test of
+nature? Is he tonic and inspiring? That he shocks us is nothing. The first
+touch of the sea is a shock. Does he toughen us, does he help make
+arterial blood?
+
+All that men do and are guilty of attracts him. Their vices and
+excesses,--he would make these his own also. He is jealous lest he be
+thought better than other men,--lest he seem to stand apart from even
+criminals and offenders. When the passion for human brotherhood is upon
+him, he is balked by nothing; he goes down into the social mire to find
+his lovers and equals. In the pride of our morality and civic well-being,
+this phase of his work shocks us; but there are moods when the soul says
+it is good, and we rejoice in the strong man that can do it.
+
+The restrictions, denials, and safeguards put upon us by the social order,
+and the dictates of worldly prudence, fall only before a still more fervid
+humanism, or a still more vehement love.
+
+The vital question is, Where does he leave us? On firmer ground, or in the
+mire? Depleted and enervated, or full and joyous? In the gloom of
+pessimism, or in the sunlight of its opposite?---
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a man or woman coming--perhaps you are the one;
+  I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully armed.
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
+  And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its
+        translation.
+
+  "I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded;
+  I announce a race of splendid and savage old men."
+
+
+There is no contradiction here. The poet sounds all the experiences of
+life, and he gives out the true note at last.
+
+  "No specification is necessary,--all that a male or female does, that is
+        vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her, in
+        the unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope
+        of it forever."
+
+
+VIII
+
+Nothing but the most uncompromising religious purpose can justify certain
+things in the "Leaves;" nothing but the most buoyant and pervasive
+spirituality can justify its overwhelming materiality; nothing but the
+most creative imagination can offset its tremendous realism; nothing but
+the note of universal brotherhood can atone for its vehement Americanism;
+nothing but the primal spirit of poesy itself can make amends for this
+open flouting of the routine poetic, and this endless procession before us
+of the common and the familiar.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman loved the word "unrefined." It was one of the words he would have
+us apply to himself. He was unrefined, as the air, the soil, the water,
+and all sweet natural things are unrefined (fine but not _re_fined). He
+applies the word to himself two or three times in the course of his poems.
+He loved the words sun-tan, air-sweetness, brawn, etc. He speaks of his
+"savage song," not to call forth the bards of the past, he says, but to
+invoke the bards of the future.
+
+  "Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage songs?"
+
+
+The thought that his poems might help contribute to the production of a
+"race of splendid and savage old men" was dear to him. He feared the
+depleting and emasculating effects of our culture and conventions. The
+decay of maternity and paternity in this country, the falling off of the
+native populations, were facts full of evil omen. His ideal of manly or
+womanly character is rich in all the purely human qualities and
+attributes; rich in sex, in sympathy, in temperament; physiologically
+sound and clean, as well as mentally and morally so.
+
+  "Fear grace, fear delicatesse;
+  Fear the mellow-sweet, the sucking of honey-juice:
+  Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!
+  Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men."
+
+
+He was himself the savage old man he invoked. It was no part of his plan
+to preach, in refined and euphonious terms, hygiene and the value of the
+natural man, but to project into literature the thing itself, to exploit a
+character coarse as well as fine, and to imbue his poems with a
+physiological quality as well as a psychological and intellectual.
+
+  "I will scatter the new roughness and gladness among them."
+
+He says to the pale, impotent victim of over-refinement, with intentional
+rudeness,
+
+  "Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you."
+
+
+X
+
+One of the key-words to Whitman both as a man and a poet is the word
+"composite." He was probably the most composite man this century has
+produced, and in this respect at least is representative of the American
+of the future, who must be the result of the blending of more diverse
+racial elements than any man of history. He seems to have had an
+intuition of his composite character when he said in his first poem:--
+
+  "I am large,--I contain multitudes."
+
+
+The London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," in reluctantly
+conceding at the time of the poet's death something to the British
+admiration of him, said he was "rich in temperament." The phrase is well
+chosen. An English expert on the subject of temperament, who visited
+Whitman some years ago, said he had all four temperaments, the sanguine,
+the nervous, the melancholic, and the lymphatic, while most persons have
+but two temperaments, and rarely three.
+
+It was probably the composite character of Whitman that caused him to
+attract such diverse and opposite types of men,--scholars and workingmen,
+lawyers, doctors, scientists, and men of the world,--and that made him
+personally such a puzzle to most people,--so impossible to classify. On
+the street the promenaders would turn and look after him, and I have often
+heard them ask each other, "What man was that?" He has often been taken
+for a doctor, and during his services in the army hospitals various myths
+were floating about concerning him. Now he was a benevolent Catholic
+priest,--then some unknown army general, or retired sea captain; at one
+time he was reputed to be one of the owners of the Cunard line of
+steamers. To be taken for a Californian was common. One recalls the
+composite character of the poet whom he outlines in his poems (see
+quotation, page 159).
+
+The book is as composite as the man. It is all things to all men; it lends
+itself to a multitude of interpretations. Every earnest reader of it will
+find some clew or suggestion by the aid of which he fancies he can unlock
+the whole book, but in the end he will be pretty sure to discover that one
+key is not enough. To one critic, his book is the "hoarse song of a man,"
+its manly and masculine element attracts him; to another he is the poet of
+joy, to another the poet of health, to still another he is the bard of
+personality; others read him as the poet of nature, or the poet of
+democracy. His French critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, calls him an apostle,--the
+apostle of the idea that man is an indivisible fragment of the universal
+Divinity.
+
+
+XI
+
+What has a poet of Whitman's aims to do with decency or indecency, with
+modesty or immodesty? These are social or conventional virtues; he
+represents mainly primary qualities and forces. Does life, does death,
+does nature, respect our proprieties, our conventional veils and
+illusions? Neither will he. He will strip them all away. He will act and
+speak as if all things in the universe were equally sacred and divine; as
+if all men were really his brothers, all women his sisters; as if all
+parts of the human body were equally beautiful and wonderful; as if
+fatherhood and motherhood, birth and begetting, were sacred acts. Of
+course it is easy to see that this course will speedily bring him in
+collision with the guardians of taste and social morality. But what of
+that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I
+behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question
+is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or
+betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and
+thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than
+the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he assumes to speak.
+
+Nothing is easier than to convict Walt Whitman of what is called
+indecency; he laughs indifferent when you have done so. It is not your
+gods that he serves. He says he would be as indifferent of observation as
+the trees or rocks. And it is here that we must look for his
+justification, upon ethical rather than upon the grounds of conventional
+art. He has taken our sins upon himself. He has applied to the morbid
+sex-consciousness, that has eaten so deeply into our social system, the
+heroic treatment; he has fairly turned it naked into the street. He has
+not merely in words denied the inherent vileness of sex; he has denied it
+in very deed. We should not have taken offense had he confined himself to
+words,--had he said sex is pure, the body is as clean about the loins as
+about the head; but being an artist, a creator, and not a mere thinker or
+preacher, he was compelled to act,--to do the thing instead of saying it.
+
+The same in other matters. Being an artist, he could not merely say all
+men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and
+sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must
+make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of
+the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the
+concrete and not with the abstract,--fraternity and equality as a reality,
+not as a sentiment.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the phase in which we are now considering him, Whitman appears as the
+Adamic man re-born here in the nineteenth century, or with science and the
+modern added, and fully and fearlessly embodying himself in a poem. It is
+stronger than we can stand, but it is good for us, and one of these days,
+or one of these centuries, we shall be able to stand it and enjoy it.
+
+  "To the garden the world anew ascending,
+  Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
+  The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
+  Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber,
+  The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, having brought me again,
+  Amorous, mature--all beautiful to me--all wondrous,
+  My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
+        reasons most wondrous;
+  Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
+  Content with the present--content with the past,
+  By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
+  Or in front, and I following her just the same."
+
+
+The critics perpetually misread Whitman because they fail to see this
+essentially composite and dramatic character of his work,--that it is not
+the song of Walt Whitman the private individual, but of Walt Whitman as
+representative of, and speaking for, all types and conditions of men; in
+fact, that it is the drama of a new democratic personality, a character
+outlined on a larger, more copious, more vehement scale than has yet
+appeared in the world. The germs of this character he would sow broadcast
+over the land.
+
+In this drama of personality the poet always identifies himself with the
+scene, incident, experience, or person he delineates, or for whom he
+speaks. He says to the New Englander, or to the man of the South and the
+West, "I depict you as myself." In the same way he depicts offenders,
+roughs, criminals, and low and despised persons as himself; he lays claim
+to every sin of omission and commission men are guilty of, because, he
+says, "the germs are in all men." Men dare not tell their faults. He will
+make them all his own, and then tell them; there shall be full confession
+for once.
+
+  "If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;
+  If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think I cannot
+        remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?"
+
+
+It will not do to read this poet, or any great poet, in a narrow and
+exacting spirit. As Whitman himself says: "The messages of great poems to
+each man and woman are: Come to us on equal terms, only then can you
+understand us."
+
+In the much misunderstood group of poems called "Children of Adam" the
+poet speaks for the male generative principle, and all the excesses and
+abuses that grow out of it he unblushingly imputes to himself. What men
+have done and still do, while under the intoxication of the sexual
+passion, he does, he makes it all his own experience.
+
+That we have here a revelation of his own personal taste and experiences
+may or may not be the case, but we have no more right to assume it than we
+have to assume that all other poets speak from experience when they use
+the first person singular. When John Brown mounted the scaffold in
+Virginia, in 1860, the poet says:--
+
+  "I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,
+  I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling
+        with age and your unheal'd wounds, you mounted the scaffold,"--
+
+very near him he stood in spirit; very near him he stood in the person of
+others, but not in his own proper person.
+
+If we take this poet literally, we shall believe he has been in California
+and Oregon; that he has set foot in every city on the continent; that he
+grew up in Virginia; that every Southern State has been by turns his home;
+that he has been a soldier, a sailor, a miner; that he has lived in
+Dakota's woods, his "diet meat, his drink from the spring;" that he has
+lived on the plains with hunters and ranchmen, etc. He lays claim to all
+these characters, all these experiences, because what others do, what
+others assume, or suffer, or enjoy, that he appropriates to himself.
+
+  "I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+  Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+  I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of
+        my skin,
+  I fall on the weeds and stones,
+  The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+  Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whipstocks.
+
+  "Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
+  I do not ask the wounded person how he feels--I myself become the wounded
+        person,
+  My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
+
+  "I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
+  See myself in prison shaped like another man,
+  And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
+
+  "For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
+  It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.
+  Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him
+        and walk by his side."
+
+
+XIII
+
+It is charged against Whitman that he does not celebrate love at all, and
+very justly. He had no purpose to celebrate the sentiment of love.
+Literature is vastly overloaded with this element already. He celebrates
+fatherhood and motherhood, and the need of well-begotten, physiologically
+well-begotten, offspring. Of that veiled prurient suggestion which readers
+so delight in--of "bosoms mutinously fair," and "the soul-lingering loops
+of perfumed hair," as one of our latest poets puts it--there is no hint
+in his volume. He would have fallen from grace the moment he had attempted
+such a thing. Any trifling or dalliance on his part would have been his
+ruin. Love as a sentiment has fairly run riot in literature. From
+Whitman's point of view, it would have been positively immoral for him
+either to have vied with the lascivious poets in painting it as the
+forbidden, or with the sentimental poets in depicting it as a charm. Woman
+with him is always the mate and equal of the man, never his plaything.
+
+Whitman is seldom or never the poet of a sentiment, at least of the
+domestic and social sentiments. His is more the voice of the eternal,
+abysmal man.
+
+The home, the fireside, the domestic allurements, are not in him; love, as
+we find it in other poets, is not in him; the idyllic, except in touches
+here and there, is not in him; the choice, the finished, the perfumed, the
+romantic, the charm of art and the delight of form, are not to be looked
+for in his pages. The cosmic takes the place of the idyllic; the begetter,
+the Adamic man, takes the place of the lover; patriotism takes the place
+of family affection; charity takes the place of piety; love of kind is
+more than love of neighbor; the poet and the artist are swallowed up in
+the seer and the prophet.
+
+The poet evidently aimed to put in his sex poems a rank and healthful
+animality, and to make them as frank as the shedding of pollen by the
+trees, strong even to the point of offense. He could not make it pleasing,
+a sweet morsel to be rolled under the tongue; that would have been levity
+and sin, as in Byron and the other poets. It must be direct and rank,
+healthfully so. The courage that did it, and showed no wavering or
+self-consciousness, was more than human. Man is a begetter. How shall a
+poet in our day and land treat this fact? With levity and by throwing over
+it the lure of the forbidden, the attraction of the erotic? That is one
+way, the way of nearly all the poets of the past. But that is not
+Whitman's way. He would sooner be bestial than Byronic, he would sooner
+shock by his frankness than inflame by his suggestion. And this in the
+interest of health and longevity, not in the interest of a prurient and
+effeminate "art." In these poems Whitman for a moment emphasizes sex, the
+need of sex, and the power of sex. "All were lacking if sex were lacking."
+He says to men and women, Here is where you live after all, here is the
+seat of empire. You are at the top of your condition when you are fullest
+and sanest there. Fearful consequences follow any corrupting or abusing or
+perverting of sex. The poet stands in the garden of the world naked and
+not ashamed. It is a great comfort that he could do it in this age of
+hectic lust and Swinburnian impotence,--that he could do it and not be
+ridiculous. To have done it without offense would have been proof that he
+had failed utterly. Let us be shocked; it is a wholesome shock, like the
+douse of the sea, or the buffet of the wind. We shall be all the better
+for it by and by.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The lover of Whitman comes inevitably to associate him with character and
+personal qualities. I sometimes meet women whom I say are of the Whitman
+type--the kind of woman he invoked and predicted. They bear children, and
+are not ashamed; motherhood is their pride and their joy: they are
+cheerful, tolerant, friendly, think no evil, meet high and low on equal
+terms; they walk, row, climb mountains; they reach forth into the actual
+world of questions and events, open-minded, sympathetic, frank, natural,
+good-natured; the mates and companions of their husbands, keeping pace
+with them in all matters; home-makers, but larger than home, considerate,
+forgiving, unceremonious,--in short, the large, fresh, wholesome open-air
+natures whose ideal so completely possessed Walt Whitman.
+
+A British critic wisely says the gift of Whitman to us is the gift of life
+rather than of literature, but it is the gift of life through literature.
+Indeed, Whitman means a life as much as Christianity means a life. He
+says:--
+
+  "Writing and talk do not prove me."
+
+Nothing but the test of reality finally proves him:--
+
+  "The proof of the poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country has
+        absorbed him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."
+
+
+The proof of Whitman shall be deferred till he has borne fruit in actual,
+concrete life.
+
+He knew that merely intellectual and artistic tests did not settle matters
+in his case, or that we would not reach his final value by making a
+dead-set at him through the purely aesthetic faculties. Is he animating to
+life itself? Can we absorb and assimilate him? Does he nourish the manly
+and heroic virtues? Does he make us more religious, more tolerant, more
+charitable, more candid, more self-reliant? If not, he fails of his chief
+end. It is doubtful if the purely scholarly and literary poets, like
+Milton, say, or like our own Poe, are ever absorbed in the sense above
+implied; while there is little doubt that poets like Homer, like
+Shakespeare, are absorbed and modify a people's manners and ideals. Only
+that which we love affects our lives. Our admiration for art and
+literature as such is something entirely outside the sources of character
+and power of action.
+
+Whitman identifies himself with our lives. We associate him with reality,
+with days, scenes, persons, events. The youth who reads Poe or Lowell
+wants to be a scholar, a wit, a poet, a writer; the youth who reads
+Whitman wants to be a man, and to get at the meaning and value of life.
+Our author's bent towards real things, real men and women, and his power
+to feed and foster personality, are unmistakable.
+
+Life, reality, alone proves him; a saner and more robust fatherhood and
+motherhood, more practical democracy, more charity, more love, more
+comradeship, more social equality, more robust ideals of womanly and manly
+character, prove him. When we are more tolerant and patient and
+long-suffering, when the strain of our worldly, commercial spirit relaxes,
+then is he justified. Whitman means a letting-up of the strain all along
+the line,--less hurry, less greed, less rivalry, more leisure, more
+charity, more fraternalism and altruism, more religion, less formality and
+convention.
+
+  "When America does what was promised,
+  When each part is peopled with free people,
+  When there is no city on earth to lead my city, the city of young men,
+        the Mannahatta city--but when the Mannahatta leads all the cities
+        of the earth,
+  When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,
+  When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
+  When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,
+  When fathers, firm, unconstrained, open-eyed--when breeds of the most
+        perfect mothers denote America,
+  Then to me ripeness and conclusion."
+
+
+XV
+
+After all I think it matters little whether we call him poet or not. Grant
+that he is not a poet in the usual or technical sense, but poet-prophet,
+or poet-seer, or all combined. He is a poet plus something else. It is
+when he is judged less than poet, or no poet at all, that we feel
+injustice is done him. Grant that his work is not art, that it does not
+give off the perfume, the atmosphere of the highly wrought artistic works
+like those of Tennyson, but of something quite different.
+
+We have all been slow to see that his cherished ends were religious rather
+than literary; that, over and above all else, he was a great religious
+teacher and prophet. Had he been strictly a literary poet, like Lowell, or
+Longfellow, or Tennyson,--that is, a writer working for purely artistic
+effects,--we should be compelled to judge him quite differently.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is a gospel--glad tidings of great joy to those who are
+prepared to receive it. Its final value lies in its direct, intense,
+personal appeal; in what it did for Symonds, who said it made a man of
+him; in what it did for Stevenson, who said it dispelled a thousand
+illusions; in what it did for Mrs. Gilchrist, who said it enabled her to
+find her own soul; in what it does for all earnest readers of it in
+blending with the inmost current of their lives. Whitman is the life-giver
+of our time. How shall a poet give us life but by making us share his
+larger measure of life, his larger hope, his larger love, his larger
+charity, his saner and wider outlook? What are the three great life-giving
+principles? Can we name them better than St. Paul named them eighteen
+hundred years ago,--faith, hope, charity? And these are the cornerstones
+of Whitman's work,--a faith so broad and fervent that it accepts death as
+joyously as life, and sees all things at last issue in spiritual results;
+a hope that sees the golden age ahead of us, not behind us; and a charity
+that balks at nothing, that makes him identify himself with offenders and
+outlaws; a charity as great as his who said to the thief on the cross,
+"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."
+
+To cry up faith, hope, and charity is not to make men partakers of them;
+but to exemplify them in a survey of the whole problem of life, to make
+them vital as hearing, or eyesight in a work of the imagination, to show
+them as motives and impulses controlling all the rest, is to beget and
+foster them in the mind of the beholder.
+
+He is more and he is less than the best of the other poets. The popular,
+the conventional poets are mainly occupied with the artistic side of
+things,--with that which refines, solaces, beautifies. Whitman is mainly
+occupied with the cosmic and universal side of things, and the human and
+spiritual values that may be extracted from them. His poetry is not the
+result of the same kind of selection and partiality as that we are more
+familiar with.
+
+Hence, while the message of Tennyson and his kind is the message of
+beauty, the message of Whitman is, in a much fuller sense, the message of
+life. He speaks the word of faith and power. This is his distinction; he
+is the life-giver. Such a man comes that we may have life, and have it
+more abundantly.
+
+The message of beauty,--who would undervalue it? The least poet and
+poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples
+and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of
+life, there is danger that we shall not know it when we hear it. It is a
+harsher and more heroic strain than the other. It calls no man to his
+ease, or to be lulled and soothed. It is a summons and a challenge. It
+lays rude, strong hands upon you. It filters and fibres your blood. It is
+more of the frost, the rains, the winds, than of cushions or parlors.
+
+The call of life is a call to battle always. We are stronger by the
+strength of every obstacle or enemy overcome.
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
+  These are the days that must happen to you:
+
+  "You shall not heap up what is called riches,
+  You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;
+  You but arrive at the city to which you were destined--you hardly settle
+        yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an irresistible
+        call to depart.
+  You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
+        remain behind you;
+  What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with
+        passionate kisses of parting,
+  You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands
+        toward you.
+
+  "Allons! After the GREAT COMPANIONS! and to belong to them!"
+
+
+XVI
+
+Whitman always avails himself of the poet's privilege and magnifies
+himself. He magnifies others in the same ratio, he magnifies all things.
+"Magnifying and applying come I," he says, "outbidding at the start the
+old cautious hucksters." Indeed, the character which speaks throughout
+"Leaves of Grass" is raised to the highest degree of personal exaltation.
+To it nothing is trivial, nothing is mean; all is good, all is divine. The
+usual distinctions disappear, burned up, the poet says, for religion's
+sake. All the human attributes are heightened and enlarged; sympathy as
+wide as the world; love that balks at nothing; charity as embracing as the
+sky; egotism like the force of gravity; religious fervor that consumes the
+coarsest facts like stubble; spirituality that finds God everywhere every
+hour of the day; faith that welcomes death as cheerfully as life;
+comradeship that would weld the nation into a family of brothers;
+sexuality that makes prudes shudder; poetic enthusiasm that scornfully
+dispenses with all the usual adventitious aids; and in general a
+largeness, coarseness, and vehemence that are quite appalling to the
+general reader. Lovers of poetry will of necessity be very slow in
+adjusting their notions to the standards of "Leaves of Grass." It is a
+survey of life and of the world from the cosmic rather than from the
+conventional standpoint. It carries the standards of the natural-universal
+into all fields.
+
+Some men have accepted poverty and privation with such contentment and
+composure as to make us almost envious of their lot; and Whitman accepts
+the coarser, commoner human elements which he finds in himself, and which
+most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception
+of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes.
+If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference
+for them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an element of
+weakness.
+
+His precept and his illustration, carried out in life, would fill the land
+with strong, native, original types of men and women animated by the most
+vehement comradeship, selfism and otherism going hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO CULTURE
+
+
+I
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not the poetry of culture, but it is to be said in
+the same breath that it is not such a work as an uncultured man produces,
+or is capable of producing.
+
+The uncultured man does not think Whitman's thoughts, or propose Whitman's
+problems to himself, or understand or appreciate them at all. The "Leaves"
+are perhaps of supreme interest only to men of deepest culture, because
+they contain in such ample measure that without which all culture is mere
+varnish or veneer. They are indirectly a tremendous criticism of American
+life and civilization, and they imply that breadth of view and that
+liberation of spirit--that complete disillusioning--which is the best
+result of culture, and which all great souls have reached, no matter who
+or what their schoolmasters may have been.
+
+Our reading public probably does not and cannot see itself in Whitman at
+all. He must be a great shock to its sense of the genteel and the
+respectable. Nor can the working people and the unlettered, though they
+were drawn to Whitman the man, be expected to respond to any considerable
+extent to Whitman the poet. His standpoint can be reached only after
+passing through many things and freeing one's self from many illusions. He
+is more representative of the time-spirit out of which America grew, and
+which is now shaping the destiny of the race upon this continent. He
+strikes under and through our whole civilization.
+
+He despised our social gods, he distrusted our book-culture, he was
+alarmed at the tendency to the depletion and attenuation of the national
+type, and he aimed to sow broadcast the germs of more manly ideals. His
+purpose was to launch his criticism from the basic facts of human life,
+psychic and physiologic; to inject into the veins of our anaemic literature
+the reddest, healthiest kind of blood; and in doing so he has given free
+swing to the primary human traits and affections and to sexuality, and has
+charged his pages with the spirit of real things, real life.
+
+We have been so long used to verse which is the outcome of the literary
+impulse alone, which is written at so many removes from the primary human
+qualities, produced from the extreme verge of culture and artificial
+refinement, which is so innocent of the raciness and healthful coarseness
+of nature, that poetry which has these qualities, which implies the body
+as well as the mind, which is the direct outgrowth of a radical human
+personality, and which make demands like those made by real things, is
+either an offense to us or is misunderstood.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman says his book is not a good lesson, but it takes down the bars to
+a good lesson, and that to another, and that to another still. To take
+down bars rather than to put them up is always Whitman's aim; to make his
+reader free of the universe, to turn him forth into the fresh and
+inexhaustible pastures of time, space, eternity, and with a smart slap
+upon his back with the halter as a spur and send-off, is about what he
+would do. His message, first and last, is "give play to yourself;" "let
+yourself go;"--happiness is in the quest of happiness; power comes to him
+who power uses.
+
+  "Long enough have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore;
+  Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
+  To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
+        and laughingly dash with your hair."
+
+
+To hold Whitman up to ridicule, and to convict him of grossness and
+tediousness, is easy enough; first, because he is so out of relation to
+the modes and taste of his times, and, secondly, because he has somewhat
+of the uncouthness and coarseness of large bodies. Then his seriousness
+and simplicity, like that of Biblical and Oriental writers,--a kind of
+childish inaptness and homeliness,--often exposes him to our keen, almost
+abnormal sense of the ridiculous. He was deficient in humor, and he wrote
+his book in entire obliviousness of social usages and conventions, so that
+the perspective of it is not the social or indoor perspective, but that
+of life and nature at large, careering and unhampered. It is probably the
+one modern poem whose standards are not social and what are called
+artistic.
+
+Its atmosphere is always that of the large, free spaces of vast, unhoused
+nature. It has been said that the modern world could be reconstructed from
+"Leaves of Grass," so compendious and all-inclusive is it in its details;
+but of the modern world as a social organization, of man as the creature
+of social usages and prohibitions, of fashions, of dress, of
+ceremony,--the indoor, parlor and drawing-room man,--there is no hint in
+its pages. In its matter and in its spirit, in its standards and in its
+execution, in its ideals and in its processes, it belongs to and
+affiliates with open-air nature, often reaching, I think, the cosmic and
+unconditioned. In a new sense is Whitman the brother of the orbs and
+cosmic processes, "conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth." All
+his enthusiasms, all his sympathies have to do with the major and
+fundamental elements of life. He is a world-poet. We do not readily adjust
+our indoor notions to him. Our culture-standards do not fit him.
+
+
+III
+
+The problem of the poet is doubtless more difficult in our day than in any
+past day; it is harder for him to touch reality.
+
+The accumulations of our civilization are enormous: an artificial world of
+great depth and potency overlies the world of reality; especially does it
+overlie the world of man's moral and intellectual nature. Most of us live
+and thrive in this artificial world, and never know but it is the world of
+God's own creating. Only now and then a man strikes his roots down through
+this made land into fresh, virgin soil. When the religious genius strikes
+his roots through it, and insists upon a present revelation, we are apt to
+cry "heretic;" when the poet strikes his roots through it, as Whitman did,
+and insists upon giving us reality,--giving us himself before custom or
+law,--we cry "barbarian," or "art-heretic," or "outlaw of art."
+
+In the countless adjustments and accumulations, and in the oceanic
+currents of our day and land, the individual is more and more lost sight
+of,--merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See
+it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will.
+See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing
+power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a
+single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their
+types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite
+character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe
+with the old joy and contentment.
+
+
+IV
+
+  "The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
+  Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and master of it?"
+
+
+Do we not, consciously or unconsciously, ask this or a similar question of
+every poet or artist whom we pass in review before us? Is he master of his
+culture, or does it master him? Does he strike back through it to simple,
+original nature, or is he a potted plant? Does he retain the native savage
+virtues, or is he entirely built up from the outside? We constantly
+mistake culture for mere refinement, which it is not: it is a liberating
+process; it is a clearing away of obstructions, and the giving to inherent
+virtues a chance to express themselves. It makes savage nature friendly
+and considerate. The aim of culture is not to get rid of nature, but to
+utilize nature. The great poet is always a "friendly and flowing savage,"
+the master and never the slave of the complex elements of our artificial
+lives.
+
+Though our progress and civilization are a triumph over nature, yet in an
+important sense we never get away from nature or improve upon her. Her
+standards are still our standards, her sweetness and excellence are still
+our aim. Her health, her fertility, her wholeness, her freshness, her
+innocence, her evolution, we would fain copy or reproduce. We would, if we
+could, keep the pungency and aroma of her wild fruit in our cultivated
+specimens, the virtue and hardiness of the savage in our fine gentlemen,
+the joy and spontaneity of her bird-songs in our poetry, the grace and
+beauty of her forms in our sculpture and carvings.
+
+A poetic utterance from an original individual standpoint, something
+definite and characteristic,--this is always the crying need. What a fine
+talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name!
+But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a
+kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste and intelligence that
+speak. When will he redeem all these promises, and become a fixed centre
+of thought and emotion in himself? To write poems is no distinction; to be
+a poem, to be a fixed point amid the seething chaos, a rock amid the
+currents, giving your own form and character to them,--that is something.
+
+It matters little, as Whitman himself says, who contributes the mass of
+poetic verbiage upon which any given age feeds.
+
+But for a national first-class poem, or a great work of the imagination of
+any sort, the man is everything, because such works finally rest upon
+primary human qualities and special individual traits. A richly endowed
+personality is always the main dependence in such cases, or, as Goethe
+says, "in the great work the great person is always present as the great
+factor."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is as distinctly an emanation from Walt Whitman, from
+his quality and equipment as a man apart from anything he owed to books or
+to secondary influences, as a tree is an emanation from the soil. It is,
+moreover, an emanation from him as an American in the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, and as a typical democratic composite man, a man of
+the common people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but with
+an extraordinary endowment of spiritual and intellectual power, to which
+he has given full swing without abating one jot or tittle the influence of
+his heritage of the common stock.
+
+
+V
+
+There is one important quality that enters into all first-class literary
+production and into all art, which is taken little account of in current
+criticism: I mean the quality of the manly,--the pulse and pressure of
+manly virility and strength. Goethe spoke of it to Eckermann as a certain
+urgent power in which the art of his time was lacking. The producers had
+taste and skill, but were not masterful as men. Goethe always looked
+straight through the work to the man behind it; in art and poetry the
+personality was everything. The special talent of one kind or another was
+quite secondary. The greatest works are the least literary. To speak in
+literature as a man, and not merely as a scholar or professional
+litterateur, is always the crying need. The new poet has this or that
+gift, but what is the human fund back of all? What is his endowment of the
+common universal human traits? How much of a man is he? His measure in
+this respect will be the measure of the final value of his contribution.
+
+The decadence of literature sets in when there is more talent than
+character in current production; when rare literary and artistic gifts no
+longer come wedded to large human and manly gifts; when taste is
+fastidious rather than robust and hearty. When was there a man born to
+English or American literature with a large endowment of the universal
+human qualities, or with those elements that give breadth and power, and
+which lead art rather than follow it? We are living in an age of great
+purity and refinement of taste in art and letters, but destitute of power.
+Goethe spoke of Walter Scott not merely as a great talent, but as a
+"comprehensive nature." Without this comprehensive nature as a setting,
+his great talent would have amounted to but little. This gives the weight,
+the final authority. How little there was on the surface of Scott of the
+literary keenness, subtlety, knowingness of later producers, and yet how
+far his contribution surpasses theirs in real human pathos and
+suggestiveness!
+
+The same might be said of Count Tolstoi, who is also, back of all, a great
+loving nature.
+
+One has great joy in Whitman because he is beyond and over all a large and
+loving personality; his work is but a thin veil through which a great
+nature clearly shows. The urgent power of which Goethe speaks is almost
+too strong,--too strong for current taste: we want more art and less man,
+more literature and less life. It is not merely a great mind that we feel,
+but a great character. It penetrates every line, and indeed makes it true
+of the book that whoever "touches this touches a man."
+
+The lesson of the poet is all in the direction of the practical manly and
+womanly qualities and virtues,--health, temperance, sanity, power,
+endurance, aplomb,--and not at all in the direction of the literary and
+artistic qualities or culture.
+
+  "To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat,
+        to manage horses, to beget superb children,
+  To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,
+  To hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea."
+
+
+All his aims, ideas, impulses, aspirations, relate to life, to
+personality, and to power to deal with real things; and if we expect from
+him only literary ideas--form, beauty, lucidity, proportion--we shall be
+disappointed. He seeks to make the impression of concrete forces and
+objects, and not of art.
+
+  "Not for an embroiderer,
+  (There will always be plenty of embroiderers--I welcome them also),
+  But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.
+
+  "Not to chisel ornaments,
+  But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme
+        Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking."
+
+His whole work is a radiation from an exemplification of the idea that
+there is something better than to be an artist or a poet,--namely, to be a
+man. The poet's rapture springs not merely from the contemplation of the
+beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; from
+the contemplation of democracy, the common people, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors, his own body, death, sex, manly love, occupations, and the force
+and vitality of things. We are to look for the clews to him in the open
+air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forms and
+methods. He declares he will never again mention love or death inside of a
+house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay
+with him in the open air.
+
+  "If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore;
+  The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key:
+  The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words.
+
+  "No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children better than they.
+
+  "The young mechanic is closest to me--he knows me pretty well.
+  The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with
+        him all day;
+  The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my
+        voice:
+  In vessels that sail, my words sail--I go with fishermen and seamen,
+        and love them.
+
+  "My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his
+        blanket;
+  The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;
+  The young mother and old mother comprehend me;
+  The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where
+        they are:
+  They and all would resume what I have told them."
+
+
+VI
+
+So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few,
+its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness
+of man rather than his strength; so far as it expresses a shrinking from
+reality and a refuge in sentimentalism; so far as it is aristocratic as in
+Tennyson, or mocking and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and mephitic as
+in Swinburne, or regretful and reminiscent as in Arnold, or a melodious
+baying of the moon as in Shelley, or the outcome of mere scholarly and
+technical acquirements as in so many of our younger poets,--so far as
+literature or poetry, I say, stand for these things, there is little of
+either in Whitman. Whitman stands for the primary and essential; he stands
+for that which makes the body as well as the mind, which makes life sane
+and joyous and masterful. Everything that tends to depletion, satiety, the
+abnormal, the erotic and exotic, that induces the stress and fever of
+life, is foreign to his spirit. He is less beautiful than the popular
+poets, yet more beautiful. He will have to do only with the inevitable
+beauty, the beauty that comes unsought, that resides in the interior
+meanings and affiliations,--the beauty that dare turn its back upon the
+beautiful.
+
+Whitman has escaped entirely the literary disease, the characteristic
+symptoms of which, according to Renan, is that people love less things
+themselves than the literary effects which they produce. He has escaped
+the art disease which makes art all in all; the religious disease, which
+runs to maudlin piety and seeks to win heaven by denying earth; the beauty
+disease, which would make of poesy a conventional flower-garden. He brings
+heroic remedies for our morbid sex-consciousness, and for all the
+pathological conditions brought about by our excess of refinement, and the
+dyspeptic depletions of our indoor artificial lives. Whitman withstood the
+aesthetic temptation, as Amiel calls it, to which most of our poets fall a
+victim,--the lust for the merely beautiful, the epicureanism of the
+literary faculties. We can make little of him if we are in quest of
+aesthetic pleasures alone. "In order to establish those literary
+authorities which are called classic centuries," says Renan, "something
+healthy and solid is necessary. Common household bread is of more value
+here than pastry." But the vast majority of literary producers aim at
+pastry, or, worse yet, confectionery,--something especially delightful and
+titivating to the taste. No doubt Renan himself was something of a
+literary epicure, but then he imposed upon himself large and serious
+tasks, and his work as a whole is solid and nourishing; his charm of style
+does not blind and seduce us. It makes all the difference in the world
+whether we seek the beautiful through the true, or the true through the
+beautiful. Seek ye the kingdom of truth first and all things shall be
+added. The novice aims to write beautifully, but the master aims to see
+truly and to feel vitally. Beauty follows him, and is never followed by
+him.
+
+Nature is beautiful because she is something else first, yes, and last,
+too, and all the while. Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the
+whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with
+the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields
+compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuye.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman's ideal is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger--much more
+racy and democratic--than the ideal we are familiar with in current
+literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the
+democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,--excluding all the
+old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and
+legends, etc.,--but he applies it to the form as well, excluding rhyme and
+measure and all the conventional verse architecture. His work stands or it
+falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or
+power which it holds. This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest,
+nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated. His
+influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or
+extra-cultured humanity. The spirit of his work transferred to practice
+begets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, magnetic,
+tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple,
+healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he
+opposes that which weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a
+scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature,
+and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and
+affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic
+spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our
+artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature.
+The people look askance at men who are above them without being of them,
+who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with
+unlettered humanity. Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit,
+and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Sumner.
+
+Whitman might be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned. His
+work is launched at a farther remove from our arts, conventions, usages,
+civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into
+our lives, than that of any other man. Absolute candor, absolute pride,
+absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature. It
+is not conditioned by what we deem modest or immodest, high or low, male
+or female. It is not conditioned by our notions of good and evil, by our
+notions of the refined and the select, by what we call good taste and bad
+taste. It is the voice of absolute man, sweeping away the artificial,
+throwing himself boldly, joyously, upon unconditioned nature. We are all
+engaged in upholding the correct and the conventional, and drawing the
+line sharply between good and evil, the high and the low, and it is well
+that we should; but here is a man who aims to take absolute ground, and to
+look at the world as God himself might look at it, without partiality or
+discriminating,--it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection
+in the universe and can be none:--
+
+  "Open mouth of my Soul uttering gladness,
+  Eyes of my Soul seeing perfection,
+  Natural life of me, faithfully praising things,
+  Corroborating forever the triumph of things."
+
+He does not take sides against evil, in the usual way, he does not take
+sides with the good except as nature herself does. He celebrates the All.
+
+Can we accept the world as science reveals it to us, as all significant,
+as all in ceaseless transmutation, as every atom aspiring to be man, an
+endless unfolding of primal germs, without beginning, without end, without
+failure or imperfection, the golden age ahead of us, not behind us?
+
+
+VIII
+
+Because of Whitman's glorification of pride, egoism, brawn, self-reliance,
+it is charged that the noble, the cultured, the self-denying, have no
+place in his system. What place have they in the antique bards?--in Homer,
+in Job, in Isaiah, in Dante? They have the same place in Whitman, yet it
+is to be kept in mind that Whitman does not stand for the specially social
+virtues, nor for culture, nor for the refinements which it induces, nor
+for art, nor for any conventionality. There are flowers of human life
+which we are not to look for in Walt Whitman. The note of fine manners,
+chivalrous conduct, which we get in Emerson; the sweetness and light
+gospel of Arnold; the gospel of hero-worship of Carlyle; the gracious
+scholarship of our New England poets, etc.,--we do not get in Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him at war with these things, but he is
+concerned with more primal and elemental questions. He strikes under and
+beyond all these things.
+
+What are the questions or purposes, then, in which his work has root?
+Simply put, to lead the way to larger, saner, more normal, more robust
+types of men and women on this continent; to prefigure and help develop
+the new democratic man,--to project him into literature on a scale and
+with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep
+hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and
+influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and
+for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,--the air,
+the water, the soil, the sunshine,--and the more we pervert or shut out
+these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we
+pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the
+religious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny and belittle our bodies,
+the further we are from the spirit of Walt Whitman, and from the spirit of
+the All.
+
+With all Whitman's glorification of pride, self-esteem, self-reliance,
+etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,--the
+free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential
+nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you
+possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life
+and conditions of men, charity as broad as the sunlight, standing up for
+those whom others are down upon, claiming nothing for self which others
+may not have upon the same terms,--of such nobility and fine manners, I
+say, you shall find an abundance in the life and works of Walt Whitman.
+
+The spirit of a man's work is everything; the letter, little or nothing.
+Though Whitman boasts of his affiliation with the common and near at hand,
+yet he is always saved from the vulgar, the mean, the humdrum, by the
+breadth of his charity and sympathy and his tremendous ideality.
+
+Of worldliness, materialism, commercialism, he has not a trace; his only
+values are spiritual and ideal; his only standards are the essential and
+the enduring. What Matthew Arnold called the Anglo-Saxon contagion, the
+bourgeois spirit, the worldly and sordid ideal, is entirely corrected in
+Whitman by the ascendant of the ethic and the universal. His democracy
+ends in universal brotherhood, his patriotism in the solidarity of
+nations, his glorification of the material in the final triumph of the
+spiritual, his egoism issues at last in complete otherism.
+
+A race that can produce a man of his fibre, his continental type, is yet
+at its best estate. Did one begin to see evil omen in this perpetual
+whittling away and sharpening and lightening of the American type,--grace
+without power, clearness without mass, intellect without character,--then
+take comfort from the volume and the rankness of Walt Whitman. Did one
+begin to fear that the decay of maternity and paternity in our older
+communities and the falling off in the native population presaged the
+drying up of the race in its very sources? Then welcome to the rank
+sexuality and to the athletic fatherhood and motherhood celebrated by
+Whitman. Did our skepticism, our headiness, our worldliness, threaten to
+eat us up like a cancer? did our hardness, our irreligiousness, and our
+passion for the genteel point to a fugitive, superficial race? was our
+literature threatened with the artistic degeneration,--running all to art
+and not at all to power? were our communities invaded by a dry rot of
+culture? were we fast becoming a delicate, indoor, genteel race? were our
+women sinking deeper and deeper into the "incredible sloughs of fashion
+and all kinds of dyspeptic depletion,"--the antidote for all these ills is
+in Walt Whitman. In him nature shows great fullness and fertility, and an
+immense friendliness. He supplements and corrects most of the special
+deficiencies and weaknesses toward which the American type seems to tend.
+He brings us back to nature again. The perpetuity of the race is with the
+common people. The race is constantly crying out at the top, in our times
+at least; culture and refinement beget fewer and fewer and poorer and
+poorer children. Where struggle ceases, that family or race is doomed.
+
+  "Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that
+        from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
+        something to make a greater struggle necessary."
+
+
+In more primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept
+in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest.
+War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and
+everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, power, longevity,
+manliness. The scholar poets are occupied with that which makes for
+culture, taste, refinement, ease, art.
+
+"Leaves of Grass," taken as a whole, aims to exhibit a modern, democratic,
+archetypal man, here in America, confronting and subduing our enormous
+materialism to his own purposes, putting it off and on as a garment;
+identifying himself with all forms of life and conditions of men; trying
+himself by cosmic laws and processes, exulting in the life of his body and
+the delights of his senses; and seeking to clinch, to develop, and to
+realize himself through the shows and events of the visible world. The
+poet seeks to interpret life from the central point of absolute abysmal
+man.
+
+The wild and the savage in nature with which Whitman perpetually
+identifies himself, and the hirsute, sun-tanned, and aboriginal in
+humanity, have misled many readers into looking upon him as expressive of
+these things only. Mr. Stedman thinks him guilty of a certain narrowness
+in preferring, or seeming to prefer, the laboring man to the gentleman.
+But the poet uses these elements only for checks and balances, and to keep
+our attention, in the midst of a highly refined and civilized age, fixed
+upon the fact that here are the final sources of our health, our power,
+our longevity. The need of the pre-scientific age was knowledge and
+refinement; the need of our age is health and sanity, cool heads and good
+digestion. And to this end the bitter and drastic remedies from the shore
+and the mountains are for us.
+
+
+IX
+
+The gospel of the average man, Matthew Arnold thought, was inimical to the
+ideal of a rare and high excellence. But, in holding up the average man,
+Whitman was only holding up the broad, universal human qualities, and
+showing that excellence may go with them also. As a matter of fact, are we
+not astonished almost daily by the superb qualities shown by the average
+man, the heroism shown by firemen, engineers, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors? Do we not know that true greatness, true nobility and strength of
+soul, may go and do go with commonplace, every-day humanity? Whitman would
+lift the average man to a higher average, and still to a higher, without
+at all weakening the qualities which he shares with universal humanity as
+it exists over and under all special advantages and social refinements.
+He says that one of the convictions that underlie his "Leaves" is the
+conviction that the "crowning growth of the United States is to be
+spiritual and heroic,"--a prophecy which in our times, I confess, does not
+seem very near fulfillment.
+
+He does not look longingly and anxiously toward the genteel social gods,
+but quite the contrary. In the library and parlor, he confesses he is as a
+gawk or one dumb. The great middle-class ideal, which is mainly the ideal
+of our own people, Whitman flouts and affronts. There are things to him of
+higher import than to have wealth and be respectable and in the mode.
+
+We might charge him with narrowness and partiality and with seeing only
+half truths, as Mr. Stedman has done, did he simply rest with the native
+as opposed to the cultivated, with brawn as opposed to brains. What he
+does do, what the upshot of his teaching shows, is that he identifies
+himself with the masses, with those universal human currents out of which
+alone a national spirit arises, as opposed to isolated schools and
+coteries and a privileged few. Whitman decries culture only so far as it
+cuts a man off from his fellows, clips away or effaces the sweet, native,
+healthy parts of him, and begets a bloodless, superstitious, infidelistic
+class. "The best culture," he says, "will always be that of the manly and
+courageous instincts and loving perceptions, and of self-respect." For
+the most part, our schooling is like our milling, which takes the bone
+and nerve building elements out of our bread. The bread of life demands
+the coarse as well as the fine, and this is what Whitman stands for.
+
+In his spirit and affiliation with the great mass of the people, with the
+commoner, sturdier, human traits, Whitman is more of the type of Angelo,
+or Rembrandt, or the antique bards, than he is like modern singers. He was
+not a product of the schools, but of the race.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES
+
+
+I
+
+It has been said, and justly I think, that in Whitman we see the first
+appearance in literature of the genuinely democratic spirit on anything
+like an ample scale. Plenty of men of democratic tendencies and
+affiliations have appeared, but none that have carried the temper and
+quality of the people, the masses, into the same regions, or blended the
+same humanity and commonness with the same commanding personality and
+spirituality. In recent English poetry the names of Burns and Wordsworth
+occur to mind, but neither of these men had anything like Whitman's
+breadth of relation to the mass of mankind, or expressed anything like his
+sweeping cosmic emotion. Wordsworth's muse was clad in homespun, but in no
+strict sense was his genius democratic--using the word to express, not a
+political creed, but the genius of modern civilization. He made much of
+the common man, common life, common things, but always does the poet stand
+apart, the recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, loving and contemplating
+these things for purposes of his art. Only through intellectual sympathy
+is he a part of what he surveys. In Whitman the common or average man has
+grown haughty, almost aristocratic. He coolly confronts the old types, the
+man of caste, culture, privileges, royalties, and relegates him to the
+past. He readjusts the standards, and estimates everything from the human
+and democratic point of view. In his scheme, the old traditions--the
+aristocratic, the scholastic, the ecclesiastical, the military, the social
+traditions--play no part. He dared to look at life, past and present, from
+the American and scientific standpoint. He turns to the old types a pride
+and complacency equal to their own.
+
+Indeed, we see in the character which Whitman has exploited and in the
+interest of which his poems are written, the democratic type fully
+realized,--pride and self-reliance equal to the greatest, and these
+matched with a love, a compassion, a spirit of fraternity and equality,
+that are entirely foreign to the old order of things.
+
+
+II
+
+At first sight Whitman does not seem vitally related to his own country
+and people; he seems an anomaly, an exception, or like one of those
+mammoth sports that sometimes appear in the vegetable world. The Whitman
+ideal is not, and has never been, the conscious ideal of the mass of our
+people. We have aspired more to the ideal of the traditional fine
+gentleman as he has figured in British letters. There seems to have been
+no hint or prophecy of such a man as Whitman in our New England
+literature, unless it be in Emerson, and here it is in the region of the
+abstract and not of the concrete. Emerson's prayer was for the absolutely
+self-reliant man, but when Whitman refused to follow his advice with
+regard to certain passages in the "Leaves," the sage withheld further
+approval of the work.
+
+We must look for the origins of Whitman, I think, in the deep
+world-currents that have been shaping the destinies of the race for the
+past hundred years or more; in the universal loosening, freeing, and
+removing obstructions; in the emancipation of the people, and their coming
+forward and taking possession of the world in their own right; in the
+triumph of democracy and of science; the downfall of kingcraft and
+priestcraft; the growth of individualism and non-conformity; the
+increasing disgust of the soul of man with forms and ceremonies; the
+sentiment of realism and positivism, the religious hunger that flees the
+churches; the growing conviction that life, that nature, are not failures,
+that the universe is good, that man is clean and divine inside and out,
+that God is immanent in nature,--all these things and more lie back of
+Whitman, and hold a causal relation to him.
+
+
+III
+
+Of course the essential elements of all first-class artistic and literary
+productions are always the same, just as nature, just as man, are
+essentially the same everywhere. Yet the literature of every people has a
+stamp of its own, starts from and implies antecedents and environments
+peculiar to itself.
+
+Just as ripe, mellow, storied, ivy-towered, velvet-turfed England lies
+back of Tennyson, and is vocal through him; just as canny, covenanting,
+conscience-burdened, craggy, sharp-tongued Scotland lies back of Carlyle;
+just as thrifty, well-schooled, well-housed, prudent, and moral New
+England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them,--so
+America as a whole, our turbulent democracy, our self-glorification, our
+faith in the future, our huge mass movements, our continental spirit, our
+sprawling, sublime, and unkempt nature, lie back of Whitman and are
+implied by his work.
+
+He had not the shaping, manipulating gift to carve his American material
+into forms of ideal beauty, and did not claim to have. He did not value
+beauty as an abstraction.
+
+What Whitman did that is unprecedented was, to take up the whole country
+into himself, fuse it, imbue it with soul and poetic emotion, and recast
+it as a sort of colossal Walt Whitman. He has not so much treated American
+themes as he has identified himself with everything American, and made the
+whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross
+materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses
+with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them
+with something like the breath of universal nature. His special gift is
+his magnetic and unconquerable personality, his towering egoism united
+with such a fund of human sympathy. His power is centripetal, so to
+speak,--he draws everything into himself like a maelstrom; the centrifugal
+power of the great dramatic artists, the power to get out of and away from
+himself, he has not. It was not for Whitman to write the dramas and
+tragedies of democracy, as Shakespeare wrote those of feudalism, or as
+Tennyson sang in delectable verse the swan-song of an overripe
+civilization. It was for him to voice the democratic spirit, to show it
+full-grown, athletic, haughtily taking possession of the world and
+redistributing the prizes according to its own standards. It was for him
+to sow broadcast over the land the germs of larger, more sane, more robust
+types of men and women, indicating them in himself.
+
+In him the new spirit of democracy first completely knows itself, is proud
+of itself, has faith and joy in itself, is fearless, tolerant, religious,
+aggressive, triumphant, and bestows itself lavishly upon all sides. It is
+tentative, doubtful, hesitating no longer. It is at ease in the world, it
+takes possession, it fears no rival, it advances with confident step.
+
+No man was ever more truly fathered by what is formative and expansive in
+his country and times than was Whitman. Not by the literature of his
+country was he begotten, but by the spirit that lies back of all, and
+that begat America itself,--the America that Europe loves and fears, that
+she comes to this country to see, and looks expectantly, but for the most
+part vainly, in our books to find.
+
+It seems to me he is distinctly a continental type. His sense of space, of
+magnitude, his processional pages, his unloosedness, his wide horizons,
+his vanishing boundaries,--always something unconfined and unconfinable,
+always the deferring and undemonstrable. The bad as well as the good
+traits of his country and his people are doubtless implied by his work.
+
+If he does not finally escape from our unripe Americanism, if he does not
+rise through it all and clarify it and turn it to ideal uses, draw out the
+spiritual meanings, then avaunt! we want nothing of him.
+
+  "The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell.
+  The former I graft and increase upon myself,
+  The latter I translate into a new tongue."
+
+
+The vital and the formative the true poet always engrafts and increases
+upon himself, and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the
+accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against
+Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers
+of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when
+his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the
+first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the
+modern; we see them translated into character; we see them tried by
+universal standards; we see them vivified by a powerful imagination. We
+see America as an idea, and see its relation to other ideas. We get a new
+conception of the value of the near, the common, the familiar. New light
+is thrown upon the worth and significance of the common people, and it is
+not the light of an abstract idea, but the light of a concrete example. We
+see the democratic type on a scale it has never before assumed; it is on a
+par with any of the types that have ruled the world in the past, the
+military, the aristocratic, the regal. It is at home, it has taken
+possession, it can hold its own. Henceforth the world is going its way. If
+it is over-confident, over-self-assertive, too American, that is the
+surplusage of the poet, of whom we do not want a penny prudence and
+caution; make your prophecy bold enough and it fulfills itself. Whitman
+has betrayed no doubt or hesitation in his poetry. His assumptions and
+vaticinations are tremendous, but they are uttered with an authority and
+an assurance that convince like natural law.
+
+
+IV
+
+I think he gives new meaning to democracy and America. In him we see a new
+type, rising out of new conditions, and fully able to justify itself and
+hold its own. It is the new man in the new world, no longer dependent upon
+or facing toward the old. I confess that to me America and the modern
+would not mean very much without Whitman. The final proof was wanting
+till they gave birth to a personality equal to the old types.
+
+Discussions and speculations about democracy do not carry very far, after
+all; to preach equality is not much. But when we see these things made
+into a man, and see the world through his eyes, and see new joy and new
+meaning in it, our doubts and perplexities are cleared up. Our universal
+balloting, and schooling, and material prosperity prove nothing: can your
+democracy produce a man who shall carry its spirit into loftiest regions,
+and prove as helpful and masterful under the new conditions as the by-gone
+types were under the old?
+
+
+V
+
+I predict a great future for Whitman, because the world is so unmistakably
+going his way. The three or four great currents of the century--the
+democratic current, the scientific current, the humanitarian current, the
+new religious current, and what flows out of them--are underneath all
+Whitman has written. They shape all and make all. They do not appear in
+him as mere dicta, or intellectual propositions, but as impulses, will,
+character, flesh-and-blood reality. We get these things, not as sentiments
+or yet theories, but as a man. We see life and the world as they appear to
+the inevitable democrat, the inevitable lover, the inevitable believer in
+God and immortality, the inevitable acceptor of absolute science.
+
+We are all going his way. We are more and more impatient of formalities,
+ceremonies, and make-believe; we more and more crave the essential, the
+real. More and more we want to see the thing as in itself it is; more and
+more is science opening our eyes to see the divine, the illustrious, the
+universal in the common, the near at hand; more and more do we tire of
+words and crave things; deeper and deeper sinks the conviction that
+personal qualities alone tell,--that the man is all in all, that the
+brotherhood of the race is not a dream, that love covers all and atones
+for all.
+
+Everything in our modern life and culture that tends to broaden,
+liberalize, free; that tends to make hardy, self-reliant, virile; that
+tends to widen charity, deepen affection between man and man, to foster
+sanity and self-reliance; that tends to kindle our appreciation of the
+divinity of all things; that heightens our rational enjoyment of life;
+that inspires hope in the future and faith in the unseen,--are on
+Whitman's side. All these things prepare the way for him.
+
+On the other hand, the strain and strife and hoggishness of our
+civilization, our trading politics, our worship of conventions, our
+millionaire ideals, our high-pressure lives, our pruriency, our
+sordidness, our perversions of nature, our scoffing caricaturing
+tendencies, are against him. He antagonizes all these things.
+
+The more democratic we become, the more we are prepared for Whitman; the
+more tolerant, fraternal, sympathetic we become, the more we are ready
+for Whitman; the more we inure ourselves to the open air and to real
+things, the more we value and understand our own bodies, the more the
+woman becomes the mate and equal of the man, the more social equality
+prevails,--the sooner will come to Whitman fullness and fruition.
+
+
+VI
+
+Some of our own critics have been a good deal annoyed by the fact that
+many European scholars and experts have recognized Whitman as the only
+distinctive American poet thus far. It would seem as if our reputation for
+culture and good manners is at stake. We want Europe to see America in our
+literary poets like Lowell, or Longfellow, or Whittier. And Europe may
+well see much that is truly representative of America in these and in
+other New England poets. She may see our aspiration toward her own ideals
+of culture and refinement; she may see native and patriotic themes firing
+Lowell and Whittier; she may see a certain spirit and temper begotten by
+our natural environment reflected in Bryant, our delicate and gentle
+humanities and scholarly aptitudes shining in Longfellow. But in every
+case she sees a type she has long been familiar with. All the poets'
+thoughts, moods, points of view, effects, aims, methods, are what she has
+long known. These are not the poets of a new _world_, but of a new
+_England_. The new-world book implies more than a new talent, more than a
+fresh pair of eyes, a fresh and original mind like the poets named; such
+men are required to keep up the old line of succession in English
+authorship. What is implied is a new national and continental spirit,
+which must arise and voice the old eternal truths through a large, new,
+democratic personality,--a new man, and, beyond and above him, a new
+heaven and a new earth.
+
+Our band of New England poets have carried the New England spirit into
+poetry,--its sense of fitness, order, propriety, its shrewdness,
+inventiveness, aptness, and its aspiration for the pure and noble in life.
+They have finely exemplified the best Yankee traits; but in no instance
+were these traits merged in a personality large enough, bold enough, and
+copious and democratic enough to give them national and continental
+significance. It would be absurd to claim that the pulse-beat of a great
+people or a great era is to be felt in the work of any of these poets.
+
+Whitman is responded to in Europe, because he expresses a new type with
+adequate power,--not, as has been so often urged, simply because he is
+strange, and gives the jaded literary palate over there a new fillip. He
+meets the demand for something in American literature that should not face
+toward Europe, that should joyfully stand upon its own ground and yet
+fulfill the conditions of greatness. He fully satisfies the thirst for
+individualism amid these awakening peoples, and the thirst for nationalism
+also. He realizes the democratic ideal, no longer tentative or apologetic,
+but taking possession of the world as its own and reappraising the wares
+it finds there.
+
+
+VII
+
+The American spirit is a continental spirit; there is nothing insular or
+narrow about it. It is informal, nonchalant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive,
+patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of
+particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable,
+unostentatious, inclined to exaggerate, generous, unrefined,--never
+meddlesome, never hypercritical, never hoggish, never exclusive. Whitman
+shared the hopeful optimistic temperament of his countrymen, the faith and
+confidence begotten by a great, fertile, sunny land. He expresses the
+independence of the people,--their pride, their jealousy of superiors,
+their contempt of authority (not always beautiful). Our want of reverence
+and veneration are supplemented in him with world-wide sympathies and
+good-fellowship.
+
+Emerson is our divine man, the precious quintessence of the New England
+type, invaluable for his stimulating and ennobling strain; but his genius
+is too astral, too select, too remote, to incarnate and give voice to the
+national spirit. Clothe him with flesh and blood, make his daring
+affirmations real and vital in a human personality and imbued with the
+American spirit, and we are on the way to Whitman.
+
+Moreover, the strong, undisguised man-flavor of "Leaves of Grass," the
+throb and pressure in it of those things that make life rank and make it
+masterful, and that make for the virility and perpetuity of the race, are,
+if it must be confessed, more keenly relished abroad than in this country,
+so thoroughly are we yet under the spell of the merely refined and
+conventional. We fail to see that in letters, as in life, the great prizes
+are not to the polished, but to the virile and the strong.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
+speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
+made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
+enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
+the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
+personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
+over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
+them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
+his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
+of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
+mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
+himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
+those who live in the open air, even laying claim to the "rowdyish." He is
+proud of freckles, sun-tan, brawn, and holds up the powerful and
+unrefined.
+
+  "I am enamor'd of growing out-doors,
+  Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
+  Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes
+        and mauls, and the drivers of horses;
+  I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out."
+
+
+"Nothing endures," he says, "but personal qualities." "Produce great
+persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently
+bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union?
+but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout
+at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He
+is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He
+sees all and embraces and encloses all.
+
+Then we see united and harmonized in Whitman the two great paramount
+tendencies of our time and of the modern world,--the altruistic or
+humanitarian tendency and the individualistic tendency; or, democracy and
+individualism, pride and equality, or, rather, pride in equality. These
+two forces, as they appear in separate individuals, are often
+antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman
+they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and
+uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping
+fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one
+motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his
+fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him
+with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he claims for
+himself he demands in the same terms for all. He has set such an example
+of self-trust and self-assertion as has no parallel in our literature, at
+the same time that he has set an equal example in practical democracy and
+universal brotherhood.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman's democracy is the breath of his nostrils, the light of his eyes,
+the blood in his veins. The reader does not feel that here is some fine
+scholar, some fine poet singing the praises of democracy; he feels that
+here is a democrat, probably, as Thoreau surmised, the greatest the world
+has yet seen, turning the light of a great love, a great intellect, a
+great soul, upon America, upon contemporary life and events, and upon the
+universe, and reading new lessons, new meanings, therein. He is a great
+poet and prophet, speaking through the average man, speaking as one of the
+people, and interpreting life from the point of view of absolute
+democracy.
+
+True, the people in their average taste and perceptions are crude and
+flippant and superficial, and often the victims of mountebanks and fools;
+yet, as forming the body of our social and political organism, and the
+chief factor in the world-problem of to-day, they are the exponents of
+great forces and laws, and often, in emergencies, show the wisdom and
+unimpeachableness of Nature herself. Deep-hidden currents and forces in
+them are liable to come to the surface, and when the politicians get in
+their way, or miscalculate them, as so often happens, they are crushed.
+Whitman is a projection into literature of the cosmic sense and conscience
+of the people, and their participation in the forces that are shaping the
+world in our century. Much comes to a head in him. Much comes to joyous
+speech and song, that heretofore had only come to thought and speculation.
+A towering, audacious personality has appeared which is strictly the fruit
+of the democratic spirit, and which has voiced itself in an impassioned
+utterance touching the whole problem of national and individual life.
+
+
+X
+
+The Whitman literature is democratic, not in the sense that it caters to
+the taste of the masses or to the taste of the average man; for, as a
+matter of fact, the masses and the average man are likely to be the last
+to recognize its value. The common people, the average newspaper-reading
+citizens, are much more likely to be drawn by the artificial and the
+conventional. But it is democratic because it is filled with the spirit of
+absolute human equality and brotherhood, and gives out the atmosphere of
+the universal, primary, human traits. The social, artificial, accidental
+distinctions of wealth, culture, position, etc., have not influenced the
+poet in the slightest degree. Whitman finds his joy and his triumph, not
+in being better than other people or above them, but in being one with
+them, and sharing their sins as well as their virtues.
+
+  "As if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as
+        myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that
+        others possess the same."
+
+
+This is one step further than others have taken, and makes democracy
+complete in itself. Again, his work identifies itself with the democratic
+ideal in getting rid of the professional and arbitrary elements of poetry,
+and appealing to the reader entirely through its spirit and content. It is
+as democratic in this respect as the workman in the field, or the mechanic
+at his bench.
+
+The poems are bathed and flooded with the quality of the common people;
+with the commonness and nearness which they share with real things and
+with all open-air nature,--with hunters, travelers, soldiers, workers in
+all fields, and with rocks, trees, and woods. It is only in the spirit of
+these things that a man himself can have health, sweetness, and
+proportion; and only in their spirit that he can give an essentially sound
+judgment of a work of art, no matter what the subject of it may be.
+
+This spirit of the "commonest, cheapest, nearest" is the only spirit in
+which man's concrete life can be carried forward. We do not live and
+breathe and grow and multiply, we do not have health and sanity and
+wholeness and proportion, we do not subdue and improve and possess the
+earth, in the spirit of something exclusive, exceptional, faraway,
+aristocratic, but in the spirit of the common and universal. The only
+demand is that, in a work of art, the common or universal shall be
+vitalized with poetic thought and enthusiasm, or imbued with the ideal of
+a rare and high excellence.
+
+
+XI
+
+Our critics have been fond of taunting Whitman with the fact that the
+common people, the workers, of whom he makes so much, and to whom he
+perpetually appeals, do not read him, or show any liking for his poems at
+all.
+
+Whitman's appeal to the common people, to the democratic masses, is an
+appeal to the future; it is an appeal to the universal human conscience
+and intelligence, as they exist above and beneath all special advantages
+of birth and culture and stand related to the total system of things. It
+also calls attention to the fact that the spirit in which he writes, and
+in which he is to be read, is the spirit of open-air life and nature.
+
+  "No school or shutter'd room commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children, better than they,"
+
+because the simple, unforced, unrefined elements of human nature are those
+out of which the poems sprang and with which they are charged. Their
+spirit is closer akin to unlettered humanity than to the over-intellectual
+and sophisticated products of the schools.
+
+Of course "roughs and little children" can make nothing of "Leaves of
+Grass," but unless the trained reader has that fund of fresh, simple,
+wholesome nature, and the love for real things, which unlettered humanity
+possesses, he will make nothing of it either.
+
+
+XII
+
+It has been truly said that "the noblest seer is ever over-possessed."
+This has been the case with nearly all original, first-class men. Carlyle
+furnished a good illustration of its truth in our own time. He was
+over-possessed with his idea of the hero and hero-worship. And it may be
+that Whitman was over-possessed with the idea of democracy, America,
+nationality, and the need of a radically new departure in poetic
+literature. Yet none knew better than he that in the long run the
+conditions of life and of human happiness and progress remain about the
+same; that the same price must still be paid for the same things; that
+character alone counts; that the same problem "how to live" ever confronts
+us; and that democracy, America, nationality, are only way stations, and
+by no means the end of the route. The all-leveling tendency of democracy
+is certainly not in the interest of literature. The world is not saved by
+the average man, but by the man much above the average, the rare and
+extraordinary man,--by the "remnant," as Arnold called them.
+
+No one knew this better than Whitman, and he said that "one main
+genesis-motive" of his "Leaves" was the conviction that the crowning
+growth of the United States was to be spiritual and heroic. Only "superb
+persons" can finally justify him.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE
+
+
+I
+
+The stupendous disclosures of modern science, and what they mean when
+translated into the language of man's ethical and aesthetic nature, have
+not yet furnished to any considerable extent the inspiration of poems.
+That all things are alike divine, that this earth is a star in the
+heavens, that the celestial laws and processes are here underfoot, that
+size is only relative, that good and bad are only relative, that forces
+are convertible and interchangeable, that matter is indestructible, that
+death is the law of life, that man is of animal origin, that the sum of
+forces is constant, that the universe is a complexus of powers
+inconceivably subtle and vital, that motion is the law of all things,--in
+fact, that we have got rid of the notions of the absolute, the fixed, the
+arbitrary, and the notion of origins and of the dualism of the world,--to
+what extent will these and kindred ideas modify art and all aesthetic
+production? The idea of the divine right of kings and the divine authority
+of priests is gone; that, in some other time or some other place God was
+nearer man than now and here,--this idea is gone. Indeed, the whole of
+man's spiritual and religious belief which forms the background of
+literature has changed,--a change as great as if the sky were to change
+from blue to red or to orange. The light of day is different. But
+literature deals with life, and the essential conditions of life, you say,
+always remain the same. Yes, but the expression of their artistic values
+is forever changing. If we ask where is the modern imaginative work that
+is based upon these revelations of science, the work in which they are the
+blood and vital juices, I answer, "Leaves of Grass," and no other. The
+work is the outgrowth of science and modern ideas, just as truly as Dante
+is the outgrowth of mediaeval ideas and superstitions; and the imagination,
+the creative spirit, is just as unhampered in Whitman as in Dante or in
+Shakespeare. The poet finds the universe just as plastic and ductile, just
+as obedient to his will, and just as ready to take the impress of his
+spirit, as did these supreme artists. Science has not hardened it at all.
+The poet opposes himself to it, and masters it and rises superior. He is
+not balked or oppressed for a moment. He knows from the start what science
+can bring him, what it can give, and what it can take away; he knows the
+universe is not orphaned; he finds more grounds than ever for a paean of
+thanksgiving and praise. His conviction of the identity of soul and body,
+matter and spirit, does not shake his faith in immortality in the least.
+His faith arises, not from half views, but from whole views. In him the
+idea of the soul, of humanity, of identity, easily balanced the idea of
+the material universe. Man was more than a match for nature. It was all
+for him, and not for itself. His enormous egotism, or hold upon the
+central thought or instinct of human worth and import, was an anchor that
+never gave way. Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an
+iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world
+of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as
+immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and
+anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old
+bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the
+universe is directed to one man,--to you. His anthropomorphism is not a
+projection of himself into nature, but an absorption of nature in himself.
+The tables are turned. It is not alien or superhuman beings that he sees
+and hears in nature, but his own that he finds everywhere. All gods are
+merged in himself.
+
+Not the least fear, not the least doubt or dismay, in this book. Not one
+moment's hesitation or losing of the way. And it is not merely an
+intellectual triumph, but the triumph of soul and personality. The iron
+knots are not untied, they are melted. Indeed, the poet's contentment and
+triumph in view of the fullest recognition of all the sin and sorrow of
+the world, and of all that baffles and dwarfs, is not the least of the
+remarkable features of the book.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil
+under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and
+illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties
+perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and
+exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained
+more than we have lost. The world is anew created by science and
+democracy, and he pronounces it good with the joy and fervor of the old
+faith.
+
+He shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets of note in
+our time who have drawn inspiration from this source, or viewed the
+universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern
+poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious
+compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was
+stupendous; the other childish and empty. But Whitman and Tennyson were
+fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vision that
+matches the best science can do. Tennyson drew upon science more for his
+images and illustrations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and
+appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed
+Whitman's imagination and made him bold; its effects were moral and
+spiritual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellectual; it enlarged
+his vocabulary without strengthening his faith. Indeed, one would say,
+from certain passages in "In Memoriam," that it had distinctly weakened
+his faith. Let us note for a moment the different ways these two poets use
+science. In his poem to Fitzgerald, Tennyson draws upon the nebular
+hypothesis for an image:--
+
+  "A planet equal to the sun
+  Which cast it, that large infidel
+  Your Omar."
+
+In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
+"of an earth that is dead."
+
+  "The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of
+        space,
+  Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."
+
+In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:--
+
+  "The fires that arch this dusky dot--
+    Yon myriad-worlded way--
+  The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,
+    World-isles in lonely skies,
+  Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
+    Our brief humanities."
+
+
+As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
+not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
+anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
+makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
+the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:--
+
+  "I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains,
+        esculent roots,
+  And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
+  And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
+  And call anything close again, when I desire it.
+
+  "In vain the speeding or shyness,
+  In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,
+  In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
+  In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
+  In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
+  In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
+  In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
+  In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
+  In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
+  I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.
+  My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
+  On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,
+  All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.
+
+  "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
+  Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there,
+  I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
+  And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
+
+  "Long I was hugged close--long and long.
+  Immense have been the preparations for me,
+  Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,
+  Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
+  For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
+  They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
+
+  "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me,
+  My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
+  For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
+  The long, slow strata piled to rest it in,
+  Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
+  Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with
+        care.
+  All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
+  Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.
+
+  "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
+  And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of
+        the farther systems:
+  Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
+  Outward, outward, and forever outward:
+  My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels;
+  He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
+  And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
+
+  "There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage.
+  If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the
+        palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float,
+        it would not avail in the long run.
+  We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
+  And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther.
+  A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not
+        hazard the span or make it impatient.
+  They are but parts--anything is but a part,
+  See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+  Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
+
+In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is
+always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of
+the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the
+man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality
+has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does
+not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional
+realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man
+refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the
+presence of the cosmic laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all
+directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the
+"full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
+outside of itself.
+
+  "I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
+  And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO RELIGION
+
+
+Whitman, as I have elsewhere said, was swayed by two or three great
+passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He
+thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.
+
+  "The soul,
+  Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
+        water ebbs and flows."
+
+
+He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy
+manly or womanly development, without religion.
+
+  "I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these
+        States must be their Religion,
+  Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur."
+
+All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.
+
+  "Each is not for its own sake,
+  I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's
+        sake."
+
+All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business
+pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion.
+
+  "For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
+        life of the earth,
+  Any more than such are to Religion."
+
+
+Again he says:--
+
+  "My Comrade!
+  For you to share with me two greatnesses--And a third one, rising
+        inclusive and more resplendent,
+  The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion."
+
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates
+is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It was larger than any creed that has
+yet been formulated. It was the conviction of the man of science touched
+and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his
+life its chief elements were faith, hope, charity. Its object was to
+prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind
+what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."
+
+The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse.
+Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had
+resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated.
+The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of
+the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was
+through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The
+great mass of the human race was doomed to endless perdition. Now there is
+no trace of this religion in Whitman, and it does not seem to have left
+any shadow upon him. Ecclesiasticism is dead; he clears the ground for a
+new growth. To the priests he says: "Your day is done."
+
+He sings a new song; he tastes a new joy in life. The earth is as divine
+as heaven, and there is no god more sacred than yourself. It is as if the
+world had been anew created, and Adam had once more been placed in the
+garden,--the world, with all consequences of the fall, purged from him.
+
+Hence we have in Whitman the whole human attitude towards the universe,
+towards God, towards life and death, towards good and evil, completely
+changed. We have absolute faith and acceptance in place of the fear and
+repentance of the old creeds; we have death welcomed as joyously as life,
+we have political and social equality as motifs and impulses, and not
+merely as sentiments. He would show us the muse of poetry, as impartial,
+as sweeping in its vision, as modern, as real, as free from the morbid and
+make-believe, as the muse of science. He sees good in all, beauty in all.
+It is not the old piety, it is the new faith; it is not the old worship,
+it is the new acceptance; not the old, corroding religious pessimism, but
+the new scientific optimism.
+
+He does not deny, he affirms; he does not criticise, he celebrates; his is
+not a call to repentance, it is a call to triumph:--
+
+  "I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
+  None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,
+  None has begun to think how divine he himself is, or how certain the
+        future is."
+
+He accepted science absolutely, yet science was not an end in itself: it
+was not his dwelling; he but entered by it to an area of his dwelling.
+
+The flower of science was religion. Without this religion, or something
+akin to it,--without some spiritual, emotional life that centred about an
+ideal,--Whitman urged that there could be no permanent national or
+individual development. In the past this ideal was found in the
+supernatural; for us and the future democratic ages, it must be found in
+the natural, in the now and the here.
+
+The aristocratic tradition not only largely shaped the literature of the
+past, it shaped the religion: man was a culprit, his life a rebellion; his
+proper attitude toward the unseen powers was that of a subject to his
+offended sovereign,--one of prostration and supplication. Heaven was a
+select circle reserved for the few,--the aristocracy of the pure and just.
+The religion of a democratic and scientific era, as voiced by Whitman and
+as exemplified in his life, is of quite another character,--not
+veneration, but joy and triumph; not fear, but love; not self-abasement,
+but self-exaltation; not sacrifice, but service: in fact, not religion at
+all in the old sense of the spiritual at war with the natural, the divine
+with the human, this world a vale of tears, and mundane things but filth
+and ashes, heaven for the good and hell for the bad; but in the new sense
+of the divinity of all things, of the equality of gods and men, of the
+brotherhood of the race, of the identity of the material and the
+spiritual, of the beneficence of death and the perfection of the universe.
+The poet turns his face to earth and not to heaven; he finds the
+miraculous, the spiritual, in the things about him, and gods and goddesses
+in the men and women he meets. He effaces the old distinctions; he
+establishes a sort of universal suffrage in spiritual matters; there are
+no select circles, no privileged persons. Is this the democracy of
+religion? liberty, fraternity, and equality carried out in the spiritual
+sphere? Death is the right hand of God, and evil plays a necessary part
+also. Nothing is discriminated against; there are no reprisals or
+postponements, no dualism or devilism. Everything is in its place; man's
+life and all the things of his life are well-considered.
+
+Carried out in practice, this democratic religion will not beget priests,
+or churches, or creeds, or rituals, but a life cheerful and full on all
+sides, helpful, loving, unworldly, tolerant, open-souled, temperate,
+fearless, free, and contemplating with pleasure, rather than alarm, "the
+exquisite transition of death."
+
+
+
+
+A FINAL WORD
+
+
+After all I have written about Whitman, I feel at times that the main
+thing I wanted to say about him I have not said, cannot say; the best
+about him cannot be told anyway. "My final merit I refuse you." His full
+significance in connection with the great modern movement; how he embodies
+it all and speaks out of it, and yet maintains his hold upon the
+primitive, the aboriginal; how he presupposes science and culture, yet
+draws his strength from that which antedates these things; how he glories
+in the present, and yet is sustained and justified by the past; how he is
+the poet of America and the modern, and yet translates these things into
+universal truths; how he is the poet of wickedness, while yet every fibre
+of him is sound and good; how his page is burdened with the material, the
+real, the contemporary, while yet his hold upon the ideal, the spiritual,
+never relaxes; how he is the poet of the body, while yet he is in even
+fuller measure the poet of the soul; in fact, how all contradictions are
+finally reconciled in him,--all these things and more, I say, I feel that
+I have not set forth with the clearness and emphasis the subject demanded.
+Other students of him will approach him on other lines, and will disclose
+meanings that I have missed.
+
+Writing about him, as Symonds said, is enormously difficult. At times I
+feel as if I was almost as much at sea with regard to him as when I first
+began to study him; not at sea with regard to his commanding genius and
+power, but with regard to any adequate statement and summary of him in
+current critical terms. One cannot define and classify him as he can a
+more highly specialized poetic genius. What is he like? He is like
+everything. He is like the soil which holds the germs of a thousand forms
+of life; he is like the grass, common, universal, perennial, formless; he
+is like your own heart, mystical yearning, rebellious, contradictory, but
+ever throbbing with life. He is fluid, generative, electric; he is full of
+the germs, potencies, and latencies of things; he provokes thought without
+satisfying it; he is formless without being void; he is both Darwinian and
+Dantesque. He is the great reconciler, he united and harmonized so many
+opposites in himself. As a man he united the masculine and feminine
+elements in a remarkable degree; he united the innocent vanity of the
+child with the self-reliance of a god. In his moral aspects, he united
+egoism and altruism, pride and charity, individualism and democracy,
+fierce patriotism and the cosmopolitan spirit; in his literary aspects he
+united mysticism and realism, the poet and prophet, the local and the
+universal; in his religious aspects he united faith and agnosticism, the
+glorification of the body and all objective things, with an unshakable
+trust in the reality of the invisible world.
+
+Rich in the elements of poetry, a London critic says, almost beyond any
+other poet of his time, and yet the conscious, elaborate, crystallic,
+poetic work which the critic demanded of him, carefully stopping short of,
+quite content to hold it all in solution, and give his reader an impulse
+rather than a specimen.
+
+I have accepted Whitman entire and without reservation. I could not do
+otherwise. It was clear enough to me that he was to be taken as a whole or
+not at all. We cannot cut and carve a man. The latest poet brings us
+poetic wares, curiously and beautifully carved and wrought specimens, some
+of which we accept and some of which we pass by. Whitman brings us no
+cunning handicraft of the muses: he brings us a gospel, he brings us a
+man, he brings us a new revelation of life; and either his work appeals to
+us as a whole, or it does not so appeal. He will not live in separate
+passages, or in a few brief poems, any more than Shakespeare or Homer or
+Dante, or the Bible, so lives.
+
+The chief thing about the average literary poet is his poetic gift, apart
+from any other consideration; we select from what he brings us as we
+select from a basket of fruit. The chief thing about Whitman is the
+personality which the poetic gift is engaged in exploiting; the excitement
+of our literary or artistic sense is always less than the excitement of
+our sense of life and of real things. We get in him a fixed point of view,
+a new vantage-ground of personality from which to survey life. It is less
+what he brings, and more what he is, than with other poets. To take him by
+fragments, picking out poetic tidbits here and there, rejecting all the
+rest, were like valuing a walk through the fields and woods only for the
+flowers culled here and there, or the bits of color in the grass or
+foliage. Is the air, the sunshine, the free spaces, the rocks, the soil,
+the trees, and the exhilaration of it all, nothing? There are flowers in
+Whitman, too, but they are amid the rocks or under the trees, and seem
+quite unpremeditated and by the way, and never the main concern. If our
+quest is for these alone, we shall surely be disappointed. "In order to
+appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose," says Joel Chandler Harris,
+"it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp
+in instant and express admiration the vast group of facts that make
+man,--that make liberty,--that make America. There is no poetry in the
+details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of
+the mighty forces behind them,--the inevitable, unaccountable,
+irresistible forward movement of man in the making of this republic."
+
+And again: "Those who approach Walt Whitman's poetry from the literary
+side are sure to be disappointed. Whatever else it is, it is not literary.
+Its art is its own, and the melody of it must be sought in other
+suggestions than those of metre.... Those who are merely literary will
+find little substance in the great drama of Democracy which is outlined
+by Walt Whitman in his writings,--it is no distinction to call them poems.
+But those who know nature at first hand--who know man, who see in this
+Republic something more than a political government--will find therein the
+thrill and glow of poetry and the essence of melody. Not the poetry that
+culture stands in expectation of, nor the melody that capers in verse and
+metre, but those rarer intimations and suggestions that are born in
+primeval solitudes, or come whirling from the vast funnel of the storm."
+How admirable! how true! No man has ever spoken more to the point upon
+Walt Whitman.
+
+The appearance of such a man as Whitman involves deep world-forces of race
+and time. He is rooted in the very basic structure of his age. After what
+I have already said, my reader will not be surprised when I tell him that
+I look upon Whitman as the one mountain thus far in our literary
+landscape. To me he changes the whole aspect, almost the very climate, of
+our literature. He adds the much-needed ruggedness, breadth, audacity,
+independence, and the elements of primal strength and health. We owe much
+to Emerson. But Emerson was much more a _made_ man than was Whitman,--much
+more the result of secondary forces, the college, the church, and of New
+England social and literary culture. With all his fervid humanity and
+deeply ingrained modernness, Whitman has the virtues of the primal and the
+savage. "Leaves of Grass" has not the charm, or the kind of charm, of the
+more highly wrought artistic works, but it has the incentive of nature and
+the charm of real things. We shall not go to it to be soothed and lulled.
+It will always remain among the difficult and heroic undertakings,
+demanding our best moments, our best strength, our morning push and power.
+Like voyaging or mountain-climbing, or facing any danger or hardship by
+land or sea, it fosters manly endeavor and the great virtues of sanity and
+self-reliance.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as
+presented in the original text.
+
+The following misprint has been corrected:
+  "differentation" corrected to "differentiation" (page 18)
+
+Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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diff --git a/30342.zip b/30342.zip
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #30342 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30342)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Whitman
+       A Study
+
+Author: John Burroughs
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2009 [EBook #30342]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Books by John Burroughs.
+
+  WORKS. 14 vols., uniform, 16mo, gilt top, $17.10;
+  half calf, $34.10; half polished morocco, $37.45.
+
+    WAKE-ROBIN.
+
+    WINTER SUNSHINE.
+
+    LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY.
+
+    FRESH FIELDS.
+
+    INDOOR STUDIES.
+
+    BIRDS AND POETS, with Other Papers.
+
+    PEPACTON, and Other Sketches.
+
+    SIGNS AND SEASONS.
+
+    RIVERBY.
+
+    WHITMAN: A STUDY.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.25.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. A Series of Literary Essays.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.10, _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage 11 cents.
+
+  A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to
+  each season of the year, from the writings of John
+  Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON
+  JOHNSON. 12mo, $1.50.
+
+  WHITMAN: A Study. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+  _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50, _net_.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_. Postage, 11 cents.
+
+  WINTER SUNSHINE. _Cambridge Classics Series._
+  Crown 8vo, $1.00.
+
+  WAKE-ROBIN. _Riverside Aldine Series._ 16mo, $1.00.
+
+  SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illustrated.
+  Square 12mo, $1.00. _School Edition_, 60
+  cents, _net_.
+
+
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: WALT WHITMAN]
+
+
+
+
+  WHITMAN
+  _A STUDY_
+
+  BY
+  JOHN BURROUGHS
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1896,
+  BY JOHN BURROUGHS.
+
+  _All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+  PRELIMINARY                                    1
+
+  BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL                     23
+
+  HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS                     73
+
+  HIS SELF-RELIANCE                             85
+
+  HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE           101
+
+  HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS              169
+
+  HIS RELATION TO CULTURE                      205
+
+  HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES    229
+
+  HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE                      249
+
+  HIS RELATION TO RELIGION                     257
+
+  A FINAL WORD                                 263
+
+
+
+
+"_All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
+from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
+from elsewhere._"--TAINE.
+
+"_If you want to tell good Gothic, see if it has the sort of roughness and
+largeness and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness
+which seems always to be the sign manual of the broad vision and massy
+power of men who can see_ past _the work they are doing, and betray here
+and there something like disdain for it._"--RUSKIN.
+
+"_Formerly, during the period termed classic, when literature was governed
+by recognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the
+most perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the
+most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,--the Æneid,
+the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day something else is wanted. For us
+the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
+imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
+The greatest poet is not he who has done the best, it is he who suggests
+the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves
+you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your
+turn._"--SAINTE-BEUVE.
+
+
+
+
+WHITMAN
+
+
+PRELIMINARY
+
+
+I
+
+The writing of this preliminary chapter, and the final survey and revision
+of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild
+place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place
+Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,--an
+amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth
+of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site of
+an ancient lake, now a garden of unknown depth and fertility. Elemental
+ruggedness, savageness, and grandeur, combined with wonderful tenderness,
+modernness, and geniality. There rise the gray scarred cliffs, crowned
+here and there with a dead hemlock or pine, where, morning after morning,
+I have seen the bald-eagle perch, and here at their feet this level area
+of tender humus, with three perennial springs of delicious cold water
+flowing in its margin; a huge granite bowl filled with the elements and
+potencies of life. The scene has a strange fascination for me, and holds
+me here day after day. From the highest point of rocks I can overlook a
+long stretch of the river and of the farming country beyond; I can hear
+owls hoot, hawks scream, and roosters crow. Birds of the garden and
+orchard meet birds of the forest upon the shaggy cedar posts that uphold
+my porch. At dusk the call of the whippoorwill mingles with the chorus of
+the pickerel frogs, and in the morning I hear through the robins' cheerful
+burst the sombre plaint of the mourning-dove. When I tire of my
+manuscript, I walk in the woods, or climb the rocks, or help the men clear
+up the ground, piling and burning the stumps and rubbish. This scene and
+situation, so primitive and secluded, yet so touched with and adapted to
+civilization, responding to the moods of both sides of the life and
+imagination of a modern man, seems, I repeat, typical in many ways of my
+poet, and is a veritable Whitman land. Whitman does not to me suggest the
+wild and unkempt as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the
+elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my
+dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to
+him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and
+placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some
+of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and
+primitive aspects.
+
+His wildness is only the wildness of the great primary forces from which
+we draw our health and strength. Underneath all his unloosedness, or free
+launching forth of himself, is the sanity and repose of nature.
+
+
+II
+
+I first became acquainted with Whitman's poetry through the columns of the
+old "Saturday Press" when I was twenty or twenty-one years old (1858 or
+1859). The first things I remember to have read were "There was a child
+went forth," "This Compost," "As I ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Old
+Ireland," and maybe a few others. I was attracted by the new poet's work
+from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found
+in the current poetry. Meeting Bayard Taylor about this time, I spoke to
+him about Whitman. "Yes," he said, "there is something in him, but he is a
+man of colossal egotism."
+
+A few years later a friend sent me a copy of the Thayer & Eldridge edition
+of "Leaves of Grass" of 1860. It proved a fascinating but puzzling book to
+me. I grazed upon it like a colt upon a mountain, taking what tasted good
+to me, and avoiding what displeased me, but having little or no conception
+of the purport of the work as a whole. I found passages and whole poems
+here and there that I never tired of reading, and that gave a strange
+fillip to my moral and intellectual nature, but nearly as many passages
+and poems puzzled or repelled me. My absorption of Emerson had prepared me
+in a measure for Whitman's philosophy of life, but not for the ideals of
+character and conduct which he held up to me, nor for the standards in art
+to which the poet perpetually appealed. Whitman was Emerson translated
+from the abstract into the concrete. There was no privacy with Whitman; he
+never sat me down in a corner with a cozy, comfortable shut-in feeling,
+but he set me upon a hill or started me upon an endless journey.
+Wordsworth had been my poet of nature, of the sequestered and the idyllic;
+but I saw that here was a poet of a larger, more fundamental nature,
+indeed of the Cosmos itself. Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the
+earth and the orbs. This much soon appeared to me, but I was troubled by
+the poet's apparent "colossal egotism," by his attitude towards evil,
+declaring himself "to be the poet of wickedness also;" by his seeming
+attraction toward the turbulent and the disorderly; and, at times, by what
+the critics had called his cataloguing style of treatment.
+
+When I came to meet the poet himself, which was in the fall of 1863, I
+felt less concern about these features of his work; he was so sound and
+sweet and gentle and attractive as a man, and withal so wise and tolerant,
+that I soon came to feel the same confidence in the book that I at once
+placed in its author, even in the parts which I did not understand. I saw
+that the work and the man were one, and that the former must be good as
+the latter was good. There was something in the manner in which both the
+book and its author carried themselves under the sun, and in the way they
+confronted America and the present time, that convinced beyond the power
+of logic or criticism.
+
+The more I saw of Whitman, and the more I studied his "Leaves," the more
+significance I found in both, and the clearer it became to me that a new
+type of a man and a new departure in poetic literature were here
+foreshadowed. There was something forbidding, but there was something
+vital and grand back of it. I found to be true what the poet said of
+himself,--
+
+  "Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,
+  To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
+  For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them,"--
+
+I have persevered in my study of the poet, though balked many times, and
+the effect upon my own mental and spiritual nature has been great; no such
+"solid prizes" in the way of a broader outlook upon life and nature, and,
+I may say, upon art, has any poet of my time afforded me. There are
+passages or whole poems in the "Leaves" which I do not yet understand
+("Sleep-Chasings" is one of them), though the language is as clear as
+daylight; they are simply too subtle or elusive for me; but my confidence
+in the logical soundness of the book is so complete that I do not trouble
+myself at all about these things.
+
+
+III
+
+I would fain make these introductory remarks to my essay a sort of window
+through which the reader may get a fairly good view of what lies beyond.
+If he does not here get any glimpse or suggestion of what pleases him, or
+of what he is looking for, it will hardly be worth while for him to
+trouble himself further.
+
+A great many readers, perhaps three fourths of the readers of current
+poetry, and not a few of the writers thereof, cannot stand Whitman at all,
+or see any reason for his being. To such my essay, if it ever comes to
+their notice, will be a curiosity, may be an offense. But I trust it will
+meet with a different reception at the hands of the smaller but rapidly
+growing circle of those who are beginning to turn to Whitman as the most
+imposing and significant figure in our literary annals.
+
+The rapidly growing Whitman literature attests the increasing interest to
+which I refer. Indeed, it seems likely that by the end of the century the
+literature which will have grown up around the name of this man will
+surpass in bulk and value that which has grown up around the name of any
+other man of letters born within the century.
+
+When Mr. Stedman wrote his essay upon the poet early in the eighties, he
+referred to the mass of this literature. It has probably more than doubled
+in volume in the intervening years: since Whitman's death in the spring of
+'92, it has been added to by William Clark's book upon the poet, Professor
+Trigg's study of Browning and Whitman, and the work of that accomplished
+critic and scholar, so lately gone to his rest, John Addington Symonds.
+This last is undoubtedly the most notable contribution that has yet been
+made, or is likely very soon to be made, to the Whitman literature. Mr.
+Symonds declares that "Leaves of Grass," which he first read at the age of
+twenty-five, influenced him more than any other book has done, except the
+Bible,--more than Plato, more than Goethe.
+
+When we remember that the man who made this statement was eminently a man
+of books, deeply read in all literatures, his testimony may well offset
+that of a score of our home critics who find nothing worthy or helpful in
+Whitman's work. One positive witness in such a matter outweighs any number
+of negative ones.
+
+
+IV
+
+For making another addition to the growing Whitman literature, I have no
+apology to offer. I know well enough that "writing and talk" cannot
+"prove" a poet; that he must be his own proof or be forgotten; and my main
+purpose in writing about Whitman, as in writing about nature, is to tell
+readers what I have found there, with the hope of inducing them to look
+for themselves. At the same time, I may say that I think no modern poet so
+much needs to be surrounded by an atmosphere of comment and
+interpretation, through which readers may approach him, as does Whitman.
+His work sprang from a habit or attitude of mind quite foreign to that
+with which current literature makes us familiar,--so germinal is it, and
+so little is it beholden to the formal art we so assiduously cultivate.
+The poet says his work "connects lovingly with precedents," but it does
+not connect lovingly with any body of poetry of this century. "Leaves of
+Grass" is bound to be a shock to the timid and pampered taste of the
+majority of current readers. I would fain lessen this shock by interposing
+my own pages of comment between the book and the public. The critic can
+say so many things the poet cannot. He can explain and qualify and
+analyze, whereas the creative artist can only hint or project. The poet
+must hasten on, he must infold and bind together, he must be direct and
+synthetic in every act. Reflection and qualification are not for him, but
+action, emotion, volition, the procreant blending and surrender. He works
+as Nature does, and gives us reality in every line.
+
+Whitman says:--
+
+  "I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot
+        expound myself."
+
+
+The type of mind of Whitman's, which seldom or never emerges as a mere
+mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a
+personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself,
+because its operations are synthetic and not analytic, its mainspring is
+love and not mere knowledge. In his prose essay called "A Backward Glance
+o'er Travel'd Roads," appended to the final edition of his poems, Whitman
+has not so much sought to expound himself as to put his reader in
+possession of his point of view, and of the considerations that lie back
+of his work. This chapter might render much that I have written
+superfluous, were there not always a distinct gain in seeing an author
+through another medium, or in getting the equivalents of him in the
+thoughts and ideals of a kindred and sympathetic mind. But I have not
+consciously sought to expound Whitman, any more than in my other books I
+have sought to expound the birds or wild nature. I have written out some
+things that he means to me, and the pleasure and profit I have found in
+his pages.
+
+There is no end to what can be drawn out of him. It has been said and
+repeated that he was not a thinker, and yet I find more food for thought
+in him than in all other poets. It has been often said and repeated that
+he is not a poet, and yet the readers that respond to him the most fully
+appear to be those in whom the poetic temperament is paramount. I believe
+he supplies in fuller measure that pristine element, something akin to the
+unbreathed air of mountain and shore, which makes the arterial blood of
+poetry and literature, than any other modern writer.
+
+
+V
+
+We can make little of Whitman unless we allow him to be a law unto
+himself, and seek him through the clews which he himself brings. When we
+try him by current modes, current taste, and demand of him formal beauty,
+formal art, we are disappointed. But when we try him by what we may call
+the scientific standard, the standard of organic nature, and demand of him
+the vital and the characteristic,--demand of him that he have a law of his
+own, and fulfill that law in the poetic sphere,--the result is quite
+different.
+
+More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other
+poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies, rather than
+in what he portrays; and more than any other poet must he wait to be
+understood by the growth of the taste of himself. "I make the only growth
+by which I can be appreciated," he truly says.
+
+His words are like the manna that descended upon the Israelites, "in which
+were all manner of tastes; and every one found in it what his palate was
+chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the young
+men tasted bread; the old men honey; and the children oil." Many young
+men,--poets, artists, teachers, preachers,--have testified that they have
+found bread in Whitman, the veritable bread of life; others have found
+honey, sweet poetic morsels; and not a few report having found only gall.
+
+
+VI
+
+In considering an original work like "Leaves of Grass," the search is
+always for the grounds upon which it is to be justified and explained.
+These grounds in this work are not easy to find; they lie deeper than the
+grounds upon which the popular poets rest. Because they are not at once
+seen, many readers have denied that there are any such grounds. But to
+deny a basis of reality to a work with the history of "Leaves of Grass,"
+and a basis well grounded on æsthetic and artistic principles, is not to
+be thought of.
+
+The more the poet eludes us, the more we know he has his hiding-place
+somewhere. The more he denies our standards, the more we know he has
+standards of his own which we must discover; the more he flouts at our
+literary conventions, the more we must press him for his own principles
+and methods. How does he justify himself to himself? Could any sane man
+have written the Children of Adam poems who was not sustained by deepest
+moral and æsthetic convictions? It is the business of the critic to search
+for these principles and convictions, and not shirk the task by ridicule
+and denial.
+
+
+VII
+
+If there was never any change in taste, if it always ran in the same
+channels,--indeed, if it did not at times run in precisely opposite
+channels,--there would be little hope that Walt Whitman's poetry would
+ever find any considerable number of readers. But one of the laws that
+dominate the progress of literature, as Edmond Shérer says, is incessant
+change, not only in thought and ideas, but in taste and the
+starting-points of art. A radical and almost violent change in these
+respects is indicated by Whitman,--a change which is in unison with many
+things in modern life and morals, but which fairly crosses the prevailing
+taste in poetry and in art. No such dose of realism and individualism
+under the guise of poetry has been administered to the reading public in
+this century. No such break with literary traditions--no such audacious
+attempt to tally, in a printed page, the living concrete man, an actual
+human presence, instead of the conscious, made-up poet--is to be found in
+modern literary records.
+
+
+VIII
+
+The much that I have said in the following pages about Whitman's radical
+differences from other poets--his changed attitude towards the universe,
+his unwonted methods and aims, etc.,--might seem to place him upon a
+ground so unique and individual as to contradict my claims for his breadth
+and universality. The great poets stand upon common ground; they excel
+along familiar lines, they touch us, and touch us deeply, at many points.
+What always saves Whitman is his enormous endowment of what is "commonest,
+nearest, easiest,"--his atmosphere of the common day, the common life, and
+his fund of human sympathy and love. He is strange because he gives us the
+familiar in such a direct, unexpected manner. His "Leaves" are like some
+new fruit that we have never before tasted. It is the product of another
+clime, another hemisphere. The same old rains and dews, the same old sun
+and soil, nursed it, yet in so many ways how novel and strange! We
+certainly have to serve a certain apprenticeship to this poet, familiarize
+ourselves with his point of view and with his democratic spirit, before we
+can make much of him. The spirit in which we come to him from the other
+poets--the poets of art and culture--is for the most part unfriendly to
+him. There is something rude, strange, and unpoetic about him at first
+sight that is sure to give most readers of poetry a shock. I think one
+might come to him from the Greek poets, or the old Hebrew or Oriental
+bards, with less shock than from our modern delicate and refined singers;
+because the old poets were more simple and elemental, and aimed less at
+the distilled dainties of poetry, than the modern. They were full of
+action, too, and volition,--of that which begets and sustains life.
+Whitman's poetry is almost entirely the expression of will and
+personality, and runs very little to intellectual subtleties and
+refinements. It fulfills itself in our wills and character, rather than in
+our taste.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country's
+poets, and among English poets generally,--a cropping out again, after so
+many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain. Had he dropped upon us
+from some other sphere, he could hardly have been a greater surprise and
+puzzle to the average reader or critic. Into a literature that was timid,
+imitative, conventional, he fell like leviathan into a duck-pond, and the
+commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All
+the reigning poets in this country except Emerson denied him, and many of
+our minor poets still keep up a hostile sissing and cackling. He will
+probably always be more or less a stumbling-block to the minor poet,
+because of his indifference to the things which to the minor poet are all
+in all. He was a poet without what is called artistic form, and without
+technique, as that word is commonly understood. His method was analogous
+to the dynamic method of organic nature, rather than to the mechanical or
+constructive method of the popular poets.
+
+
+X
+
+Of course the first thing that strikes the reader in "Leaves of Grass" is
+its seeming oddity and strangeness. If a man were to come into a dress
+reception in shirt sleeves and with his hat on, the feature would strike
+us at once, and would be magnified in our eyes; we should quite forget
+that he was a man, and in essentials differed but little from the rest of
+us, after all. The exterior habiliments on such occasions count for nearly
+everything; and in the popular poetry rhyme, measure, and the language and
+manners of the poets are much more than anything else. If Whitman did not
+do anything so outré as to come into a dress reception with his coat off
+and his hat on, he did come into the circle of the poets without the usual
+poetic habiliments. He was not dressed up at all, and he was not at all
+abashed or apologetic. His air was confident and self-satisfied, if it did
+not at times suggest the insolent and aggressive. It was the dress circle
+that was on trial, and not Walt Whitman.
+
+We could forgive a man in real life for such an audacious proceeding only
+on the ground of his being something extraordinary as a person, with an
+extraordinary message to convey; and we can pardon the poet only on
+precisely like grounds. He must make us forget his unwonted garb by his
+unique and lovable personality, and the power and wisdom of his utterance.
+If he cannot do this we shall soon tire of him.
+
+That Whitman was a personality the like of which the world has not often
+seen, and that his message to his country and to his race was of prime
+importance, are conclusions at which more and more thinking persons are
+surely arriving.
+
+His want of art, of which we have heard so much, is, it seems to me, just
+this want of the usual trappings and dress uniform of the poets. In the
+essentials of art, the creative imagination, the plastic and quickening
+spirit, the power of identification with the thing contemplated, and the
+absolute use of words, he has few rivals.
+
+
+XI
+
+I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
+Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
+colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
+such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
+is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
+appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
+violently for him or violently against, and it will require the
+perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
+significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
+show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.
+
+"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
+has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
+this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
+interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
+up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
+and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
+vanity."
+
+To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
+one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
+not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
+follows, I shall be more than content.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the world of literature, as in the world of physical forces, things
+adjust themselves after a while, and no impetus can be given to any man's
+name or fame that will finally carry it beyond the limit of his real
+worth. However "one-sided" my enthusiasm for Whitman may be, or that of
+any of his friends may be, there is no danger but that in time he will
+find exactly his proper place and level. My opinion, or any man's opinion,
+of the works of another, is like a wind that blows for a moment across
+the water, heaping it up a little on the shore or else beating it down,
+but not in any way permanently affecting its proper level.
+
+The adverse winds that have blown over Whitman's work have been many and
+persistent, and yet the tide has surely risen, his fame has slowly
+increased.
+
+It will soon be forty years since he issued the first thin quarto edition
+of "Leaves of Grass," and, though the opposition to him has been the most
+fierce and determined ever recorded in our literary history, often
+degenerating into persecution and willful misrepresentation, yet his fame
+has steadily grown both at home and abroad. The impression he early made
+upon such men as Emerson, Thoreau, William O'Connor, Mr. Stedman, Colonel
+Ingersoll, and others in this country, and upon Professors Dowden and
+Clifford, upon Symonds, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti, Lord Lytton, Mrs.
+Gilchrist, George Eliot, in England, has been followed by an equally deep
+or deeper impression upon many of the younger and bolder spirits of both
+hemispheres. In fact Whitman saw his battle essentially won in his own
+lifetime, though his complete triumph is of course a matter of the distant
+future.
+
+
+XIII
+
+But let me give without further delay a fuller hint of the attitude these
+pages assume and hold towards the subject they discuss.
+
+There are always, or nearly always, a few men born to each generation who
+embody the best thought and culture of that generation, and express it in
+approved literary forms. From Petrarch down to Lowell, the lives and works
+of these men fill the literary annals; they uphold the literary and
+scholarly traditions; they are the true men of letters; they are justly
+honored and beloved in their day and land. We in this country have
+recently, in the death of Dr. Holmes, mourned the loss of the last of the
+New England band of such men. We are all indebted to them for solace, and
+for moral and intellectual stimulus.
+
+Then, much more rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like
+an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who
+bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are
+not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times
+for the most part decry and disown,--the primal, original, elemental men.
+It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the
+minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He
+is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets,--nearer the
+founders and discoverers, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic,
+patriarchal men who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with
+the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the
+seer, the prophet. The specialization and differentiation of our latter
+ages of science and culture is less marked in him than in other poets.
+Poetry, philosophy, religion, are all inseparably blended in his pages. He
+is in many ways a reversion to an earlier type. Dr. Brinton has remarked
+that his attitude toward the principle of sex and his use of sexual
+imagery in his poems, are the same as in the more primitive religions.
+Whitman was not a poet by elaboration, but by suggestion; not an artist by
+formal presentation, but by spirit and conception; not a philosopher by
+system and afterthought, but by vision and temper.
+
+In his "Leaves," we again hear the note of destiny,--again see the
+universal laws and forces exemplified in the human personality, and turned
+upon life with love and triumph.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The world always has trouble with its primary men, or with the men who
+have any primary gifts, like Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Tolstoi,
+Ibsen. The idols of an age are nearly always secondary men: they break no
+new ground; they make no extraordinary demands; our tastes and wants are
+already adjusted to their type; we understand and approve of them at once.
+The primary men disturb us; they are a summons and a challenge; they break
+up the old order; they open up new territory which we are to subdue and
+occupy; the next age and the next make more of them. In my opinion, the
+next age and the next will make more of Whitman, and the next still more,
+because he is in the great world-current, in the line of the evolutionary
+movement of our time. Is it at all probable that Tennyson can ever be to
+any other age what he has been to this? Tennyson marks an expiring age,
+the sunset of the feudal world. He did not share the spirit to which the
+future belongs. There was not one drop of democratic blood in his veins.
+To him, the people were an hundred-headed beast.
+
+
+XV
+
+If my essay seems like one continual strain to attain the unattainable, to
+compass and define Whitman, who will not be compassed and defined, I can
+only say that I regret it, but could not well help it. Talking about
+Whitman, Symonds said, was like talking about the universe, and it is so.
+There is somewhat incommensurable in his works. One may not hope to speak
+the final word about him, to sum him up in a sentence. He is so palpable,
+so real, so near at hand, that the critic or expounder of him promises
+himself an easy victory; but before one can close with him he is gone. He
+is, after all, as subtle and baffling as air or light.
+
+                    ... "I will certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you."
+
+
+It is probably this characteristic which makes Whitman an irrepressible
+figure in literature; he will not down for friend or foe. He escapes from
+all classification, and is larger than any definition of him that has yet
+been given. How many times has he been exploded by British and American
+critics; how many times has he been labeled and put upon the shelf, only
+to reappear again as vigorous and untranslatable as ever!
+
+
+XVI
+
+So far as Whitman stands merely for the spirit of revolt, or of reaction
+against current modes in life and literature, I have little interest in
+him. As the "apostle of the rough, the uncouth," to use Mr. Howells's
+words, the world would long ago have tired of him. The irruption into
+letters of the wild and lawless, or of the strained and eccentric, can
+amuse and interest us only for a moment. It is because these are only
+momentary phases of him, as it were, and because underneath all he
+embraces the whole of life and ministers to it, that his fame and
+influence are still growing in the world. One hesitates even to call
+Whitman the poet of "democracy," or of "personality," or of "the modern,"
+because such terms only half define him. He quickly escapes into that
+large and universal air which all great art breathes. We cannot sum him up
+in a phrase. He flows out on all sides, and his sympathies embrace all
+types and conditions of men. He is a great democrat, but, first and last
+and over all, he is a great man, a great nature, and deep world-currents
+course through him. He is distinctively an American poet, but his
+Americanism is only the door through which he enters upon the universal.
+
+
+XVII
+
+Call his work poetry or prose, or what you will: that it is an inspired
+utterance of some sort, any competent person ought to be able to see. And
+what else do we finally demand of any work than that it be inspired? How
+all questions of form and art, and all other questions, sink into
+insignificance beside that! The exaltation of mind and spirit shown in the
+main body of Whitman's work, the genuine, prophetic fervor, the
+intensification and amplification of the simple ego, and the resultant
+raising of all human values, seem to me as plain as daylight.
+
+Whitman is to be classed among the great names by the breadth and
+all-inclusiveness of his theme and by his irrepressible personality. I
+think it highly probable that future scholars and critics will find his
+work fully as significant and era-marking as that of any of the few
+supreme names of the past. It is the culmination of an age of
+individualism, and, as opposites meet, it is also the best lesson in
+nationalism and universal charity that this century has seen.
+
+
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL
+
+
+I
+
+Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 30, 1819, and died
+at Camden, N. J., March 26, 1892. Though born in the country, most of his
+life was passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New
+Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is
+buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,--free, unhampered,
+unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of
+money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole,
+joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter
+through the world,--no hurry, no fever, no strife; hence no bitterness, no
+depletion, no wasted energies. A farm boy, then a school-teacher, then a
+printer, editor, writer, traveler, mechanic, nurse in the army hospitals,
+and lastly government clerk; large and picturesque of figure, slow of
+movement; tolerant, passive, receptive, and democratic,--of the people; in
+all his tastes and attractions, always aiming to walk abreast with the
+great laws and forces, and to live thoroughly in the free, nonchalant
+spirit of his own day and land. His strain was mingled Dutch and English,
+with a decided Quaker tinge, which came from his mother's side, and which
+had a marked influence upon his work.
+
+The spirit that led him to devote his time and substance to the sick and
+wounded soldiers during the war may be seen in that earlier incident in
+his life when he drove a Broadway stage all one winter, that a disabled
+driver might lie by without starving his family. It is from this episode
+that the tradition of his having been a New York stage-driver comes. He
+seems always to have had a special liking for this class of workmen. One
+of the house surgeons of the old New York Hospital relates that in the
+latter part of the fifties Whitman was a frequent visitor to that
+institution, looking after and ministering to disabled stage-drivers.
+"These drivers," says the doctor, "like those of the omnibuses in London,
+were a set of men by themselves. A good deal of strength, intelligence,
+and skillful management of horses was required of a Broadway stage-driver.
+He seems to have been decidedly a higher order of man than the driver of
+the present horse-cars. He usually had his primary education in the
+country, and graduated as a thorough expert in managing a very difficult
+machine, in an exceptionally busy thoroughfare.
+
+"It was this kind of a man that so attracted Walt Whitman that he was
+constantly to be seen perched on the box alongside one of them going up
+and down Broadway. I often watched the poet and driver, as probably did
+many another New Yorker in those days.
+
+"I do not wonder as much now as I did in 1860 that a man like Walt Whitman
+became interested in these drivers. He was not interested in the news of
+every-day life--the murders and accidents and political convulsions--but
+he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not
+had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now
+that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then
+been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote
+them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said
+much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had satisfied
+himself of the nature of the injury and of the prospect of recovery.
+
+"Whitman appeared to be about forty years of age at that time. He was
+always dressed in a blue flannel coat and vest, with gray and baggy
+trousers. He wore a woolen shirt, with a Byronic collar, low in the neck,
+without a cravat, as I remember, and a large felt hat. His hair was iron
+gray, and he had a full beard and mustache of the same color. His face and
+neck were bronzed by exposure to the sun and air. He was large, and gave
+the impression of being a vigorous man. He was scrupulously careful of his
+simple attire, and his hands were soft and hairy."
+
+During the early inception of "Leaves of Grass" he was a carpenter in
+Brooklyn, building and selling small frame-houses to working people. He
+frequently knocked off work to write his poems. In his life Whitman was
+never one of the restless, striving sort. In this respect he was not
+typical of his countrymen. All his urgency and strenuousness he reserved
+for his book. He seems always to have been a sort of visitor in life,
+noting, observing, absorbing, keeping aloof from all ties that would hold
+him, and making the most of the hour and the place in which he happened to
+be. He was in no sense a typical literary man. During his life in New York
+and Brooklyn, we see him moving entirely outside the fashionable circles,
+the learned circles, the literary circles, the money-getting circles. He
+belongs to no set or club. He is seen more with the laboring
+classes,--drivers, boatmen, mechanics, printers,--and I suspect may often
+be found with publicans and sinners. He is fond of the ferries and of the
+omnibuses. He is a frequenter of the theatre and of the Italian opera.
+Alboni makes a deep and lasting impression upon him. It is probably to her
+that he writes these lines:--
+
+  "Here take this gift,
+  I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, general,
+  One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress
+        and freedom of the race,
+  Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
+  But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to
+        any."
+
+
+Elsewhere he refers to Alboni by name and speaks of her as
+
+  "The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
+  Sister of loftiest gods."
+
+
+Some of his poems were written at the opera. The great singers evidently
+gave him clews and suggestions that were applicable to his own art.
+
+His study was out of doors. He wrote on the street, on the ferry, at the
+seaside, in the fields, at the opera,--always from living impulses arising
+at the moment, and always with his eye upon the fact. He says he has read
+his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, and tried them by the realities
+of life and nature about him. Were they as real and alive as they?--this
+was the only question with him.
+
+At home in his father's family in Brooklyn we see him gentle, patient,
+conciliatory, much looked up to by all. Neighbors seek his advice. He is
+cool, deliberate, impartial. A marked trait is his indifference to money
+matters; his people are often troubled because he lets opportunities to
+make money pass by. When his "Leaves" appear, his family are puzzled, do
+not know what to make of it. His mother thinks that, if "Hiawatha" is
+poetry, may be Walt's book is, too. He never counsels with any one, and is
+utterly indifferent as to what people may say or think. He is not a
+stirring and punctual man, is always a little late; not an early riser,
+not prompt at dinner; always has ample time, and will not be hurried; the
+business gods do not receive his homage. He is gray at thirty, and is said
+to have had a look of age in youth, as he had a look of youth in age. He
+has few books, cares little for sport, never uses a gun; has no bad
+habits; has no entanglements with women, and apparently never contemplates
+marriage. It is said that during his earliest years of manhood he kept
+quite aloof from the "girls."
+
+At the age of nineteen he edited "The Long Islander," published at
+Huntington. A recent visitor to these early haunts of Whitman gathered
+some reminiscences of him at this date:--
+
+"Amid the deep revery of nature, on that mild October afternoon, we
+returned to the village of Huntington, there to meet the few, the very
+few, survivors who recall Walt's first appearance in the literary world as
+the editor of 'The Long Islander,' nigh sixty years ago (1838). Two of
+these forefathers of the hamlet clearly remembered his powerful
+personality, brimful of life, reveling in strength, careless of time and
+the world, of money and of toil; a lover of books and of jokes; delighting
+to gather round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of
+evenings, and tell them stories and read them poetry, his own and others'.
+That of his own he called his 'Yawps,' a word which he afterwards made
+famous. Both remembered him as a delightful companion, generous to a
+fault, glorying in youth, negligent of his affairs, issuing 'The Long
+Islander' at random intervals,--once a week, once in two weeks, once in
+three,--until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him
+out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt himself was editor,
+publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all in one."
+
+
+II
+
+Few men were so deeply impressed by our Civil War as was Whitman. It
+aroused all his patriotism, all his sympathies, and, as a poet, tested his
+power to deal with great contemporary events and scenes. He was first
+drawn to the seat of war on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel
+George W. Whitman, 51st New York Volunteers, who was wounded by the
+fragment of a shell at Fredericksburg. This was in the fall of 1862. This
+brought him in contact with the sick and wounded soldiers, and henceforth,
+as long as the war lasts and longer, he devoted his time and substance to
+ministering to them. The first two or three years of his life in
+Washington he supported himself by correspondence with Northern
+newspapers, mainly with the "New York Times." These letters, as well as
+the weekly letters to his mother during the same period, form an intensely
+pathetic and interesting record.
+
+They contain such revelations of himself, and such pictures of the scenes
+he moved among, that I shall here quote freely from them. The following
+extract is from a letter written from Fredericksburg the third or fourth
+day after the battle of December, 1862:--
+
+"Spent a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the
+Rappahannock, immediately opposite Fredericksburg. It is used as a
+hospital since the battle, and seems to have received only the worst
+cases. Out of doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front
+of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.,
+about a load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each
+covered with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, toward the river,
+are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of
+barrel-staves, or broken board, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies
+were subsequently taken up and transported North to their friends.)
+
+"The house is quite crowded, everything impromptu, no system, all bad
+enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds
+pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and
+bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a
+Mississippian,--a captain,--hit badly in leg, I talked with some time; he
+asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward
+in Washington, with leg amputated, doing well.)
+
+"I went through the rooms, down stairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
+I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks
+home, mothers, etc. Also talked to three or four who seemed most
+susceptible to it, and needing it."
+
+"December 22 to 31.--Am among the regimental, brigade, and division
+hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and
+sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their
+blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No
+cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around
+from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I
+cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me
+convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and
+sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.
+
+"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
+camps, talking with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups
+around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get
+acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well
+used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best."
+
+After continuing in front through the winter, he returns to Washington,
+where the wounded and sick have mainly been concentrated. The Capital
+city, truly, is now one huge hospital; and there Whitman establishes
+himself, and thenceforward, for several years, has but one daily and
+nightly avocation.
+
+He alludes to writing letters by the bedside, and says:--
+
+"I do a good deal of this, of course, writing all kinds, including
+love-letters. Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written home to
+parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives, for one reason or another, for
+a long, long time. Some are poor writers, some cannot get paper and
+envelopes; many have an aversion to writing, because they dread to worry
+the folks at home,--the facts about them are so sad to tell. I always
+encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them."
+
+A glimpse of the scenes after Chancellorsville:--
+
+"As I write this, in May, 1863, the wounded have begun to arrive from
+Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first
+arrivals. The men in charge of them told me the bad cases were yet to
+come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
+see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here foot of Sixth
+Street at night. Two boat-loads came about half past seven last night. A
+little after eight, it rained a long and violent shower. The poor, pale,
+helpless soldiers had been debarked, and lay around on the wharf and
+neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any
+rate they were exposed to it.
+
+"The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the
+ground, out on side places, etc., the men are lying on blankets and old
+quilts, with the bloody rags bound round heads, arms, legs, etc. The
+attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also,--only a few
+hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
+common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
+there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by
+the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is
+called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on
+stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their
+sufferings,--a few groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a
+scream of pain, as they lift a man into the ambulance.
+
+"To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the
+next day more, and so on for many days.
+
+"The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
+generally supposed,--I should say nine tenths are native-born. Among the
+arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
+and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
+are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
+a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was, perhaps,
+worse than usual. Amputations are going on,--the attendants are dressing
+wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw,
+the other day, a gentleman--a visitor, apparently, from curiosity--in one
+of the wards stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were
+probing, etc. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and
+fallen on the floor."
+
+An episode,--the death of a New York soldier:--
+
+"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
+have been with a good deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
+company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound
+also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
+and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
+opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
+the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
+crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
+chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
+feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
+me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
+mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It is my chief
+reliance.' He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: 'Why,
+Oscar, don't you think you will get well?' He said: 'I may, but it is not
+probable.' He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
+discharged much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that
+he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
+affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned
+fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
+post-office, Cattaraugus County, New York. I had several such interviews
+with him. He died a few days after the one just described."
+
+And here, also, a characteristic scene in another of those long
+barracks:--
+
+"It is Sunday afternoon (middle of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and
+very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now
+lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
+8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
+wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well.
+Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on,
+sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
+yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so
+handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over
+to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
+Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan."
+
+In a letter to his mother in 1863 he says, in reference to his hospital
+services: "I have got in the way, after going lightly, as it were, all
+through the wards of a hospital, and trying to give a word of cheer, if
+nothing else, to every one, then confining my special attention to the few
+where the investment seems to tell best, and who want it most.... Mother,
+I have real pride in telling you that I have the consciousness of saving
+quite a number of lives by keeping the men from giving up, and being a
+good deal with them. The men say it is so, and the doctors say it is so;
+and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I say it myself.
+I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you."
+
+Again he says: "I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity; I go
+among the smallpox, etc., just the same. I feel to go without
+apprehension, and so I go: nobody else goes; but, as the darkey said there
+at Charleston when the boat ran on a flat and the rebel sharpshooters were
+peppering them, '_somebody_ must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"
+
+In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
+wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
+hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
+large and well,--indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
+the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
+not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."
+
+As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
+letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
+Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
+a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
+do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
+secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,--a
+regular Carolina or Virginia planter."
+
+The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
+deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
+used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have seen so many
+cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
+hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
+and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."
+
+Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
+health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
+trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
+but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:--
+
+"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
+Hospital),--about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
+probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
+stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
+Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
+'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
+knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
+composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
+o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
+blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I told you,
+last letter, I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young
+men I knew well, especially two of whom I had strong hopes of their
+getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are
+crowded here in Washington in immense numbers, and all those that came up
+from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such
+plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from
+Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the
+largest proportion of worst cases get little or no attention.
+
+"We receive them here with their wounds full of worms,--some all swelled
+and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new
+feature is, that many of the poor, afflicted young men are crazy; every
+ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and
+it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is
+most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it; but I
+suppose it is because I have not felt firstrate myself."
+
+Of the Ohio soldier above referred to, Whitman had written a few days
+before: "You remember I told you of him a year ago, when he was first
+brought in. I thought him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I
+had seen. A real giant in size, and always with a smile on his face. Oh,
+what a change! He has long been very irritable to every one but me, and
+his frame is all wasted away."
+
+To his brother Jeff he wrote: "Of the many I have seen die, or known of
+the past year, I have not seen or known of one who met death with any
+terror. Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of
+seventeen named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
+Artillery, Battery M. He was brought into one of the hospitals mortally
+wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it
+ought to be a relief to his folks, after all, if they could see how little
+he suffered. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed;
+it was very warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat.
+At length he opened his eyes quite wide and clear, and looked inquiringly
+around. I said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said
+quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking
+around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he
+lay so peaceful in his dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England
+country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
+fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."
+
+Another extract from a letter to his mother in April, 1864:--
+
+"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
+active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
+gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,--the flag, the
+tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
+never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
+pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,--it belonged to one
+of our cavalry regiments,--presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
+taken by the rebs in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
+little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
+four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
+rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
+again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
+it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
+he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
+I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
+a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."
+
+[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
+movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
+principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
+simple, and on a low key,--to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
+and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
+certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
+carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
+of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
+trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
+flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
+summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
+white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
+air and sunshine.
+
+When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
+feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
+festival,--strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh
+underclothes. He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder,
+full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant
+pockets. He would sometimes come in summer with a good-sized basket filled
+with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing them among
+the feverish and thirsty.]
+
+Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses. A
+well-known correspondent of the "New York Herald" writes thus about him in
+April, 1876:--
+
+"I first heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle
+there. Subsequently I saw him, time and again, in the Washington
+hospitals, or wending his way there, with basket or haversack on his arm,
+and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed
+the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kindness,
+tenderness, and thoughtfulness.
+
+"Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds
+through a hospital filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism
+he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each
+cot bore its man. When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of
+affection and welcome on every face, however wan, and his presence seemed
+to light up the place as it might be lighted by the presence of the God of
+Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in
+whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To
+one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to
+others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a
+sheet of paper or a postage-stamp, all of which and many other things were
+in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message
+for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an
+errand; to another, some special friend very low, he would give a manly
+farewell kiss. He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do, and
+he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The
+lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it,
+and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of
+many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!'"
+
+
+III
+
+Out of that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called "Drum-Taps,"
+first published in 1865,--since merged in his "Leaves,"--were produced.
+Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, come from life. The vivid
+incidents of "The Dresser" are but daguerreotypes of the poet's own actual
+movements among the bad cases of the wounded after a battle. The same
+personal knowledge runs through "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and
+Dim," "Come up from the Fields, Father," etc., etc.
+
+The reader of this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not
+the purpose of the poet to portray battles and campaigns, or to celebrate
+special leaders or military prowess, but rather to chant the human aspects
+of anguish that follow in the train of war. He perhaps feels that the
+permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a
+business, as a means of growth, has served its time; and that,
+notwithstanding the vast difference between ancient and modern warfare,
+both in the spirit and in the means, Homer's pictures are essentially true
+yet, and no additions to them can be made. War can never be to us what it
+has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never the main
+fact, the paramount condition, tyrannizing over all the affairs of
+national and individual life, but only an episode, a passing interruption;
+and the poet, who in our day would be as true to his nation and times as
+Homer was to his, must treat of it from the standpoint of peace and
+progress, and even benevolence. Vast armies rise up in a night and
+disappear in a day; a million of men, inured to battle and to blood, go
+back to the avocations of peace without a moment's confusion or
+delay,--indicating clearly the tendency that prevails.
+
+Apostrophizing the genius of America in the supreme hour of victory, he
+says:--
+
+  "No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee--nor mastery's rapturous
+        verse:--
+  But a little book containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds,
+  And psalms of the dead."
+
+
+The collection is also remarkable for the absence of all sectional or
+partisan feeling. Under the head of "Reconciliation" are these lines:--
+
+  "Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
+  Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be
+        utterly lost!
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  ... For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
+  I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near;
+  I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the
+        coffin."
+
+
+Perhaps the most noteworthy of Whitman's war poems is the one called "When
+Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloomed," written in commemoration of
+President Lincoln.
+
+The main effect of this poem is of strong, solemn, and varied music; and
+it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great
+composers most work,--namely, spiritual auricular analogy. At first it
+would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect. No reference
+whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not
+even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone
+that of lamentation; but, with the intuitions of the grand art, which is
+the most complex when it seems most simple, he seizes upon three beautiful
+facts of nature, which he weaves into a wreath for the dead President's
+tomb. The central thought is of death, but around this he curiously
+twines, first, the early-blooming lilacs which the poet may have plucked
+the day the dark shadow came; next the song of the hermit thrush, the most
+sweet and solemn of all our songsters, heard at twilight in the dusky
+cedars; and with these the evening star, which, as many may remember,
+night after night in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in
+the west with unusual and tender brightness. These are the premises whence
+he starts his solemn chant.
+
+The attitude, therefore, is not that of being bowed down and weeping
+hopeless tears, but of singing a commemorative hymn, in which the voices
+of nature join, and fits that exalted condition of the soul which serious
+events and the presence of death induce. There are no words of mere
+eulogy, no statistics, and no story or narrative; but there are pictures,
+processions, and a strange mingling of darkness and light, of grief and
+triumph: now the voice of the bird, or the drooping lustrous star, or the
+sombre thought of death; then a recurrence to the open scenery of the land
+as it lay in the April light, "the summer approaching with richness and
+the fields all busy with labor," presently dashed in upon by a spectral
+vision of armies with torn and bloody battle-flags, and, again, of the
+white skeletons of young men long afterward strewing the ground. Hence the
+piece has little or nothing of the character of the usual productions on
+such occasions. It is dramatic; yet there is no development of plot, but
+a constant interplay, a turning and returning of images and sentiments.
+
+The poet breaks a sprig of lilac from the bush in the door-yard,--the dark
+cloud falls on the land,--the long funeral sets out,--and then the
+apostrophe:--
+
+  "Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
+  Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,
+  With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities draped in black,
+  With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women,
+        standing,
+  With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,
+  With the countless torches lit--with the silent sea of faces, and the
+        unbared heads,
+  With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
+  With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
+        and solemn;
+  With all the mournful voices of the dirges, pour'd around the coffin,
+  To dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--Where amid these you
+        journey,
+  With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;
+  Here! coffin that slowly passes,
+  I give you my sprig of lilac.
+
+  "(Nor for you, for one alone;
+  Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
+  For fresh as the morning--thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
+        and sacred death.
+
+  "All over bouquets of roses,
+  O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;
+  But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
+  Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes;
+  With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
+  For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)"
+
+
+Then the strain goes on:--
+
+  "O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
+  And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
+  And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?
+
+  "Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
+  Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till
+        there on the prairies meeting:
+  These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
+  I perfume the grave of him I love."
+
+
+The poem reaches, perhaps, its height in the matchless invocation to
+Death:--
+
+  "Come, lovely and soothing Death,
+  Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
+  In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
+  Sooner or later, delicate Death.
+
+  "Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
+  For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;
+  And for love, sweet love--but praise! O praise and praise,
+  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
+
+  "Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
+  Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
+  Then I chant it for thee--I glorify thee above all;
+  I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
+
+  "Approach, encompassing Death--strong Deliveress!
+  When it is so--when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
+  Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
+  Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
+
+  "From me to thee glad serenades,
+  Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee--adornments and feastings for
+        thee;
+  And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky are
+        fitting,
+  And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
+  The night, in silence, under many a star;
+  The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;
+  And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death,
+  And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman despised riches, and all mere worldly success, as heartily as ever
+did any of the old Christians. All outward show and finery were intensely
+distasteful to him. He probably would not have accepted the finest house
+in New York on condition that he live in it. During his hospital
+experiences he cherished the purpose, as soon as the war was over, of
+returning to Brooklyn, buying an acre or two of land in some by-place on
+Long Island, and building for himself and his family a cheap house. When
+his brother Jeff contemplated building, he advised him to build merely an
+Irish shanty. After what he had seen the soldiers put up with, he thought
+anything was good enough for him or his people. In one of his letters to
+his mother, he comments upon the un-American and inappropriate
+ornamentation of the rooms in the Capitol building, "without grandeur and
+without simplicity," he says. In the state the country was in, and with
+the hospital scenes before him, the "poppy-show goddesses" and the Italian
+style of decoration, etc., sickened him, and he got away from it all as
+quickly as he could.
+
+
+V
+
+During the war and after, I used to see a good deal of Whitman in
+Washington. Summer and winter he was a conspicuous figure on Pennsylvania
+Avenue, where he was wont to walk for exercise and to feed his hunger for
+faces. One would see him afar off, in the crowd but not of it,--a large,
+slow-moving figure, clad in gray, with broad-brimmed hat and gray
+beard,--or, quite as frequently, on the front platform of the street
+horse-cars with the driver. My eye used to single him out many blocks
+away.
+
+There were times during this period when his aspect was rather
+forbidding,--the physical man was too pronounced on first glance; the
+other man was hidden beneath the broad-brimmed hat. One needed to see the
+superbly domed head and classic brow crowning the rank physical man.
+
+In his middle manhood, judging from the photos, he had a hirsute, kindly
+look, but very far removed from the finely cut traditional poet's face.
+
+
+VI
+
+I have often heard Whitman say that he inherited most excellent blood from
+his mother,--the old Dutch Van Velser strain,--Long Island blood filtered
+and vitalized through generations by the breath of the sea. He was his
+mother's child unmistakably. With all his rank masculinity, there was a
+curious feminine undertone in him which revealed itself in the quality of
+his voice, the delicate texture of his skin, the gentleness of his touch
+and ways, the attraction he had for children and the common people. A lady
+in the West, writing to me about him, spoke of his "great mother-nature."
+He was receptive, sympathetic, tender, and met you, not in a positive,
+aggressive manner, but more or less in a passive or neutral mood. He did
+not give his friends merely his mind, he gave them himself. It is not
+merely his mind or intellect that he has put into his poems, it is
+himself. Indeed, this feminine mood or attitude might be dwelt upon at
+much length in considering his poems,--their solvent, absorbing power, and
+the way they yield themselves to diverse interpretations.
+
+The sea, too, had laid its hand upon him, as I have already suggested. He
+never appeared so striking and impressive as when seen upon the beach. His
+large and tall gray figure looked at home, and was at home, upon the
+shore. The simple, strong, flowing lines of his face, his always clean
+fresh air, his blue absorbing eye, his commanding presence, and something
+pristine and elemental in his whole expression, seemed at once to put him
+_en rapport_ with the sea. No phase of nature seems to have impressed him
+so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman was preëminently manly,--richly endowed with the universal,
+healthy human qualities and attributes. Mr. Conway relates that when
+Emerson handed him the first thin quarto edition of "Leaves of Grass,"
+while he was calling at his house in Concord, soon after the book
+appeared, he said, "Americans abroad may now come home: unto us a man is
+born."
+
+President Lincoln, standing one day during the war before a window in the
+White House, saw Whitman slowly saunter by. He followed him with his
+eyes, and, turning, said to those about him, "Well, _he_ looks like a
+_man_."
+
+  "Meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms."
+
+
+During Whitman's Western tour in 1879 or '80, at some point in Kansas, in
+company with several well-known politicians and government officials, he
+visited a lot of Indians who were being held as prisoners. The sheriff
+told the Indians who the distinguished men were who were about to see
+them, but the Indians paid little attention to them as, one after the
+other, the officials and editors passed by them. Behind all came Whitman.
+The old chief looked at him steadily, then extended his hand and said,
+"How!" All the other Indians followed, surrounding Whitman, shaking his
+hand and making the air melodious with their "Hows." The incident
+evidently pleased the old poet a good deal.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Whitman was of large mould in every way, and of bold, far-reaching
+schemes, and is very sure to fare better at the hands of large men than of
+small. The first and last impression which his personal presence always
+made upon one was of a nature wonderfully gentle, tender, and benignant.
+His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and dominated by his
+humanity, so that the impression you got from him was not that of a
+learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human
+nature,--such an impression, I fancy, only fuller, as one might have got
+from Walter Scott. This was perhaps the secret of the attraction he had,
+for the common, unlettered people and for children. I think that even his
+literary friends often sought his presence less for conversation than to
+bask in his physical or psychical sunshine, and to rest upon his boundless
+charity. The great service he rendered to the wounded and homesick
+soldiers in the hospitals during the war came from his copious endowment
+of this broad, sweet, tender democratic nature. He brought father and
+mother to them, and the tonic and cheering atmosphere of simple,
+affectionate home life.
+
+In person Whitman was large and tall, above six feet, with a breezy,
+open-air look. His temperament was sanguine; his voice was a tender
+baritone. The dominant impression he made was that of something fresh and
+clean. I remember the first time I met him, which was in Washington, in
+the fall of 1863. I was impressed by the fine grain and clean, fresh
+quality of the man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect
+something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a
+bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His
+body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar
+fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was
+undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did
+not appear till he was past sixty. After that, I have little doubt, it was
+the finest head this age or country has seen. Every artist who saw him
+was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch him. The lines were so
+simple, so free, and so strong. High, arching brows; straight, clear-cut
+nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized,
+but a vital part of a symmetrical, dome-shaped head; ear large, and the
+most delicately carved I have ever seen; the mouth and chin hidden by a
+soft, long, white beard. It seems to me his face steadily refined and
+strengthened with age. Time depleted him in just the right way,--softened
+his beard and took away the too florid look; subdued the carnal man, and
+brought out more fully the spiritual man. When I last saw him (December
+26, 1891), though he had been very near death for many days, I am sure I
+had never seen his face so beautiful. There was no breaking-down of the
+features, or the least sign of decrepitude, such as we usually note in old
+men. The expression was full of pathos, but it was as grand as that of a
+god. I could not think of him as near death, he looked so unconquered.
+
+In Washington I knew Whitman intimately from the fall of 1863 to the time
+he left in 1873. In Camden I visited him yearly after that date, usually
+in the late summer or fall. I will give one glimpse of him from my diary,
+under date of August 18, 1887. I reached his house in the morning, before
+he was up. Presently he came slowly down stairs and greeted me. "Find him
+pretty well,--looking better than last year. With his light-gray suit,
+and white hair, and fresh pink face, he made a fine picture. Among other
+things, we talked of the Swinburne attack (then recently published). W.
+did not show the least feeling on the subject, and, I clearly saw, was
+absolutely undisturbed by the article. I told him I had always been more
+disturbed by S.'s admiration for him than I was now by his condemnation.
+By and by W. had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, ten
+miles distant, to see young Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a
+level farming and truck-gardening country; warm, but breezy. W. drives
+briskly, and salutes every person we meet, little and big, black and
+white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he
+knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old
+Long Island custom of his people, to speak to every one on the road, was
+strong upon him. One tipsy man in a buggy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye
+do, pap?' etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W., as
+something I had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what
+the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would
+have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the
+centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of
+Christianity to check and curb them, etc. W. knew the history of many
+prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two colored men
+to look after him; there, in that fine house among the trees, an old
+maid, who had spent a large fortune on her house and lands, and was now
+destitute, yet she was a woman of remarkable good sense, etc. We returned
+to Camden before dark, W. apparently not fatigued by the drive of twenty
+miles."
+
+In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry. It
+was such a face, said Mr. Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected from a
+million. "It is the face of an aged loving child. As I looked, it was with
+the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never
+heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being.
+I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an avatar, was more
+gentle to all men, women, children, and living things."
+
+
+IX
+
+For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
+to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
+visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
+which the doctor printed on his return home:--
+
+"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
+and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
+of his presence as a whole.
+
+"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
+in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure
+white linen, with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt
+buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown
+open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of
+his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned
+almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned
+up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of
+the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire
+visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and
+massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong,
+white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an
+eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was
+not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is
+concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon
+his broad, square shoulders; and it is almost entirely covered with long,
+fine, straggling hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit
+snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streaming over
+and around his large but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big
+neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of
+his face, right down to the middle of his chest, like a cataract of
+materialized, white, glistening vapor, giving him a most venerable and
+patriarchal appearance. His high, massive forehead is seamed with
+wrinkles. His nose is large, strong, broad, and prominent, but
+beautifully chiseled and proportioned, almost straight, very slightly
+depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to
+the angles of the mouth. The eyebrows are thick and shaggy, with strong,
+white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes,
+which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, small, rather deeply set,
+calm, clear, penetrating, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness,
+kindness, and sympathy. The upper eyelids droop considerably over the
+eyeballs. The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache,
+are full. The whole face impresses one with a sense of resoluteness,
+strength, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness,
+unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly
+pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man.
+There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in
+them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But
+it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in
+his _tout ensemble_, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic
+presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and
+exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing
+an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I
+felt that I was here face to face with the living embodiment of all that
+was good, noble, and lovable in humanity."
+
+
+X
+
+British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic
+temperament, etc., but he was in no sense a muscular man, an athlete. His
+body, though superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in
+its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin. He
+took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports. He
+walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he
+always had an air of infinite leisure. For several years, while a clerk in
+the Attorney-General's Office in Washington, his exercise for an hour each
+day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round,
+smooth stone, of about one pound weight, and catching it as it fell. Later
+in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked
+to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that
+way. In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and
+sweetness of body, but none upon mere brute strength. This is what he says
+"To a Pupil:"--
+
+  1. Is reform needed? Is it through you?
+     The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you
+          need to accomplish it.
+
+  2. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,
+          complexion, clean and sweet?
+     Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and Soul,
+          that when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and
+          command enters with you, and every one is impressed with your
+          personality?
+
+  3. O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
+     Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to
+          inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
+          elevatedness,
+     Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
+
+
+It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
+of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,--the
+freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
+perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
+mind.
+
+A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
+several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
+face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
+was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
+majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
+looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
+seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
+friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
+would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
+all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
+upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
+identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
+poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
+poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold," he says, "the body
+includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
+soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
+of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
+strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
+knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
+singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
+curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.
+
+The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
+to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
+the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
+distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
+power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
+face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
+face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
+face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
+mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature.
+It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow.
+
+And the influence of his poems is always on the side of physiological
+cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes
+morbid and mean. He says the "expression of a well-made man appears not
+only in his face: it is in his limbs and joints also; it is curiously in
+the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his
+neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the
+strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
+flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more.
+You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."
+He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: "To be
+surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,--I
+do not ask any more delight; I swim in it, as in a sea. There is something
+in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact
+and odor of them, that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul,
+but these please the soul well." Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he
+found in the society of the common people that satisfied him so; for his
+part, he could not find anything. The subordination by Whitman of the
+purely intellectual to the human and physical, which runs all through his
+poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, who was deficient in the
+sensuous, probably could not appreciate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The atmosphere of Whitman personally was that of a large, tolerant,
+tender, sympathetic, restful man, easy of approach, indifferent to any
+special social or other distinctions and accomplishments that might be
+yours, and regarding you from the start for yourself alone.
+
+Children were very fond of him; and women, unless they had been prejudiced
+against him, were strongly drawn toward him. His personal magnetism was
+very great, and was warming and cheering. He was rich in temperament,
+probably beyond any other man of his generation,--rich in all the purely
+human and emotional endowments and basic qualities. Then there was a look
+about him hard to describe, and which I have seen in no other face,--a
+gray, brooding, elemental look, like the granite rock, something primitive
+and Adamic that might have belonged to the first man; or was it a
+suggestion of the gray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was
+born, and that had surely set its seal upon him? I know not, but I feel
+the man with that look is not of the day merely, but of the centuries. His
+eye was not piercing, but absorbing,--"draining" is the word happily used
+by William O'Connor; the soul back of it drew things to himself, and
+entered and possessed them through sympathy and personal force and
+magnetism, rather than through mere intellectual force.
+
+
+XII
+
+Walt Whitman was of the people, the common people, and always gave out
+their quality and atmosphere. His commonness, his nearness, as of the
+things you have always known,--the day, the sky, the soil, your own
+parents,--were in no way veiled, or kept in abeyance, by his culture or
+poetic gifts. He was redolent of the human and the familiar. Though
+capable, on occasions, of great pride and hauteur, yet his habitual mood
+and presence was that of simple, average, healthful humanity,--the virtue
+and flavor of sailors, soldiers, laborers, travelers, or people who live
+with real things in the open air. His commonness rose into the uncommon,
+the extraordinary, but without any hint of the exclusive or specially
+favored. He was indeed "no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women
+or apart from them."
+
+The spirit that animates every page of his book, and that it always
+effuses, is the spirit of common, universal humanity,--humanity apart from
+creeds, schools, conventions, from all special privileges and refinements,
+as it is in and of itself in its relations to the whole system of things,
+in contradistinction to the literature of culture which effuses the spirit
+of the select and exclusive.
+
+His life was the same. Walt Whitman never stood apart from or above any
+human being. The common people--workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the
+outcast--saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction
+was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity.
+Specially intellectual people rather repelled him; the wit, the scholar,
+the poet, must have a rich endowment of the common, universal, human
+attributes and qualities to pass current with him. He sought the society
+of boatmen, railroad men, farmers, mechanics, printers, teamsters, mothers
+of families, etc., rather than the society of professional men or
+scholars. Men who had the quality of things in the open air--the virtue of
+rocks, trees, hills--drew him most; and it is these qualities and virtues
+that he has aimed above all others to put into his poetry, and to put them
+there in such a way that he who reads must feel and imbibe them.
+
+The recognized poets put into their pages the virtue and quality of the
+fine gentleman, or of the sensitive, artistic nature: this poet of
+democracy effuses the atmosphere of fresh, strong Adamic man,--man acted
+upon at first hand by the shows and forces of universal nature.
+
+If our poet ever sounds the note of the crude, the loud, the exaggerated,
+he is false to himself and to his high aims. I think he may be charged
+with having done so a few times, in his earlier work, but not in his
+later. In the 1860 edition of his poems stands this portraiture, which may
+stand for himself, with one or two features rather overdrawn:--
+
+  "His shape arises
+  Arrogant, masculine, naïve, rowdyish,
+  Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman,
+  Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by
+        the sea,
+  Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from
+        taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia,
+        clean-breathed,
+  Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds,
+        full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and
+        back,
+  Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,
+  Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms,
+  Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck gray and open, of slow
+        movement on foot,
+  Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his friends, companion
+        of the street,
+  Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches, and never
+        their meanest.
+  A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the
+        life of the wharves and the great ferries,
+  Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, easily understood after all,
+  Never offering others, always offering himself, corroborating his
+        phrenology,
+  Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive,
+        of copious friendship, sublimity, firmness, self-esteem,
+        comparison, individuality, form, locality, eventuality,
+  Avowing by life, manners, words to contribute illustrations of results
+        of These States,
+  Teacher of the unquenchable creed namely egotism,
+  Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against
+        his."
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman was determined, at whatever risk to his own reputation, to make
+the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of
+American humanity, and to do this the rowdy element could not be entirely
+ignored. Hence he unflinchingly imputes it to himself, as, for that
+matter, he has nearly every sin and dereliction mankind are guilty of.
+
+Whitman developed slowly and late upon the side that related him to social
+custom and usage,--to the many fictions, concealments, make-believes, and
+subterfuges of the world of parlors and drawing-rooms. He never was an
+adept in what is called "good form;" the natural man that he was shows
+crude in certain relations. His publication of Emerson's letter with its
+magnificent eulogium of "Leaves of Grass" has been much commented upon.
+There may be two opinions as to the propriety of his course in this
+respect: a letter from a stranger upon a matter of public interest is not
+usually looked upon as a private letter. Emerson never spoke with more
+felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for
+Whitman's own sake that we would have had him practice self-denial in the
+matter; he greatly plumed himself upon Emerson's endorsement, and was
+guilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon
+the cover of the next edition of his book. Grant that it showed a certain
+crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; later in life, he could not
+have erred in this way. Ruskin is reported saying that he never in his
+life wrote a letter to any human being that he would not be willing should
+be posted up in the market-place, or cried by the public crier through the
+town. But Emerson was a much more timid and conforming man than Ruskin,
+and was much more likely to be shocked by such a circumstance.
+
+It has been said that the publication of this letter much annoyed Emerson,
+and that he never forgave Whitman the offense. That he was disturbed by it
+and by the storm that arose there can be little doubt; but there is no
+evidence that he allowed the fact to interfere with his friendship for the
+poet. Charles W. Eldridge, who personally knew of the relations of the two
+men, says:--
+
+"There was not a year from 1855 (the date of the Emerson letter and its
+publication) down to 1860 (the year Walt came to Boston to supervise the
+issue of the Thayer & Eldridge edition of 'Leaves of Grass'), that Emerson
+did not personally seek out Walt at his Brooklyn home, usually that they
+might have a long symposium together at the Astor House in New York.
+Besides that, during these years Emerson sent many of his closest friends,
+including Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of
+introduction to him. This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who
+has committed an unpardonable offense.
+
+"I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently
+came down from Concord to see him, and that they had many walks and talks
+together, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American
+House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel. On several occasions
+they met by appointment in our counting-room. Their relations were as
+cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Emerson who sought out
+Walt, and never the other way, although, of course, Walt appreciated and
+enjoyed Emerson's companionship very much. In truth, Walt never sought the
+company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary
+society. I know that at this time Walt was invited by Emerson to Concord,
+but declined to go, probably through his fear that he would see too much
+of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around
+Emerson."
+
+
+XIV
+
+Whitman gave himself to men as men and not as scholars or poets, and gave
+himself purely as a man. While not specially averse to meeting people on
+literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was more to his taste to meet on
+the broadest, commonest, human grounds. What you had seen or felt or
+suffered or done was of much more interest to him than what you had read
+or thought; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the
+last person you had met, or the last chore you had done.
+
+Any glimpse of the farm, the shop, the household--any bit of real life,
+anything that carried the flavor and quality of concrete reality--was very
+welcome to him; herein, no doubt, showing the healthy, objective, artist
+mind. He never tired of hearing me talk about the birds or wild animals,
+or my experiences in camp in the woods, the kind of characters I had met
+there, and the flavor of the life of remote settlements in Maine or
+Canada. His inward, subjective life was ample of itself; he was familiar
+with all your thoughts and speculations beforehand: what he craved was
+wider experience,--to see what you had seen, and feel what you had felt.
+He was fond of talking with returned travelers and explorers, and with
+sailors, soldiers, mechanics; much of his vast stores of information upon
+all manner of subjects was acquired at firsthand, in the old way, from the
+persons who had seen or done or been what they described or related.
+
+He had almost a passion for simple, unlettered humanity,--an attraction
+which specially intellectual persons will hardly understand. Schooling and
+culture are so often purchased at such an expense to the innate,
+fundamental human qualities! Ignorance, with sound instincts and the
+quality which converse with real things imparts to men, was more
+acceptable to him than so much of our sophisticated knowledge, or our
+studied wit, or our artificial poetry.
+
+
+XV
+
+At the time of Whitman's death, one of our leading literary journals
+charged him with having brought on premature decay by leading a riotous
+and debauched life. I hardly need say that there was no truth in the
+charge. The tremendous emotional strain of writing his "Leaves," followed
+by his years of service in the army hospitals, where he contracted
+blood-poison, resulted at the age of fifty-four in the rupture of a small
+blood-vessel in the brain, which brought on partial paralysis. A sunstroke
+during his earlier manhood also played its part in the final break-down.
+
+That, tried by the standard of the lives of our New England poets,
+Whitman's life was a blameless one, I do not assert; but that it was a
+sane, temperate, manly one, free from excesses, free from the perversions
+and morbidities of a mammonish, pampered, over-stimulated age, I do
+believe. Indeed, I may say I know. The one impression he never failed to
+make--physically, morally, intellectually--on young and old, women and
+men, was that of health, sanity, sweetness. This is the impression he
+seems to have made upon Mr. Howells, when he met the poet at Pfaff's early
+in the sixties.
+
+The critic I have alluded to inferred license in the man from liberty in
+the poet. He did not have the gumption to see that Whitman made the
+experience of all men his own, and that his scheme included the evil as
+well as the good; that especially did he exploit the unloosed, all-loving,
+all-accepting natural man,--the man who is done with conventions,
+illusions and all morbid pietisms, and who gives himself lavishly to all
+that begets and sustains life. Yet not the natural or carnal man for his
+own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual meanings and values to which
+he is the key. Indeed, Whitman is about the most uncompromising
+spiritualist in literature; with him, all things exist by and for the
+soul. He felt the tie of universal brotherhood, also, as few have felt it.
+It was not a theory with him, but a fact that shaped his life and colored
+his poems. "Whoever degrades another degrades me," and the thought fired
+his imagination.
+
+
+XVI
+
+The student of Whitman's life and works will be early struck by three
+things,--his sudden burst into song, the maturity of his work from the
+first, and his self-knowledge and self-estimate. The fit of inspiration
+came upon him suddenly; it was like the flowering of the orchards in
+spring; there was little or no hint of it till almost the very hour of
+the event. Up to the time of the appearance of the first edition of
+"Leaves of Grass," he had produced nothing above mediocrity. A hack writer
+on newspapers and magazines, then a carpenter and house-builder in a small
+way, then that astounding revelation "Leaves of Grass," the very audacity
+of it a gospel in itself. How dare he do it? how could he do it, and not
+betray hesitation or self-consciousness? It is one of the exceptional
+events in literary history. The main body of his work was produced in five
+or six years, or between 1854 and 1859. Of course it was a sudden
+flowering, which, consciously or unconsciously, must have been long
+preparing in his mind. His work must have had a long foreground, as
+Emerson suggested. Dr. Bucke, his biographer, thinks it was a special
+inspiration,--something analogous to Paul's conversion, a sudden opening
+of what the doctor calls "cosmic consciousness."
+
+Another student and lover of Whitman says: "It is certain that some time
+about his thirty-fifth year [probably a little earlier] there came over
+him a decided change: he seemed immensely to broaden and deepen; he became
+less interested in what are usually regarded as the more practical affairs
+of life. He lost what little ambition he ever had for money-making, and
+permitted good business opportunities to pass unheeded. He ceased to write
+the somewhat interesting but altogether commonplace and respectable
+stories and verses which he had been in the habit of contributing to
+periodicals. He would take long trips into the country, no one knew where,
+and would spend more time in his favorite haunts about the city, or on the
+ferries, or the tops of omnibuses, at the theatre and opera, in picture
+galleries, and wherever he could observe men and women and art and
+nature."
+
+Then the maturity of his work from the first line of it! It seems as if he
+came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one
+bound,--never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do.
+What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint.
+He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he
+first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first poem, "Starting
+from Paumanok," and he has kept the letter and the spirit of every promise
+therein made. We never see him doubtful or hesitating; we never see him
+battling for his territory, and uncertain whether or not he is upon his
+own ground. He has an air of contentment, of mastery and triumph, from the
+start.
+
+His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.
+We should probably have to go back to sacred history to find a parallel
+case. The manner of man he was, his composite character, his relation to
+his country and times, his unlikeness to other poets, his affinity to the
+common people, how he would puzzle and elude his critics, how his words
+would itch at our ears till we understood them, etc.,--how did he know all
+this from the first?
+
+
+
+
+HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS
+
+
+I
+
+Let me here summarize some of the ideas and principles in which "Leaves of
+Grass" has its root, and from which it starts. A collection of poems in
+the usual sense, a variety of themes artistically treated and appealing to
+our æsthetic perceptibilities alone, it is not. It has, strictly speaking,
+but one theme,--personality, the personality of the poet himself. To
+exploit this is always the main purpose, and, in doing so, to make the
+book both directly and indirectly a large, impassioned utterance upon all
+the main problems of life and of nationality. It is primitive, like the
+early literature of a race or people, in that its spirit and purpose are
+essentially religious. It is like the primitive literatures also in its
+prophetic cry and in its bardic simplicity and homeliness, and unlike them
+in its faith and joy and its unconquerable optimism.
+
+It has been not inaptly called the bible of democracy. Its biblical
+features are obvious enough with the darker negative traits left out. It
+is Israel with science and the modern added.
+
+Whitman was swayed by a few great passions,--the passion for country, the
+passion for comrades, the cosmic passion, etc. His first concern seems
+always to have been for his country. He has touched no theme, named no
+man, not related in some way to America. The thought of it possessed him
+as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
+Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
+power,--the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
+suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
+cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
+all-inclusive:--
+
+  "My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
+        earth,
+  I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
+        lands;
+  I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
+
+  "O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
+        continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
+  I think I have blown with you, O winds,
+  O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."
+
+
+II
+
+The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,--of
+absolute social equality.
+
+It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
+distinguished from the old theological conception,--namely, that creation
+is good and sound in all its parts.
+
+It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
+friend and not the enemy of life.
+
+It places comradeship, manly attachment, above sex love, and indicates it
+as the cement of future states and republics.
+
+It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.
+
+It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
+trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
+sexuality,--upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
+at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
+frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.
+
+It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
+conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
+works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.
+
+It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
+man,--a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
+have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
+parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
+the heroes of land and sea.
+
+Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
+real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and
+concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore,
+the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man.
+
+Its purpose is to stimulate and arouse, rather than to soothe and satisfy.
+It addresses the character, the intuitions, the ego, more than the
+intellect or the purely æsthetic faculties. Its end is not taste, but
+growth in the manly virtues and powers.
+
+Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.
+
+It aspires to a candor and a directness like that of Nature herself.
+
+It aims to let Nature speak without check, with original energy. The only
+checks are those which health and wholeness demand.
+
+Its standards are those of the natural universal.
+
+Its method is egocentric. The poet never goes out of himself, but draws
+everything into himself and makes it all serve to illustrate his
+personality.
+
+Its form is not what is called artistic. Its suggestion is to be found in
+organic nature, in trees, clouds, and in the vital and flowing currents.
+
+In its composition the author was doubtless greatly influenced by the
+opera and the great singers, and the music of the great composers. He
+would let himself go in the same manner and seek his effects through
+multitude and the quality of the living voice.
+
+Finally, "Leaves of Grass" is an utterance out of the depths of
+primordial, aboriginal human nature. It embodies and exploits a character
+not rendered anæmic by civilization, but preserving a sweet and sane
+savagery, indebted to culture only as a means to escape culture, reaching
+back always, through books, art, civilization, to fresh, unsophisticated
+nature, and drawing his strength thence.
+
+Another of the ideas that master Whitman and rule him is the idea of
+identity,--that you are you and I am I, and that we are henceforth secure
+whatever comes or goes. He revels in this idea; it is fruitful with him;
+it begets in him the ego-enthusiasm, and is at the bottom of his
+unshakable faith in immortality. It leavens all his work. It cannot be too
+often said that the book is not merely a collection of pretty poems,
+themes elaborated and followed out at long removes from the personality of
+the poet, but a series of _sorties_ into the world of materials, the
+American world, piercing through the ostensible shows of things to the
+interior meanings, and illustrating in a free and large way the genesis
+and growth of a man, his free use of the world about him, appropriating it
+to himself, seeking his spiritual identity through its various objects and
+experiences, and giving in many direct and indirect ways the meaning and
+satisfaction of life. There is much in it that is not poetical in the
+popular sense, much that is neutral and negative, and yet is an integral
+part of the whole, as is the case in the world we inhabit. If it offends,
+it is in a wholesome way, like objects in the open air.
+
+
+III
+
+Whitman rarely celebrates exceptional characters. He loves the common
+humanity, and finds his ideals among the masses. It is not difficult to
+reconcile his attraction toward the average man, towards workingmen and
+"powerful, uneducated persons," with the ideal of a high excellence,
+because he finally rests only upon the most elevated and heroic personal
+qualities,--elevated but well grounded in the common and universal.
+
+The types upon which he dwells the most fondly are of the common people.
+
+  "I knew a man,
+  He was a common farmer--he was the father of five sons,
+  And in them were the fathers of sons--and in them were the fathers of
+        sons.
+
+  "This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
+  The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale
+        yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable
+        meaning of his black eyes,
+  These I used to go and visit him to see--he was wise also,
+  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were
+        massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
+  They and his daughters loved him--all who saw him loved him,
+  They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal love;
+  He drank water only--the blood showed like scarlet through the
+        clear-brown skin of his face,
+  He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sailed his boat himself--he had
+        a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner--he had fowling-pieces
+        presented to him by men that loved him;
+  When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you
+        would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
+  You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by him
+        in the boat, that you and he might touch each other."
+
+All the _motifs_ of his work are the near, the vital, the universal;
+nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are
+democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality,
+comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of the
+sexes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it
+sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems
+are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a
+look, a gesture, a tone of voice.
+
+"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand
+at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" requires a large perspective; you must not get your face
+too near the book. You must bring to it a magnanimity of spirit,--a
+charity and faith equal to its own. Looked at too closely, it often seems
+incoherent and meaningless; draw off a little and let the figure come out.
+The book is from first to last a most determined attempt, on the part of a
+large, reflective, loving, magnetic, rather primitive, thoroughly
+imaginative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth
+century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career
+upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiasm as to lift and
+fill it with the deepest meanings of the spirit and disclose the order of
+universal nature. The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or
+criticism, or partiality whatever, but has squarely and lovingly faced the
+oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and
+fused them in his fervid humanity, and imbued them with deepest poetic
+meanings. One of the most striking features of the book is the adequacy
+and composure, even joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence
+of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era. He
+spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no
+part; and his quality, his individuality, shines through it all, as the
+sun through vapors. The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of
+Walt Whitman. It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man
+exploited and illustrated. Walt Whitman does not write poems, strictly
+speaking,--does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel
+and carve it into a beautiful image or object, or polish and elaborate a
+thought, embodying it in pleasing tropes and pictures. His purpose is
+rather to show a towering, loving, composite personality moving amid all
+sorts of materials, taking them up but for a moment, disclosing new
+meanings and suggestions in them, passing on, bestowing himself upon
+whoever or whatever will accept him, tossing hints and clues right and
+left, provoking and stimulating the thought and imagination of his reader,
+but finishing nothing for him, leaving much to be desired, much to be
+completed by him in his turn.
+
+
+IV
+
+The reader who would get at the spirit and meaning of "Leaves of Grass"
+must remember that its animating principle, from first to last, is
+Democracy,--that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit
+of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New
+World,--and that all things characteristically American (trades, tools,
+occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places
+in it. It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the
+life of the poet fell, and to show one master personality accepting,
+absorbing all and rising superior to it,--namely, the poet himself. Yet it
+is never Whitman that speaks so much as it is Democracy that speaks
+through him. He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in
+this character launches forth his "omnivorous words." What would seem
+colossal egotism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with
+low, rude persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and
+vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the
+boundless compassion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal
+Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain
+and easy in the works of this much misunderstood poet.
+
+Perhaps the single poem that throws most light upon his aims and methods,
+and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in "Calamus," and is as
+follows:--
+
+  "Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
+  Without one thing all will be useless,
+  I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
+  I am not what you suppos'd, but far different.
+
+  "Who is he that would become my follower?
+  Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
+
+  "The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
+  You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your
+        sole and exclusive standard,
+  Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
+  The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives
+        around you would have to be abandon'd,
+  Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let
+        go your hand from my shoulders,
+  Put me down and depart on your way.
+
+  "Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
+  Or back of a rock in the open air,
+  (For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
+  And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
+  But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any
+        person for miles around approach unawares,
+  Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or
+        some quiet island,
+  Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
+  With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,
+  For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
+
+  "Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
+  Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
+  Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
+  For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
+  And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
+
+  "But these leaves conning you con at peril,
+  For these leaves and me you will not understand,
+  They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
+        certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you.
+
+  "For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
+  Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
+  Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
+  Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove
+        victorious,
+  Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps
+        more,
+  For all is useless without that for which you may guess at many times
+        and not hit, that which I hinted at,
+  Therefore release me and depart on your way."
+
+
+When one has fully mastered this poem he has got a pretty good hold upon
+Whitman's spirit and method. His open-air standards, the baffling and
+elusive character of his work, the extraordinary demand it makes, its
+radical and far-reaching effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil
+as a necessary part of the good (there was a human need of sin, said
+Margaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and
+suggestive method, that it can be fully read only through our acquaintance
+with life and real things at first hand, etc.,--all this and more is in
+the poem.
+
+
+
+
+HIS SELF-RELIANCE
+
+
+I
+
+It is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a German author was to
+be a German martyr. I presume things have changed in Germany since those
+times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and
+hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In
+Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an
+American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the
+great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Molière, or Byron, was
+Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times;
+but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and
+self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His
+unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise. It was of a kind
+that tries a man's mettle, and brings out his heroic traits if he has any.
+One almost envies him his unpopularity. It was of the kind that only the
+greatest ones have experienced, and that attests something extraordinary
+in the recipient of it. He said he was more resolute because all had
+denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:--
+
+  "I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor
+        ridicule."
+
+
+There are no more precious and tonic pages in history than the records of
+men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in
+obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature.
+Whitman's is the most striking case in our literary annals,--probably the
+most striking one in our century outside of politics and religion. The
+inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: "My commission obeying, to
+question it never daring."
+
+The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained
+it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and
+cannot be avoided.
+
+  "Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you and were tender
+        with you? and stood aside for you?
+  Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace
+        themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute
+        the passage with you?"
+
+
+Every man is a partaker in the triumph of him who is always true to
+himself and makes no compromises with customs, schools, or opinions.
+Whitman's life, underneath its easy tolerance and cheerful good-will, was
+heroic. He fought his battle against great odds and he conquered; he had
+his own way, he yielded not a hair to the enemy.
+
+The pressure brought to bear upon him by the press, by many of his
+friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to
+change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served
+as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the
+more deeply he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The
+fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and
+aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could
+have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no
+publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was
+threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy
+Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would
+omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for
+one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always
+did.
+
+Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down
+Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which
+was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable
+conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so,
+whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet
+probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had
+not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your
+own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your
+private heart is true of all men,--that is genius."
+
+In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson
+invoked and prayed for,--the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who
+should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be
+Greek, or Italian, or French, or English, but only himself; who should
+not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate,
+or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debasements of
+our times the lineaments of the same gods that so ravished the bards of
+old.
+
+The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the
+books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
+thank and revere him."
+
+Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has
+done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works
+in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a
+time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures
+itself by its contempt of some external good,"--popularity, for instance.
+"The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have chosen your
+part abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the
+world." "Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
+something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous
+age." Heroism "is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality
+in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of
+hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent
+than all actual and all possible antagonists." "A man is to carry himself
+in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and
+ephemeral but he." "Great works of art," he again says, "teach us to
+abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility, the
+more when the whole cry of voices is on the other side."
+
+These brave sayings of Emerson were all illustrated and confirmed by
+Whitman's course. The spectacle of this man sitting there by the window of
+his little house in Camden, poor and partially paralyzed, and looking out
+upon the trite and commonplace scenes and people, or looking athwart the
+years and seeing only detraction and denial, yet always serene, cheerful,
+charitable, his wisdom and tolerance ripening and mellowing with time, is
+something to treasure and profit by. He was a man who needed no
+assurances. He had the patience and the leisure of nature. He welcomed
+your friendly and sympathetic word, or with equal composure he did without
+it.
+
+I remember calling upon him shortly after Swinburne's fierce onslaught
+upon him had been published, some time in the latter part of the eighties.
+I was curious to see how Whitman took it, but I could not discover either
+in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly
+of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne's
+account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat
+upon himself as Swinburne had done. In fact I think hostile criticism,
+fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it
+not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against shadows.
+Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was
+trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think
+Whitman took any interest in it from the first.
+
+Self-reliance, or self-trust, is one of the principles Whitman announces
+in his "Laws for Creations." He saw that no first-class work is possible
+except it issue from a man's deepest, most radical self.
+
+  "What do you suppose creation is?
+  What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no
+        superior?
+  What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that
+        man or woman is as good as God?
+  And that there is no God any more divine than yourself?
+  And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
+  And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?"
+
+
+I think it probable that Whitman anticipated a long period of comparative
+oblivion for himself and his works. He knew from the first that the public
+would not be with him; he knew that the censors of taste, the critics and
+literary professors, would not be with him; he knew that the vast army of
+Philistia, the respectable, fashionable mammon-worshiping crowd, would not
+be with him,--that the timid, the pampered, the prurient, the conforming,
+the bourgeoisie spirit, the class spirit, the academic spirit, the
+Pharisaic spirit in all its forms, would all work against him; and that,
+as in the case of nearly all original, first-class men, he would have to
+wait to be understood for the growth of the taste of himself. None knew
+more clearly than he did how completely our people were under the
+illusion of the genteel and the conventional, and that, even among the
+emancipated few, the possession of anything like robust æsthetic
+perception was rare enough. America, so bold and original and independent
+in the world of practical politics and material endeavor, is, in spiritual
+and imaginative regions, timid, conforming, imitative. There is, perhaps,
+no civilized country in the world wherein the native, original man, the
+real critter, as Whitman loved to say, that underlies all our culture and
+conventions, crops out so little in manners, in literature, and in social
+usages. The fear of being unconventional is greater with us than the fear
+of death. A certain evasiveness, polish, distrust of ourselves, amounting
+to insipidity and insincerity, is spoken of by observant foreigners. In
+other words, we are perhaps the least like children of any people in the
+world. All these things were against Whitman, and will continue to be
+against him for a long time. With the first stroke he broke through the
+conventional and took his stand upon the natural. With rude hands he tore
+away the veils and concealments from the body and from the soul. He
+ignored entirely all social and conventional usages and hypocrisies, not
+by revolt against them, but by choosing a point of view from which they
+disappeared. He embraced the unrefined and the savage as well as the
+tender and human. The illusions of the past, the models and standards, he
+freed himself of at once, and declared for the beauty and the divinity of
+the now and the here. The rude realism of his "Leaves" shocked like a
+plunge in the surf, but it invigorated also, if we were strong enough to
+stand it.
+
+Out of Whitman's absolute self-trust arose his prophetic egotism,--the
+divine fervor and audacity of the simple ego. He shared the conviction of
+the old prophets that man is a part of God, and that there is nothing in
+the universe any more divine than the individual soul. "I, too," he says,
+and this line is the key to much there is in his work--
+
+  "I, too, have felt the resistless call of myself."
+
+
+With the old Biblical writers the motions of their own spirits, their
+thoughts, their dreams, were the voice of God. There is something of the
+same sort in Whitman. The voice of that inner self was final and
+authoritative with him. It was the voice of God. He could drive through
+and over all the conventions of the world in obedience to that voice. This
+call to him was as a voice from Sinai. One of his mastering thoughts was
+the thought of identity,--that you are you, and I am I. This was the final
+meaning of things, and the meaning of immortality. "Yourself, _yourself_,
+YOURSELF," he says, with swelling vehemence, "forever and ever." To be
+compacted and riveted and fortified in yourself, so as to be a law unto
+yourself, is the final word of the past and of the present.
+
+
+II
+
+The shadow of Whitman's self-reliance and heroic self-esteem--the sort of
+eddy or back-water--was undoubtedly a childlike fondness for praise and
+for seeing his name in print. In his relaxed moments, when the stress of
+his task was not upon him, he was indeed in many respects a child. He had
+a child's delight in his own picture. He enjoyed hearing himself lauded as
+Colonel Ingersoll lauded him in his lecture in Philadelphia, and as his
+friends lauded him at his birthday dinner parties during the last two or
+three years of his life; he loved to see his name in print, and items
+about himself in the newspapers; he sometimes wrote them himself and gave
+them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his
+life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in
+fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him
+dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him
+to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be
+frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men
+also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature,
+and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human
+nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be
+kept up to the heroic pitch.
+
+
+III
+
+It was difficult to appreciate his liking for the newspaper. But he had
+been a newspaper man himself; the printer's ink had struck in; he had many
+associations with the press-room and the composing-room; he loved the
+common, democratic character of the newspaper; it was the average man's
+library. The homely uses to which it was put, and the humble firesides to
+which it found its way, endeared it to him, and made him love to see his
+name in it.
+
+Whitman's vanity was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as
+tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy
+sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life
+there was none.
+
+His egotism is of the large generous species that never irritates or
+pricks into you like that of the merely conceited man. His love, his
+candor, his sympathy are on an equal scale.
+
+His egotism comes finally to affect one like the independence and
+indifference of natural law. It takes little heed of our opinion, whether
+it be for or against, and keeps to its own way whatever befall.
+
+Whitman's absolute faith in himself was a part of his faith in creation.
+He felt himself so keenly a part of the whole that he shared its soundness
+and excellence; he must be good as it is good.
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
+manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
+give rise to the charge that he was a _poseur_. He was a _poseur_ in the
+sense, and to the extent, that any man is a _poseur_ who tries to live up
+to a certain ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
+clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
+apart and looking upon himself as another person. Hence his extraordinary
+self-knowledge, and, we may also say, his extraordinary self-appreciation,
+or to use his own words, "the quite changed attitude of the ego, the one
+chanting or talking, towards himself." Of course there is danger in this
+attitude, but Whitman was large enough and strong enough to escape it. He
+saw himself to be the typical inevitable democrat that others have seen
+him to be, and with perfect candor and without ever forcing the note, he
+portrays himself as such. As his work is confessedly the poem of himself,
+himself magnified and projected, as it were, upon the canvas of a great
+age and country, all his traits and qualities stand out in heroic
+proportions, his pride and egotism as well as his love and tolerance.
+
+"How beautiful is candor," he says. "All faults may be forgiven of him who
+has perfect candor." The last thing that could ever be charged of Whitman
+is that he lacked openness, or was guilty of any deceit or concealments in
+his life or works.
+
+From the studies, notes, and scrap-books which Whitman left, it appears
+that he was long preparing and disciplining himself for the work he had in
+view. "The long foreground," to which Emerson referred in his letter, was
+of course a reality. But this self-consciousness and self-adjustment to a
+given end is an element of strength and not of weakness.
+
+In the famous vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the
+first "Leaves of Grass" he assumes an attitude and is in a sense a
+_poseur_; but the reader comes finally to wonder at the marvelous
+self-knowledge the picture displays, and how strictly typical it is of the
+poet's mental and spiritual attitude towards the world,--independent,
+unconventional, audacious, yet inquiring and sympathetic in a wonderful
+degree. In the same way he posed in other portraits. A favorite with him
+is the one in which he sits contemplating a butterfly upon his
+forefinger--typical of a man "preoccupied of his own soul." In another he
+peers out curiously as from behind a mask. In an earlier one he stands,
+hat in hand, in marked _negligé_ costume,--a little too intentional, one
+feels. The contempt of the polished ones is probably very strong within
+him at this time. I say contempt, though I doubt if Whitman ever felt
+contempt for any human being.
+
+
+V
+
+Then Whitman had a curious habit of standing apart, as it were, and
+looking upon himself and his career as of some other person. He was
+interested in his own cause, and took a hand in the discussion. From first
+to last he had the habit of regarding himself objectively. On his deathbed
+he seemed to be a spectator of his own last moments, and was seen to feel
+his pulse a few minutes before he breathed his last.
+
+He has recorded this trait in his poems:--
+
+  "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
+  Stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, waiting,
+  Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
+  Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it."
+
+As also in this from "Calamus:"--
+
+  "That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,
+        chattering, chaffering,
+  How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,
+  How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
+  But among my lovers, and caroling these songs,
+  Oh, I never doubt whether that is really me."
+
+
+Whitman always speaks as one having authority and not as a scribe, not as
+a mere man of letters. This is the privilege of the divine egoism of the
+prophet.
+
+Like the utterances of the biblical writers, without argument, without
+elaboration, his mere dictum seems the word of fate. It is not the voice
+of a man who has made his way through the world by rejecting and denying,
+but by accepting all and rising superior. What the "push of reading" or
+the push of argument could not start is often started and clinched by his
+mere authoritative "I say."
+
+  "I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery
+        draws the blood out of liberty,"...
+  "I say the human shape or face is so great it must never be made
+        ridiculous;
+  I say for ornaments nothing outré can be allowed,
+  And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,
+  And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology
+        and in other persons' physiologies also.
+
+  "Think of the past;
+  I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and
+        your times....
+  Think of spiritual results.
+  Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results.
+  Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
+  Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
+  Think of womanhood and you to be a woman;
+  The Creation is womanhood;
+  Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
+  Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
+        womanhood?"
+
+
+Egotism is usually intolerant, but Whitman was one of the most tolerant of
+men.
+
+A craving for sympathy and personal affection he certainly had; to be
+valued as a human being was more to him than to be valued as a poet. His
+strongest attachments were probably for persons who had no opinion, good
+or bad, of his poetry at all.
+
+
+VI
+
+Under close scrutiny his egotism turns out to be a kind of altru-egotism,
+which is vicarious and all-inclusive of his fellows. It is one phase of
+his democracy, and is vital and radical in his pages. It is a high,
+imperturbable pride in his manhood and in the humanity which he shares
+with all. It is the exultant and sometimes almost arrogant expression of
+the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world--the
+feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws,
+institutions, conventions, bibles, religions--that the divinity of kings,
+and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to the humblest
+person.
+
+It was a passion that united him to his fellows rather than separated him
+from them. His pride was not that of a man who sets himself up above
+others, or who claims some special advantage or privilege, but that
+godlike quality that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence
+we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for
+mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and
+follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is
+the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there
+might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that
+his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate
+the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves,"
+flowing curiously out of its pride and egotism, is the lesson of charity,
+of self-surrender, and the free bestowal of yourself upon all hands.
+
+The law of life of great art is the law of life in ethics, and was long
+ago announced.
+
+He that would lose his life shall find it; he who gives himself the most
+freely shall the most freely receive. Whitman made himself the brother and
+equal of all, not in word, but in very deed; he was in himself a compend
+of the people for which he spoke, and this breadth of sympathy and free
+giving of himself has resulted in an unexpected accession of power.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE
+
+
+I
+
+Whitman protests against his "Leaves" being judged merely as literature;
+but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends
+the matter. Still while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are
+paramount in most other poets,--certainly in all third and fourth rate
+poets, in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values.
+
+In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates
+that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary
+productions.
+
+"Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries," he says in one of the
+"Inscriptions,"--
+
+  "For that which was lacking in all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed
+        most, I bring.
+  Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
+  The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,
+  A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
+  But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."
+
+
+Not linked with the studied and scholarly productions, not open to the
+mere bookish mind, but more akin to the primitive utterances and oracles
+of historic humanity. A literary age like ours lays great stress upon the
+savor of books, art, culture, and has little taste for the savor of real
+things, the real man, which we get in Whitman.
+
+"It is the true breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit,
+that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes
+on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would
+not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is
+beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson,
+begat Browning, begat the New England poets, but it did not in the same
+sense beget Whitman, any more than it begat Homer or Job or Isaiah. The
+artist may delight in him and find his own ideals there; the critic may
+study him and find the poet master of all his weapons; the disciple of
+culture will find, as Professor Triggs has well said, that "there is no
+body of writings in literature which demands a wider conversancy with the
+best that has been thought or said in the world,"--yet the poet escapes
+from all hands that would finally hold him and monopolize him. Whitman is
+an immense solvent,--forms, theories, rules, criticisms, disappear in his
+fluid, teeming pages. Much can be deduced from him, because much went to
+the making up of his point of view. He makes no criticism, yet a
+far-reaching criticism is implied in the very start of his poems. No
+modern poet presupposes so much, or requires so much preliminary study and
+reflection. He brings a multitude of questions and problems, and, what is
+singular, he brings them in himself; they are implied in his temper, and
+in his attitude toward life and reality.
+
+Whitman says he has read his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, that he
+has tried himself by the elemental laws; and tells us in many ways, direct
+and indirect, that the standards he would be tried by are not those of art
+or books, but of absolute nature. He has been laughed at for calling
+himself a "Kosmos," but evidently he uses the term to indicate this
+elemental, dynamic character of his work,--its escape from indoor,
+artificial standards, its aspiration after the "amplitude of the earth,
+and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of
+the earth, and the equilibrium also."
+
+
+II
+
+Unless the poetic perception is fundamental in us, and can grasp the
+poetry of things, actions, characters, multitudes, heroisms, we shall read
+Whitman with very poor results. Unless America, the contemporary age,
+life, nature, are poetical to us, Whitman will not be. He has aimed at the
+larger poetry of forces, masses, persons, enthusiasms, rather than at the
+poetry of the specially rare and fine. He kindles in me the delight I have
+in space, freedom, power, the elements, the cosmic, democracy, and the
+great personal qualities of self-reliance, courage, candor, charity.
+
+Always in the literary poets are we impressed with the art of the poet as
+something distinct from the poet himself, and more or less put on. The
+poet gets himself up for the occasion; he assumes the pose and the
+language of the poet, as the priest assumes the pose and the language of
+devotion. In Whitman the artist and the man are one. He never gets himself
+up for the occasion. Our pleasure in him is rarely or never our pleasure
+in the well-dressed, the well-drilled, the cultivated, the refined, the
+orderly, but it is more akin to our pleasure in real things, in human
+qualities and powers, in freedom, health, development. Yet I never open
+his book without being struck afresh with its pictural quality, its grasp
+of the concrete, its vivid realism, its intimate sense of things, persons,
+truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such
+as we can never get in mere prose. It is as direct as a challenge, as
+personal as a handshake, and yet withal how mystical, how elusive, how
+incommensurable! To deny that Whitman belongs to the fraternity of great
+artists, the shapers and moulders of the ideal,--those who breathe the
+breath of life into the clay or stone of common facts and objects, who
+make all things plastic and the vehicles of great and human emotions,--is
+to read him very inadequately, to say the least. To get at Walt Whitman
+you must see through just as much as you do in dealing with nature; you
+are to bring the same interpretive imagination. You are not to be balked
+by what appears to be the coarse and the familiar, or his rank
+contemporaneity; after a time you will surely see the lambent spiritual
+flames that play about it all.
+
+  "Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering about me,"
+
+and his cosmic splendor, depth, and power. It is not the denial of art, it
+is a new affirmation of life. It is one phase of his democracy. It is the
+logical conclusion of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself that
+appeared in the first edition of his poems. He would give us more of the
+man, a fuller measure of personal, concrete, human qualities, than any
+poet before him. He strips away the artificial wrappings and illusions
+usual in poetry, and relies entirely upon the native and intrinsic. He
+will have no curtains, he says,--not the finest,--between himself and his
+reader.
+
+  "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
+        all poems,
+  You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of
+        suns left),
+  You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
+        through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
+  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+  You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."
+
+
+This is a hint of his democracy as applied to literature,--more direct and
+immediate contact with the primary and universal, less of the vestments
+and trappings of art and more of the push and power of original character
+and of nature.
+
+
+III
+
+It seems to me it is always in order to protest against the narrow and
+dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticism touching this
+matter of art. "The boundaries of art are jealously guarded," says a
+recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that
+had been accurately surveyed and fixed,--as if art was a fact and not a
+spirit.
+
+Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that
+art is in any sense an "enclosure,"--a province fenced off and set apart
+from the rest,--any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many
+people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human
+spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the
+sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has
+but one principle, one aim,--to produce an impression, a powerful
+impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the
+canons of taste and criticism. Name any principle, so called, and some day
+a genius shall be born who will produce his effects in defiance of it, or
+by appearing to reverse it. Such a man as Turner seemed, at first sight,
+to set at defiance all correct notions of art. The same with Wagner in
+music, the same with Whitman in poetry. The new man is impossible till he
+appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power
+does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical
+standards to him. But it is sure to do so at last. There is nothing final
+in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are
+deductions from his work, not its inspiration. We demand of the new man,
+of the overthrower of our idols, but one thing,--has he authentic
+inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded.
+If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of
+nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case. Is
+there no room for the new man? But the new man makes room for himself, and
+if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is
+appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.
+
+
+IV
+
+The trouble with most of us is that we found our taste for poetry upon
+particular authors, instead of upon literature as a whole, or, better yet,
+upon life and reality. Hence we form standards instead of principles.
+Standards are limited, rigid, uncompromising, while principles are
+flexible, expansive, creative. If we are wedded to the Miltonic standard
+of poetry, the classic standards, we shall have great difficulties with
+Whitman; but if we have founded our taste upon natural principles--if we
+have learned to approach literature through reality, instead of reality
+through literature--we shall not be the victims of any one style or model;
+we shall be made free of all. The real test of art, of any art, as Burke
+long ago said, and as quoted by Mr. Howells in his trenchant little volume
+called "Criticism and Fiction," is to be sought outside of art, namely, in
+nature. "I can judge but poorly of anything while I measure it by no other
+standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's
+power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the
+meanest, things in nature will give the truest lights." It is thought that
+the preëminence of the Greek standards is settled when we say they are
+natural. Yes, but Nature is not Greek. She is Asiatic, German, English, as
+well.
+
+
+V
+
+In poetry, in art, a man must sustain a certain vital relation to his
+work, and that work must sustain a certain vital relation to the laws of
+mind and of life. That is all, and that leaves the doors very wide. We are
+not to ask, Is it like this or like that? but, Is it vital, is it real, is
+it a consistent, well-organized whole?
+
+The poet must always interpret himself and nature after his own fashion.
+Is his fashion adequate? Is the interpretation vivid and real? Do his
+lines cut to the quick, and beget heat and joy in the soul? If we cannot
+make the poet's ideal our own by sharing his enthusiasm for it, the
+trouble is as likely to be in ourselves as in him. In any case he must be
+a law unto himself.
+
+The creative artist differs from the mere writer or thinker in this: he
+sustains a direct personal relation to his subject through emotion,
+intuition, will. The indirect, impersonal relation which works by
+reflection, comparison, and analysis is that of the critic and
+philosopher. The man is an artist when he gives us a concrete and
+immediate impression of reality: from his hands we get the thing itself;
+from the critic and thinker we get ideas _about_ the thing. The poet does
+not merely say the world is beautiful; he shows it as beautiful: he does
+not describe the flower; he places it before us. What are the enemies of
+art? Reflection, didacticism, description, the turgid, the obscure. A poet
+with a thesis to sustain is more or less barred from the freedom of pure
+art. It is by direct and unconsidered expression, says Scherer, that art
+communicates with reality. The things that make for art, then, are
+feeling, intuition, sentiment, soul, a fresh and vigorous sense of real
+things,--in fact, all that makes for life, health, and wholeness. Goethe
+is more truly an artist in the first part of Faust than in the second;
+Arnold has a more truly artistic mind than Lowell.
+
+The principles of art are always the same in the respect I have indicated,
+just as the principles of life are always the same, or of health and
+longevity are always the same. No writer is an artist who is related to
+his subject simply by mental or logical grip alone: he must have a certain
+emotional affiliation and identity with it; he does not so much convey to
+us ideas and principles as pictures, parables, impressions,--a lively
+sense of real things. When we put Whitman outside the pale of art, we must
+show his shortcomings here; we must show that he is not fluid and
+generative,--that he paints instead of interprets, that he gives us
+reasons instead of impulses, a stone when we ask for bread. "I do not
+give a little charity," he says; "when I give, I give myself." This the
+artist always does, not his mind merely, but his soul, his personality.
+"Leaves of Grass" is as direct an emanation from a central personal force
+as any book in literature, and always carries its own test and its own
+proof. It never hardens into a system, it never ceases to be penetrated
+with will and emotion, it never declines from the order of deeds to the
+order of mere thoughts. All is movement, progress, evolution, picture,
+parable, impulse.
+
+It is on these grounds that Whitman, first of all, is an artist. He has
+the artist temperament. His whole life was that of a man who lives to
+ideal ends,--who lived to bestow himself upon others, to extract from life
+its meaning and its joy.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman has let himself go, and trusted himself to the informal and
+spontaneous, to a degree unprecedented. His course required a
+self-reliance of the highest order; it required an innate cohesion and
+homogeneity, a firmness and consistency of individual outline, that few
+men have. It would seem to be much easier to face the poet's problem in
+the old, well-worn forms--forms that are so winsome and authoritative in
+themselves--than, to stand upon a basis so individual and intrinsic as
+Whitman chose to stand upon. His course goes to the quick at once. How
+much of a man are you? How vital and fundamental is your poetic gift? Can
+it go alone? Can it face us in undress?
+
+Never did the artist more cunningly conceal himself; never did he so
+completely lose himself in the man, identifying himself with the natural
+and spontaneous; never emerging and challenging attention on his own
+account, denying us when we too literally seek him, mocking us when we
+demand his credentials, and revealing himself only when we have come to
+him upon his own terms.
+
+The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no
+outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader. "This is
+no book," he says: "who touches this touches a man." In one sense Whitman
+is without art,--the impression which he always seeks to make is that of
+reality itself. He aims to give us reality without the usual literary
+veils and illusions,--the least possible amount of the artificial, the
+extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader. He banishes from
+his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,--all
+atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and
+decoration,--and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers.
+The verse does not seem to have been shaped; it might have grown: it takes
+no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular,
+rhythmical, and always fluid and real. A cry will always be raised against
+the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and
+falls back upon simple Nature, or upon himself, as Millet did in painting,
+and Wagner in music, and Whitman in poetry.
+
+Whitman's working ideas, the principles that inspired him, are all
+directly related to life and the problems of life; they are democracy,
+nature, freedom, love, personality, religion: while the ideas from which
+our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,--they are
+literary ideas, such as lucidity, form, beauty.
+
+
+VII
+
+Much light is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark
+which he once made in conversation with Dr. Bucke:--
+
+"I have aimed to make the book simple,--tasteless, or with little
+taste,--with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or
+writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is
+not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her
+productions--her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, meats--with
+faint and delicate flavor and fragrance, but these in the long run make
+the deepest impression. Man, dealing with natural things, constantly aims
+to increase their piquancy. By crossing and selection he deepens and
+intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so
+on. He pursues the same method in poetry,--that is, strives for strong
+light or shade, for high color, perfume, pungency, in all ways for the
+greatest immediate effect. In so doing he leaves the true way, the way of
+Nature, and, in the long run, comes far short of producing her effects."
+
+More light of the same kind is thrown upon his methods by the following
+passage from the preface to the first edition of his poems in 1855.
+
+"To speak in literature," he says, "with the perfect rectitude and
+insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the
+sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless
+triumph of art." And again: "The great poet has less a marked style, and
+is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution,
+and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be
+meddlesome; I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or
+originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I
+will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell,
+I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate
+or soothe, I will have purpose, as health or heat or snow has, and be as
+regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my
+composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side
+and look in the mirror with me."
+
+
+VIII
+
+But in view of the profound impression Whitman's work has made upon widely
+different types of mind on both sides of the Atlantic, and in view of the
+persistent vitality of his fame, the question whether he is inside or
+outside the pale of art amounts to very little. I quite agree with the
+late Mrs. Gilchrist, that, when "great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please."
+
+That Whitman has expressed great meanings and great emotions with adequate
+power, even his unfriendly critics admit. Thus Professor Wendell, in an
+admirable essay on American literature, says that "though Whitman is
+uncouth, inarticulate, and lacking in a grotesque degree artistic form,
+yet for all that he can make you feel for the moment how even the
+ferry-boats plying from New York to Brooklyn are fragments of God's
+eternities." In the same way Mr. William Clark, his British critic and
+expounder, says that he is wanting in discrimination and art, "flings his
+ideas at us in a heap," etc., and yet that the effect of his work is "to
+stir our emotions, widen our interests, and rally the forces of our moral
+nature."
+
+It seems to me that a man who, through the printed page, can do these
+things, must have some kind of art worth considering. If, through his
+impassioned treatment of a prosy, commonplace object like a ferry-boat, he
+can so dignify and exalt it, and so fill it with the meanings of the
+spirit, that it seems like a part of God's eternities, his methods are at
+least worth inquiring into.
+
+The truth is, Whitman's art, in its lack of extrinsic form and finish, is
+Oriental rather than Occidental, and is an offense to a taste founded upon
+the precision and finish of a mechanical age. His verse is like the
+irregular, slightly rude coin of the Greeks compared with the exact,
+machine-cut dies of our own day, or like the unfinished look of Japanese
+pottery beside the less beautiful but more perfect specimens of modern
+ceramic art.
+
+For present purposes, we may say there are two phases of art,--formal art
+and creative art. By formal art I mean that which makes a direct appeal to
+our sense of form,--our sense of the finely carved, the highly wrought,
+the deftly planned; and by creative art I mean that quickening,
+fructifying power of the masters, that heat and passion that make the
+world plastic and submissive to their hands, teeming with new meanings and
+thrilling with new life.
+
+Formal art is always in the ascendant. Formal anything--formal dress,
+formal manners, formal religion, formal this and that--always counts for
+more than the informal, the spontaneous, the original. It is easier, it
+can be put off and on.
+
+Formal art is nearly always the gift of the minor poet, and often of the
+major poet also. In such a poet as Swinburne, formal art leads by a great
+way. The content of his verse,--what is it? In Tennyson as well I should
+say formal art is in the ascendant. Creative art is his also; Tennyson
+reaches and moves the spirit, yet his skill is more noteworthy than his
+power. In Wordsworth, on the other hand, I should say creative art led:
+the content of his verse is more than its form; his spiritual and
+religious values are greater than his literary and artistic. The same is
+true of our own Emerson. Poe, again, is much more as an artist than as a
+man or a personality.
+
+I hardly need say that in Whitman formal art, the ostensibly artistic,
+counts for but very little. The intentional artist, the professional poet,
+is kept entirely in abeyance, or is completely merged and hidden in the
+man, more so undoubtedly than in any poet this side the old Oriental
+bards. We call him formless, chaotic, amorphous, etc., because he makes no
+appeal to our modern highly stimulated sense of art or artificial form. We
+must discriminate this from our sense of power, our sense of life, our
+sense of beauty, of the sublime, of the all, which clearly Whitman would
+reach and move. Whitman certainly has a form of his own: what would a
+poet, or any writer or worker in the ideal, do without some kind of form?
+some consistent and adequate vehicle of expression? But Whitman's form is
+not what is called artistic, because it is not brought within the rules of
+the prosodical system, and does not appeal to our sense of the consciously
+shaped and cultivated. It is essentially the prose form heightened and
+intensified by a deep, strong, lyric and prophetic note.
+
+The bonds and shackles of regular verse-form Whitman threw off. This
+course seemed to be demanded by the spirit to which he had dedicated
+himself,--the spirit of absolute unconstraint. The restrictions and
+hamperings of the scholastic forms did not seem to be consistent with this
+spirit, which he identified with democracy and the New World. A poet who
+sets out to let down the bars everywhere, to remove veils and
+obstructions, to emulate the freedom of the elemental forces, to effuse
+always the atmosphere of open-air growths and objects, to be as
+"regardless of observation" as the processes of nature, etc., will not be
+apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression. The
+essentially prose form which Whitman chose is far more in keeping with the
+spirit and aim of his work than any conventional metrical system could
+have been. Had he wrought solely as a conscious artist, aiming at the
+effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have chosen a
+different medium.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman threw himself with love and enthusiasm upon this great, crude,
+seething, materialistic American world. The question is, Did he master it?
+Is he adequate to absorb and digest it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is
+it plastic in his hands? Does he stamp it with his own image? I do not
+ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make
+it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because
+evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it. He is content if he
+present America and the modern to us as they are inwrought into his own
+personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character,
+passion, will, motive, conviction. He would show them subjectively and as
+living impulses in himself. Of course a great constructive, dramatic poet
+like Shakespeare would have solved his problem in a different manner, or
+through the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters. But the
+poet and prophet of democracy and of egotism shows us all things in and
+through himself.
+
+His egotism, or egocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work.
+It colors all and determines all. The poems are the direct outgrowth of
+the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it
+were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon
+the trunk. His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most
+poets. He never leads us away from himself into pleasant paths with
+enticing flowers of fancy or forms of art. He carves or shapes nothing for
+its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent
+grounds as pure art. His work is not material made precious by elaboration
+and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life.
+
+
+X
+
+Whitman was compelled to this negation of extrinsic art by the problem he
+had set before himself,--first, to arouse, to suggest, rather than to
+finish or elaborate, less to display any theme or thought than "to bring
+the reader into the atmosphere of the theme or thought;" secondly, to make
+his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that
+the dominant impression should always be that of the living, breathing
+man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see
+him and feel him in books or art,--the man in the form and garb of actual,
+concrete life, not as poet or artist, but simply as man. This is doubtless
+the meaning of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to
+the first issue of the "Leaves," to which I have referred. This portrait
+is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task. It was a
+hint that we must take this poet with very little literary tailoring; it
+was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and
+spoke in their spirit.
+
+It is never the theme treated, but always the character exploited; never
+the structure finished, but always the plan suggested; never the work
+accomplished, but always the impulse imparted,--freedom, power, growth.
+
+  "Allons! we must not stop here.
+  However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling,
+        we cannot remain here,
+  However sheltered this port, or however calm these waters, we must not
+        anchor here,
+  However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to
+        receive it but a little while.
+
+  "Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
+  Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
+  Allons! from all formulas!
+  From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!"
+
+
+This magnificent poem, "The Song of the Open Road," is one of the most
+significant in Whitman's work. He takes the open road as his type,--not an
+end in itself, not a fulfillment, but a start, a journey, a progression.
+It teaches him the profound lesson of reception, "no preference nor
+denial," and the profounder lesson of liberty and truth:--
+
+  "From this hour, freedom!
+  From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
+  Going where I list--my own master, total and absolute,
+  Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
+  Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
+  Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
+        would hold me.
+
+  "I inhale great draughts of air,
+  The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine."
+
+He will not rest with art, he will not rest with books, he will press his
+way steadily toward the largest freedom.
+
+  "Only the kernel of every object nourishes.
+  Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
+  Where is he who undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?"
+
+
+Whitman was not a builder. If he had the architectural power which the
+great poets have shown, he gave little proof of it. It was not required by
+the task he set before himself. His book is not a temple: it is a wood, a
+field, a highway; vista, vista, everywhere,--vanishing lights and shades,
+truths half disclosed, successions of objects, hints, suggestions, brief
+pictures, groups, voices, contrasts, blendings, and, above all, the tonic
+quality of the open air. The shorter poems are like bunches of herbs or
+leaves, or a handful of sprays gathered in a walk; never a thought
+carefully carved, and appealing to our sense of artistic form.
+
+The main poem of the book, "The Song of Myself," is a series of
+utterances, ejaculations, apostrophes, enumerations, associations,
+pictures, parables, incidents, suggestions, with little or no structural
+or logical connection, but all emanating from a personality whose presence
+dominates the page, and whose eye is ever upon us. Without this vivid and
+intimate sense of the man back of all, of a sane and powerful spirit
+sustaining ours, the piece would be wild and inchoate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The reader will be sure to demand of Whitman ample compensation for the
+absence from his work of those things which current poets give us in such
+full measure. Whether or not the compensation is ample, whether the music
+of his verse as of winds and waves, the long, irregular, dithyrambic
+movement, its fluid and tonic character, the vastness of conception, the
+large, biblical speech, the surging cosmic emotion, the vivid personal
+presence as of the living man looking into your eye or walking by your
+side,--whether all these things, the refreshing quality as of "harsh salt
+spray" which the poet Lanier found in the "Leaves," the electric currents
+which Mrs. Gilchrist found there, the "unexcelled imaginative justice of
+language" which Mr. Stevenson at times found, the religious liberation and
+faith which Mr. Symonds found, the "incomparable things incomparably well
+said" of Emerson, the rifle-bullets of Ruskin, the "supreme words" of
+Colonel Ingersoll, etc.,--whether qualities and effects like these, I say,
+make up to us for the absence of the traditional poetic graces and
+adornments, is a question which will undoubtedly long divide the reading
+world.
+
+In the works upon which our poetic taste is founded, artistic form is
+paramount; we have never been led to apply to such works open-air
+standards,--clouds, trees, rivers, spaces,--but the precision and
+definiteness of the cultured and the artificial. If Whitman had aimed at
+pure art and had failed, his work would be intolerable. As his French
+critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, has well said: "In the large work which Whitman
+attempted, there come no rules save those of nobility and strength of
+spirit; and these suffice amply to create a most unlooked-for and
+grandiose aspect of beauty." "Overcrowded and disorderly" as it may seem,
+"if heroic emotion and thought and enthusiasm vitalize it," the poet has
+reached his goal.
+
+
+XII
+
+Sometimes I define Whitman to myself as the poet of the open air,--not
+because he sings the praises of these things after the manner of the
+so-called nature-poets, but because he has the quality of things in the
+open air, the quality of the unhoused, the untamed, the elemental and
+aboriginal. He pleases and he offends, the same way things at large do. He
+has the brawn, the indifference, the rudeness, the virility, the
+coarseness,--something gray, unpronounced, elemental, about him, the
+effect of mass, size, distance, flowing, vanishing lines, neutral
+spaces,--something informal, multitudinous, and processional,--something
+regardless of criticism, that makes no bid for our applause, not
+calculated instantly to please, unmindful of details, prosaic if we make
+it so, common, near at hand, and yet that provokes thought and stirs our
+emotions in an unusual degree. The long lists and catalogues of objects
+and scenes in Whitman, that have so excited the mirth of the critics, are
+one phase of his out-of-doors character,--a multitude of concrete objects,
+a grove, a thicket, a field, a stretch of beach,--every object sharply
+defined, but no attempt at logical or artistic sequence, the effect of the
+whole informal, multitudinous. It may be objected to these pages that they
+consist of a mass of details that do not make a picture. But every line is
+a picture of a scene or an object. Whitman always keeps up the movement,
+he never pauses to describe; it is all action.
+
+Passing from such a poet as Tennyson to Whitman is like going from a warm,
+perfumed interior, with rich hangings, pictures, books, statuary, fine men
+and women, out into the street, or upon the beach, or upon the hill, or
+under the midnight stars. We lose something certainly, but do we not gain
+something also? Do we not gain just what Whitman had in view, namely,
+direct contact with the elements in which are the sources of our life and
+health? Do we not gain in scope and power what we lose in art and
+refinement?
+
+The title, "Leaves of Grass," is full of meaning. What self-knowledge and
+self-scrutiny it implies! The grass, perennial sprouting, universal,
+formless, common, the always spread feast of the herds, dotted with
+flowers, the herbage of the earth, so suggestive of the multitudinous,
+loosely aggregated, unelaborated character of the book; the lines
+springing directly out of the personality of the poet, the soil of his
+life.
+
+  "What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me,"
+
+says the poet, and this turns out to be the case. We only look to see if
+in the common and the cheap he discloses new values and new meanings,--if
+his leaves of grass have the old freshness and nutriment, and be not a
+mere painted greenness.
+
+  "The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
+  The carpenter dresses his plank--the tongue of his foreplane whistles
+        its wild ascending lisp,
+  The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving
+        dinner,
+  The pilot seizes the king-pin--he heaves down with a strong arm,
+  The mate stands braced in the whale-boat--lance and harpoon are ready,
+  The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
+  The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
+  The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
+  The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First Day loafe, and looks
+        at the oats and rye,
+  The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case,
+  He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
+        bedroom;
+  The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
+  He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
+  The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,
+  What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
+  The quadroon girl is sold at the stand--the drunkard nods by the
+        bar-room stove,
+  The machinist rolls up his sleeves--the policeman travels his beat--the
+        gate-keeper marks who pass,
+  The young fellow drives the express-wagon--I love him, though I do not
+        know him,
+  The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
+  The western turkey-shooting draws old and young--some lean on their
+        rifles, some sit on logs,
+  Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his
+        piece;
+  The groups of newly-come emigrants cover the wharf or levee,
+  As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them
+        from his saddle,
+  The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners,
+        the dancers bow to each other,
+  The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret, and harks to the
+        musical rain,
+  The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
+  The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and
+        the winter-grain falls in the ground,
+  Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the
+        frozen surface,
+  The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep
+        with his axe,
+  Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-wood or pekan-trees,
+  Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River, or through those
+        drained by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
+  Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,
+  Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons
+        around them,
+  In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their
+        day's sport,
+  The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
+  The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
+  The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his
+        wife;
+  And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
+  And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am."
+
+
+What is this but tufts and tussocks of grass; not branching trees, nor yet
+something framed and deftly put together, but a succession of simple
+things, objects, actions, persons; handfuls of native growths, a stretch
+of prairie or savanna; no composition, no artistic wholes, no logical
+sequence, yet all vital and real; jets of warm life that shoot and play
+over the surface of contemporary America, and that the poet uses as the
+stuff out of which to weave the song of himself.
+
+This simple aggregating or cataloguing style as it has been called, and
+which often occurs in the "Leaves," has been much criticised, but it seems
+to me in perfect keeping in a work that does not aim at total artistic
+effects, at finished structural perfection like architecture, but to
+picture the elements of a man's life and character in outward scenes and
+objects and to show how all nature tends inward to him and he outward to
+it. Whitman showers the elements of American life upon his reader until,
+so to speak, his mind is drenched with them, but never groups them into
+patterns to tickle his sense of form. It is charged that his method is
+inartistic, and it is so in a sense, but it is the Whitman art and has its
+own value in his work. Only the artist instinct could prompt to this
+succession of one line genre word painting.
+
+But this is not the way of the great artists. No, but it is Whitman's way,
+and these things have a certain artistic value in his work, a work that
+professedly aims to typify his country and times,--the value of multitude,
+processions, mass-movements, and the gathering together of elements and
+forces from wide areas.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman's relation to art, then, is primary and fundamental, just as his
+relations to religion, to culture, to politics, to democracy, are primary
+and fundamental,--through his emotion, his soul, and not merely through
+his tools, his intellect. His artistic conscience is quickly revealed to
+any searching inquiry. It is seen in his purpose to convey his message by
+suggestion and indirection, or as an informing, vitalizing breath and
+spirit. His thought and meaning are enveloped in his crowded, concrete,
+and often turbulent pages, as science is enveloped in nature. He has a
+profound ethic, a profound metaphysic, but they are not formulated; they
+are vital in his pages as hearing or eyesight.
+
+Whitman studied effects, and shaped his means to his end, weighing values
+and subordinating parts, as only the great artist does. He knew the power
+of words as few know them; he knew the value of vista, perspective,
+vanishing lights and lines. He knew how to make his words itch at your
+ears till you understood them; how to fold up and put away in his
+sentences meanings, glimpses, that did not at first reveal themselves. It
+is only the work of the great creative artist that is pervaded by will,
+and that emanates directly and inevitably from the personality of the man
+himself. As a man and an American, Whitman is as closely related to his
+work as Æschylus to his, or Dante to his. This is always a supreme
+test,--the closeness and vitality of the relation of a man to his work.
+Could any one else have done it? Is it the general intelligence that
+speaks, the culture and refinement of the age? or have we a new revelation
+of life, a new mind and soul? The lesser poets sustain only a secondary
+relation to their works. It is other poets, other experiences, the past,
+the schools, the forms, that speak through them. In all Whitman's
+recitatives, as he calls them, the free-flowing ends of the sentences, the
+loose threads of meaning, the unraveled or unknitted threads and fringes,
+are all well considered, and are one phase of _his_ art. He seeks his
+effects thus.
+
+His method is indirect, allegorical, and elliptical to an unusual degree;
+often a curious suspension and withholding in a statement, a suggestive
+incompleteness, both ends of his thought, as it were, left in the air;
+sometimes the substantive, sometimes the nominative, is wanting, and all
+for a purpose. The poet somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic
+screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are
+used to in prophecy. The forthrightness of utterance, the projectile
+force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the
+great prophetic souls, is here.
+
+Whitman is poetic in the same way in which he is democratic, in the same
+way in which he is religious, or American, or modern,--not by word merely,
+but by deed; not by the extrinsic, but by the intrinsic; not by art, but
+by life.
+
+I am never tired of saying that to put great personal qualities in a poem,
+or other literary work, not formulated or didactically stated, but in
+tone, manner, attitude, breadth of view, love, charity, good fellowship,
+etc., is the great triumph for our day. So put, they are a possession to
+the race forever; they grow and bear fruit perennially, like the grass and
+the trees. And shall it be said that the poet who does this has no worthy
+art?
+
+
+XIV
+
+Nearly all modern artificial products, when compared with the ancient, are
+characterized by greater mechanical finish and precision. Can we say,
+therefore, they are more artistic? Is a gold coin of the time of Pericles,
+so rude and simple, less artistic than the elaborate coins of our own day?
+Is Japanese pottery, the glazing often ragged and uneven, less artistic
+than the highly finished work of the moderns?
+
+Are we quite sure, after all, that what we call "artistic form" is in any
+high or fundamental sense artistic? Are the precise, the regular, the
+measured, the finished, the symmetrical, indispensable to our conception
+of art? If regular extrinsic form and measure and proportion are necessary
+elements of the artistic, then geometrical flower-beds, and trees set in
+rows or trained to some fancy pattern, ought to please the artist. But do
+they? If we look for the artistic in these things, then Addison is a
+greater artist than Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says, "Addison speaks the
+language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." Which is really the most
+artistic? The one is the coin from the die, the other the coin from the
+hand.
+
+Tennyson's faultless form and finish are not what stamp him a great
+artist. He would no doubt be glad to get rid of them if he could, at least
+to keep them in abeyance and make them less obtrusive; he would give
+anything for the freedom, raciness, and wildness of Shakespeare. But he is
+not equal to these things. The culture, the refinement, the precision of a
+correct and mechanical age have sunk too deeply into his soul. He has not
+the courage or the spring to let himself go as Shakespeare did. Tennyson,
+too, speaks the language of poets, and not of men; he savors of the
+flower-garden, and not of the forest. Tennyson knows that he is an artist.
+Shakespeare, apparently, never had such a thought; he is intent solely
+upon holding the mirror up to nature. The former lived in an age of
+criticism, and when the poets loved poetry more than they did life and
+things; the latter, in a more virile time, and in "the full stream of the
+world."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not self-advertised as a work of art. The author had
+no thought that you should lay down his book and say, "What a great
+artist!" "What a master workman!" He would rather you should say, "What a
+great man!" "What a loving comrade!" "What a real democrat!" "What a
+healing and helpful force!" He would not have you admire his poetry: he
+would have you filled with the breath of a new and larger and saner life;
+he would be a teacher and trainer of men.
+
+The love of the precise, the exact, the methodical, is characteristic of
+an age of machinery, of a commercial and industrial age like ours. These
+things are indispensable in the mill and counting-house, but why should we
+insist upon them in poetry? Why should we cling to an arbitrary form like
+the sonnet? Why should we insist upon a perfect rhyme, as if it was a cog
+in a wheel? Why not allow and even welcome the freedom of half-rhymes, or
+suggestive rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it
+into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering
+and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the
+man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an
+artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair with great laws
+and forces?
+
+Of course it is much easier for a poet to use the regular verse-forms and
+verse language than it is to dispense with them; that is, a much less
+poetic capital is required in the former case than in the latter. The
+stock forms and the stock language count for a good deal. A very small
+amount of original talent may cut quite an imposing figure in the robes of
+the great masters. Require the poet to divest himself of them, and to
+speak in the language of men and in the spirit of real things, and see how
+he fares.
+
+
+XV
+
+Whitman was afraid of what he called the beauty disease. He thought a poet
+of the first order should be sparing of the direct use of the beautiful,
+as Nature herself is. His aim should be larger, and beauty should follow
+and not lead. The poet should not say to himself, "Come, I will make
+something beautiful," but rather "I will make something true, and
+quickening, and powerful. I will not dress my verse up in fine words and
+pretty fancies, but I will breathe into it the grit and force and
+adhesiveness of real things." Beauty is the flowering of life and
+fecundity, and it must have deep root in the non-beautiful.
+
+Beauty, as the master knows it, is a spirit and not an adornment. It is
+not merely akin to flowers and gems and rainbows: it is akin to the All.
+Looking through his eyes, you shall see it in the rude and the savage
+also, in rocks and deserts and mountains, in the common as well as in the
+rare, in wrinkled age as well as in rosy youth.
+
+The non-beautiful holds the world together, holds life together and
+nourishes it, more than the beautiful. Nature is beautiful because she is
+so much else first,--yes, and last, and all the time.
+
+  "For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
+        delicates of the earth and of man,
+  And nothing endures but personal qualities."
+
+
+Is there not in field, wood, or shore something more precious and tonic
+than any special beauties we may chance to find there,--flowers, perfumes,
+sunsets,--something that we cannot do without, though we can do without
+these? Is it health, life, power, or what is it?
+
+Whatever it is, it is something analogous to this that we get in Whitman.
+There is little in his "Leaves" that one would care to quote for its mere
+beauty, though this element is there also. One may pluck a flower here and
+there in his rugged landscape, as in any other; but the flowers are always
+by the way, and never the main matter. We should not miss them if they
+were not there. What delights and invigorates us is in the air, and in the
+look of things. The flowers are like our wild blossoms growing under great
+trees or amid rocks, never the camellia or tuberose of the garden or
+hot-house,--something rude and bracing is always present, always a breath
+of the untamed and aboriginal.
+
+Whitman's work gives results, and never processes. There is no return of
+the mind upon itself; it descends constantly upon things, persons,
+realities. It is a rushing stream which will not stop to be analyzed. It
+has been urged that Whitman does not give the purely intellectual
+satisfaction that would seem to be warranted by his mental grasp and
+penetration. No, nor the æsthetic satisfaction warranted by his
+essentially artistic habit of mind. Well, he did not promise satisfaction
+in anything, but only to put us on the road to satisfaction. His book, he
+says, is not a "good lesson," but it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
+and that to another, and every one to another still.
+
+Let me repeat that the sharp, distinct intellectual note--the note of
+culture, books, clubs, etc., such as we get from so many modern writers,
+you will not get from Whitman. In my opinion, the note he sounds is deeper
+and better than that. It has been charged by an unfriendly critic that he
+strikes lower than the intellect. If it is meant by this that he misses
+the intellect, it is not true; he stimulates the intellect as few poets
+do. He strikes lower because he strikes farther. He sounds the note of
+character, personality, volition, the note of prophecy, of democracy, and
+of love. He seems unintellectual to an abnormally intellectual age; he
+seems unpoetic to a taste formed upon poetic tidbits; he seems irreligious
+to standards founded upon the old models of devotional piety; he seems
+disorderly, incoherent to all petty thumb and finger measurements. In his
+ideas and convictions, Whitman was a modern of the moderns; yet in his
+type, his tastes, his fundamental make-up, he was primitive, of an earlier
+race and age,--before, as Emerson suggests, the gods had cut Man up into
+men, with special talents of one kind or another.
+
+
+XVI
+
+Take any of Whitman's irregular-flowing lines, and clip and trim them, and
+compress them into artificial verse-forms, and what have we gained to make
+up for what we have lost? Take his lines called "Reconciliation," for
+instance:--
+
+  "Word over all beautiful as the sky,
+  Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
+        lost,
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
+  I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
+  Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."
+
+Or take his poem called "Old Ireland:"--
+
+  "Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
+  Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
+  Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
+  Her old white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,
+  At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
+  Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,
+  Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.
+
+  "Yet a word, ancient mother,
+  You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between
+        your knees,
+  Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,
+  For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
+  It was an illusion; the son you loved was not really dead,
+  The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another
+        country.
+  Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
+  What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,
+      The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,
+      And now with rosy and new blood,
+      Moves to-day in a new country."
+
+Or take these lines from "Children of Adam:"--
+
+  "I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I
+        pass'd the church,
+  Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your
+        long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,
+  I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
+        soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
+  Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the
+        wrists around my head,
+  Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last
+        night under my ear."
+
+Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
+measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
+highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
+wanted to preserve at all hazards,--vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
+free-careering forces of nature.
+
+I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
+not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
+is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
+restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
+and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
+like him best without it.
+
+
+XVII
+
+How well we know the language of the conventional poetic! In this
+language, the language of nine tenths of current poetry, the wind comes
+up out of the south and kisses the rose's crimson mouth, or it comes out
+of the wood and rumples the poppy's hood. Morning comes in glistening
+sandals, and her footsteps are jeweled with flowers. Everything is
+bedecked and bejeweled. Nothing is truly seen or truly reported. It is an
+attempt to paint the world beautiful. It is not beautiful as it is, and we
+must deck it out in the colors of the fancy. Now, I do not want the world
+painted for me. I want the grass green or brown, as the case may be; the
+sky blue, the rocks gray, the soil red; and that the sun should rise and
+set without any poetic claptrap. What I want is to see these things spin
+around a thought, or float on the current of an emotion, as they always do
+in real poetry.
+
+Beauty always follows, never leads the great poet. It arises out of the
+interior substance and structure of his work, like the bloom of health in
+the cheeks. The young poet thinks to win Beauty by direct and persistent
+wooing of her. He has not learned yet that she comes unsought to the
+truthful, the brave, the heroic. Let him think some great thought,
+experience some noble impulse, give himself with love to life and reality
+about him, and Beauty is already his. She is the reward of noble deeds.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+The modern standard in art is becoming more and more what has been called
+the canon of the characteristic, as distinguished from the Greek or
+classic canon of formal beauty. It is this canon, as Professor Triggs
+suggests, that we are to apply to Whitman. Dr. Johnson had it in mind when
+he wrote thus of Shakespeare:--
+
+"The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed
+and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers: the
+composition of Shakespeare is a forest in which oaks extend their
+branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds
+and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
+filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless
+diversity."
+
+Classic art holds to certain fixed standards; it seeks formal beauty; it
+holds to order and proportion in external parts; its ideal of natural
+beauty is the well-ordered park or grove or flower-garden. It has a horror
+of the wild and savage. Mountains and forests, and tempests and seas,
+filled the classic mind with terror. Not so with the modern romantic mind,
+which finds its best stimulus and delight in free, unhampered nature. It
+loves the element of mystery and the suggestion of uncontrollable power.
+The modern mind has a sense of the vast, the infinite, that the Greek had
+not, and it is drawn by informal beauty more than by the formal.
+
+
+XIX
+
+It is urged against Whitman that he brings us the materials of poetry, but
+not poetry: he brings us the marble block, but not the statue; or he
+brings us the brick and mortar, but not the house. False or superficial
+analogies mislead us. Poetry is not something made; it is something grown,
+it is a vital union of the fact and the spirit. If the verse awakens in us
+the poetic thrill, the material, whatever it be, must have been touched
+with the transforming spirit of poesy. Why does Whitman's material suggest
+to any reader that it is poetic material? Because it has already been
+breathed upon by the poetic spirit. A poet may bring the raw material of
+poetry in the sense that he may bring the raw material of a gold coin; the
+stamp and form you give it does not add to its value. It is doubtful if
+any of Whitman's utterances could be worked up into what is called poetry
+without a distinct loss of poetic value. What they would gain in finish
+they would lose in suggestiveness. This word "suggestiveness" affords one
+of the keys to Whitman. The objection to him I have been considering
+arises from the failure of the critic to see and appreciate his avowed
+purpose to make his page fruitful in poetic suggestion, rather than in
+samples of poetic elaboration. "I finish no specimens," he says. "I shower
+them by exhaustless laws, fresh and modern continually, as Nature does."
+He is quite content if he awaken the poetic emotion without at all
+satisfying it. He would have you more eager and hungry for poetry when you
+had finished with him than when you began. He brings the poetic stimulus,
+and brings it in fuller measure than any contemporary poet; and this is
+enough for him.
+
+An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that
+reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry
+did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in
+motion at once; he was so fruitful in themes, so suggestive of new
+harmonies and melodies. He gave the hints, and left his reader to follow
+them up. This is exactly what Whitman wanted to do. It defines his
+attitude toward poetry, towards philosophy, towards religion,--to suggest
+and set going, to arouse unanswerable questions, and to brace you to meet
+them; to bring the materials of poetry, if you will have it so, and leave
+you to make the poem; to start trains of thought, and leave you to pursue
+the flight alone. Not a thinker, several critics have urged; no, but the
+cause of thought in others to an unwonted degree. "Whether you agree with
+him or not," says an Australian essayist, "he will sting you into such an
+anguish of thought as must in the end be beneficial." It matters little to
+him whether or not you agree with him; what is important is, that you
+should think the matter out for yourself. He purposely avoids hemming you
+in by his conclusions; he would lead you in no direction but your own.
+"Once more I charge you give play to your self. I charge you leave all
+free, as I have left all free."
+
+No thought, no philosophy, no music, no poetry, in his pages; no, it is
+all character, impulse, emotion, suggestion. But the true reader of him
+experiences all these things: he finds in his pages, if he knows how to
+look for it, a profound metaphysic, a profound ethic, a profound æsthetic;
+a theory of art and poetry which is never stated, but only hinted or
+suggested, and which is much more robust and vital than what we are used
+to; a theory of good and evil; a view of character and conduct; a theory
+of the state and of politics, of the relation of the sexes, etc., to give
+ample food for thought and speculation. The Hegelian philosophy is in the
+"Leaves" as vital as the red corpuscles in the blood, so much is implied
+that is not stated, but only suggested, as in Nature herself. The really
+vast erudition of the work is adroitly concealed, hidden like its
+philosophy, as a tree hides its roots. Readers should not need to be told
+that, in the region of art as of religion, mentality is not first, but
+spirituality, personality, imagination; and that we do not expect a poet's
+thoughts to lie upon his pages like boulders in the field, but rather to
+show their presence like elements in the soil.
+
+  "Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
+  Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
+  If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
+        form, color, perfume to you,
+  If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
+        tall branches and trees."
+
+
+The early records and sacred books of most peoples contain what is called
+the materials of poetry. The Bible is full of such materials. English
+literature shows many attempts to work this material up into poetry, but
+always with a distinct loss of poetic value. The gold is simply beaten
+out thin and made to cover more surface, or it is mixed with some base
+metal. A recent English poet has attempted to work up the New Testament
+records into poetry, and the result is for the most part a thin, windy
+dilution of the original. If the record or legend is full of poetic
+suggestion, that is enough; to elaborate it, and deck it out in poetic
+finery without loss of poetic value, is next to impossible.
+
+To me the Arthurian legends as they are given in the old books, are more
+poetic, more stimulating to the imagination, than they are after they have
+gone through the verbal upholstering and polishing of such a poet as
+Swinburne or even Tennyson. These poets add little but words and flowers
+of fancy, and the heroic simplicity of the original is quite destroyed.
+
+
+XX
+
+No critic of repute has been more puzzled and misled by this unwrought
+character of our poet's verse than Mr. Edmund Gosse, the London poet and
+essayist. Mr. Gosse finds Whitman only a potential or possible poet; his
+work is literature in the condition of protoplasm. He is a maker of poems
+in solution; the structural change which should have crystallized his
+fluid and teeming pages into forms of art never came. It does not occur to
+Mr. Gosse to inquire whether or not something like this may not have been
+the poet's intention. Perhaps this is the secret of the vitality of his
+work, which, as Mr. Gosse says, now, after forty years, shows no sign of
+declining. Perhaps it was a large, fresh supply of poetic yeast that the
+poet really sought to bring us. Undoubtedly Whitman aimed to give his work
+just this fluid, generative quality, to put into it the very basic
+elements of life itself. He feared the "structural change" to which Mr.
+Gosse refers; he knew it was more or less a change from life to death: the
+cell and not the crystal; the leaf of grass, and not the gem, is the type
+of his sentences. He sacrificed fixed form; above all, did he stop short
+of that conscious intellectual elaboration so characteristic of later
+poetry, the better to give the impression and the stimulus of creative
+elemental power. It is not to the point to urge that this is not the
+method or aim of other poets; that others have used the fixed forms, and
+found them plastic and vital in their hands. It was Whitman's aim; these
+were the effects he sought. I think beyond doubt that he gives us the
+impression of something dynamic, something akin to the vital forces of the
+organic world, much more distinctly and fully than any other poet who has
+lived.
+
+Whitman always aimed to make his reader an active partner with him in his
+poetic enterprise. "I seek less," he says, "to state or display any theme
+or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
+theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." This trait is brought
+out by Mr. Gosse in a little allegory. "Every reader who comes to
+Whitman," he says, "starts upon an expedition to the virgin forest. He
+must take his conveniences with him. He will make of the excursion what
+his own spirit dictates. [We generally do, in such cases, Mr. Gosse.]
+There are solitudes, fresh air, rough landscape, and a well of water, but
+if he wishes to enjoy the latter he must bring his own cup with him." This
+phase of Whitman's work has never been more clearly defined. Mr. Gosse
+utters it as an adverse criticism. It is true exposition, however we take
+it, what we get out of Whitman depends so largely upon what we bring to
+him. Readers will not all get the same. We do not all get the same out of
+a walk or a mountain climb. We get out of him in proportion to the
+sympathetic and interpretative power of our own spirits. Have you the
+brooding, warming, vivifying mother-mind? That vague, elusive,
+incommensurable something in the "Leaves" that led Symonds to say that
+talking about Whitman was like talking about the universe,--that seems to
+challenge our pursuit and definition, that takes on so many different
+aspects to so many different minds,--it seems to be this that has led Mr.
+Gosse to persuade himself that there is no real Walt Whitman, no man whom
+we can take, as we take any other figure in literature, as an "entity of
+positive value and definite characteristics," but a mere mass of literary
+protoplasm that takes the instant impression of whatever mood approaches
+it. Stevenson finds a Stevenson in it, Mr. Symonds finds a Symonds,
+Emerson finds an Emerson, etc. Truly may our poet say, "I contain
+multitudes." In what other poet do these men, or others like them, find
+themselves?
+
+Whitman was a powerful solvent undoubtedly. He never hardens into anything
+like a system, or into mere intellectual propositions. One of his own
+phrases, "the fluid and swallowing soul," is descriptive of this trait of
+him. One source of his charm is, that we each see some phase of ourselves
+in him, as Mr. Gosse suggests. Above all things is he potential and
+indicative, bard of "flowing mouth and indicative hand." In his
+"Inscriptions" he says:--
+
+  "I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual
+        look upon you and then averts his face,
+  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
+  Expecting the main things from you."
+
+
+This withholding and half-averted glancing, then, on the part of the poet,
+is deliberate and enters into the scheme of the work. Mr. Gosse would have
+shown himself a sounder critic had he penetrated the poet's purpose in
+this respect, and shown whether or not he had violated the canons he had
+set up for his own guidance. We do not condemn a creative work when it
+departs from some rule or precedent, but when it violates its own
+principle, when it is not consistent with itself, when it hath not eyes to
+see, or ears to hear, or hands to reach what lies within its own sphere.
+Art, in the plastic realms of written language, may set its mind upon
+elaboration, upon structural finish and proportion, upon exact forms and
+compensations, as in architecture, or it may set its mind upon
+suggestion, indirection, and the flowing, changing forms of organic
+nature. It is as much art in the one case as in the other. To get rid of
+all visible artifice is, of course, the great thing in both cases. There
+is so little apparent artifice in Whitman's case that he has been accused
+of being entirely without art, and of throwing his matter together in a
+haphazard way,--"without thought, without selection," without
+"composition, evolution, vertebration of style," says Mr. Gosse. Yet his
+work more than holds its own in a field where these things alone are
+supposed to insure success. Whitman covers up his processes well, and
+knows how to hit his mark without seeming to take aim. The verdicts upon
+him are mainly contradictory, because each critic only takes in a part of
+his scheme. Mr. Stedman finds him a formalist. Mr. Gosse finds in him a
+negation of all form. The London critic says he is without thought. A
+Boston critic speaks of what he happily calls the "waves of thought" in
+his work,--vast mind-impulses that lift and sway great masses of concrete
+facts and incidents. Whitman knew from the start that he would puzzle and
+baffle his critics, and would escape from them like air when they felt
+most sure they had him in their verbal nets. So it has been from the
+first, and so it continues to be. Without one thing, he says, it is
+useless to read him; and of what that one thing needful is, he gives only
+the vaguest hint, only a "significant look."
+
+
+XXI
+
+I may here notice two objections to Whitman urged by Mr. Stedman,--a
+critic for whose opinion I have great respect, and a man for whom I have a
+genuine affection. With all his boasted breadth and tolerance, Whitman,
+says my friend, is narrow; and, with all his vaunted escape from the
+shackles of verse-form, he is a formalist: his "irregular, manneristic
+chant" is as much at the extreme of artificiality as is the sonnet. These
+certainly are faults that one does not readily associate with the work of
+Whitman. But then I remember that the French critic, Scherer, charges
+Carlyle, the apostle of the gospel of sincerity, with being insincere and
+guilty of canting about cant. If Carlyle is insincere, I think it very
+likely that Whitman may be narrow and hide-bound. These things are so much
+a matter of temperament that one cannot judge for another. Yet one ought
+not to confound narrowness and breadth, or little and big. All earnest,
+uncompromising men are more or less open to the charge of narrowness. A
+man is narrow when he concentrates himself upon a point; even a
+cannon-shot is. Whitman was narrow in the sense that he was at times
+monotonous; that he sought but few effects, that he poured himself out
+mainly in one channel, that he struck chiefly the major chords of life.
+His "Leaves" do not show a great range of artistic motifs. A versatile,
+many-sided nature he certainly was not; a large, broad, tolerant nature
+he as certainly was. He does not assume many and diverse forms like a
+purely artistic talent, sporting with and masquerading in all the elements
+of life, like Shakespeare; but in his own proper form, and in his own
+proper person, he gives a sense of vastness and power that are
+unapproached in modern literature. He asserts himself uncompromisingly,
+but he would have you do the same. "He who spreads a wider breast than my
+own proves the width of my own." "He most honors my style who learns under
+it to destroy the teacher." His highest hope is to be the soil of superior
+poems.
+
+Mr. Stedman thinks he detects in the poet a partiality for the coarser,
+commoner elements of our humanity over the finer and choicer,--for the
+"rough" over the gentleman. But when all things have been duly considered,
+it will be found, I think, that he finally rests only with great personal
+qualities and traits. He is drawn by powerful, natural persons, wherever
+found,--men and women self-poised, fully equipped on all sides:--
+
+  "I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully arm'd,
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,"--
+
+and much more to the same effect.
+
+  "I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain:
+  If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it."
+
+
+Whitman is a formalist, just as every man who has a way of his own of
+saying and doing things, no matter how natural, is a formalist; but he is
+not a stickler for form of any sort. He has his own proper form, of
+course, which he rarely departs from. At one extreme of artificiality Mr.
+Stedman apparently places the sonnet. This is an arbitrary form; its rules
+are inflexible; it is something cut and shaped and fitted together after a
+predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial. If Whitman's
+irregularity was equally studied; if it gave us the same sense of
+something cunningly planned and wrought to a particular end, clipped here,
+curbed there, folded back in this line, drawn out in that, and attaining
+to a certain mechanical proportion and balance as a whole,--then there
+would be good ground for the critic's charge. But such is not the case.
+Whitman did not have, nor claim to have, the architectonic power of the
+great constructive poets. He did not build the lofty rhyme. He did not
+build anything, strictly speaking. He let himself go. He named his book
+after the grass, which makes a carpet over the earth, and which is a sign
+and a presence rather than a form.
+
+
+XXII
+
+Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect
+from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional
+cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might
+expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or
+grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a
+little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional
+obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is
+commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy;
+from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an
+average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"
+may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc. The price paid for his
+strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination
+to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision
+with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"
+with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious,"
+will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"
+will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his
+healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk
+to flight.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+To say that Whitman is a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If
+it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of
+language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the
+saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the
+right word--for just the right word--than did Whitman. He would wait for
+days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the
+language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the
+evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language
+never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not
+consciously challenge your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is
+never on dress parade. His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so
+much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to _stumble_ upon
+them. His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial
+adjuncts of poetry,--no finery or stuck-on ornament,--nothing obtrusively
+beautiful or poetic; and because it bears itself with the freedom and
+nonchalance of a man in his every-day attire.
+
+But it is always in a measure misleading to compare language with dress,
+to say that a poet clothes his thought, etc. The language is the thought;
+it is an incarnation, not an outside tailoring. To improve the expression
+is to improve the thought. In the most vital writing, the thought is nude;
+the mind of the reader touches something alive and real. When we begin to
+hear the rustle of a pompous or highly wrought vocabulary, when the man
+begins to dress his commonplace ideas up in fine phrases, we have enough
+of him.
+
+Indeed, it is only the mechanical writer who may be said to "clothe" his
+ideas with words; the real poet thinks through words.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps
+has been made, that in him we find the big merely,--strength without
+power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this
+impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious
+things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here
+is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great
+lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires
+a large space to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and
+multitude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The
+style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling,
+cloud-like masses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me
+there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not
+only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity;
+not only breadth, there is quality and charm. He is both Dantesque and
+Darwinian, as has been said.
+
+Mr. Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whitman, and,
+despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of
+literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,--the
+symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power. Thus, "he
+is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or
+buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a
+kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the
+world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise
+mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,--all seas,
+lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal
+earth."
+
+Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and
+plains, and to the globe itself.
+
+But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only
+claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size
+and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no
+impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to
+size,--breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of
+a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists
+are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.
+
+Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast masses of
+humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the
+industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
+are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
+elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
+effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
+sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere
+the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
+significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
+contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
+forces and objects of the universe, first with reference to character and
+personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
+of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
+in his first poem:--
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.
+
+  "I tramp a perpetual journey,
+  My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
+        woods,
+  No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
+  I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
+  I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,
+  But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
+  My left hand hooking you round the waist,
+  My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public
+        road."
+
+
+He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
+effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
+and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
+the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
+before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
+views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
+disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
+disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
+things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
+His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
+in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
+bits and parts as from the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
+of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:--
+
+  "It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
+        exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the
+        untruth of a single second,
+  I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor
+        ten billions of years,
+  Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and
+        builds a house."
+
+In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
+as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.
+These are typical lines:--
+
+  "A thousand perfect men and women appear,
+  Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths,
+        with offerings."
+
+  "Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young,
+  The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young."
+
+
+"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same
+effect. Always wholes, total impressions,--always a view as of a "strong
+bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower,
+but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a
+city. The title of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might
+stand as the title of the book. When he gathers details and special
+features he masses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo
+carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always
+in the totals, the breadth, the sweep of conception. The part that is
+local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality
+is the background across which it all flits.
+
+We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give
+us,--studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects,
+rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we
+inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He
+tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and
+processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the
+orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon
+he sees a spirit kindred to his own.
+
+He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and
+what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and
+equilibrium.
+
+"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:--
+
+  "The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed
+        either,
+  They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.
+  They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,
+  Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The earth does not argue,
+  Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
+  Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
+  Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
+  Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.
+  Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."
+
+He says the best of life
+
+  "Is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"
+
+and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:--
+
+  "I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate
+        the theory of the earth,
+  No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless
+        it compares with the amplitude of the earth,
+  Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
+        earth."
+
+
+No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
+these and kindred passages:--
+
+  "The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
+  His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
+  The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
+  The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has
+        the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of
+        poems, the Answerer,
+  (Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day,
+        for all its names.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
+  The words of true poems do not merely please,
+  The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of
+        beauty;
+  The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
+        fathers,
+  The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
+
+  "Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness
+        of body, withdrawnness,
+  Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,
+  The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
+  The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all
+        these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
+  The words of the true poems give you more than poems;
+  They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
+        peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything
+        else.
+  They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;
+  They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
+  Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain,
+        love-sick.
+  They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the
+        outset,
+  They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,
+  Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to
+        learn one of the meanings,
+  To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings
+        and never be quiet again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Of these States the poet is the equable man,
+  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of
+        their full returns,
+  Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
+  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more
+        nor less,
+  He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
+  He is the equalizer of his age and land,
+  He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
+  In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
+        building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce,
+        lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality,
+        government,
+  In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as
+        the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
+  The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
+  He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),
+  He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a
+        helpless thing,
+  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
+  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
+  In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
+  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
+  He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as
+        dreams or dots.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass
+        away,
+  The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
+  Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."
+
+
+Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's
+idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the
+beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in
+centuries.
+
+We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in
+these lines of Tennyson:--
+
+  "The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."
+
+"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's
+pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.
+
+Whitman's ideal poet is the most composite man, rich in temperament, rank
+in the human attributes, embracing races and eras in himself. All men see
+themselves in him:--
+
+  "The mechanic takes him for a mechanic,
+  And the soldier supposes him to be a soldier, and the sailor that he
+        has followed the sea,
+  And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
+  And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,
+  No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has
+        followed it,
+  No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters
+        there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
+  The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
+        themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,
+  They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so
+        grown."
+
+
+Let us hold the poet to his own ideals, and not condemn him because he has
+not aimed at something foreign to himself.
+
+The questions which Whitman puts to him who would be an American poet may
+fairly be put to himself.
+
+  "Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what the land and sea, the
+        bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
+  Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
+  Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce
+        contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole
+        people?
+  Are you not of some coterie? some school, or mere religion?
+  Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to
+        life itself?
+  Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
+  Have you, too, the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  What is this you bring my America?
+  Is it uniform with my country?
+  Is it not something that has been better done or told before?
+  Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?
+  Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?--is the good old cause
+        in it?
+  Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
+        literats of enemies' lands?
+  Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
+  Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?
+  Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?
+  Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my
+        strength, gait, face?
+  Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere
+        amanuenses?
+
+
+So far as Whitman's poetry falls within any of the old divisions it is
+lyrical,--a personal and individual utterance. Open the book anywhere and
+you are face to face with a man. His eye is fixed upon you. It is a man's
+voice you hear, and it is directed to _you_. He is not elaborating a
+theme: he is suggesting a relation or hinting a meaning. He is not
+chiseling, or carving a work of art: he is roughly outlining a man; he is
+planting a seed, or tilling a field.
+
+
+XXV
+
+I believe it was the lamented Professor Clifford who first used the term
+"cosmic emotion" in connection with "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's
+atmosphere is so distinctly outside of and above that which ministers to
+our social and domestic wants,--the confined and perfumed air of an indoor
+life; his mood and temper are so habitually begotten by the contemplation
+of the orbs and the laws and processes of universal nature, that the
+phrase often comes to mind in considering him. He is not in any sense,
+except perhaps in a few minor pieces, a domestic and fireside poet,--a
+solace to our social instincts and cultivated ideals. He is too large, too
+aboriginal, too elemental, too strong for that. I seem to understand and
+appreciate him best when I keep in mind the earth as a whole, and its
+relation to the system. Any large view or thought, or survey of life or
+mankind, is a preparation for him. He demands the outdoor temper and
+habit, he demands a sense of space and power, he demands above all things
+a feeling for reality. "Vastness" is a word that applies to him; abysmal
+man, cosmic consciousness, the standards of the natural universal,--all
+hint some phase of his genius. His survey of life and duty is from a point
+not included in any four walls, or in any school or convention. It is a
+survey from out the depths of being; the breath of worlds and systems is
+in these utterances. His treatment of sex, of comradeship, of death, of
+democracy, of religion, of art, of immortality, is in the spirit of the
+great out-of-doors of the universe; the point of view is cosmic rather
+than personal or philanthropic. What charity is this!--the charity of
+sunlight that spares nothing and turns away from nothing. What "heroic
+nudity"! like the nakedness of rocks and winter trees. What sexuality!
+like the lust of spring or the push of tides. What welcome to death, as
+only the night which proves the day!
+
+
+XXVI
+
+This orbic nature which so thrills and fills Whitman is not at all akin to
+that which we get in the so-called nature-poets of Wordsworth and his
+school,--the charm of privacy, of the sequestered, the cosy,--qualities
+that belong to the art of a domestic, home-loving race, and to lovers of
+solitude. Tennyson's poetry abounds in these qualities; so does
+Wordsworth's. There is less of them in Browning, and more of them in the
+younger poets. That communing with nature, those dear friendships with
+birds and flowers, that gentle wooing of the wild and sylvan, that flavor
+of the rural, the bucolic,--all these are important features in the
+current popular poetry, but they are not to any marked extent
+characteristic of Whitman. The sentiment of domesticity, love as a
+sentiment; the attraction of children, home and fireside; the attraction
+of books, art, travel; our pleasure in the choice, the refined, the
+artificial,--these are not the things you are to demand of Whitman. You do
+not demand them of Homer or Dante or the Biblical writers. We are to
+demand of him the major things, primary things; the lift of great
+emotions; the cosmic, the universal; the joy of health, of selfhood; the
+stimulus of the real, the modern, the American; always the large, the
+virile; always perfect acceptance and triumph.
+
+Whitman's free use of the speech of the common people is doubtless
+offensive to a fastidious literary taste. Such phrases as "I will be even
+with you," "what would it amount to," "give in," "not one jot less;"
+"young fellows," "old fellows," "stuck up," "every bit as much," "week in
+and week out," and a thousand others, would jar on the page of any other
+poet more than on his.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+William Rossetti says his language has a certain ultimate quality. Another
+critic speaks of his absolute use of language. Colonel Ingersoll credits
+him with more supreme words than have been uttered by any other man of our
+time.
+
+The power to use words was in Whitman's eyes a divine power, and was
+bought with a price:--
+
+  "For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,
+        procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
+  After treading ground, and breasting river and lake,
+  After a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,
+        after knowledge, freedom, crimes,
+  After complete faith, after clarifying elevations and removing
+        obstructions,
+  After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman,
+        the divine power to speak words."
+
+
+Whitman's sense of composition and his rare artistic faculty of using
+language are seen, as John Addington Symonds says, in the "countless clear
+and perfect phrases" "which are hung, like golden medals of consummate
+workmanship and incised form, in rich clusters over every poem he
+produced. And, what he aimed at above all, these phrases are redolent of
+the very spirit of the emotions they suggest, communicate the breadth and
+largeness of the natural things they indicate, embody the essence of
+realities in living words which palpitate and burn forever."
+
+The great poet is always more or less the original, the abysmal man. He is
+face to face with universal laws and conditions. He speaks out of a
+greater exaltation of sentiment than the prose-writer. He takes liberties;
+he speaks for all men; he is a bird on "pinions free."
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+In saying or implying that Whitman's aim was not primarily literary or
+artistic, I am liable to be misunderstood; and when Whitman himself says,
+"No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
+performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward
+art or æstheticism," he exposes himself to the same misconception. It is
+the literary and poetic value of his verses alone that can save them.
+Their philosophy, their democracy, their vehement patriotism, their
+religious ardor, their spirit of comradeship, or what not, will not alone
+suffice. All depends upon the manner in which these things are presented
+to us. Do we get the reality, or words about the reality? No matter what
+the content of the verse, unless into the whole is breathed the breath of
+the true creative artist they will surely perish. Oblivion awaits every
+utterance not touched with the life of the spirit. Whitman was as
+essentially an artist as was Shakespeare or Dante; his work shows the same
+fusion of imagination, will, emotion, personality; it carries the same
+quality of real things,--not the same shaping, constructive power, but the
+same quickening, stimulating power, the same magic use of words. The
+artist in him is less conscious of itself, is less differentiated from the
+man, than in the other poets. He objected to having his work estimated for
+its literary value alone, but in so doing he used the word in a narrow
+sense.
+
+After all these ages of the assiduous cultivation of literature, there has
+grown up in men a kind of lust of the mere art of writing, just as, after
+so many generations of religious training, there has grown up a passion
+for religious forms and observances. "Mere literature" has come to be a
+current phrase in criticism, meaning, I suppose, that the production to
+which it is applied is notable only for good craftsmanship. In the same
+spirit one speaks of mere scholarship, or of a certain type of man as a
+mere gentleman. It was mere literature that Whitman was afraid of, the
+æsthetic disease, the passion for letters, for poetry, divorced from love
+of life and of things. None knew better than he that the ultimate value of
+any imaginative and emotional work, even of the Bible, is its literary
+value. Its spiritual and religious value is inseparably connected with its
+literary value.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not bookish; it is always the voice of a man, and not
+of a scholar or conventional poet, that addresses us. We all imbue words
+more or less with meanings of our own; but, from the point of view I am
+now essaying, literature is the largest fact, and embraces all inspired
+utterances. The hymn-book seeks to embody or awaken religious emotion
+alone; would its religious value be less if its poetic value were more? I
+think not. The best of the Psalms of David, from the religious point of
+view, are the best from the literary point of view. What reaches and
+thrills the soul,--that is great art. What arouses the passions--mirth,
+anger, indignation, pity--may or may not be true art. No one, for
+instance, can read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" without tears, laughter, anger; but
+no one, I fancy, could ever get from it that deep, tranquil pleasure and
+edification that the great imaginative works impart. Keble's poetry is
+more obviously religious than Wordsworth's or Arnold's, but how
+short-lived, because it is not embalmed in the true artistic spirit! In
+all the great poems, there is something as deep and calm as the light and
+the sky, and as common and universal. I find this something in Whitman. In
+saying, therefore, that his aim was ulterior to that of art, that he was
+not begotten by the literary spirit, I only mean that his aim was that of
+the largest art, and of the most vital and comprehensive literature. We
+should have heard the last of his "Leaves" long ago had they not possessed
+unmistakably the vitality of true literature, "incomparable things,
+incomparably well said," as Emerson remarked.
+
+A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary
+merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its
+literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words
+"literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital
+and imaginative use of language which is the characteristic of all true
+literature. The most effective way of saying a thing in the region of the
+sentiments and emotions,--that is the true literary way.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS
+
+
+I
+
+I have divided my subject into many chapters, and given to each a separate
+heading, yet I am aware that they are all but slight variations of a
+single theme,--viz., Whitman's reliance upon absolute nature. That there
+might be no mistake about it, and that his reader might at once be put in
+possession of his point of view, the poet declared at the outset of his
+career that at every hazard he should let nature speak.
+
+  "Creeds and schools in abeyance
+  Retiring back awhile, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
+  I harbor for good or bad,
+  I permit to speak at every hazard,
+  Nature without check, with original energy."
+
+
+The hazard of letting nature speak will, of course, be great,--the hazard
+of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and
+inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely
+passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his
+criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former
+contingency--the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser
+public--has been astounding. He has been read in a narrow, literal,
+bourgeois spirit. The personal pronoun, which he uses so freely, has been
+taken to stand for the private individual Walt Whitman, so that he has
+been looked upon as a compound of egotism and licentiousness. His
+character has been traduced, and his purpose in the "Leaves" entirely
+misunderstood.
+
+We see at a glance that his attitude towards nature, towards God, towards
+the body and the soul, reverses many of the old ascetic theological
+conceptions.
+
+All is good, all is as it should be; to abase the body is to abase the
+soul. Man is divine inside and out, and is no more divine about the head
+than about the loins. It is from this point of view that he has launched
+his work. He believed the time had come for an utterance out of radical,
+uncompromising human nature; let conventions and refinements stand back,
+let nature, let the soul, let the elemental forces speak; let the body,
+the passions, sex, be exalted; the stone rejected by the builders shall be
+the chief stone in the corner. Evil shall be shown to be a part of the
+good, and death shall be welcomed as joyously as life.
+
+Whitman says his poems will do just as much evil as good, and perhaps
+more. To many readers this confession of itself would be his condemnation.
+To others it would be an evidence of his candor and breadth of view. I
+suppose all great vital forces, whether embodied in a man or in a book,
+work evil as well as good. If they do not, they only tickle the surface
+of things. Has not the Bible worked evil also? Some think more evil than
+good. The dews and the rains and the sunshine work evil.
+
+From Whitman's point of view, there is no good without evil; evil is an
+unripe kind of good. There is no light without darkness, no life without
+death, no growth without pain and struggle. Beware the emasculated good,
+the good by exclusion rather than by victory. "Leaves of Grass" will work
+evil on evil minds,--on narrow, unbalanced minds. It is not a guide, but
+an inspiration; not a remedy, but health and strength. Art does not preach
+directly, but indirectly; it is moral by its spirit, and the mood and
+temper it begets.
+
+Whitman, in celebrating manly pride, self-reliance, the deliciousness of
+sex; in glorifying the body, the natural passions and appetites, nativity;
+in identifying himself with criminals and low or lewd persons; in frankly
+imputing to himself all sins men are guilty of, runs the risk, of course,
+of being read in a spirit less generous and redemptive than his own.
+
+The charity of the poet may stimulate the license of the libertine; the
+optimism of the seer may confirm the evil-doer; the equality of the
+democrat may foster the insolence of the rowdy. This is our lookout and
+not the poet's. We take the same chances with him that we do with nature;
+we are to trim our sails to the breeze he brings; we are to sow wheat and
+not tares for his rains to water.
+
+Whitman's glorification of the body has led some critics to say that he is
+the poet of the body only. But it is just as true to say he is the poet of
+the soul only. He always seeks the spiritual through the material. He
+treats the body and the soul as one, and he treats all things as having
+reference to the soul.
+
+  "I will not make a poem, nor the least part, of a poem, but has
+        reference to the soul,
+  Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there
+        is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul."
+
+
+The curious physiological strain which runs through the poems is to be
+considered in the light of this idea. He exalts the body because in doing
+so he exalts the soul.
+
+  "Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results."
+
+
+II
+
+The reader of Whitman must do his or her own moralizing; the poet is here
+not to deprecate or criticise, but to love and celebrate; he has no
+partialities; our notions of morality do not concern him; he exploits the
+average man just as he finds him; he _is_ the average man for the time
+being and confesses to all his sins and shortcomings, and we will make of
+the result good or evil, according to our mental horizon. That his work is
+unmixed good is the last thing the poet would claim for it. He has not,
+after the easy fashion of the moralist, set the good here and the bad
+there; he has blended them as they are in nature and in life; our profit
+and discipline begin when we have found out whither he finally tends, or
+when we have mastered him and extracted the good he holds. If we expect he
+is going to preach an austere system of morality to us, or any system of
+morality, we are doomed to disappointment. Does Nature preach such a
+system? does Nature preach at all? neither will he. He presents you the
+elements of good and evil in himself in vital fusion and play; your part
+is to see how the totals are at last good.
+
+It is objected that Whitman is too persistent in declaring himself an
+animal, when the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he is an
+animal and the thing he is least likely to remember is that he is a spirit
+and a child of God. But Whitman insists with the same determination that
+he is a spirit and an heir of immortality,--not as one who has cheated the
+devil of his due, but as one who shares the privileges and felicities of
+all, and who finds the divine in the human. Indeed it is here that he
+sounds his most joyous and triumphant note. No such faith in spiritual
+results, no such conviction of the truth of immortality, no such
+determined recognition of the unseen world as the final reality is to be
+found in modern poetry.
+
+As I have said, Whitman aimed to put his whole nature in a poem--the
+physical or physiological, the spiritual, the æsthetic and
+intellectual,--without giving any undue prominence to either. If he has
+not done so, if he has made the animal and sexual too pronounced, more so
+than nature will justify in the best proportioned man, then and then only
+is his artistic scheme vitiated and his work truly immoral.
+
+It may be true that the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he
+is an animal; what he is most likely to forget, is that the animal is just
+as sacred and important as any other part; indeed that it is the basis of
+all, and that a sane and healthful and powerful spirituality and
+intellectuality can only flow out of a sane and healthful animality.
+
+  "I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
+  And you must not be abased to the other."
+
+
+III
+
+Furthermore, Whitman's main problem is to project into literature the new
+democratic man as he conceives him,--the man of the future, intensely
+American, but in the broadest sense human and cosmopolitan; he is to
+project him on a scale large enough for all uses and conditions, ignoring
+the feudal and aristocratic types which have for the most part dominated
+literature, and matching them with a type more copious in friendship,
+charity, sympathy, religion, candor, and of equal egoism and power.
+
+It is to exploit and enforce and illustrate this type or character that
+"Leaves of Grass" is written. The poems are the drama of this new
+democratic man. This type Whitman finds in himself. He does not have to
+create it as Shakespeare did Hamlet or Lear; he has only to discover it
+in himself. He is it and he gives it free utterance. His work is,
+therefore, as he says, the poem of himself,--himself written
+large,--written as upon the face of the continent, written in the types
+and events he finds on all sides. He sees himself in all men, the bad as
+well as the good, and he sees all men in himself. All the stupendous
+claims he makes for himself he makes for others. His egotism is vicarious
+and embraces the world. It is not the private individual Walt Whitman that
+makes these stupendous claims for himself; it is Walt Whitman as the
+spokesman of the genius of American democracy. He is not to discuss a
+question. He is to outline a character, he is to incarnate a principle.
+The essayist or philosopher may discuss the value of any given idea,--may
+talk about it; the creative artist alone can give us the thing itself, the
+concrete flesh-and-blood reality. Whitman is not only to make this survey,
+to launch this criticism; he is to embody it in a living human
+personality, and enable us to see the world of man and morals through its
+eyes. What with the scientist, the philosopher, is thought, must be
+emotion and passion with him.
+
+Whitman promises that we shall share with him "two greatnesses, and a
+third one rising inclusive and more resplendent,"--
+
+  "The greatness of Love and Democracy and the greatness of Religion"--
+
+not merely as ideas, but as living impulses. He is to show the spirit of
+absolute, impartial nature, incarnated in a human being, imbued with
+love, democracy, and religion, moving amid the scenes and events of the
+New World, sounding all the joys and abandonments of life, and re-reading
+the oracles from the American point of view. And the utterance launched
+forth is to be imbued with poetic passion.
+
+Whitman always aims at a complete human synthesis, and leaves his reader
+to make of it what he can. It is not for the poet to qualify and explain.
+He seeks to reproduce his whole nature in a book,--reproduce it with all
+its contradictions and carnalities, the good and the bad, the coarse and
+the fine, the body and the soul,--to give free swing to himself, trusting
+to natural checks and compensations to ensure a good result at last, but
+not at all disturbed if you find parts of it bad as in creation itself.
+
+His method being that of the poet, and not that of the moralist or
+preacher, how shall he sort and sift, culling this virtue and that, giving
+parts and fragments instead of the entire man? He must give all, not
+abstractly, but concretely, synthetically.
+
+To a common prostitute Whitman says:--
+
+  "Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you;
+  Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle
+        for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you."
+
+
+We are housed in social usages and laws, we are sheltered and warmed and
+comforted by conventions and institutions and numberless traditions;
+their value no one disputes. But for purposes of his own Whitman ignores
+them all; he lets in upon us the free and maybe raw air of the great
+out-of-doors of absolute nature; his standards are not found inside of any
+four walls; he contemplates life, and would quicken it in its
+fundamentals; his survey is from a plane whence our arts and refinements
+and petty distinctions disappear. He sees the evil of the world no less
+necessary than the good; he sees death as a part of life itself; he sees
+the body and the soul as one; he sees the spiritual always issuing from
+the material; he sees not one result at last lamentable in the universe.
+
+
+IV
+
+Unless, as I have already said, we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself,
+we can make little of him; unless we place ourselves at his absolute point
+of view, his work is an offense and without meaning. The only question is,
+Has he a law, has he a steady and rational point of view, is his work a
+consistent and well-organized whole? Ask yourself, What is the point of
+view of absolute, uncompromising science? It is that creation is all good
+and sound; things are as they should be or must be; there are no
+conceivable failures; there is no evil in the final analysis, or, if there
+is, it is necessary, and plays its part also; there is no more beginning
+nor ending than there is now, no more heaven or hell than we find or make
+here:--
+
+  "Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and
+        rectified?"
+
+
+It has been urged that Whitman violates his own canon of the excellence of
+nature. But what he violates is more a secondary or acquired nature. He
+violates our social conventions and instincts, he exposes what we cover
+up; but the spirit of his undertaking demanded this of him. Remember that
+at all hazards he is to let nature--absolute nature--speak; that he is to
+be the poet of the body as well as of the soul, and that no part of the
+body of a man or woman, "hearty and clean," is vile, and that "none shall
+be less familiar than the rest."
+
+His glory is, that he never flinched or hesitated in following his
+principle to its logical conclusions,--"my commission obeying, to question
+it never daring."
+
+It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones for the sins of us all,--the sins
+of perverting, denying, abusing the most sacred and important organs and
+functions of our bodies.
+
+
+V
+
+In Whitman we find the most complete identification of the man with the
+subject. He always is, or becomes, the thing he portrays. Not merely does
+he portray America,--he speaks out of the American spirit, the spirit that
+has broken irrevocably with the past and turns joyously to the future; he
+does not praise equality, he illustrates it; he puts himself down beside
+the lowest and most despised person, and calls him brother.
+
+  "You felons on trial in courts,
+  You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and
+        handcuff'd with iron,
+  Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
+  Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with
+        iron, or my ankles with iron?"
+
+
+He does not give a little charity, he gives himself as freely as the
+clouds give rain, or the sun gives light; he does not write a treatise on
+democracy, he applies the democratic spirit to everything in heaven and on
+earth, and redistributes the prizes from its points of view; he does not,
+except very briefly, sing the praises of science, but he launches his
+poems always from the scientific view of the world, in contradistinction
+to the old theological and mythical point of view. It is always the
+example, it is always the thing itself, he gives us. Few precepts, no
+sermon, no reproof. Does he praise candor? No, he is candor; he confesses
+to everything; he shows us the inmost working of his mind. We know him
+better than we know our nearest friends. Does he exalt the pride of man in
+himself, or egoism? Again he illustrates it: he is egoism; he makes the
+whole universe revolve around himself; he never for a moment goes out of
+himself; he does not seek a theme; he is the theme. His egocentric method
+of treatment is what characterizes him as an artist. He elaborates no
+theme, he builds nothing, he carves nothing, but makes himself a source
+and centre of pulsing, vital energy. Wave after wave radiates from him.
+What we see and get always is Walt Whitman. Our attention is never fixed
+upon the writer, but always upon the man.
+
+Of course this method of Whitman of becoming one with his subject, and
+speaking out of it, is always the method of the creative artist. It is
+this that distinguishes the artist from the mere thinker or prose-writer.
+The latter tells us about a thing; the former gives us the thing, or the
+spirit of the thing itself.
+
+If Whitman had put his criticism of our time and civilization in an
+argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As
+an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and
+tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we
+tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a
+personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a
+theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons and a challenge,
+and will not be easily put aside.
+
+The great philosophical poets, like Lucretius, try to solve the riddles.
+Whitman's aim is only to thrust the riddles before you, to give you a new
+sense of them, and start the game afresh. He knows what a complex,
+contradictory thing the universe is, and that the most any poet can do is
+to break the old firmament up into new forms. To put his arms around it?
+No. Put your arms around your fellow-man, and then you have encompassed it
+as nearly as mortal can do.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman's attraction toward the common people was real. There is one thing
+that makes every-day humanity, the great, toiling, unlettered masses,
+forever welcome to men who unite great imagination with broad
+sympathies,--they give a sense of reality; they refresh, as nature always
+refreshes. There is a tang and a sting to the native, the spontaneous,
+that the cultivated rarely has. The farmer, the mechanic, the sailor, the
+soldier, savor of the primal and the hardy. In painting his own portrait,
+Whitman makes prominent the coarser, unrefined traits, because here the
+colors are fast,--here is the basis of all. The careful student of Whitman
+will surely come to see how all the elements of his picture--his pride,
+his candor, his democracy, his sensuality, his coarseness,--finally fit
+together, and correct and offset each other and make a perfect unity.
+
+No poet is so easily caricatured and turned into ridicule as Whitman. He
+is deficient in humor, and hence, like the Biblical writers, is sometimes
+on the verge of the grotesque without knowing it. The sense of the
+ridiculous has been enormously stimulated and developed in the modern
+mind, and--what is to be regretted--it has been mostly at the expense of
+the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this
+country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push
+and topple it over. The fear which all Americans have before their eyes,
+and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of
+appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked
+individuality of manners or dress, lest we expose ourselves to the shafts
+of ridicule. Emerson said he had heard with admiring submission the remark
+of a lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gave
+a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow;
+and what ranks before religion with us as a people is being in the mode,
+and writing our verse and cutting our coats in the approved style. Pride
+of the eye, a keen sense of the proprieties and the conventionalities, and
+a morbid feeling for the ridiculous, would have been death to Whitman's
+undertaking. He would have faltered, or betrayed self-consciousness. He
+certainly never could have spoken with that elemental aplomb and
+indifference which is so marked a feature of his work. Any hesitation, any
+knuckling, would have been his ruin. We should have seen he was not
+entirely serious, and should have laughed at him. We laugh now only for a
+moment; the spell of his earnestness and power is soon upon us.
+
+
+VII
+
+Thoreau considered Whitman's "Leaves" worth all the sermons in the country
+for preaching; and yet few poets have assumed so little the function of
+the preacher. His great cure-all is love; he gives himself instead of a
+sermon. His faith in the remedial power of affection, comradeship, is
+truly Christ-like. Lover of sinners is also his designation. The reproof
+is always indirect or implied. He brings to bear character rather than
+precept. He helps you as health, as nature, as fresh air, pure water help.
+He says to you:--
+
+  "The mockeries are not you;
+  Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
+  I pursue you where none else has pursued you:
+  Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed
+        routine,--if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they
+        do not conceal you from me.
+  The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion,--if these balk
+        others, they do not balk me.
+  The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature
+        death,--all these I part aside.
+  I track through your windings and turnings,--I come upon you where you
+        thought eye should never come upon you."
+
+
+Whitman said, in the now famous preface of 1855, that "the greatest poet
+does not moralize, or make applications of morals,--he knows the soul."
+There is no preaching or reproof in the "Leaves."
+
+  "I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
+        oppression and shame;
+  I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
+        remorseful after deeds done;
+  I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,
+        gaunt, desperate;
+  I see the wife misused by her husband; I see the treacherous seducer of
+        the young woman;
+  I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
+        hid,--I see these sights on the earth,
+  I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and
+        prisoners,
+  I observe a famine at sea,--I observe the sailors casting lots who shall
+        be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest,
+  I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
+        laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
+  All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out
+        upon,
+  See, hear, and am silent."
+
+
+Only once does he shame and rebuke the offender; then he holds up to him
+"a hand-mirror."
+
+  "Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (who is it? is it you?)
+  Outside fair costume,--within, ashes and filth.
+  No more a flashing eye,--no more a sonorous voice or springy step,
+  Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
+  A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,
+  Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
+  Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
+  Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
+  Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
+  No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
+  Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
+  Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!"
+
+
+The poet's way is so different from the moralist's way! The poet confesses
+all, loves all,--has no preferences. He is moral only in his results. We
+ask ourselves, Does he breathe the air of health? Can he stand the test of
+nature? Is he tonic and inspiring? That he shocks us is nothing. The first
+touch of the sea is a shock. Does he toughen us, does he help make
+arterial blood?
+
+All that men do and are guilty of attracts him. Their vices and
+excesses,--he would make these his own also. He is jealous lest he be
+thought better than other men,--lest he seem to stand apart from even
+criminals and offenders. When the passion for human brotherhood is upon
+him, he is balked by nothing; he goes down into the social mire to find
+his lovers and equals. In the pride of our morality and civic well-being,
+this phase of his work shocks us; but there are moods when the soul says
+it is good, and we rejoice in the strong man that can do it.
+
+The restrictions, denials, and safeguards put upon us by the social order,
+and the dictates of worldly prudence, fall only before a still more fervid
+humanism, or a still more vehement love.
+
+The vital question is, Where does he leave us? On firmer ground, or in the
+mire? Depleted and enervated, or full and joyous? In the gloom of
+pessimism, or in the sunlight of its opposite?---
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a man or woman coming--perhaps you are the one;
+  I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully armed.
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
+  And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its
+        translation.
+
+  "I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded;
+  I announce a race of splendid and savage old men."
+
+
+There is no contradiction here. The poet sounds all the experiences of
+life, and he gives out the true note at last.
+
+  "No specification is necessary,--all that a male or female does, that is
+        vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her, in
+        the unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope
+        of it forever."
+
+
+VIII
+
+Nothing but the most uncompromising religious purpose can justify certain
+things in the "Leaves;" nothing but the most buoyant and pervasive
+spirituality can justify its overwhelming materiality; nothing but the
+most creative imagination can offset its tremendous realism; nothing but
+the note of universal brotherhood can atone for its vehement Americanism;
+nothing but the primal spirit of poesy itself can make amends for this
+open flouting of the routine poetic, and this endless procession before us
+of the common and the familiar.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman loved the word "unrefined." It was one of the words he would have
+us apply to himself. He was unrefined, as the air, the soil, the water,
+and all sweet natural things are unrefined (fine but not _re_fined). He
+applies the word to himself two or three times in the course of his poems.
+He loved the words sun-tan, air-sweetness, brawn, etc. He speaks of his
+"savage song," not to call forth the bards of the past, he says, but to
+invoke the bards of the future.
+
+  "Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage songs?"
+
+
+The thought that his poems might help contribute to the production of a
+"race of splendid and savage old men" was dear to him. He feared the
+depleting and emasculating effects of our culture and conventions. The
+decay of maternity and paternity in this country, the falling off of the
+native populations, were facts full of evil omen. His ideal of manly or
+womanly character is rich in all the purely human qualities and
+attributes; rich in sex, in sympathy, in temperament; physiologically
+sound and clean, as well as mentally and morally so.
+
+  "Fear grace, fear delicatesse;
+  Fear the mellow-sweet, the sucking of honey-juice:
+  Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!
+  Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men."
+
+
+He was himself the savage old man he invoked. It was no part of his plan
+to preach, in refined and euphonious terms, hygiene and the value of the
+natural man, but to project into literature the thing itself, to exploit a
+character coarse as well as fine, and to imbue his poems with a
+physiological quality as well as a psychological and intellectual.
+
+  "I will scatter the new roughness and gladness among them."
+
+He says to the pale, impotent victim of over-refinement, with intentional
+rudeness,
+
+  "Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you."
+
+
+X
+
+One of the key-words to Whitman both as a man and a poet is the word
+"composite." He was probably the most composite man this century has
+produced, and in this respect at least is representative of the American
+of the future, who must be the result of the blending of more diverse
+racial elements than any man of history. He seems to have had an
+intuition of his composite character when he said in his first poem:--
+
+  "I am large,--I contain multitudes."
+
+
+The London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," in reluctantly
+conceding at the time of the poet's death something to the British
+admiration of him, said he was "rich in temperament." The phrase is well
+chosen. An English expert on the subject of temperament, who visited
+Whitman some years ago, said he had all four temperaments, the sanguine,
+the nervous, the melancholic, and the lymphatic, while most persons have
+but two temperaments, and rarely three.
+
+It was probably the composite character of Whitman that caused him to
+attract such diverse and opposite types of men,--scholars and workingmen,
+lawyers, doctors, scientists, and men of the world,--and that made him
+personally such a puzzle to most people,--so impossible to classify. On
+the street the promenaders would turn and look after him, and I have often
+heard them ask each other, "What man was that?" He has often been taken
+for a doctor, and during his services in the army hospitals various myths
+were floating about concerning him. Now he was a benevolent Catholic
+priest,--then some unknown army general, or retired sea captain; at one
+time he was reputed to be one of the owners of the Cunard line of
+steamers. To be taken for a Californian was common. One recalls the
+composite character of the poet whom he outlines in his poems (see
+quotation, page 159).
+
+The book is as composite as the man. It is all things to all men; it lends
+itself to a multitude of interpretations. Every earnest reader of it will
+find some clew or suggestion by the aid of which he fancies he can unlock
+the whole book, but in the end he will be pretty sure to discover that one
+key is not enough. To one critic, his book is the "hoarse song of a man,"
+its manly and masculine element attracts him; to another he is the poet of
+joy, to another the poet of health, to still another he is the bard of
+personality; others read him as the poet of nature, or the poet of
+democracy. His French critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, calls him an apostle,--the
+apostle of the idea that man is an indivisible fragment of the universal
+Divinity.
+
+
+XI
+
+What has a poet of Whitman's aims to do with decency or indecency, with
+modesty or immodesty? These are social or conventional virtues; he
+represents mainly primary qualities and forces. Does life, does death,
+does nature, respect our proprieties, our conventional veils and
+illusions? Neither will he. He will strip them all away. He will act and
+speak as if all things in the universe were equally sacred and divine; as
+if all men were really his brothers, all women his sisters; as if all
+parts of the human body were equally beautiful and wonderful; as if
+fatherhood and motherhood, birth and begetting, were sacred acts. Of
+course it is easy to see that this course will speedily bring him in
+collision with the guardians of taste and social morality. But what of
+that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I
+behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question
+is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or
+betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and
+thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than
+the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he assumes to speak.
+
+Nothing is easier than to convict Walt Whitman of what is called
+indecency; he laughs indifferent when you have done so. It is not your
+gods that he serves. He says he would be as indifferent of observation as
+the trees or rocks. And it is here that we must look for his
+justification, upon ethical rather than upon the grounds of conventional
+art. He has taken our sins upon himself. He has applied to the morbid
+sex-consciousness, that has eaten so deeply into our social system, the
+heroic treatment; he has fairly turned it naked into the street. He has
+not merely in words denied the inherent vileness of sex; he has denied it
+in very deed. We should not have taken offense had he confined himself to
+words,--had he said sex is pure, the body is as clean about the loins as
+about the head; but being an artist, a creator, and not a mere thinker or
+preacher, he was compelled to act,--to do the thing instead of saying it.
+
+The same in other matters. Being an artist, he could not merely say all
+men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and
+sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must
+make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of
+the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the
+concrete and not with the abstract,--fraternity and equality as a reality,
+not as a sentiment.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the phase in which we are now considering him, Whitman appears as the
+Adamic man re-born here in the nineteenth century, or with science and the
+modern added, and fully and fearlessly embodying himself in a poem. It is
+stronger than we can stand, but it is good for us, and one of these days,
+or one of these centuries, we shall be able to stand it and enjoy it.
+
+  "To the garden the world anew ascending,
+  Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
+  The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
+  Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber,
+  The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, having brought me again,
+  Amorous, mature--all beautiful to me--all wondrous,
+  My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
+        reasons most wondrous;
+  Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
+  Content with the present--content with the past,
+  By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
+  Or in front, and I following her just the same."
+
+
+The critics perpetually misread Whitman because they fail to see this
+essentially composite and dramatic character of his work,--that it is not
+the song of Walt Whitman the private individual, but of Walt Whitman as
+representative of, and speaking for, all types and conditions of men; in
+fact, that it is the drama of a new democratic personality, a character
+outlined on a larger, more copious, more vehement scale than has yet
+appeared in the world. The germs of this character he would sow broadcast
+over the land.
+
+In this drama of personality the poet always identifies himself with the
+scene, incident, experience, or person he delineates, or for whom he
+speaks. He says to the New Englander, or to the man of the South and the
+West, "I depict you as myself." In the same way he depicts offenders,
+roughs, criminals, and low and despised persons as himself; he lays claim
+to every sin of omission and commission men are guilty of, because, he
+says, "the germs are in all men." Men dare not tell their faults. He will
+make them all his own, and then tell them; there shall be full confession
+for once.
+
+  "If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;
+  If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think I cannot
+        remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?"
+
+
+It will not do to read this poet, or any great poet, in a narrow and
+exacting spirit. As Whitman himself says: "The messages of great poems to
+each man and woman are: Come to us on equal terms, only then can you
+understand us."
+
+In the much misunderstood group of poems called "Children of Adam" the
+poet speaks for the male generative principle, and all the excesses and
+abuses that grow out of it he unblushingly imputes to himself. What men
+have done and still do, while under the intoxication of the sexual
+passion, he does, he makes it all his own experience.
+
+That we have here a revelation of his own personal taste and experiences
+may or may not be the case, but we have no more right to assume it than we
+have to assume that all other poets speak from experience when they use
+the first person singular. When John Brown mounted the scaffold in
+Virginia, in 1860, the poet says:--
+
+  "I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,
+  I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling
+        with age and your unheal'd wounds, you mounted the scaffold,"--
+
+very near him he stood in spirit; very near him he stood in the person of
+others, but not in his own proper person.
+
+If we take this poet literally, we shall believe he has been in California
+and Oregon; that he has set foot in every city on the continent; that he
+grew up in Virginia; that every Southern State has been by turns his home;
+that he has been a soldier, a sailor, a miner; that he has lived in
+Dakota's woods, his "diet meat, his drink from the spring;" that he has
+lived on the plains with hunters and ranchmen, etc. He lays claim to all
+these characters, all these experiences, because what others do, what
+others assume, or suffer, or enjoy, that he appropriates to himself.
+
+  "I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+  Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+  I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of
+        my skin,
+  I fall on the weeds and stones,
+  The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+  Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whipstocks.
+
+  "Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
+  I do not ask the wounded person how he feels--I myself become the wounded
+        person,
+  My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
+
+  "I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
+  See myself in prison shaped like another man,
+  And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
+
+  "For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
+  It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.
+  Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him
+        and walk by his side."
+
+
+XIII
+
+It is charged against Whitman that he does not celebrate love at all, and
+very justly. He had no purpose to celebrate the sentiment of love.
+Literature is vastly overloaded with this element already. He celebrates
+fatherhood and motherhood, and the need of well-begotten, physiologically
+well-begotten, offspring. Of that veiled prurient suggestion which readers
+so delight in--of "bosoms mutinously fair," and "the soul-lingering loops
+of perfumed hair," as one of our latest poets puts it--there is no hint
+in his volume. He would have fallen from grace the moment he had attempted
+such a thing. Any trifling or dalliance on his part would have been his
+ruin. Love as a sentiment has fairly run riot in literature. From
+Whitman's point of view, it would have been positively immoral for him
+either to have vied with the lascivious poets in painting it as the
+forbidden, or with the sentimental poets in depicting it as a charm. Woman
+with him is always the mate and equal of the man, never his plaything.
+
+Whitman is seldom or never the poet of a sentiment, at least of the
+domestic and social sentiments. His is more the voice of the eternal,
+abysmal man.
+
+The home, the fireside, the domestic allurements, are not in him; love, as
+we find it in other poets, is not in him; the idyllic, except in touches
+here and there, is not in him; the choice, the finished, the perfumed, the
+romantic, the charm of art and the delight of form, are not to be looked
+for in his pages. The cosmic takes the place of the idyllic; the begetter,
+the Adamic man, takes the place of the lover; patriotism takes the place
+of family affection; charity takes the place of piety; love of kind is
+more than love of neighbor; the poet and the artist are swallowed up in
+the seer and the prophet.
+
+The poet evidently aimed to put in his sex poems a rank and healthful
+animality, and to make them as frank as the shedding of pollen by the
+trees, strong even to the point of offense. He could not make it pleasing,
+a sweet morsel to be rolled under the tongue; that would have been levity
+and sin, as in Byron and the other poets. It must be direct and rank,
+healthfully so. The courage that did it, and showed no wavering or
+self-consciousness, was more than human. Man is a begetter. How shall a
+poet in our day and land treat this fact? With levity and by throwing over
+it the lure of the forbidden, the attraction of the erotic? That is one
+way, the way of nearly all the poets of the past. But that is not
+Whitman's way. He would sooner be bestial than Byronic, he would sooner
+shock by his frankness than inflame by his suggestion. And this in the
+interest of health and longevity, not in the interest of a prurient and
+effeminate "art." In these poems Whitman for a moment emphasizes sex, the
+need of sex, and the power of sex. "All were lacking if sex were lacking."
+He says to men and women, Here is where you live after all, here is the
+seat of empire. You are at the top of your condition when you are fullest
+and sanest there. Fearful consequences follow any corrupting or abusing or
+perverting of sex. The poet stands in the garden of the world naked and
+not ashamed. It is a great comfort that he could do it in this age of
+hectic lust and Swinburnian impotence,--that he could do it and not be
+ridiculous. To have done it without offense would have been proof that he
+had failed utterly. Let us be shocked; it is a wholesome shock, like the
+douse of the sea, or the buffet of the wind. We shall be all the better
+for it by and by.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The lover of Whitman comes inevitably to associate him with character and
+personal qualities. I sometimes meet women whom I say are of the Whitman
+type--the kind of woman he invoked and predicted. They bear children, and
+are not ashamed; motherhood is their pride and their joy: they are
+cheerful, tolerant, friendly, think no evil, meet high and low on equal
+terms; they walk, row, climb mountains; they reach forth into the actual
+world of questions and events, open-minded, sympathetic, frank, natural,
+good-natured; the mates and companions of their husbands, keeping pace
+with them in all matters; home-makers, but larger than home, considerate,
+forgiving, unceremonious,--in short, the large, fresh, wholesome open-air
+natures whose ideal so completely possessed Walt Whitman.
+
+A British critic wisely says the gift of Whitman to us is the gift of life
+rather than of literature, but it is the gift of life through literature.
+Indeed, Whitman means a life as much as Christianity means a life. He
+says:--
+
+  "Writing and talk do not prove me."
+
+Nothing but the test of reality finally proves him:--
+
+  "The proof of the poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country has
+        absorbed him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."
+
+
+The proof of Whitman shall be deferred till he has borne fruit in actual,
+concrete life.
+
+He knew that merely intellectual and artistic tests did not settle matters
+in his case, or that we would not reach his final value by making a
+dead-set at him through the purely æsthetic faculties. Is he animating to
+life itself? Can we absorb and assimilate him? Does he nourish the manly
+and heroic virtues? Does he make us more religious, more tolerant, more
+charitable, more candid, more self-reliant? If not, he fails of his chief
+end. It is doubtful if the purely scholarly and literary poets, like
+Milton, say, or like our own Poe, are ever absorbed in the sense above
+implied; while there is little doubt that poets like Homer, like
+Shakespeare, are absorbed and modify a people's manners and ideals. Only
+that which we love affects our lives. Our admiration for art and
+literature as such is something entirely outside the sources of character
+and power of action.
+
+Whitman identifies himself with our lives. We associate him with reality,
+with days, scenes, persons, events. The youth who reads Poe or Lowell
+wants to be a scholar, a wit, a poet, a writer; the youth who reads
+Whitman wants to be a man, and to get at the meaning and value of life.
+Our author's bent towards real things, real men and women, and his power
+to feed and foster personality, are unmistakable.
+
+Life, reality, alone proves him; a saner and more robust fatherhood and
+motherhood, more practical democracy, more charity, more love, more
+comradeship, more social equality, more robust ideals of womanly and manly
+character, prove him. When we are more tolerant and patient and
+long-suffering, when the strain of our worldly, commercial spirit relaxes,
+then is he justified. Whitman means a letting-up of the strain all along
+the line,--less hurry, less greed, less rivalry, more leisure, more
+charity, more fraternalism and altruism, more religion, less formality and
+convention.
+
+  "When America does what was promised,
+  When each part is peopled with free people,
+  When there is no city on earth to lead my city, the city of young men,
+        the Mannahatta city--but when the Mannahatta leads all the cities
+        of the earth,
+  When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,
+  When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
+  When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,
+  When fathers, firm, unconstrained, open-eyed--when breeds of the most
+        perfect mothers denote America,
+  Then to me ripeness and conclusion."
+
+
+XV
+
+After all I think it matters little whether we call him poet or not. Grant
+that he is not a poet in the usual or technical sense, but poet-prophet,
+or poet-seer, or all combined. He is a poet plus something else. It is
+when he is judged less than poet, or no poet at all, that we feel
+injustice is done him. Grant that his work is not art, that it does not
+give off the perfume, the atmosphere of the highly wrought artistic works
+like those of Tennyson, but of something quite different.
+
+We have all been slow to see that his cherished ends were religious rather
+than literary; that, over and above all else, he was a great religious
+teacher and prophet. Had he been strictly a literary poet, like Lowell, or
+Longfellow, or Tennyson,--that is, a writer working for purely artistic
+effects,--we should be compelled to judge him quite differently.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is a gospel--glad tidings of great joy to those who are
+prepared to receive it. Its final value lies in its direct, intense,
+personal appeal; in what it did for Symonds, who said it made a man of
+him; in what it did for Stevenson, who said it dispelled a thousand
+illusions; in what it did for Mrs. Gilchrist, who said it enabled her to
+find her own soul; in what it does for all earnest readers of it in
+blending with the inmost current of their lives. Whitman is the life-giver
+of our time. How shall a poet give us life but by making us share his
+larger measure of life, his larger hope, his larger love, his larger
+charity, his saner and wider outlook? What are the three great life-giving
+principles? Can we name them better than St. Paul named them eighteen
+hundred years ago,--faith, hope, charity? And these are the cornerstones
+of Whitman's work,--a faith so broad and fervent that it accepts death as
+joyously as life, and sees all things at last issue in spiritual results;
+a hope that sees the golden age ahead of us, not behind us; and a charity
+that balks at nothing, that makes him identify himself with offenders and
+outlaws; a charity as great as his who said to the thief on the cross,
+"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."
+
+To cry up faith, hope, and charity is not to make men partakers of them;
+but to exemplify them in a survey of the whole problem of life, to make
+them vital as hearing, or eyesight in a work of the imagination, to show
+them as motives and impulses controlling all the rest, is to beget and
+foster them in the mind of the beholder.
+
+He is more and he is less than the best of the other poets. The popular,
+the conventional poets are mainly occupied with the artistic side of
+things,--with that which refines, solaces, beautifies. Whitman is mainly
+occupied with the cosmic and universal side of things, and the human and
+spiritual values that may be extracted from them. His poetry is not the
+result of the same kind of selection and partiality as that we are more
+familiar with.
+
+Hence, while the message of Tennyson and his kind is the message of
+beauty, the message of Whitman is, in a much fuller sense, the message of
+life. He speaks the word of faith and power. This is his distinction; he
+is the life-giver. Such a man comes that we may have life, and have it
+more abundantly.
+
+The message of beauty,--who would undervalue it? The least poet and
+poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples
+and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of
+life, there is danger that we shall not know it when we hear it. It is a
+harsher and more heroic strain than the other. It calls no man to his
+ease, or to be lulled and soothed. It is a summons and a challenge. It
+lays rude, strong hands upon you. It filters and fibres your blood. It is
+more of the frost, the rains, the winds, than of cushions or parlors.
+
+The call of life is a call to battle always. We are stronger by the
+strength of every obstacle or enemy overcome.
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
+  These are the days that must happen to you:
+
+  "You shall not heap up what is called riches,
+  You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;
+  You but arrive at the city to which you were destined--you hardly settle
+        yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an irresistible
+        call to depart.
+  You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
+        remain behind you;
+  What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with
+        passionate kisses of parting,
+  You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands
+        toward you.
+
+  "Allons! After the GREAT COMPANIONS! and to belong to them!"
+
+
+XVI
+
+Whitman always avails himself of the poet's privilege and magnifies
+himself. He magnifies others in the same ratio, he magnifies all things.
+"Magnifying and applying come I," he says, "outbidding at the start the
+old cautious hucksters." Indeed, the character which speaks throughout
+"Leaves of Grass" is raised to the highest degree of personal exaltation.
+To it nothing is trivial, nothing is mean; all is good, all is divine. The
+usual distinctions disappear, burned up, the poet says, for religion's
+sake. All the human attributes are heightened and enlarged; sympathy as
+wide as the world; love that balks at nothing; charity as embracing as the
+sky; egotism like the force of gravity; religious fervor that consumes the
+coarsest facts like stubble; spirituality that finds God everywhere every
+hour of the day; faith that welcomes death as cheerfully as life;
+comradeship that would weld the nation into a family of brothers;
+sexuality that makes prudes shudder; poetic enthusiasm that scornfully
+dispenses with all the usual adventitious aids; and in general a
+largeness, coarseness, and vehemence that are quite appalling to the
+general reader. Lovers of poetry will of necessity be very slow in
+adjusting their notions to the standards of "Leaves of Grass." It is a
+survey of life and of the world from the cosmic rather than from the
+conventional standpoint. It carries the standards of the natural-universal
+into all fields.
+
+Some men have accepted poverty and privation with such contentment and
+composure as to make us almost envious of their lot; and Whitman accepts
+the coarser, commoner human elements which he finds in himself, and which
+most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception
+of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes.
+If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference
+for them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an element of
+weakness.
+
+His precept and his illustration, carried out in life, would fill the land
+with strong, native, original types of men and women animated by the most
+vehement comradeship, selfism and otherism going hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO CULTURE
+
+
+I
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not the poetry of culture, but it is to be said in
+the same breath that it is not such a work as an uncultured man produces,
+or is capable of producing.
+
+The uncultured man does not think Whitman's thoughts, or propose Whitman's
+problems to himself, or understand or appreciate them at all. The "Leaves"
+are perhaps of supreme interest only to men of deepest culture, because
+they contain in such ample measure that without which all culture is mere
+varnish or veneer. They are indirectly a tremendous criticism of American
+life and civilization, and they imply that breadth of view and that
+liberation of spirit--that complete disillusioning--which is the best
+result of culture, and which all great souls have reached, no matter who
+or what their schoolmasters may have been.
+
+Our reading public probably does not and cannot see itself in Whitman at
+all. He must be a great shock to its sense of the genteel and the
+respectable. Nor can the working people and the unlettered, though they
+were drawn to Whitman the man, be expected to respond to any considerable
+extent to Whitman the poet. His standpoint can be reached only after
+passing through many things and freeing one's self from many illusions. He
+is more representative of the time-spirit out of which America grew, and
+which is now shaping the destiny of the race upon this continent. He
+strikes under and through our whole civilization.
+
+He despised our social gods, he distrusted our book-culture, he was
+alarmed at the tendency to the depletion and attenuation of the national
+type, and he aimed to sow broadcast the germs of more manly ideals. His
+purpose was to launch his criticism from the basic facts of human life,
+psychic and physiologic; to inject into the veins of our anæmic literature
+the reddest, healthiest kind of blood; and in doing so he has given free
+swing to the primary human traits and affections and to sexuality, and has
+charged his pages with the spirit of real things, real life.
+
+We have been so long used to verse which is the outcome of the literary
+impulse alone, which is written at so many removes from the primary human
+qualities, produced from the extreme verge of culture and artificial
+refinement, which is so innocent of the raciness and healthful coarseness
+of nature, that poetry which has these qualities, which implies the body
+as well as the mind, which is the direct outgrowth of a radical human
+personality, and which make demands like those made by real things, is
+either an offense to us or is misunderstood.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman says his book is not a good lesson, but it takes down the bars to
+a good lesson, and that to another, and that to another still. To take
+down bars rather than to put them up is always Whitman's aim; to make his
+reader free of the universe, to turn him forth into the fresh and
+inexhaustible pastures of time, space, eternity, and with a smart slap
+upon his back with the halter as a spur and send-off, is about what he
+would do. His message, first and last, is "give play to yourself;" "let
+yourself go;"--happiness is in the quest of happiness; power comes to him
+who power uses.
+
+  "Long enough have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore;
+  Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
+  To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
+        and laughingly dash with your hair."
+
+
+To hold Whitman up to ridicule, and to convict him of grossness and
+tediousness, is easy enough; first, because he is so out of relation to
+the modes and taste of his times, and, secondly, because he has somewhat
+of the uncouthness and coarseness of large bodies. Then his seriousness
+and simplicity, like that of Biblical and Oriental writers,--a kind of
+childish inaptness and homeliness,--often exposes him to our keen, almost
+abnormal sense of the ridiculous. He was deficient in humor, and he wrote
+his book in entire obliviousness of social usages and conventions, so that
+the perspective of it is not the social or indoor perspective, but that
+of life and nature at large, careering and unhampered. It is probably the
+one modern poem whose standards are not social and what are called
+artistic.
+
+Its atmosphere is always that of the large, free spaces of vast, unhoused
+nature. It has been said that the modern world could be reconstructed from
+"Leaves of Grass," so compendious and all-inclusive is it in its details;
+but of the modern world as a social organization, of man as the creature
+of social usages and prohibitions, of fashions, of dress, of
+ceremony,--the indoor, parlor and drawing-room man,--there is no hint in
+its pages. In its matter and in its spirit, in its standards and in its
+execution, in its ideals and in its processes, it belongs to and
+affiliates with open-air nature, often reaching, I think, the cosmic and
+unconditioned. In a new sense is Whitman the brother of the orbs and
+cosmic processes, "conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth." All
+his enthusiasms, all his sympathies have to do with the major and
+fundamental elements of life. He is a world-poet. We do not readily adjust
+our indoor notions to him. Our culture-standards do not fit him.
+
+
+III
+
+The problem of the poet is doubtless more difficult in our day than in any
+past day; it is harder for him to touch reality.
+
+The accumulations of our civilization are enormous: an artificial world of
+great depth and potency overlies the world of reality; especially does it
+overlie the world of man's moral and intellectual nature. Most of us live
+and thrive in this artificial world, and never know but it is the world of
+God's own creating. Only now and then a man strikes his roots down through
+this made land into fresh, virgin soil. When the religious genius strikes
+his roots through it, and insists upon a present revelation, we are apt to
+cry "heretic;" when the poet strikes his roots through it, as Whitman did,
+and insists upon giving us reality,--giving us himself before custom or
+law,--we cry "barbarian," or "art-heretic," or "outlaw of art."
+
+In the countless adjustments and accumulations, and in the oceanic
+currents of our day and land, the individual is more and more lost sight
+of,--merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See
+it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will.
+See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing
+power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a
+single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their
+types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite
+character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe
+with the old joy and contentment.
+
+
+IV
+
+  "The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
+  Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and master of it?"
+
+
+Do we not, consciously or unconsciously, ask this or a similar question of
+every poet or artist whom we pass in review before us? Is he master of his
+culture, or does it master him? Does he strike back through it to simple,
+original nature, or is he a potted plant? Does he retain the native savage
+virtues, or is he entirely built up from the outside? We constantly
+mistake culture for mere refinement, which it is not: it is a liberating
+process; it is a clearing away of obstructions, and the giving to inherent
+virtues a chance to express themselves. It makes savage nature friendly
+and considerate. The aim of culture is not to get rid of nature, but to
+utilize nature. The great poet is always a "friendly and flowing savage,"
+the master and never the slave of the complex elements of our artificial
+lives.
+
+Though our progress and civilization are a triumph over nature, yet in an
+important sense we never get away from nature or improve upon her. Her
+standards are still our standards, her sweetness and excellence are still
+our aim. Her health, her fertility, her wholeness, her freshness, her
+innocence, her evolution, we would fain copy or reproduce. We would, if we
+could, keep the pungency and aroma of her wild fruit in our cultivated
+specimens, the virtue and hardiness of the savage in our fine gentlemen,
+the joy and spontaneity of her bird-songs in our poetry, the grace and
+beauty of her forms in our sculpture and carvings.
+
+A poetic utterance from an original individual standpoint, something
+definite and characteristic,--this is always the crying need. What a fine
+talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name!
+But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a
+kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste and intelligence that
+speak. When will he redeem all these promises, and become a fixed centre
+of thought and emotion in himself? To write poems is no distinction; to be
+a poem, to be a fixed point amid the seething chaos, a rock amid the
+currents, giving your own form and character to them,--that is something.
+
+It matters little, as Whitman himself says, who contributes the mass of
+poetic verbiage upon which any given age feeds.
+
+But for a national first-class poem, or a great work of the imagination of
+any sort, the man is everything, because such works finally rest upon
+primary human qualities and special individual traits. A richly endowed
+personality is always the main dependence in such cases, or, as Goethe
+says, "in the great work the great person is always present as the great
+factor."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is as distinctly an emanation from Walt Whitman, from
+his quality and equipment as a man apart from anything he owed to books or
+to secondary influences, as a tree is an emanation from the soil. It is,
+moreover, an emanation from him as an American in the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, and as a typical democratic composite man, a man of
+the common people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but with
+an extraordinary endowment of spiritual and intellectual power, to which
+he has given full swing without abating one jot or tittle the influence of
+his heritage of the common stock.
+
+
+V
+
+There is one important quality that enters into all first-class literary
+production and into all art, which is taken little account of in current
+criticism: I mean the quality of the manly,--the pulse and pressure of
+manly virility and strength. Goethe spoke of it to Eckermann as a certain
+urgent power in which the art of his time was lacking. The producers had
+taste and skill, but were not masterful as men. Goethe always looked
+straight through the work to the man behind it; in art and poetry the
+personality was everything. The special talent of one kind or another was
+quite secondary. The greatest works are the least literary. To speak in
+literature as a man, and not merely as a scholar or professional
+litterateur, is always the crying need. The new poet has this or that
+gift, but what is the human fund back of all? What is his endowment of the
+common universal human traits? How much of a man is he? His measure in
+this respect will be the measure of the final value of his contribution.
+
+The decadence of literature sets in when there is more talent than
+character in current production; when rare literary and artistic gifts no
+longer come wedded to large human and manly gifts; when taste is
+fastidious rather than robust and hearty. When was there a man born to
+English or American literature with a large endowment of the universal
+human qualities, or with those elements that give breadth and power, and
+which lead art rather than follow it? We are living in an age of great
+purity and refinement of taste in art and letters, but destitute of power.
+Goethe spoke of Walter Scott not merely as a great talent, but as a
+"comprehensive nature." Without this comprehensive nature as a setting,
+his great talent would have amounted to but little. This gives the weight,
+the final authority. How little there was on the surface of Scott of the
+literary keenness, subtlety, knowingness of later producers, and yet how
+far his contribution surpasses theirs in real human pathos and
+suggestiveness!
+
+The same might be said of Count Tolstoï, who is also, back of all, a great
+loving nature.
+
+One has great joy in Whitman because he is beyond and over all a large and
+loving personality; his work is but a thin veil through which a great
+nature clearly shows. The urgent power of which Goethe speaks is almost
+too strong,--too strong for current taste: we want more art and less man,
+more literature and less life. It is not merely a great mind that we feel,
+but a great character. It penetrates every line, and indeed makes it true
+of the book that whoever "touches this touches a man."
+
+The lesson of the poet is all in the direction of the practical manly and
+womanly qualities and virtues,--health, temperance, sanity, power,
+endurance, aplomb,--and not at all in the direction of the literary and
+artistic qualities or culture.
+
+  "To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat,
+        to manage horses, to beget superb children,
+  To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,
+  To hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea."
+
+
+All his aims, ideas, impulses, aspirations, relate to life, to
+personality, and to power to deal with real things; and if we expect from
+him only literary ideas--form, beauty, lucidity, proportion--we shall be
+disappointed. He seeks to make the impression of concrete forces and
+objects, and not of art.
+
+  "Not for an embroiderer,
+  (There will always be plenty of embroiderers--I welcome them also),
+  But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.
+
+  "Not to chisel ornaments,
+  But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme
+        Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking."
+
+His whole work is a radiation from an exemplification of the idea that
+there is something better than to be an artist or a poet,--namely, to be a
+man. The poet's rapture springs not merely from the contemplation of the
+beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; from
+the contemplation of democracy, the common people, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors, his own body, death, sex, manly love, occupations, and the force
+and vitality of things. We are to look for the clews to him in the open
+air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forms and
+methods. He declares he will never again mention love or death inside of a
+house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay
+with him in the open air.
+
+  "If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore;
+  The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key:
+  The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words.
+
+  "No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children better than they.
+
+  "The young mechanic is closest to me--he knows me pretty well.
+  The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with
+        him all day;
+  The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my
+        voice:
+  In vessels that sail, my words sail--I go with fishermen and seamen,
+        and love them.
+
+  "My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his
+        blanket;
+  The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;
+  The young mother and old mother comprehend me;
+  The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where
+        they are:
+  They and all would resume what I have told them."
+
+
+VI
+
+So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few,
+its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness
+of man rather than his strength; so far as it expresses a shrinking from
+reality and a refuge in sentimentalism; so far as it is aristocratic as in
+Tennyson, or mocking and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and mephitic as
+in Swinburne, or regretful and reminiscent as in Arnold, or a melodious
+baying of the moon as in Shelley, or the outcome of mere scholarly and
+technical acquirements as in so many of our younger poets,--so far as
+literature or poetry, I say, stand for these things, there is little of
+either in Whitman. Whitman stands for the primary and essential; he stands
+for that which makes the body as well as the mind, which makes life sane
+and joyous and masterful. Everything that tends to depletion, satiety, the
+abnormal, the erotic and exotic, that induces the stress and fever of
+life, is foreign to his spirit. He is less beautiful than the popular
+poets, yet more beautiful. He will have to do only with the inevitable
+beauty, the beauty that comes unsought, that resides in the interior
+meanings and affiliations,--the beauty that dare turn its back upon the
+beautiful.
+
+Whitman has escaped entirely the literary disease, the characteristic
+symptoms of which, according to Renan, is that people love less things
+themselves than the literary effects which they produce. He has escaped
+the art disease which makes art all in all; the religious disease, which
+runs to maudlin piety and seeks to win heaven by denying earth; the beauty
+disease, which would make of poesy a conventional flower-garden. He brings
+heroic remedies for our morbid sex-consciousness, and for all the
+pathological conditions brought about by our excess of refinement, and the
+dyspeptic depletions of our indoor artificial lives. Whitman withstood the
+æsthetic temptation, as Amiel calls it, to which most of our poets fall a
+victim,--the lust for the merely beautiful, the epicureanism of the
+literary faculties. We can make little of him if we are in quest of
+æsthetic pleasures alone. "In order to establish those literary
+authorities which are called classic centuries," says Renan, "something
+healthy and solid is necessary. Common household bread is of more value
+here than pastry." But the vast majority of literary producers aim at
+pastry, or, worse yet, confectionery,--something especially delightful and
+titivating to the taste. No doubt Renan himself was something of a
+literary epicure, but then he imposed upon himself large and serious
+tasks, and his work as a whole is solid and nourishing; his charm of style
+does not blind and seduce us. It makes all the difference in the world
+whether we seek the beautiful through the true, or the true through the
+beautiful. Seek ye the kingdom of truth first and all things shall be
+added. The novice aims to write beautifully, but the master aims to see
+truly and to feel vitally. Beauty follows him, and is never followed by
+him.
+
+Nature is beautiful because she is something else first, yes, and last,
+too, and all the while. Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the
+whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with
+the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields
+compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuyé.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman's ideal is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger--much more
+racy and democratic--than the ideal we are familiar with in current
+literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the
+democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,--excluding all the
+old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and
+legends, etc.,--but he applies it to the form as well, excluding rhyme and
+measure and all the conventional verse architecture. His work stands or it
+falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or
+power which it holds. This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest,
+nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated. His
+influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or
+extra-cultured humanity. The spirit of his work transferred to practice
+begets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, magnetic,
+tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple,
+healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he
+opposes that which weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a
+scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature,
+and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and
+affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic
+spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our
+artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature.
+The people look askance at men who are above them without being of them,
+who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with
+unlettered humanity. Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit,
+and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Sumner.
+
+Whitman might be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned. His
+work is launched at a farther remove from our arts, conventions, usages,
+civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into
+our lives, than that of any other man. Absolute candor, absolute pride,
+absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature. It
+is not conditioned by what we deem modest or immodest, high or low, male
+or female. It is not conditioned by our notions of good and evil, by our
+notions of the refined and the select, by what we call good taste and bad
+taste. It is the voice of absolute man, sweeping away the artificial,
+throwing himself boldly, joyously, upon unconditioned nature. We are all
+engaged in upholding the correct and the conventional, and drawing the
+line sharply between good and evil, the high and the low, and it is well
+that we should; but here is a man who aims to take absolute ground, and to
+look at the world as God himself might look at it, without partiality or
+discriminating,--it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection
+in the universe and can be none:--
+
+  "Open mouth of my Soul uttering gladness,
+  Eyes of my Soul seeing perfection,
+  Natural life of me, faithfully praising things,
+  Corroborating forever the triumph of things."
+
+He does not take sides against evil, in the usual way, he does not take
+sides with the good except as nature herself does. He celebrates the All.
+
+Can we accept the world as science reveals it to us, as all significant,
+as all in ceaseless transmutation, as every atom aspiring to be man, an
+endless unfolding of primal germs, without beginning, without end, without
+failure or imperfection, the golden age ahead of us, not behind us?
+
+
+VIII
+
+Because of Whitman's glorification of pride, egoism, brawn, self-reliance,
+it is charged that the noble, the cultured, the self-denying, have no
+place in his system. What place have they in the antique bards?--in Homer,
+in Job, in Isaiah, in Dante? They have the same place in Whitman, yet it
+is to be kept in mind that Whitman does not stand for the specially social
+virtues, nor for culture, nor for the refinements which it induces, nor
+for art, nor for any conventionality. There are flowers of human life
+which we are not to look for in Walt Whitman. The note of fine manners,
+chivalrous conduct, which we get in Emerson; the sweetness and light
+gospel of Arnold; the gospel of hero-worship of Carlyle; the gracious
+scholarship of our New England poets, etc.,--we do not get in Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him at war with these things, but he is
+concerned with more primal and elemental questions. He strikes under and
+beyond all these things.
+
+What are the questions or purposes, then, in which his work has root?
+Simply put, to lead the way to larger, saner, more normal, more robust
+types of men and women on this continent; to prefigure and help develop
+the new democratic man,--to project him into literature on a scale and
+with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep
+hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and
+influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and
+for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,--the air,
+the water, the soil, the sunshine,--and the more we pervert or shut out
+these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we
+pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the
+religious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny and belittle our bodies,
+the further we are from the spirit of Walt Whitman, and from the spirit of
+the All.
+
+With all Whitman's glorification of pride, self-esteem, self-reliance,
+etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,--the
+free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential
+nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you
+possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life
+and conditions of men, charity as broad as the sunlight, standing up for
+those whom others are down upon, claiming nothing for self which others
+may not have upon the same terms,--of such nobility and fine manners, I
+say, you shall find an abundance in the life and works of Walt Whitman.
+
+The spirit of a man's work is everything; the letter, little or nothing.
+Though Whitman boasts of his affiliation with the common and near at hand,
+yet he is always saved from the vulgar, the mean, the humdrum, by the
+breadth of his charity and sympathy and his tremendous ideality.
+
+Of worldliness, materialism, commercialism, he has not a trace; his only
+values are spiritual and ideal; his only standards are the essential and
+the enduring. What Matthew Arnold called the Anglo-Saxon contagion, the
+bourgeois spirit, the worldly and sordid ideal, is entirely corrected in
+Whitman by the ascendant of the ethic and the universal. His democracy
+ends in universal brotherhood, his patriotism in the solidarity of
+nations, his glorification of the material in the final triumph of the
+spiritual, his egoism issues at last in complete otherism.
+
+A race that can produce a man of his fibre, his continental type, is yet
+at its best estate. Did one begin to see evil omen in this perpetual
+whittling away and sharpening and lightening of the American type,--grace
+without power, clearness without mass, intellect without character,--then
+take comfort from the volume and the rankness of Walt Whitman. Did one
+begin to fear that the decay of maternity and paternity in our older
+communities and the falling off in the native population presaged the
+drying up of the race in its very sources? Then welcome to the rank
+sexuality and to the athletic fatherhood and motherhood celebrated by
+Whitman. Did our skepticism, our headiness, our worldliness, threaten to
+eat us up like a cancer? did our hardness, our irreligiousness, and our
+passion for the genteel point to a fugitive, superficial race? was our
+literature threatened with the artistic degeneration,--running all to art
+and not at all to power? were our communities invaded by a dry rot of
+culture? were we fast becoming a delicate, indoor, genteel race? were our
+women sinking deeper and deeper into the "incredible sloughs of fashion
+and all kinds of dyspeptic depletion,"--the antidote for all these ills is
+in Walt Whitman. In him nature shows great fullness and fertility, and an
+immense friendliness. He supplements and corrects most of the special
+deficiencies and weaknesses toward which the American type seems to tend.
+He brings us back to nature again. The perpetuity of the race is with the
+common people. The race is constantly crying out at the top, in our times
+at least; culture and refinement beget fewer and fewer and poorer and
+poorer children. Where struggle ceases, that family or race is doomed.
+
+  "Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that
+        from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
+        something to make a greater struggle necessary."
+
+
+In more primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept
+in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest.
+War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and
+everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, power, longevity,
+manliness. The scholar poets are occupied with that which makes for
+culture, taste, refinement, ease, art.
+
+"Leaves of Grass," taken as a whole, aims to exhibit a modern, democratic,
+archetypal man, here in America, confronting and subduing our enormous
+materialism to his own purposes, putting it off and on as a garment;
+identifying himself with all forms of life and conditions of men; trying
+himself by cosmic laws and processes, exulting in the life of his body and
+the delights of his senses; and seeking to clinch, to develop, and to
+realize himself through the shows and events of the visible world. The
+poet seeks to interpret life from the central point of absolute abysmal
+man.
+
+The wild and the savage in nature with which Whitman perpetually
+identifies himself, and the hirsute, sun-tanned, and aboriginal in
+humanity, have misled many readers into looking upon him as expressive of
+these things only. Mr. Stedman thinks him guilty of a certain narrowness
+in preferring, or seeming to prefer, the laboring man to the gentleman.
+But the poet uses these elements only for checks and balances, and to keep
+our attention, in the midst of a highly refined and civilized age, fixed
+upon the fact that here are the final sources of our health, our power,
+our longevity. The need of the pre-scientific age was knowledge and
+refinement; the need of our age is health and sanity, cool heads and good
+digestion. And to this end the bitter and drastic remedies from the shore
+and the mountains are for us.
+
+
+IX
+
+The gospel of the average man, Matthew Arnold thought, was inimical to the
+ideal of a rare and high excellence. But, in holding up the average man,
+Whitman was only holding up the broad, universal human qualities, and
+showing that excellence may go with them also. As a matter of fact, are we
+not astonished almost daily by the superb qualities shown by the average
+man, the heroism shown by firemen, engineers, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors? Do we not know that true greatness, true nobility and strength of
+soul, may go and do go with commonplace, every-day humanity? Whitman would
+lift the average man to a higher average, and still to a higher, without
+at all weakening the qualities which he shares with universal humanity as
+it exists over and under all special advantages and social refinements.
+He says that one of the convictions that underlie his "Leaves" is the
+conviction that the "crowning growth of the United States is to be
+spiritual and heroic,"--a prophecy which in our times, I confess, does not
+seem very near fulfillment.
+
+He does not look longingly and anxiously toward the genteel social gods,
+but quite the contrary. In the library and parlor, he confesses he is as a
+gawk or one dumb. The great middle-class ideal, which is mainly the ideal
+of our own people, Whitman flouts and affronts. There are things to him of
+higher import than to have wealth and be respectable and in the mode.
+
+We might charge him with narrowness and partiality and with seeing only
+half truths, as Mr. Stedman has done, did he simply rest with the native
+as opposed to the cultivated, with brawn as opposed to brains. What he
+does do, what the upshot of his teaching shows, is that he identifies
+himself with the masses, with those universal human currents out of which
+alone a national spirit arises, as opposed to isolated schools and
+coteries and a privileged few. Whitman decries culture only so far as it
+cuts a man off from his fellows, clips away or effaces the sweet, native,
+healthy parts of him, and begets a bloodless, superstitious, infidelistic
+class. "The best culture," he says, "will always be that of the manly and
+courageous instincts and loving perceptions, and of self-respect." For
+the most part, our schooling is like our milling, which takes the bone
+and nerve building elements out of our bread. The bread of life demands
+the coarse as well as the fine, and this is what Whitman stands for.
+
+In his spirit and affiliation with the great mass of the people, with the
+commoner, sturdier, human traits, Whitman is more of the type of Angelo,
+or Rembrandt, or the antique bards, than he is like modern singers. He was
+not a product of the schools, but of the race.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES
+
+
+I
+
+It has been said, and justly I think, that in Whitman we see the first
+appearance in literature of the genuinely democratic spirit on anything
+like an ample scale. Plenty of men of democratic tendencies and
+affiliations have appeared, but none that have carried the temper and
+quality of the people, the masses, into the same regions, or blended the
+same humanity and commonness with the same commanding personality and
+spirituality. In recent English poetry the names of Burns and Wordsworth
+occur to mind, but neither of these men had anything like Whitman's
+breadth of relation to the mass of mankind, or expressed anything like his
+sweeping cosmic emotion. Wordsworth's muse was clad in homespun, but in no
+strict sense was his genius democratic--using the word to express, not a
+political creed, but the genius of modern civilization. He made much of
+the common man, common life, common things, but always does the poet stand
+apart, the recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, loving and contemplating
+these things for purposes of his art. Only through intellectual sympathy
+is he a part of what he surveys. In Whitman the common or average man has
+grown haughty, almost aristocratic. He coolly confronts the old types, the
+man of caste, culture, privileges, royalties, and relegates him to the
+past. He readjusts the standards, and estimates everything from the human
+and democratic point of view. In his scheme, the old traditions--the
+aristocratic, the scholastic, the ecclesiastical, the military, the social
+traditions--play no part. He dared to look at life, past and present, from
+the American and scientific standpoint. He turns to the old types a pride
+and complacency equal to their own.
+
+Indeed, we see in the character which Whitman has exploited and in the
+interest of which his poems are written, the democratic type fully
+realized,--pride and self-reliance equal to the greatest, and these
+matched with a love, a compassion, a spirit of fraternity and equality,
+that are entirely foreign to the old order of things.
+
+
+II
+
+At first sight Whitman does not seem vitally related to his own country
+and people; he seems an anomaly, an exception, or like one of those
+mammoth sports that sometimes appear in the vegetable world. The Whitman
+ideal is not, and has never been, the conscious ideal of the mass of our
+people. We have aspired more to the ideal of the traditional fine
+gentleman as he has figured in British letters. There seems to have been
+no hint or prophecy of such a man as Whitman in our New England
+literature, unless it be in Emerson, and here it is in the region of the
+abstract and not of the concrete. Emerson's prayer was for the absolutely
+self-reliant man, but when Whitman refused to follow his advice with
+regard to certain passages in the "Leaves," the sage withheld further
+approval of the work.
+
+We must look for the origins of Whitman, I think, in the deep
+world-currents that have been shaping the destinies of the race for the
+past hundred years or more; in the universal loosening, freeing, and
+removing obstructions; in the emancipation of the people, and their coming
+forward and taking possession of the world in their own right; in the
+triumph of democracy and of science; the downfall of kingcraft and
+priestcraft; the growth of individualism and non-conformity; the
+increasing disgust of the soul of man with forms and ceremonies; the
+sentiment of realism and positivism, the religious hunger that flees the
+churches; the growing conviction that life, that nature, are not failures,
+that the universe is good, that man is clean and divine inside and out,
+that God is immanent in nature,--all these things and more lie back of
+Whitman, and hold a causal relation to him.
+
+
+III
+
+Of course the essential elements of all first-class artistic and literary
+productions are always the same, just as nature, just as man, are
+essentially the same everywhere. Yet the literature of every people has a
+stamp of its own, starts from and implies antecedents and environments
+peculiar to itself.
+
+Just as ripe, mellow, storied, ivy-towered, velvet-turfed England lies
+back of Tennyson, and is vocal through him; just as canny, covenanting,
+conscience-burdened, craggy, sharp-tongued Scotland lies back of Carlyle;
+just as thrifty, well-schooled, well-housed, prudent, and moral New
+England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them,--so
+America as a whole, our turbulent democracy, our self-glorification, our
+faith in the future, our huge mass movements, our continental spirit, our
+sprawling, sublime, and unkempt nature, lie back of Whitman and are
+implied by his work.
+
+He had not the shaping, manipulating gift to carve his American material
+into forms of ideal beauty, and did not claim to have. He did not value
+beauty as an abstraction.
+
+What Whitman did that is unprecedented was, to take up the whole country
+into himself, fuse it, imbue it with soul and poetic emotion, and recast
+it as a sort of colossal Walt Whitman. He has not so much treated American
+themes as he has identified himself with everything American, and made the
+whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross
+materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses
+with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them
+with something like the breath of universal nature. His special gift is
+his magnetic and unconquerable personality, his towering egoism united
+with such a fund of human sympathy. His power is centripetal, so to
+speak,--he draws everything into himself like a maelstrom; the centrifugal
+power of the great dramatic artists, the power to get out of and away from
+himself, he has not. It was not for Whitman to write the dramas and
+tragedies of democracy, as Shakespeare wrote those of feudalism, or as
+Tennyson sang in delectable verse the swan-song of an overripe
+civilization. It was for him to voice the democratic spirit, to show it
+full-grown, athletic, haughtily taking possession of the world and
+redistributing the prizes according to its own standards. It was for him
+to sow broadcast over the land the germs of larger, more sane, more robust
+types of men and women, indicating them in himself.
+
+In him the new spirit of democracy first completely knows itself, is proud
+of itself, has faith and joy in itself, is fearless, tolerant, religious,
+aggressive, triumphant, and bestows itself lavishly upon all sides. It is
+tentative, doubtful, hesitating no longer. It is at ease in the world, it
+takes possession, it fears no rival, it advances with confident step.
+
+No man was ever more truly fathered by what is formative and expansive in
+his country and times than was Whitman. Not by the literature of his
+country was he begotten, but by the spirit that lies back of all, and
+that begat America itself,--the America that Europe loves and fears, that
+she comes to this country to see, and looks expectantly, but for the most
+part vainly, in our books to find.
+
+It seems to me he is distinctly a continental type. His sense of space, of
+magnitude, his processional pages, his unloosedness, his wide horizons,
+his vanishing boundaries,--always something unconfined and unconfinable,
+always the deferring and undemonstrable. The bad as well as the good
+traits of his country and his people are doubtless implied by his work.
+
+If he does not finally escape from our unripe Americanism, if he does not
+rise through it all and clarify it and turn it to ideal uses, draw out the
+spiritual meanings, then avaunt! we want nothing of him.
+
+  "The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell.
+  The former I graft and increase upon myself,
+  The latter I translate into a new tongue."
+
+
+The vital and the formative the true poet always engrafts and increases
+upon himself, and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the
+accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against
+Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers
+of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when
+his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the
+first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the
+modern; we see them translated into character; we see them tried by
+universal standards; we see them vivified by a powerful imagination. We
+see America as an idea, and see its relation to other ideas. We get a new
+conception of the value of the near, the common, the familiar. New light
+is thrown upon the worth and significance of the common people, and it is
+not the light of an abstract idea, but the light of a concrete example. We
+see the democratic type on a scale it has never before assumed; it is on a
+par with any of the types that have ruled the world in the past, the
+military, the aristocratic, the regal. It is at home, it has taken
+possession, it can hold its own. Henceforth the world is going its way. If
+it is over-confident, over-self-assertive, too American, that is the
+surplusage of the poet, of whom we do not want a penny prudence and
+caution; make your prophecy bold enough and it fulfills itself. Whitman
+has betrayed no doubt or hesitation in his poetry. His assumptions and
+vaticinations are tremendous, but they are uttered with an authority and
+an assurance that convince like natural law.
+
+
+IV
+
+I think he gives new meaning to democracy and America. In him we see a new
+type, rising out of new conditions, and fully able to justify itself and
+hold its own. It is the new man in the new world, no longer dependent upon
+or facing toward the old. I confess that to me America and the modern
+would not mean very much without Whitman. The final proof was wanting
+till they gave birth to a personality equal to the old types.
+
+Discussions and speculations about democracy do not carry very far, after
+all; to preach equality is not much. But when we see these things made
+into a man, and see the world through his eyes, and see new joy and new
+meaning in it, our doubts and perplexities are cleared up. Our universal
+balloting, and schooling, and material prosperity prove nothing: can your
+democracy produce a man who shall carry its spirit into loftiest regions,
+and prove as helpful and masterful under the new conditions as the by-gone
+types were under the old?
+
+
+V
+
+I predict a great future for Whitman, because the world is so unmistakably
+going his way. The three or four great currents of the century--the
+democratic current, the scientific current, the humanitarian current, the
+new religious current, and what flows out of them--are underneath all
+Whitman has written. They shape all and make all. They do not appear in
+him as mere dicta, or intellectual propositions, but as impulses, will,
+character, flesh-and-blood reality. We get these things, not as sentiments
+or yet theories, but as a man. We see life and the world as they appear to
+the inevitable democrat, the inevitable lover, the inevitable believer in
+God and immortality, the inevitable acceptor of absolute science.
+
+We are all going his way. We are more and more impatient of formalities,
+ceremonies, and make-believe; we more and more crave the essential, the
+real. More and more we want to see the thing as in itself it is; more and
+more is science opening our eyes to see the divine, the illustrious, the
+universal in the common, the near at hand; more and more do we tire of
+words and crave things; deeper and deeper sinks the conviction that
+personal qualities alone tell,--that the man is all in all, that the
+brotherhood of the race is not a dream, that love covers all and atones
+for all.
+
+Everything in our modern life and culture that tends to broaden,
+liberalize, free; that tends to make hardy, self-reliant, virile; that
+tends to widen charity, deepen affection between man and man, to foster
+sanity and self-reliance; that tends to kindle our appreciation of the
+divinity of all things; that heightens our rational enjoyment of life;
+that inspires hope in the future and faith in the unseen,--are on
+Whitman's side. All these things prepare the way for him.
+
+On the other hand, the strain and strife and hoggishness of our
+civilization, our trading politics, our worship of conventions, our
+millionaire ideals, our high-pressure lives, our pruriency, our
+sordidness, our perversions of nature, our scoffing caricaturing
+tendencies, are against him. He antagonizes all these things.
+
+The more democratic we become, the more we are prepared for Whitman; the
+more tolerant, fraternal, sympathetic we become, the more we are ready
+for Whitman; the more we inure ourselves to the open air and to real
+things, the more we value and understand our own bodies, the more the
+woman becomes the mate and equal of the man, the more social equality
+prevails,--the sooner will come to Whitman fullness and fruition.
+
+
+VI
+
+Some of our own critics have been a good deal annoyed by the fact that
+many European scholars and experts have recognized Whitman as the only
+distinctive American poet thus far. It would seem as if our reputation for
+culture and good manners is at stake. We want Europe to see America in our
+literary poets like Lowell, or Longfellow, or Whittier. And Europe may
+well see much that is truly representative of America in these and in
+other New England poets. She may see our aspiration toward her own ideals
+of culture and refinement; she may see native and patriotic themes firing
+Lowell and Whittier; she may see a certain spirit and temper begotten by
+our natural environment reflected in Bryant, our delicate and gentle
+humanities and scholarly aptitudes shining in Longfellow. But in every
+case she sees a type she has long been familiar with. All the poets'
+thoughts, moods, points of view, effects, aims, methods, are what she has
+long known. These are not the poets of a new _world_, but of a new
+_England_. The new-world book implies more than a new talent, more than a
+fresh pair of eyes, a fresh and original mind like the poets named; such
+men are required to keep up the old line of succession in English
+authorship. What is implied is a new national and continental spirit,
+which must arise and voice the old eternal truths through a large, new,
+democratic personality,--a new man, and, beyond and above him, a new
+heaven and a new earth.
+
+Our band of New England poets have carried the New England spirit into
+poetry,--its sense of fitness, order, propriety, its shrewdness,
+inventiveness, aptness, and its aspiration for the pure and noble in life.
+They have finely exemplified the best Yankee traits; but in no instance
+were these traits merged in a personality large enough, bold enough, and
+copious and democratic enough to give them national and continental
+significance. It would be absurd to claim that the pulse-beat of a great
+people or a great era is to be felt in the work of any of these poets.
+
+Whitman is responded to in Europe, because he expresses a new type with
+adequate power,--not, as has been so often urged, simply because he is
+strange, and gives the jaded literary palate over there a new fillip. He
+meets the demand for something in American literature that should not face
+toward Europe, that should joyfully stand upon its own ground and yet
+fulfill the conditions of greatness. He fully satisfies the thirst for
+individualism amid these awakening peoples, and the thirst for nationalism
+also. He realizes the democratic ideal, no longer tentative or apologetic,
+but taking possession of the world as its own and reappraising the wares
+it finds there.
+
+
+VII
+
+The American spirit is a continental spirit; there is nothing insular or
+narrow about it. It is informal, nonchalant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive,
+patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of
+particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable,
+unostentatious, inclined to exaggerate, generous, unrefined,--never
+meddlesome, never hypercritical, never hoggish, never exclusive. Whitman
+shared the hopeful optimistic temperament of his countrymen, the faith and
+confidence begotten by a great, fertile, sunny land. He expresses the
+independence of the people,--their pride, their jealousy of superiors,
+their contempt of authority (not always beautiful). Our want of reverence
+and veneration are supplemented in him with world-wide sympathies and
+good-fellowship.
+
+Emerson is our divine man, the precious quintessence of the New England
+type, invaluable for his stimulating and ennobling strain; but his genius
+is too astral, too select, too remote, to incarnate and give voice to the
+national spirit. Clothe him with flesh and blood, make his daring
+affirmations real and vital in a human personality and imbued with the
+American spirit, and we are on the way to Whitman.
+
+Moreover, the strong, undisguised man-flavor of "Leaves of Grass," the
+throb and pressure in it of those things that make life rank and make it
+masterful, and that make for the virility and perpetuity of the race, are,
+if it must be confessed, more keenly relished abroad than in this country,
+so thoroughly are we yet under the spell of the merely refined and
+conventional. We fail to see that in letters, as in life, the great prizes
+are not to the polished, but to the virile and the strong.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
+speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
+made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
+enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
+the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
+personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
+over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
+them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
+his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
+of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
+mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
+himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
+those who live in the open air, even laying claim to the "rowdyish." He is
+proud of freckles, sun-tan, brawn, and holds up the powerful and
+unrefined.
+
+  "I am enamor'd of growing out-doors,
+  Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
+  Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes
+        and mauls, and the drivers of horses;
+  I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out."
+
+
+"Nothing endures," he says, "but personal qualities." "Produce great
+persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently
+bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union?
+but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout
+at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He
+is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He
+sees all and embraces and encloses all.
+
+Then we see united and harmonized in Whitman the two great paramount
+tendencies of our time and of the modern world,--the altruistic or
+humanitarian tendency and the individualistic tendency; or, democracy and
+individualism, pride and equality, or, rather, pride in equality. These
+two forces, as they appear in separate individuals, are often
+antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman
+they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and
+uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping
+fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one
+motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his
+fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him
+with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he claims for
+himself he demands in the same terms for all. He has set such an example
+of self-trust and self-assertion as has no parallel in our literature, at
+the same time that he has set an equal example in practical democracy and
+universal brotherhood.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman's democracy is the breath of his nostrils, the light of his eyes,
+the blood in his veins. The reader does not feel that here is some fine
+scholar, some fine poet singing the praises of democracy; he feels that
+here is a democrat, probably, as Thoreau surmised, the greatest the world
+has yet seen, turning the light of a great love, a great intellect, a
+great soul, upon America, upon contemporary life and events, and upon the
+universe, and reading new lessons, new meanings, therein. He is a great
+poet and prophet, speaking through the average man, speaking as one of the
+people, and interpreting life from the point of view of absolute
+democracy.
+
+True, the people in their average taste and perceptions are crude and
+flippant and superficial, and often the victims of mountebanks and fools;
+yet, as forming the body of our social and political organism, and the
+chief factor in the world-problem of to-day, they are the exponents of
+great forces and laws, and often, in emergencies, show the wisdom and
+unimpeachableness of Nature herself. Deep-hidden currents and forces in
+them are liable to come to the surface, and when the politicians get in
+their way, or miscalculate them, as so often happens, they are crushed.
+Whitman is a projection into literature of the cosmic sense and conscience
+of the people, and their participation in the forces that are shaping the
+world in our century. Much comes to a head in him. Much comes to joyous
+speech and song, that heretofore had only come to thought and speculation.
+A towering, audacious personality has appeared which is strictly the fruit
+of the democratic spirit, and which has voiced itself in an impassioned
+utterance touching the whole problem of national and individual life.
+
+
+X
+
+The Whitman literature is democratic, not in the sense that it caters to
+the taste of the masses or to the taste of the average man; for, as a
+matter of fact, the masses and the average man are likely to be the last
+to recognize its value. The common people, the average newspaper-reading
+citizens, are much more likely to be drawn by the artificial and the
+conventional. But it is democratic because it is filled with the spirit of
+absolute human equality and brotherhood, and gives out the atmosphere of
+the universal, primary, human traits. The social, artificial, accidental
+distinctions of wealth, culture, position, etc., have not influenced the
+poet in the slightest degree. Whitman finds his joy and his triumph, not
+in being better than other people or above them, but in being one with
+them, and sharing their sins as well as their virtues.
+
+  "As if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as
+        myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that
+        others possess the same."
+
+
+This is one step further than others have taken, and makes democracy
+complete in itself. Again, his work identifies itself with the democratic
+ideal in getting rid of the professional and arbitrary elements of poetry,
+and appealing to the reader entirely through its spirit and content. It is
+as democratic in this respect as the workman in the field, or the mechanic
+at his bench.
+
+The poems are bathed and flooded with the quality of the common people;
+with the commonness and nearness which they share with real things and
+with all open-air nature,--with hunters, travelers, soldiers, workers in
+all fields, and with rocks, trees, and woods. It is only in the spirit of
+these things that a man himself can have health, sweetness, and
+proportion; and only in their spirit that he can give an essentially sound
+judgment of a work of art, no matter what the subject of it may be.
+
+This spirit of the "commonest, cheapest, nearest" is the only spirit in
+which man's concrete life can be carried forward. We do not live and
+breathe and grow and multiply, we do not have health and sanity and
+wholeness and proportion, we do not subdue and improve and possess the
+earth, in the spirit of something exclusive, exceptional, faraway,
+aristocratic, but in the spirit of the common and universal. The only
+demand is that, in a work of art, the common or universal shall be
+vitalized with poetic thought and enthusiasm, or imbued with the ideal of
+a rare and high excellence.
+
+
+XI
+
+Our critics have been fond of taunting Whitman with the fact that the
+common people, the workers, of whom he makes so much, and to whom he
+perpetually appeals, do not read him, or show any liking for his poems at
+all.
+
+Whitman's appeal to the common people, to the democratic masses, is an
+appeal to the future; it is an appeal to the universal human conscience
+and intelligence, as they exist above and beneath all special advantages
+of birth and culture and stand related to the total system of things. It
+also calls attention to the fact that the spirit in which he writes, and
+in which he is to be read, is the spirit of open-air life and nature.
+
+  "No school or shutter'd room commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children, better than they,"
+
+because the simple, unforced, unrefined elements of human nature are those
+out of which the poems sprang and with which they are charged. Their
+spirit is closer akin to unlettered humanity than to the over-intellectual
+and sophisticated products of the schools.
+
+Of course "roughs and little children" can make nothing of "Leaves of
+Grass," but unless the trained reader has that fund of fresh, simple,
+wholesome nature, and the love for real things, which unlettered humanity
+possesses, he will make nothing of it either.
+
+
+XII
+
+It has been truly said that "the noblest seer is ever over-possessed."
+This has been the case with nearly all original, first-class men. Carlyle
+furnished a good illustration of its truth in our own time. He was
+over-possessed with his idea of the hero and hero-worship. And it may be
+that Whitman was over-possessed with the idea of democracy, America,
+nationality, and the need of a radically new departure in poetic
+literature. Yet none knew better than he that in the long run the
+conditions of life and of human happiness and progress remain about the
+same; that the same price must still be paid for the same things; that
+character alone counts; that the same problem "how to live" ever confronts
+us; and that democracy, America, nationality, are only way stations, and
+by no means the end of the route. The all-leveling tendency of democracy
+is certainly not in the interest of literature. The world is not saved by
+the average man, but by the man much above the average, the rare and
+extraordinary man,--by the "remnant," as Arnold called them.
+
+No one knew this better than Whitman, and he said that "one main
+genesis-motive" of his "Leaves" was the conviction that the crowning
+growth of the United States was to be spiritual and heroic. Only "superb
+persons" can finally justify him.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE
+
+
+I
+
+The stupendous disclosures of modern science, and what they mean when
+translated into the language of man's ethical and æsthetic nature, have
+not yet furnished to any considerable extent the inspiration of poems.
+That all things are alike divine, that this earth is a star in the
+heavens, that the celestial laws and processes are here underfoot, that
+size is only relative, that good and bad are only relative, that forces
+are convertible and interchangeable, that matter is indestructible, that
+death is the law of life, that man is of animal origin, that the sum of
+forces is constant, that the universe is a complexus of powers
+inconceivably subtle and vital, that motion is the law of all things,--in
+fact, that we have got rid of the notions of the absolute, the fixed, the
+arbitrary, and the notion of origins and of the dualism of the world,--to
+what extent will these and kindred ideas modify art and all æsthetic
+production? The idea of the divine right of kings and the divine authority
+of priests is gone; that, in some other time or some other place God was
+nearer man than now and here,--this idea is gone. Indeed, the whole of
+man's spiritual and religious belief which forms the background of
+literature has changed,--a change as great as if the sky were to change
+from blue to red or to orange. The light of day is different. But
+literature deals with life, and the essential conditions of life, you say,
+always remain the same. Yes, but the expression of their artistic values
+is forever changing. If we ask where is the modern imaginative work that
+is based upon these revelations of science, the work in which they are the
+blood and vital juices, I answer, "Leaves of Grass," and no other. The
+work is the outgrowth of science and modern ideas, just as truly as Dante
+is the outgrowth of mediæval ideas and superstitions; and the imagination,
+the creative spirit, is just as unhampered in Whitman as in Dante or in
+Shakespeare. The poet finds the universe just as plastic and ductile, just
+as obedient to his will, and just as ready to take the impress of his
+spirit, as did these supreme artists. Science has not hardened it at all.
+The poet opposes himself to it, and masters it and rises superior. He is
+not balked or oppressed for a moment. He knows from the start what science
+can bring him, what it can give, and what it can take away; he knows the
+universe is not orphaned; he finds more grounds than ever for a pæan of
+thanksgiving and praise. His conviction of the identity of soul and body,
+matter and spirit, does not shake his faith in immortality in the least.
+His faith arises, not from half views, but from whole views. In him the
+idea of the soul, of humanity, of identity, easily balanced the idea of
+the material universe. Man was more than a match for nature. It was all
+for him, and not for itself. His enormous egotism, or hold upon the
+central thought or instinct of human worth and import, was an anchor that
+never gave way. Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an
+iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world
+of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as
+immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and
+anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old
+bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the
+universe is directed to one man,--to you. His anthropomorphism is not a
+projection of himself into nature, but an absorption of nature in himself.
+The tables are turned. It is not alien or superhuman beings that he sees
+and hears in nature, but his own that he finds everywhere. All gods are
+merged in himself.
+
+Not the least fear, not the least doubt or dismay, in this book. Not one
+moment's hesitation or losing of the way. And it is not merely an
+intellectual triumph, but the triumph of soul and personality. The iron
+knots are not untied, they are melted. Indeed, the poet's contentment and
+triumph in view of the fullest recognition of all the sin and sorrow of
+the world, and of all that baffles and dwarfs, is not the least of the
+remarkable features of the book.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil
+under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and
+illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties
+perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and
+exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained
+more than we have lost. The world is anew created by science and
+democracy, and he pronounces it good with the joy and fervor of the old
+faith.
+
+He shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets of note in
+our time who have drawn inspiration from this source, or viewed the
+universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern
+poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious
+compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was
+stupendous; the other childish and empty. But Whitman and Tennyson were
+fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vision that
+matches the best science can do. Tennyson drew upon science more for his
+images and illustrations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and
+appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed
+Whitman's imagination and made him bold; its effects were moral and
+spiritual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellectual; it enlarged
+his vocabulary without strengthening his faith. Indeed, one would say,
+from certain passages in "In Memoriam," that it had distinctly weakened
+his faith. Let us note for a moment the different ways these two poets use
+science. In his poem to Fitzgerald, Tennyson draws upon the nebular
+hypothesis for an image:--
+
+  "A planet equal to the sun
+  Which cast it, that large infidel
+  Your Omar."
+
+In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
+"of an earth that is dead."
+
+  "The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of
+        space,
+  Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."
+
+In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:--
+
+  "The fires that arch this dusky dot--
+    Yon myriad-worlded way--
+  The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,
+    World-isles in lonely skies,
+  Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
+    Our brief humanities."
+
+
+As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
+not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
+anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
+makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
+the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:--
+
+  "I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains,
+        esculent roots,
+  And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
+  And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
+  And call anything close again, when I desire it.
+
+  "In vain the speeding or shyness,
+  In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,
+  In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
+  In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
+  In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
+  In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
+  In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
+  In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
+  In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
+  I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.
+  My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
+  On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,
+  All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.
+
+  "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
+  Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there,
+  I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
+  And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
+
+  "Long I was hugged close--long and long.
+  Immense have been the preparations for me,
+  Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,
+  Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
+  For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
+  They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
+
+  "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me,
+  My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
+  For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
+  The long, slow strata piled to rest it in,
+  Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
+  Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with
+        care.
+  All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
+  Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.
+
+  "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
+  And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of
+        the farther systems:
+  Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
+  Outward, outward, and forever outward:
+  My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels;
+  He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
+  And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
+
+  "There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage.
+  If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the
+        palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float,
+        it would not avail in the long run.
+  We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
+  And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther.
+  A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not
+        hazard the span or make it impatient.
+  They are but parts--anything is but a part,
+  See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+  Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
+
+In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is
+always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of
+the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the
+man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality
+has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does
+not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional
+realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man
+refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the
+presence of the cosmic laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all
+directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the
+"full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
+outside of itself.
+
+  "I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
+  And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO RELIGION
+
+
+Whitman, as I have elsewhere said, was swayed by two or three great
+passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He
+thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.
+
+  "The soul,
+  Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
+        water ebbs and flows."
+
+
+He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy
+manly or womanly development, without religion.
+
+  "I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these
+        States must be their Religion,
+  Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur."
+
+All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.
+
+  "Each is not for its own sake,
+  I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's
+        sake."
+
+All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business
+pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion.
+
+  "For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
+        life of the earth,
+  Any more than such are to Religion."
+
+
+Again he says:--
+
+  "My Comrade!
+  For you to share with me two greatnesses--And a third one, rising
+        inclusive and more resplendent,
+  The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion."
+
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates
+is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It was larger than any creed that has
+yet been formulated. It was the conviction of the man of science touched
+and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his
+life its chief elements were faith, hope, charity. Its object was to
+prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind
+what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."
+
+The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse.
+Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had
+resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated.
+The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of
+the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was
+through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The
+great mass of the human race was doomed to endless perdition. Now there is
+no trace of this religion in Whitman, and it does not seem to have left
+any shadow upon him. Ecclesiasticism is dead; he clears the ground for a
+new growth. To the priests he says: "Your day is done."
+
+He sings a new song; he tastes a new joy in life. The earth is as divine
+as heaven, and there is no god more sacred than yourself. It is as if the
+world had been anew created, and Adam had once more been placed in the
+garden,--the world, with all consequences of the fall, purged from him.
+
+Hence we have in Whitman the whole human attitude towards the universe,
+towards God, towards life and death, towards good and evil, completely
+changed. We have absolute faith and acceptance in place of the fear and
+repentance of the old creeds; we have death welcomed as joyously as life,
+we have political and social equality as motifs and impulses, and not
+merely as sentiments. He would show us the muse of poetry, as impartial,
+as sweeping in its vision, as modern, as real, as free from the morbid and
+make-believe, as the muse of science. He sees good in all, beauty in all.
+It is not the old piety, it is the new faith; it is not the old worship,
+it is the new acceptance; not the old, corroding religious pessimism, but
+the new scientific optimism.
+
+He does not deny, he affirms; he does not criticise, he celebrates; his is
+not a call to repentance, it is a call to triumph:--
+
+  "I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
+  None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,
+  None has begun to think how divine he himself is, or how certain the
+        future is."
+
+He accepted science absolutely, yet science was not an end in itself: it
+was not his dwelling; he but entered by it to an area of his dwelling.
+
+The flower of science was religion. Without this religion, or something
+akin to it,--without some spiritual, emotional life that centred about an
+ideal,--Whitman urged that there could be no permanent national or
+individual development. In the past this ideal was found in the
+supernatural; for us and the future democratic ages, it must be found in
+the natural, in the now and the here.
+
+The aristocratic tradition not only largely shaped the literature of the
+past, it shaped the religion: man was a culprit, his life a rebellion; his
+proper attitude toward the unseen powers was that of a subject to his
+offended sovereign,--one of prostration and supplication. Heaven was a
+select circle reserved for the few,--the aristocracy of the pure and just.
+The religion of a democratic and scientific era, as voiced by Whitman and
+as exemplified in his life, is of quite another character,--not
+veneration, but joy and triumph; not fear, but love; not self-abasement,
+but self-exaltation; not sacrifice, but service: in fact, not religion at
+all in the old sense of the spiritual at war with the natural, the divine
+with the human, this world a vale of tears, and mundane things but filth
+and ashes, heaven for the good and hell for the bad; but in the new sense
+of the divinity of all things, of the equality of gods and men, of the
+brotherhood of the race, of the identity of the material and the
+spiritual, of the beneficence of death and the perfection of the universe.
+The poet turns his face to earth and not to heaven; he finds the
+miraculous, the spiritual, in the things about him, and gods and goddesses
+in the men and women he meets. He effaces the old distinctions; he
+establishes a sort of universal suffrage in spiritual matters; there are
+no select circles, no privileged persons. Is this the democracy of
+religion? liberty, fraternity, and equality carried out in the spiritual
+sphere? Death is the right hand of God, and evil plays a necessary part
+also. Nothing is discriminated against; there are no reprisals or
+postponements, no dualism or devilism. Everything is in its place; man's
+life and all the things of his life are well-considered.
+
+Carried out in practice, this democratic religion will not beget priests,
+or churches, or creeds, or rituals, but a life cheerful and full on all
+sides, helpful, loving, unworldly, tolerant, open-souled, temperate,
+fearless, free, and contemplating with pleasure, rather than alarm, "the
+exquisite transition of death."
+
+
+
+
+A FINAL WORD
+
+
+After all I have written about Whitman, I feel at times that the main
+thing I wanted to say about him I have not said, cannot say; the best
+about him cannot be told anyway. "My final merit I refuse you." His full
+significance in connection with the great modern movement; how he embodies
+it all and speaks out of it, and yet maintains his hold upon the
+primitive, the aboriginal; how he presupposes science and culture, yet
+draws his strength from that which antedates these things; how he glories
+in the present, and yet is sustained and justified by the past; how he is
+the poet of America and the modern, and yet translates these things into
+universal truths; how he is the poet of wickedness, while yet every fibre
+of him is sound and good; how his page is burdened with the material, the
+real, the contemporary, while yet his hold upon the ideal, the spiritual,
+never relaxes; how he is the poet of the body, while yet he is in even
+fuller measure the poet of the soul; in fact, how all contradictions are
+finally reconciled in him,--all these things and more, I say, I feel that
+I have not set forth with the clearness and emphasis the subject demanded.
+Other students of him will approach him on other lines, and will disclose
+meanings that I have missed.
+
+Writing about him, as Symonds said, is enormously difficult. At times I
+feel as if I was almost as much at sea with regard to him as when I first
+began to study him; not at sea with regard to his commanding genius and
+power, but with regard to any adequate statement and summary of him in
+current critical terms. One cannot define and classify him as he can a
+more highly specialized poetic genius. What is he like? He is like
+everything. He is like the soil which holds the germs of a thousand forms
+of life; he is like the grass, common, universal, perennial, formless; he
+is like your own heart, mystical yearning, rebellious, contradictory, but
+ever throbbing with life. He is fluid, generative, electric; he is full of
+the germs, potencies, and latencies of things; he provokes thought without
+satisfying it; he is formless without being void; he is both Darwinian and
+Dantesque. He is the great reconciler, he united and harmonized so many
+opposites in himself. As a man he united the masculine and feminine
+elements in a remarkable degree; he united the innocent vanity of the
+child with the self-reliance of a god. In his moral aspects, he united
+egoism and altruism, pride and charity, individualism and democracy,
+fierce patriotism and the cosmopolitan spirit; in his literary aspects he
+united mysticism and realism, the poet and prophet, the local and the
+universal; in his religious aspects he united faith and agnosticism, the
+glorification of the body and all objective things, with an unshakable
+trust in the reality of the invisible world.
+
+Rich in the elements of poetry, a London critic says, almost beyond any
+other poet of his time, and yet the conscious, elaborate, crystallic,
+poetic work which the critic demanded of him, carefully stopping short of,
+quite content to hold it all in solution, and give his reader an impulse
+rather than a specimen.
+
+I have accepted Whitman entire and without reservation. I could not do
+otherwise. It was clear enough to me that he was to be taken as a whole or
+not at all. We cannot cut and carve a man. The latest poet brings us
+poetic wares, curiously and beautifully carved and wrought specimens, some
+of which we accept and some of which we pass by. Whitman brings us no
+cunning handicraft of the muses: he brings us a gospel, he brings us a
+man, he brings us a new revelation of life; and either his work appeals to
+us as a whole, or it does not so appeal. He will not live in separate
+passages, or in a few brief poems, any more than Shakespeare or Homer or
+Dante, or the Bible, so lives.
+
+The chief thing about the average literary poet is his poetic gift, apart
+from any other consideration; we select from what he brings us as we
+select from a basket of fruit. The chief thing about Whitman is the
+personality which the poetic gift is engaged in exploiting; the excitement
+of our literary or artistic sense is always less than the excitement of
+our sense of life and of real things. We get in him a fixed point of view,
+a new vantage-ground of personality from which to survey life. It is less
+what he brings, and more what he is, than with other poets. To take him by
+fragments, picking out poetic tidbits here and there, rejecting all the
+rest, were like valuing a walk through the fields and woods only for the
+flowers culled here and there, or the bits of color in the grass or
+foliage. Is the air, the sunshine, the free spaces, the rocks, the soil,
+the trees, and the exhilaration of it all, nothing? There are flowers in
+Whitman, too, but they are amid the rocks or under the trees, and seem
+quite unpremeditated and by the way, and never the main concern. If our
+quest is for these alone, we shall surely be disappointed. "In order to
+appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose," says Joel Chandler Harris,
+"it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp
+in instant and express admiration the vast group of facts that make
+man,--that make liberty,--that make America. There is no poetry in the
+details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of
+the mighty forces behind them,--the inevitable, unaccountable,
+irresistible forward movement of man in the making of this republic."
+
+And again: "Those who approach Walt Whitman's poetry from the literary
+side are sure to be disappointed. Whatever else it is, it is not literary.
+Its art is its own, and the melody of it must be sought in other
+suggestions than those of metre.... Those who are merely literary will
+find little substance in the great drama of Democracy which is outlined
+by Walt Whitman in his writings,--it is no distinction to call them poems.
+But those who know nature at first hand--who know man, who see in this
+Republic something more than a political government--will find therein the
+thrill and glow of poetry and the essence of melody. Not the poetry that
+culture stands in expectation of, nor the melody that capers in verse and
+metre, but those rarer intimations and suggestions that are born in
+primeval solitudes, or come whirling from the vast funnel of the storm."
+How admirable! how true! No man has ever spoken more to the point upon
+Walt Whitman.
+
+The appearance of such a man as Whitman involves deep world-forces of race
+and time. He is rooted in the very basic structure of his age. After what
+I have already said, my reader will not be surprised when I tell him that
+I look upon Whitman as the one mountain thus far in our literary
+landscape. To me he changes the whole aspect, almost the very climate, of
+our literature. He adds the much-needed ruggedness, breadth, audacity,
+independence, and the elements of primal strength and health. We owe much
+to Emerson. But Emerson was much more a _made_ man than was Whitman,--much
+more the result of secondary forces, the college, the church, and of New
+England social and literary culture. With all his fervid humanity and
+deeply ingrained modernness, Whitman has the virtues of the primal and the
+savage. "Leaves of Grass" has not the charm, or the kind of charm, of the
+more highly wrought artistic works, but it has the incentive of nature and
+the charm of real things. We shall not go to it to be soothed and lulled.
+It will always remain among the difficult and heroic undertakings,
+demanding our best moments, our best strength, our morning push and power.
+Like voyaging or mountain-climbing, or facing any danger or hardship by
+land or sea, it fosters manly endeavor and the great virtues of sanity and
+self-reliance.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as
+presented in the original text.
+
+The following misprint has been corrected:
+  "differentation" corrected to "differentiation" (page 18)
+
+Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Whitman: A Study, by John Burroughs.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Whitman
+       A Study
+
+Author: John Burroughs
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2009 [EBook #30342]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover01.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table class="bbox" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="advertisement">
+<tr><td align="center"><b>Books by John Burroughs.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WORKS. 14 vols., uniform, 16mo, gilt top, $17.10;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">half calf, $34.10; half polished morocco, $37.45.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Wake-Robin.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Winter Sunshine.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Locusts and Wild Honey.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Fresh Fields.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Indoor Studies.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Birds and Poets</span>, with Other Papers.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Pepacton</span>, and Other Sketches.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Signs and Seasons.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Riverby.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Whitman: A Study.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">The Light of Day</span>: Religious Discussions and Criticisms from</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 6em;"> the Standpoint of a Naturalist.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Each of the above, $1.25.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Literary Values.</span> A Series of Literary Essays.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Far and Near.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Ways of Nature.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Each of the above, $1.10, <i>net</i>. Postage extra.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>WAYS OF NATURE. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>. Postage extra.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FAR AND NEAR. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>. Postage 11 cents.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to each season of the year,<br/><span style="margin-left: 4em;">from the writings of John Burroughs. Illustrated from
+Photographs</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">by <span class="smcap">Clifton Johnson</span>. 12mo, $1.50.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>WHITMAN: A Study. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and Criticisms from the<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">Standpoint of a Naturalist. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>LITERARY VALUES. <i>Riverside Edition.</i> 12mo, $1.50, <i>net</i>. Postage,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">11 cents.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>WINTER SUNSHINE. <i>Cambridge Classics Series.</i> Crown 8vo, $1.00.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WAKE-ROBIN. <i>Riverside Aldine Series.</i> 16mo, $1.00.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illustrated. Square 12mo,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">$1.00. <i>School Edition</i>, 60 cents, <i>net</i>.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Boston and New York</span></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis01.jpg" alt="Walt Whitman" /></div>
+<p class="center">WALT WHITMAN</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<h2>WHITMAN</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3><i>A STUDY</i></h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h5>BY</h5>
+<h3>JOHN BURROUGHS</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/tp01.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br />
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge</h4>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h5>Copyright, 1896,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By john burroughs.</span></h5>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#preliminary"><span class="smcap">Preliminary</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#BIOGRAPHICAL_AND_PERSONAL"><span class="smcap">Biographical and Personal</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RULING_IDEAS_AND_AIMS"><span class="smcap">His Ruling Ideas and Aims</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_SELF-RELIANCE"><span class="smcap">His Self-Reliance</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_ART"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Art and Literature</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_LIFE"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Life and Morals</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_CULTURE"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Culture</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_HIS_COUNTRY"><span class="smcap">His Relation to his Country and his Times</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_SCIENCE"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Science</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#HIS_RELATION_TO_RELIGION"><span class="smcap">His Relation to Religion</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#A_FINAL_WORD"><span class="smcap">A Final Word</span></a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>"<i>All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
+from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
+from elsewhere.</i>"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Taine.</span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>If you want to tell good Gothic, see if it has the sort of roughness and
+largeness and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness
+which seems always to be the sign manual of the broad vision and massy
+power of men who can see</i> past <i>the work they are doing, and betray here and
+there something like disdain for it.</i>"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ruskin.</span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Formerly, during the period termed classic, when literature was governed
+by recognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the
+most perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the
+most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,&mdash;the &AElig;neid,
+the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day something else is wanted. For us
+the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
+imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
+The greatest poet is not he who has done the best, it is he who suggests
+the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves
+you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your
+turn.</i>"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sainte-Beuve.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="preliminary" id="preliminary"></a>WHITMAN</h2>
+
+<h3>PRELIMINARY</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">The</span> writing of this preliminary chapter, and the final survey and revision
+of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild
+place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place
+Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,&mdash;an
+amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth
+of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site of
+an ancient lake, now a garden of unknown depth and fertility. Elemental
+ruggedness, savageness, and grandeur, combined with wonderful tenderness,
+modernness, and geniality. There rise the gray scarred cliffs, crowned
+here and there with a dead hemlock or pine, where, morning after morning,
+I have seen the bald-eagle perch, and here at their feet this level area
+of tender humus, with three perennial springs of delicious cold water
+flowing in its margin; a huge granite bowl filled with the elements and
+potencies of life. The scene has a strange fascination for me, and holds
+me here day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> after day. From the highest point of rocks I can overlook a
+long stretch of the river and of the farming country beyond; I can hear
+owls hoot, hawks scream, and roosters crow. Birds of the garden and
+orchard meet birds of the forest upon the shaggy cedar posts that uphold
+my porch. At dusk the call of the whippoorwill mingles with the chorus of
+the pickerel frogs, and in the morning I hear through the robins' cheerful
+burst the sombre plaint of the mourning-dove. When I tire of my
+manuscript, I walk in the woods, or climb the rocks, or help the men clear
+up the ground, piling and burning the stumps and rubbish. This scene and
+situation, so primitive and secluded, yet so touched with and adapted to
+civilization, responding to the moods of both sides of the life and
+imagination of a modern man, seems, I repeat, typical in many ways of my
+poet, and is a veritable Whitman land. Whitman does not to me suggest the
+wild and unkempt as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the
+elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my
+dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to
+him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and
+placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some
+of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and
+primitive aspects.</p>
+
+<p>His wildness is only the wildness of the great primary forces from which
+we draw our health and strength. Underneath all his unloosedness, or free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+launching forth of himself, is the sanity and repose of nature.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>I first became acquainted with Whitman's poetry through the columns of the
+old "Saturday Press" when I was twenty or twenty-one years old (1858 or
+1859). The first things I remember to have read were "There was a child
+went forth," "This Compost," "As I ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Old
+Ireland," and maybe a few others. I was attracted by the new poet's work
+from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found
+in the current poetry. Meeting Bayard Taylor about this time, I spoke to
+him about Whitman. "Yes," he said, "there is something in him, but he is a
+man of colossal egotism."</p>
+
+<p>A few years later a friend sent me a copy of the Thayer &amp; Eldridge edition
+of "Leaves of Grass" of 1860. It proved a fascinating but puzzling book to
+me. I grazed upon it like a colt upon a mountain, taking what tasted good
+to me, and avoiding what displeased me, but having little or no conception
+of the purport of the work as a whole. I found passages and whole poems
+here and there that I never tired of reading, and that gave a strange
+fillip to my moral and intellectual nature, but nearly as many passages
+and poems puzzled or repelled me. My absorption of Emerson had prepared me
+in a measure for Whitman's philosophy of life, but not for the ideals of
+character and conduct which he held up to me, nor for the standards in art
+to which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the poet perpetually appealed. Whitman was Emerson translated
+from the abstract into the concrete. There was no privacy with Whitman; he
+never sat me down in a corner with a cozy, comfortable shut-in feeling,
+but he set me upon a hill or started me upon an endless journey.
+Wordsworth had been my poet of nature, of the sequestered and the idyllic;
+but I saw that here was a poet of a larger, more fundamental nature,
+indeed of the Cosmos itself. Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the
+earth and the orbs. This much soon appeared to me, but I was troubled by
+the poet's apparent "colossal egotism," by his attitude towards evil,
+declaring himself "to be the poet of wickedness also;" by his seeming
+attraction toward the turbulent and the disorderly; and, at times, by what
+the critics had called his cataloguing style of treatment.</p>
+
+<p>When I came to meet the poet himself, which was in the fall of 1863, I
+felt less concern about these features of his work; he was so sound and
+sweet and gentle and attractive as a man, and withal so wise and tolerant,
+that I soon came to feel the same confidence in the book that I at once
+placed in its author, even in the parts which I did not understand. I saw
+that the work and the man were one, and that the former must be good as
+the latter was good. There was something in the manner in which both the
+book and its author carried themselves under the sun, and in the way they
+confronted America and the present time, that convinced beyond the power
+of logic or criticism.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>The more I saw of Whitman, and the more I studied his "Leaves," the more
+significance I found in both, and the clearer it became to me that a new
+type of a man and a new departure in poetic literature were here
+foreshadowed. There was something forbidding, but there was something
+vital and grand back of it. I found to be true what the poet said of
+himself,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,<br />
+To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,<br />
+For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I have persevered in my study of the poet, though balked many times, and
+the effect upon my own mental and spiritual nature has been great; no such
+"solid prizes" in the way of a broader outlook upon life and nature, and,
+I may say, upon art, has any poet of my time afforded me. There are
+passages or whole poems in the "Leaves" which I do not yet understand
+("Sleep-Chasings" is one of them), though the language is as clear as
+daylight; they are simply too subtle or elusive for me; but my confidence
+in the logical soundness of the book is so complete that I do not trouble
+myself at all about these things.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>I would fain make these introductory remarks to my essay a sort of window
+through which the reader may get a fairly good view of what lies beyond.
+If he does not here get any glimpse or suggestion of what pleases him, or
+of what he is look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>ing for, it will hardly be worth while for him to
+trouble himself further.</p>
+
+<p>A great many readers, perhaps three fourths of the readers of current
+poetry, and not a few of the writers thereof, cannot stand Whitman at all,
+or see any reason for his being. To such my essay, if it ever comes to
+their notice, will be a curiosity, may be an offense. But I trust it will
+meet with a different reception at the hands of the smaller but rapidly
+growing circle of those who are beginning to turn to Whitman as the most
+imposing and significant figure in our literary annals.</p>
+
+<p>The rapidly growing Whitman literature attests the increasing interest to
+which I refer. Indeed, it seems likely that by the end of the century the
+literature which will have grown up around the name of this man will
+surpass in bulk and value that which has grown up around the name of any
+other man of letters born within the century.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Stedman wrote his essay upon the poet early in the eighties, he
+referred to the mass of this literature. It has probably more than doubled
+in volume in the intervening years: since Whitman's death in the spring of
+'92, it has been added to by William Clark's book upon the poet, Professor
+Trigg's study of Browning and Whitman, and the work of that accomplished
+critic and scholar, so lately gone to his rest, John Addington Symonds.
+This last is undoubtedly the most notable contribution that has yet been
+made, or is likely very soon to be made, to the Whitman literature. Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+Symonds declares that "Leaves of Grass," which he first read at the age of
+twenty-five, influenced him more than any other book has done, except the
+Bible,&mdash;more than Plato, more than Goethe.</p>
+
+<p>When we remember that the man who made this statement was eminently a man
+of books, deeply read in all literatures, his testimony may well offset
+that of a score of our home critics who find nothing worthy or helpful in
+Whitman's work. One positive witness in such a matter outweighs any number
+of negative ones.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>For making another addition to the growing Whitman literature, I have no
+apology to offer. I know well enough that "writing and talk" cannot
+"prove" a poet; that he must be his own proof or be forgotten; and my main
+purpose in writing about Whitman, as in writing about nature, is to tell
+readers what I have found there, with the hope of inducing them to look
+for themselves. At the same time, I may say that I think no modern poet so
+much needs to be surrounded by an atmosphere of comment and
+interpretation, through which readers may approach him, as does Whitman.
+His work sprang from a habit or attitude of mind quite foreign to that
+with which current literature makes us familiar,&mdash;so germinal is it, and
+so little is it beholden to the formal art we so assiduously cultivate.
+The poet says his work "connects lovingly with precedents," but it does
+not connect lovingly with any body of poetry of this century. "Leaves of
+Grass" is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> bound to be a shock to the timid and pampered taste of the
+majority of current readers. I would fain lessen this shock by interposing
+my own pages of comment between the book and the public. The critic can
+say so many things the poet cannot. He can explain and qualify and
+analyze, whereas the creative artist can only hint or project. The poet
+must hasten on, he must infold and bind together, he must be direct and
+synthetic in every act. Reflection and qualification are not for him, but
+action, emotion, volition, the procreant blending and surrender. He works
+as Nature does, and gives us reality in every line.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The type of mind of Whitman's, which seldom or never emerges as a mere
+mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a
+personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself,
+because its operations are synthetic and not analytic, its mainspring is
+love and not mere knowledge. In his prose essay called "A Backward Glance
+o'er Travel'd Roads," appended to the final edition of his poems, Whitman
+has not so much sought to expound himself as to put his reader in
+possession of his point of view, and of the considerations that lie back
+of his work. This chapter might render much that I have written
+superfluous, were there not always a distinct gain in seeing an author
+through another medium, or in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> getting the equivalents of him in the
+thoughts and ideals of a kindred and sympathetic mind. But I have not
+consciously sought to expound Whitman, any more than in my other books I
+have sought to expound the birds or wild nature. I have written out some
+things that he means to me, and the pleasure and profit I have found in
+his pages.</p>
+
+<p>There is no end to what can be drawn out of him. It has been said and
+repeated that he was not a thinker, and yet I find more food for thought
+in him than in all other poets. It has been often said and repeated that
+he is not a poet, and yet the readers that respond to him the most fully
+appear to be those in whom the poetic temperament is paramount. I believe
+he supplies in fuller measure that pristine element, something akin to the
+unbreathed air of mountain and shore, which makes the arterial blood of
+poetry and literature, than any other modern writer.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>We can make little of Whitman unless we allow him to be a law unto
+himself, and seek him through the clews which he himself brings. When we
+try him by current modes, current taste, and demand of him formal beauty,
+formal art, we are disappointed. But when we try him by what we may call
+the scientific standard, the standard of organic nature, and demand of him
+the vital and the characteristic,&mdash;demand of him that he have a law of his
+own, and fulfill that law in the poetic sphere,&mdash;the result is quite
+different.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other
+poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies, rather than
+in what he portrays; and more than any other poet must he wait to be
+understood by the growth of the taste of himself. "I make the only growth
+by which I can be appreciated," he truly says.</p>
+
+<p>His words are like the manna that descended upon the Israelites, "in which
+were all manner of tastes; and every one found in it what his palate was
+chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the young
+men tasted bread; the old men honey; and the children oil." Many young
+men,&mdash;poets, artists, teachers, preachers,&mdash;have testified that they have
+found bread in Whitman, the veritable bread of life; others have found
+honey, sweet poetic morsels; and not a few report having found only gall.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>In considering an original work like "Leaves of Grass," the search is
+always for the grounds upon which it is to be justified and explained.
+These grounds in this work are not easy to find; they lie deeper than the
+grounds upon which the popular poets rest. Because they are not at once
+seen, many readers have denied that there are any such grounds. But to
+deny a basis of reality to a work with the history of "Leaves of Grass,"
+and a basis well grounded on &aelig;sthetic and artistic principles, is not to
+be thought of.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>The more the poet eludes us, the more we know he has his hiding-place
+somewhere. The more he denies our standards, the more we know he has
+standards of his own which we must discover; the more he flouts at our
+literary conventions, the more we must press him for his own principles
+and methods. How does he justify himself to himself? Could any sane man
+have written the Children of Adam poems who was not sustained by deepest
+moral and &aelig;sthetic convictions? It is the business of the critic to search
+for these principles and convictions, and not shirk the task by ridicule
+and denial.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>If there was never any change in taste, if it always ran in the same
+channels,&mdash;indeed, if it did not at times run in precisely opposite
+channels,&mdash;there would be little hope that Walt Whitman's poetry would
+ever find any considerable number of readers. But one of the laws that
+dominate the progress of literature, as Edmond Sh&eacute;rer says, is incessant
+change, not only in thought and ideas, but in taste and the
+starting-points of art. A radical and almost violent change in these
+respects is indicated by Whitman,&mdash;a change which is in unison with many
+things in modern life and morals, but which fairly crosses the prevailing
+taste in poetry and in art. No such dose of realism and individualism
+under the guise of poetry has been administered to the reading public in
+this century. No such break with literary traditions&mdash;no such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> audacious
+attempt to tally, in a printed page, the living concrete man, an actual
+human presence, instead of the conscious, made-up poet&mdash;is to be found in
+modern literary records.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>The much that I have said in the following pages about Whitman's radical
+differences from other poets&mdash;his changed attitude towards the universe,
+his unwonted methods and aims, etc.,&mdash;might seem to place him upon a
+ground so unique and individual as to contradict my claims for his breadth
+and universality. The great poets stand upon common ground; they excel
+along familiar lines, they touch us, and touch us deeply, at many points.
+What always saves Whitman is his enormous endowment of what is "commonest,
+nearest, easiest,"&mdash;his atmosphere of the common day, the common life, and
+his fund of human sympathy and love. He is strange because he gives us the
+familiar in such a direct, unexpected manner. His "Leaves" are like some
+new fruit that we have never before tasted. It is the product of another
+clime, another hemisphere. The same old rains and dews, the same old sun
+and soil, nursed it, yet in so many ways how novel and strange! We
+certainly have to serve a certain apprenticeship to this poet, familiarize
+ourselves with his point of view and with his democratic spirit, before we
+can make much of him. The spirit in which we come to him from the other
+poets&mdash;the poets of art and culture&mdash;is for the most part unfriendly to
+him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> There is something rude, strange, and unpoetic about him at first
+sight that is sure to give most readers of poetry a shock. I think one
+might come to him from the Greek poets, or the old Hebrew or Oriental
+bards, with less shock than from our modern delicate and refined singers;
+because the old poets were more simple and elemental, and aimed less at
+the distilled dainties of poetry, than the modern. They were full of
+action, too, and volition,&mdash;of that which begets and sustains life.
+Whitman's poetry is almost entirely the expression of will and
+personality, and runs very little to intellectual subtleties and
+refinements. It fulfills itself in our wills and character, rather than in
+our taste.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country's
+poets, and among English poets generally,&mdash;a cropping out again, after so
+many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain. Had he dropped upon us
+from some other sphere, he could hardly have been a greater surprise and
+puzzle to the average reader or critic. Into a literature that was timid,
+imitative, conventional, he fell like leviathan into a duck-pond, and the
+commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All
+the reigning poets in this country except Emerson denied him, and many of
+our minor poets still keep up a hostile sissing and cackling. He will
+probably always be more or less a stumbling-block to the minor poet,
+because of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> indifference to the things which to the minor poet are all
+in all. He was a poet without what is called artistic form, and without
+technique, as that word is commonly understood. His method was analogous
+to the dynamic method of organic nature, rather than to the mechanical or
+constructive method of the popular poets.</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>Of course the first thing that strikes the reader in "Leaves of Grass" is
+its seeming oddity and strangeness. If a man were to come into a dress
+reception in shirt sleeves and with his hat on, the feature would strike
+us at once, and would be magnified in our eyes; we should quite forget
+that he was a man, and in essentials differed but little from the rest of
+us, after all. The exterior habiliments on such occasions count for nearly
+everything; and in the popular poetry rhyme, measure, and the language and
+manners of the poets are much more than anything else. If Whitman did not
+do anything so outr&eacute; as to come into a dress reception with his coat off
+and his hat on, he did come into the circle of the poets without the usual
+poetic habiliments. He was not dressed up at all, and he was not at all
+abashed or apologetic. His air was confident and self-satisfied, if it did
+not at times suggest the insolent and aggressive. It was the dress circle
+that was on trial, and not Walt Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>We could forgive a man in real life for such an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> audacious proceeding only
+on the ground of his being something extraordinary as a person, with an
+extraordinary message to convey; and we can pardon the poet only on
+precisely like grounds. He must make us forget his unwonted garb by his
+unique and lovable personality, and the power and wisdom of his utterance.
+If he cannot do this we shall soon tire of him.</p>
+
+<p>That Whitman was a personality the like of which the world has not often
+seen, and that his message to his country and to his race was of prime
+importance, are conclusions at which more and more thinking persons are
+surely arriving.</p>
+
+<p>His want of art, of which we have heard so much, is, it seems to me, just
+this want of the usual trappings and dress uniform of the poets. In the
+essentials of art, the creative imagination, the plastic and quickening
+spirit, the power of identification with the thing contemplated, and the
+absolute use of words, he has few rivals.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
+Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
+colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
+such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
+is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
+appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
+violently for him or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> violently against, and it will require the
+perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
+significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
+show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.</p>
+
+<p>"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
+has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
+this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
+interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
+up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
+and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
+vanity."</p>
+
+<p>To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
+one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
+not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
+follows, I shall be more than content.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>In the world of literature, as in the world of physical forces, things
+adjust themselves after a while, and no impetus can be given to any man's
+name or fame that will finally carry it beyond the limit of his real
+worth. However "one-sided" my enthusiasm for Whitman may be, or that of
+any of his friends may be, there is no danger but that in time he will
+find exactly his proper place and level. My opinion, or any man's opinion,
+of the works of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> another, is like a wind that blows for a moment across
+the water, heaping it up a little on the shore or else beating it down,
+but not in any way permanently affecting its proper level.</p>
+
+<p>The adverse winds that have blown over Whitman's work have been many and
+persistent, and yet the tide has surely risen, his fame has slowly
+increased.</p>
+
+<p>It will soon be forty years since he issued the first thin quarto edition
+of "Leaves of Grass," and, though the opposition to him has been the most
+fierce and determined ever recorded in our literary history, often
+degenerating into persecution and willful misrepresentation, yet his fame
+has steadily grown both at home and abroad. The impression he early made
+upon such men as Emerson, Thoreau, William O'Connor, Mr. Stedman, Colonel
+Ingersoll, and others in this country, and upon Professors Dowden and
+Clifford, upon Symonds, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti, Lord Lytton, Mrs.
+Gilchrist, George Eliot, in England, has been followed by an equally deep
+or deeper impression upon many of the younger and bolder spirits of both
+hemispheres. In fact Whitman saw his battle essentially won in his own
+lifetime, though his complete triumph is of course a matter of the distant
+future.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>But let me give without further delay a fuller hint of the attitude these
+pages assume and hold towards the subject they discuss.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>There are always, or nearly always, a few men born to each generation who
+embody the best thought and culture of that generation, and express it in
+approved literary forms. From Petrarch down to Lowell, the lives and works
+of these men fill the literary annals; they uphold the literary and
+scholarly traditions; they are the true men of letters; they are justly
+honored and beloved in their day and land. We in this country have
+recently, in the death of Dr. Holmes, mourned the loss of the last of the
+New England band of such men. We are all indebted to them for solace, and
+for moral and intellectual stimulus.</p>
+
+<p>Then, much more rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like
+an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who
+bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are
+not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times
+for the most part decry and disown,&mdash;the primal, original, elemental men.
+It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the
+minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He
+is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets,&mdash;nearer the
+founders and discoverers, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic,
+patriarchal men who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with
+the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the
+seer, the prophet. The specialization and <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'differentation'">differentiation</ins> of our latter
+ages of science and cul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>ture is less marked in him than in other poets.
+Poetry, philosophy, religion, are all inseparably blended in his pages. He
+is in many ways a reversion to an earlier type. Dr. Brinton has remarked
+that his attitude toward the principle of sex and his use of sexual
+imagery in his poems, are the same as in the more primitive religions.
+Whitman was not a poet by elaboration, but by suggestion; not an artist by
+formal presentation, but by spirit and conception; not a philosopher by
+system and afterthought, but by vision and temper.</p>
+
+<p>In his "Leaves," we again hear the note of destiny,&mdash;again see the
+universal laws and forces exemplified in the human personality, and turned
+upon life with love and triumph.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>The world always has trouble with its primary men, or with the men who
+have any primary gifts, like Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Tolstoi,
+Ibsen. The idols of an age are nearly always secondary men: they break no
+new ground; they make no extraordinary demands; our tastes and wants are
+already adjusted to their type; we understand and approve of them at once.
+The primary men disturb us; they are a summons and a challenge; they break
+up the old order; they open up new territory which we are to subdue and
+occupy; the next age and the next make more of them. In my opinion, the
+next age and the next will make more of Whitman, and the next still more,
+because he is in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> great world-current, in the line of the evolutionary
+movement of our time. Is it at all probable that Tennyson can ever be to
+any other age what he has been to this? Tennyson marks an expiring age,
+the sunset of the feudal world. He did not share the spirit to which the
+future belongs. There was not one drop of democratic blood in his veins.
+To him, the people were an hundred-headed beast.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>If my essay seems like one continual strain to attain the unattainable, to
+compass and define Whitman, who will not be compassed and defined, I can
+only say that I regret it, but could not well help it. Talking about
+Whitman, Symonds said, was like talking about the universe, and it is so.
+There is somewhat incommensurable in his works. One may not hope to speak
+the final word about him, to sum him up in a sentence. He is so palpable,
+so real, so near at hand, that the critic or expounder of him promises
+himself an easy victory; but before one can close with him he is gone. He
+is, after all, as subtle and baffling as air or light.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">... "I will certainly elude you,</span><br />
+Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!<br />
+Already you see I have escaped from you."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It is probably this characteristic which makes Whitman an irrepressible
+figure in literature; he will not down for friend or foe. He escapes from
+all classification, and is larger than any definition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> of him that has yet
+been given. How many times has he been exploded by British and American
+critics; how many times has he been labeled and put upon the shelf, only
+to reappear again as vigorous and untranslatable as ever!</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+<p>So far as Whitman stands merely for the spirit of revolt, or of reaction
+against current modes in life and literature, I have little interest in
+him. As the "apostle of the rough, the uncouth," to use Mr. Howells's
+words, the world would long ago have tired of him. The irruption into
+letters of the wild and lawless, or of the strained and eccentric, can
+amuse and interest us only for a moment. It is because these are only
+momentary phases of him, as it were, and because underneath all he
+embraces the whole of life and ministers to it, that his fame and
+influence are still growing in the world. One hesitates even to call
+Whitman the poet of "democracy," or of "personality," or of "the modern,"
+because such terms only half define him. He quickly escapes into that
+large and universal air which all great art breathes. We cannot sum him up
+in a phrase. He flows out on all sides, and his sympathies embrace all
+types and conditions of men. He is a great democrat, but, first and last
+and over all, he is a great man, a great nature, and deep world-currents
+course through him. He is distinctively an American poet, but his
+Americanism is only the door through which he enters upon the universal.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XVII</h4>
+
+<p>Call his work poetry or prose, or what you will: that it is an inspired
+utterance of some sort, any competent person ought to be able to see. And
+what else do we finally demand of any work than that it be inspired? How
+all questions of form and art, and all other questions, sink into
+insignificance beside that! The exaltation of mind and spirit shown in the
+main body of Whitman's work, the genuine, prophetic fervor, the
+intensification and amplification of the simple ego, and the resultant
+raising of all human values, seem to me as plain as daylight.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman is to be classed among the great names by the breadth and
+all-inclusiveness of his theme and by his irrepressible personality. I
+think it highly probable that future scholars and critics will find his
+work fully as significant and era-marking as that of any of the few
+supreme names of the past. It is the culmination of an age of
+individualism, and, as opposites meet, it is also the best lesson in
+nationalism and universal charity that this century has seen.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="BIOGRAPHICAL_AND_PERSONAL" id="BIOGRAPHICAL_AND_PERSONAL"></a>BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">Walt Whitman</span> was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 30, 1819, and died
+at Camden, N. J., March 26, 1892. Though born in the country, most of his
+life was passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New
+Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is
+buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,&mdash;free, unhampered,
+unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of
+money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole,
+joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter
+through the world,&mdash;no hurry, no fever, no strife; hence no bitterness, no
+depletion, no wasted energies. A farm boy, then a school-teacher, then a
+printer, editor, writer, traveler, mechanic, nurse in the army hospitals,
+and lastly government clerk; large and picturesque of figure, slow of
+movement; tolerant, passive, receptive, and democratic,&mdash;of the people; in
+all his tastes and attractions, always aiming to walk abreast with the
+great laws and forces, and to live thoroughly in the free, nonchalant
+spirit of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> own day and land. His strain was mingled Dutch and English,
+with a decided Quaker tinge, which came from his mother's side, and which
+had a marked influence upon his work.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit that led him to devote his time and substance to the sick and
+wounded soldiers during the war may be seen in that earlier incident in
+his life when he drove a Broadway stage all one winter, that a disabled
+driver might lie by without starving his family. It is from this episode
+that the tradition of his having been a New York stage-driver comes. He
+seems always to have had a special liking for this class of workmen. One
+of the house surgeons of the old New York Hospital relates that in the
+latter part of the fifties Whitman was a frequent visitor to that
+institution, looking after and ministering to disabled stage-drivers.
+"These drivers," says the doctor, "like those of the omnibuses in London,
+were a set of men by themselves. A good deal of strength, intelligence,
+and skillful management of horses was required of a Broadway stage-driver.
+He seems to have been decidedly a higher order of man than the driver of
+the present horse-cars. He usually had his primary education in the
+country, and graduated as a thorough expert in managing a very difficult
+machine, in an exceptionally busy thoroughfare.</p>
+
+<p>"It was this kind of a man that so attracted Walt Whitman that he was
+constantly to be seen perched on the box alongside one of them going up
+and down Broadway. I often watched the poet and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> driver, as probably did
+many another New Yorker in those days.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wonder as much now as I did in 1860 that a man like Walt Whitman
+became interested in these drivers. He was not interested in the news of
+every-day life&mdash;the murders and accidents and political convulsions&mdash;but
+he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not
+had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now
+that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then
+been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote
+them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said
+much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had satisfied
+himself of the nature of the injury and of the prospect of recovery.</p>
+
+<p>"Whitman appeared to be about forty years of age at that time. He was
+always dressed in a blue flannel coat and vest, with gray and baggy
+trousers. He wore a woolen shirt, with a Byronic collar, low in the neck,
+without a cravat, as I remember, and a large felt hat. His hair was iron
+gray, and he had a full beard and mustache of the same color. His face and
+neck were bronzed by exposure to the sun and air. He was large, and gave
+the impression of being a vigorous man. He was scrupulously careful of his
+simple attire, and his hands were soft and hairy."</p>
+
+<p>During the early inception of "Leaves of Grass" he was a carpenter in
+Brooklyn, building and sell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>ing small frame-houses to working people. He
+frequently knocked off work to write his poems. In his life Whitman was
+never one of the restless, striving sort. In this respect he was not
+typical of his countrymen. All his urgency and strenuousness he reserved
+for his book. He seems always to have been a sort of visitor in life,
+noting, observing, absorbing, keeping aloof from all ties that would hold
+him, and making the most of the hour and the place in which he happened to
+be. He was in no sense a typical literary man. During his life in New York
+and Brooklyn, we see him moving entirely outside the fashionable circles,
+the learned circles, the literary circles, the money-getting circles. He
+belongs to no set or club. He is seen more with the laboring
+classes,&mdash;drivers, boatmen, mechanics, printers,&mdash;and I suspect may often
+be found with publicans and sinners. He is fond of the ferries and of the
+omnibuses. He is a frequenter of the theatre and of the Italian opera.
+Alboni makes a deep and lasting impression upon him. It is probably to her
+that he writes these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Here take this gift,<br />
+I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, general,<br />
+One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress and freedom of the race,<br />
+Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;<br />
+But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Elsewhere he refers to Alboni by name and speaks of her as</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>"The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,<br />
+Sister of loftiest gods."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Some of his poems were written at the opera. The great singers evidently
+gave him clews and suggestions that were applicable to his own art.</p>
+
+<p>His study was out of doors. He wrote on the street, on the ferry, at the
+seaside, in the fields, at the opera,&mdash;always from living impulses arising
+at the moment, and always with his eye upon the fact. He says he has read
+his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, and tried them by the realities
+of life and nature about him. Were they as real and alive as they?&mdash;this
+was the only question with him.</p>
+
+<p>At home in his father's family in Brooklyn we see him gentle, patient,
+conciliatory, much looked up to by all. Neighbors seek his advice. He is
+cool, deliberate, impartial. A marked trait is his indifference to money
+matters; his people are often troubled because he lets opportunities to
+make money pass by. When his "Leaves" appear, his family are puzzled, do
+not know what to make of it. His mother thinks that, if "Hiawatha" is
+poetry, may be Walt's book is, too. He never counsels with any one, and is
+utterly indifferent as to what people may say or think. He is not a
+stirring and punctual man, is always a little late; not an early riser,
+not prompt at dinner; always has ample time, and will not be hurried; the
+business gods do not receive his homage. He is gray at thirty, and is said
+to have had a look of age in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> youth, as he had a look of youth in age. He
+has few books, cares little for sport, never uses a gun; has no bad
+habits; has no entanglements with women, and apparently never contemplates
+marriage. It is said that during his earliest years of manhood he kept
+quite aloof from the "girls."</p>
+
+<p>At the age of nineteen he edited "The Long Islander," published at
+Huntington. A recent visitor to these early haunts of Whitman gathered
+some reminiscences of him at this date:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Amid the deep revery of nature, on that mild October afternoon, we
+returned to the village of Huntington, there to meet the few, the very
+few, survivors who recall Walt's first appearance in the literary world as
+the editor of 'The Long Islander,' nigh sixty years ago (1838). Two of
+these forefathers of the hamlet clearly remembered his powerful
+personality, brimful of life, reveling in strength, careless of time and
+the world, of money and of toil; a lover of books and of jokes; delighting
+to gather round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of
+evenings, and tell them stories and read them poetry, his own and others'.
+That of his own he called his 'Yawps,' a word which he afterwards made
+famous. Both remembered him as a delightful companion, generous to a
+fault, glorying in youth, negligent of his affairs, issuing 'The Long
+Islander' at random intervals,&mdash;once a week, once in two weeks, once in
+three,&mdash;until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him
+out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> himself was editor,
+publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all in one."</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Few men were so deeply impressed by our Civil War as was Whitman. It
+aroused all his patriotism, all his sympathies, and, as a poet, tested his
+power to deal with great contemporary events and scenes. He was first
+drawn to the seat of war on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel
+George W. Whitman, 51st New York Volunteers, who was wounded by the
+fragment of a shell at Fredericksburg. This was in the fall of 1862. This
+brought him in contact with the sick and wounded soldiers, and henceforth,
+as long as the war lasts and longer, he devoted his time and substance to
+ministering to them. The first two or three years of his life in
+Washington he supported himself by correspondence with Northern
+newspapers, mainly with the "New York Times." These letters, as well as
+the weekly letters to his mother during the same period, form an intensely
+pathetic and interesting record.</p>
+
+<p>They contain such revelations of himself, and such pictures of the scenes
+he moved among, that I shall here quote freely from them. The following
+extract is from a letter written from Fredericksburg the third or fourth
+day after the battle of December, 1862:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Spent a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the
+Rappahannock, immediately opposite Fredericksburg. It is used as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> a
+hospital since the battle, and seems to have received only the worst
+cases. Out of doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front
+of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.,
+about a load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each
+covered with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, toward the river,
+are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of
+barrel-staves, or broken board, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies
+were subsequently taken up and transported North to their friends.)</p>
+
+<p>"The house is quite crowded, everything impromptu, no system, all bad
+enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds
+pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and
+bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a
+Mississippian,&mdash;a captain,&mdash;hit badly in leg, I talked with some time; he
+asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward
+in Washington, with leg amputated, doing well.)</p>
+
+<p>"I went through the rooms, down stairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
+I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks
+home, mothers, etc. Also talked to three or four who seemed most
+susceptible to it, and needing it."</p>
+
+<p>"December 22 to 31.&mdash;Am among the regimental, brigade, and division
+hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and
+sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> ground, lucky if their
+blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No
+cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around
+from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I
+cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me
+convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and
+sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
+camps, talking with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups
+around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get
+acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well
+used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best."</p>
+
+<p>After continuing in front through the winter, he returns to Washington,
+where the wounded and sick have mainly been concentrated. The Capital
+city, truly, is now one huge hospital; and there Whitman establishes
+himself, and thenceforward, for several years, has but one daily and
+nightly avocation.</p>
+
+<p>He alludes to writing letters by the bedside, and says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I do a good deal of this, of course, writing all kinds, including
+love-letters. Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written home to
+parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives, for one reason or another, for
+a long, long time. Some are poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> writers, some cannot get paper and
+envelopes; many have an aversion to writing, because they dread to worry
+the folks at home,&mdash;the facts about them are so sad to tell. I always
+encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them."</p>
+
+<p>A glimpse of the scenes after Chancellorsville:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"As I write this, in May, 1863, the wounded have begun to arrive from
+Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first
+arrivals. The men in charge of them told me the bad cases were yet to
+come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
+see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here foot of Sixth
+Street at night. Two boat-loads came about half past seven last night. A
+little after eight, it rained a long and violent shower. The poor, pale,
+helpless soldiers had been debarked, and lay around on the wharf and
+neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any
+rate they were exposed to it.</p>
+
+<p>"The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the
+ground, out on side places, etc., the men are lying on blankets and old
+quilts, with the bloody rags bound round heads, arms, legs, etc. The
+attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also,&mdash;only a few
+hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
+common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
+there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by
+the ambulances are now arriving in clus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>ters, and one after another is
+called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on
+stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their
+sufferings,&mdash;a few groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a
+scream of pain, as they lift a man into the ambulance.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the
+next day more, and so on for many days.</p>
+
+<p>"The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
+generally supposed,&mdash;I should say nine tenths are native-born. Among the
+arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
+and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
+are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
+a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was, perhaps,
+worse than usual. Amputations are going on,&mdash;the attendants are dressing
+wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw,
+the other day, a gentleman&mdash;a visitor, apparently, from curiosity&mdash;in one
+of the wards stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were
+probing, etc. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and
+fallen on the floor."</p>
+
+<p>An episode,&mdash;the death of a New York soldier:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
+have been with a good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
+company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrh&oelig;a, and a bad wound
+also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
+and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
+opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
+the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
+crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
+chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
+feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
+me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
+mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It is my chief
+reliance.' He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: 'Why,
+Oscar, don't you think you will get well?' He said: 'I may, but it is not
+probable.' He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
+discharged much. Then the diarrh&oelig;a had prostrated him, and I felt that
+he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
+affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned
+fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
+post-office, Cattaraugus County, New York. I had several such interviews
+with him. He died a few days after the one just described."</p>
+
+<p>And here, also, a characteristic scene in another of those long
+barracks:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>"It is Sunday afternoon (middle of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and
+very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now
+lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
+8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
+wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well.
+Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on,
+sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
+yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so
+handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over
+to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
+Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan."</p>
+
+<p>In a letter to his mother in 1863 he says, in reference to his hospital
+services: "I have got in the way, after going lightly, as it were, all
+through the wards of a hospital, and trying to give a word of cheer, if
+nothing else, to every one, then confining my special attention to the few
+where the investment seems to tell best, and who want it most.... Mother,
+I have real pride in telling you that I have the consciousness of saving
+quite a number of lives by keeping the men from giving up, and being a
+good deal with them. The men say it is so, and the doctors say it is so;
+and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I say it myself.
+I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>Again he says: "I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity; I go
+among the smallpox, etc., just the same. I feel to go without
+apprehension, and so I go: nobody else goes; but, as the darkey said there
+at Charleston when the boat ran on a flat and the rebel sharpshooters were
+peppering them, '<i>somebody</i> must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"</p>
+
+<p>In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
+wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
+hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
+large and well,&mdash;indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
+the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
+not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."</p>
+
+<p>As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
+letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
+Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
+a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
+do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
+secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,&mdash;a
+regular Carolina or Virginia planter."</p>
+
+<p>The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
+deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
+used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> seen so many
+cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
+hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
+and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
+health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
+trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
+but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
+Hospital),&mdash;about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
+probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
+stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
+Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
+'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
+knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
+composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
+o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
+blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I told you,
+last letter, I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young
+men I knew well, especially two of whom I had strong hopes of their
+getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are
+crowded here in Washington in immense numbers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and all those that came up
+from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such
+plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from
+Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the
+largest proportion of worst cases get little or no attention.</p>
+
+<p>"We receive them here with their wounds full of worms,&mdash;some all swelled
+and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new
+feature is, that many of the poor, afflicted young men are crazy; every
+ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and
+it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is
+most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it; but I
+suppose it is because I have not felt firstrate myself."</p>
+
+<p>Of the Ohio soldier above referred to, Whitman had written a few days
+before: "You remember I told you of him a year ago, when he was first
+brought in. I thought him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I
+had seen. A real giant in size, and always with a smile on his face. Oh,
+what a change! He has long been very irritable to every one but me, and
+his frame is all wasted away."</p>
+
+<p>To his brother Jeff he wrote: "Of the many I have seen die, or known of
+the past year, I have not seen or known of one who met death with any
+terror. Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of
+seventeen named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
+Ar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>tillery, Battery M. He was brought into one of the hospitals mortally
+wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it
+ought to be a relief to his folks, after all, if they could see how little
+he suffered. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed;
+it was very warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat.
+At length he opened his eyes quite wide and clear, and looked inquiringly
+around. I said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said
+quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking
+around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he
+lay so peaceful in his dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England
+country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
+fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."</p>
+
+<p>Another extract from a letter to his mother in April, 1864:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
+active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
+gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,&mdash;the flag, the
+tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
+never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
+pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,&mdash;it belonged to one
+of our cavalry regiments,&mdash;presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
+taken by the rebs in a cavalry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
+little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
+four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
+rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
+again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
+it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
+he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
+I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
+a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."</p>
+
+<p>[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
+movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
+principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
+simple, and on a low key,&mdash;to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
+and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
+certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
+carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
+of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
+trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
+flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
+summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
+white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
+air and sunshine.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
+feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
+festival,&mdash;strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh
+underclothes. He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder,
+full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant
+pockets. He would sometimes come in summer with a good-sized basket filled
+with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing them among
+the feverish and thirsty.]</p>
+
+<p>Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses. A
+well-known correspondent of the "New York Herald" writes thus about him in
+April, 1876:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I first heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle
+there. Subsequently I saw him, time and again, in the Washington
+hospitals, or wending his way there, with basket or haversack on his arm,
+and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed
+the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kindness,
+tenderness, and thoughtfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds
+through a hospital filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism
+he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each
+cot bore its man. When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of
+affection and welcome on every face, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>ever wan, and his presence seemed
+to light up the place as it might be lighted by the presence of the God of
+Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in
+whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To
+one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to
+others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a
+sheet of paper or a postage-stamp, all of which and many other things were
+in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message
+for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an
+errand; to another, some special friend very low, he would give a manly
+farewell kiss. He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do, and
+he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The
+lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it,
+and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of
+many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!'"</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Out of that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called "Drum-Taps,"
+first published in 1865,&mdash;since merged in his "Leaves,"&mdash;were produced.
+Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, come from life. The vivid
+incidents of "The Dresser" are but daguerreotypes of the poet's own actual
+movements among the bad cases of the wounded after a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> battle. The same
+personal knowledge runs through "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and
+Dim," "Come up from the Fields, Father," etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>The reader of this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not
+the purpose of the poet to portray battles and campaigns, or to celebrate
+special leaders or military prowess, but rather to chant the human aspects
+of anguish that follow in the train of war. He perhaps feels that the
+permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a
+business, as a means of growth, has served its time; and that,
+notwithstanding the vast difference between ancient and modern warfare,
+both in the spirit and in the means, Homer's pictures are essentially true
+yet, and no additions to them can be made. War can never be to us what it
+has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never the main
+fact, the paramount condition, tyrannizing over all the affairs of
+national and individual life, but only an episode, a passing interruption;
+and the poet, who in our day would be as true to his nation and times as
+Homer was to his, must treat of it from the standpoint of peace and
+progress, and even benevolence. Vast armies rise up in a night and
+disappear in a day; a million of men, inured to battle and to blood, go
+back to the avocations of peace without a moment's confusion or
+delay,&mdash;indicating clearly the tendency that prevails.</p>
+
+<p>Apostrophizing the genius of America in the supreme hour of victory, he
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+"No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee&mdash;nor mastery's rapturous verse:&mdash;<br />
+But a little book containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds,<br />
+And psalms of the dead."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The collection is also remarkable for the absence of all sectional or
+partisan feeling. Under the head of "Reconciliation" are these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Word over all, beautiful as the sky!<br />
+Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost!<br />
+That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;<br />
+... For my enemy is dead&mdash;a man divine as myself is dead;<br />
+I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin&mdash;I draw near;<br />
+I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Perhaps the most noteworthy of Whitman's war poems is the one called "When
+Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloomed," written in commemoration of
+President Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>The main effect of this poem is of strong, solemn, and varied music; and
+it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great
+composers most work,&mdash;namely, spiritual auricular analogy. At first it
+would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect. No reference
+whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not
+even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone
+that of lamentation; but, with the intuitions of the grand art, which is
+the most complex when it seems most simple, he seizes upon three beautiful
+facts of na<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>ture, which he weaves into a wreath for the dead President's
+tomb. The central thought is of death, but around this he curiously
+twines, first, the early-blooming lilacs which the poet may have plucked
+the day the dark shadow came; next the song of the hermit thrush, the most
+sweet and solemn of all our songsters, heard at twilight in the dusky
+cedars; and with these the evening star, which, as many may remember,
+night after night in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in
+the west with unusual and tender brightness. These are the premises whence
+he starts his solemn chant.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude, therefore, is not that of being bowed down and weeping
+hopeless tears, but of singing a commemorative hymn, in which the voices
+of nature join, and fits that exalted condition of the soul which serious
+events and the presence of death induce. There are no words of mere
+eulogy, no statistics, and no story or narrative; but there are pictures,
+processions, and a strange mingling of darkness and light, of grief and
+triumph: now the voice of the bird, or the drooping lustrous star, or the
+sombre thought of death; then a recurrence to the open scenery of the land
+as it lay in the April light, "the summer approaching with richness and
+the fields all busy with labor," presently dashed in upon by a spectral
+vision of armies with torn and bloody battle-flags, and, again, of the
+white skeletons of young men long afterward strewing the ground. Hence the
+piece has little or nothing of the character of the usual productions on
+such oc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>casions. It is dramatic; yet there is no development of plot, but
+a constant interplay, a turning and returning of images and sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>The poet breaks a sprig of lilac from the bush in the door-yard,&mdash;the dark
+cloud falls on the land,&mdash;the long funeral sets out,&mdash;and then the
+apostrophe:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,<br />
+Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,<br />
+With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities draped in black,<br />
+With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women, standing,<br />
+With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,<br />
+With the countless torches lit&mdash;with the silent sea of faces, and the unbared heads,<br />
+With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,<br />
+With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn;<br />
+With all the mournful voices of the dirges, pour'd around the coffin,<br />
+To dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs&mdash;Where amid these you journey,<br />
+With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;<br />
+Here! coffin that slowly passes,<br />
+I give you my sprig of lilac.<br />
+<br />
+"(Nor for you, for one alone;<br />
+Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;<br />
+For fresh as the morning&mdash;thus would I chant a song for you, O sane and sacred death.<br />
+<br />
+"All over bouquets of roses,<br />
+O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;<br />
+But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,<br />
+Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes;<br />
+With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,<br />
+For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Then the strain goes on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+"O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?<br />
+And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?<br />
+And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?<br />
+<br />
+"Sea-winds, blown from east and west,<br />
+Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till there on the prairies meeting:<br />
+These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,<br />
+I perfume the grave of him I love."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The poem reaches, perhaps, its height in the matchless invocation to Death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Come, lovely and soothing Death,<br />
+Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,<br />
+In the day, in the night, to all, to each,<br />
+Sooner or later, delicate Death.<br />
+<br />
+"Prais'd be the fathomless universe,<br />
+For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;<br />
+And for love, sweet love&mdash;but praise! O praise and praise,<br />
+For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.<br />
+<br />
+"Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,<br />
+Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?<br />
+Then I chant it for thee&mdash;I glorify thee above all;<br />
+I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.<br />
+<br />
+"Approach, encompassing Death&mdash;strong Deliveress!<br />
+When it is so&mdash;when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,<br />
+Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,<br />
+Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.<br />
+<br />
+"From me to thee glad serenades,<br />
+Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee&mdash;adornments and feastings for thee;<br />
+And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky are fitting,<br />
+And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.<br />
+The night, in silence, under many a star;<br />
+The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;<br />
+And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death,<br />
+And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman despised riches, and all mere worldly success, as heartily as ever
+did any of the old Christians. All outward show and finery were intensely
+distasteful to him. He probably would not have accepted the finest house
+in New York on condition that he live in it. During his hospital
+experiences he cherished the purpose, as soon as the war was over, of
+returning to Brooklyn, buying an acre or two of land in some by-place on
+Long Island, and building for himself and his family a cheap house. When
+his brother Jeff contemplated building, he advised him to build merely an
+Irish shanty. After what he had seen the soldiers put up with, he thought
+anything was good enough for him or his people. In one of his letters to
+his mother, he comments upon the un-American and inappropriate
+ornamentation of the rooms in the Capitol building, "without grandeur and
+without simplicity," he says. In the state the country was in, and with
+the hospital scenes before him, the "poppy-show goddesses" and the Italian
+style of decoration, etc., sickened him, and he got away from it all as
+quickly as he could.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>During the war and after, I used to see a good deal of Whitman in
+Washington. Summer and winter he was a conspicuous figure on Pennsylvania
+Avenue, where he was wont to walk for exercise and to feed his hunger for
+faces. One would see him afar off,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> in the crowd but not of it,&mdash;a large,
+slow-moving figure, clad in gray, with broad-brimmed hat and gray
+beard,&mdash;or, quite as frequently, on the front platform of the street
+horse-cars with the driver. My eye used to single him out many blocks
+away.</p>
+
+<p>There were times during this period when his aspect was rather
+forbidding,&mdash;the physical man was too pronounced on first glance; the
+other man was hidden beneath the broad-brimmed hat. One needed to see the
+superbly domed head and classic brow crowning the rank physical man.</p>
+
+<p>In his middle manhood, judging from the photos, he had a hirsute, kindly
+look, but very far removed from the finely cut traditional poet's face.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>I have often heard Whitman say that he inherited most excellent blood from
+his mother,&mdash;the old Dutch Van Velser strain,&mdash;Long Island blood filtered
+and vitalized through generations by the breath of the sea. He was his
+mother's child unmistakably. With all his rank masculinity, there was a
+curious feminine undertone in him which revealed itself in the quality of
+his voice, the delicate texture of his skin, the gentleness of his touch
+and ways, the attraction he had for children and the common people. A lady
+in the West, writing to me about him, spoke of his "great mother-nature."
+He was receptive, sympathetic, tender, and met you, not in a positive,
+aggressive manner, but more or less in a passive or neutral mood. He did
+not give his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> friends merely his mind, he gave them himself. It is not
+merely his mind or intellect that he has put into his poems, it is
+himself. Indeed, this feminine mood or attitude might be dwelt upon at
+much length in considering his poems,&mdash;their solvent, absorbing power, and
+the way they yield themselves to diverse interpretations.</p>
+
+<p>The sea, too, had laid its hand upon him, as I have already suggested. He
+never appeared so striking and impressive as when seen upon the beach. His
+large and tall gray figure looked at home, and was at home, upon the
+shore. The simple, strong, flowing lines of his face, his always clean
+fresh air, his blue absorbing eye, his commanding presence, and something
+pristine and elemental in his whole expression, seemed at once to put him
+<i>en rapport</i> with the sea. No phase of nature seems to have impressed him
+so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was pre&euml;minently manly,&mdash;richly endowed with the universal,
+healthy human qualities and attributes. Mr. Conway relates that when
+Emerson handed him the first thin quarto edition of "Leaves of Grass,"
+while he was calling at his house in Concord, soon after the book
+appeared, he said, "Americans abroad may now come home: unto us a man is
+born."</p>
+
+<p>President Lincoln, standing one day during the war before a window in the
+White House, saw Whitman slowly saunter by. He followed him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> with his
+eyes, and, turning, said to those about him, "Well, <i>he</i> looks like a
+<i>man</i>."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>During Whitman's Western tour in 1879 or '80, at some point in Kansas, in
+company with several well-known politicians and government officials, he
+visited a lot of Indians who were being held as prisoners. The sheriff
+told the Indians who the distinguished men were who were about to see
+them, but the Indians paid little attention to them as, one after the
+other, the officials and editors passed by them. Behind all came Whitman.
+The old chief looked at him steadily, then extended his hand and said,
+"How!" All the other Indians followed, surrounding Whitman, shaking his
+hand and making the air melodious with their "Hows." The incident
+evidently pleased the old poet a good deal.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was of large mould in every way, and of bold, far-reaching
+schemes, and is very sure to fare better at the hands of large men than of
+small. The first and last impression which his personal presence always
+made upon one was of a nature wonderfully gentle, tender, and benignant.
+His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and dominated by his
+humanity, so that the impression you got from him was not that of a
+learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human
+nature,&mdash;such an impression, I fancy, only fuller, as one might have got
+from Walter Scott.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> This was perhaps the secret of the attraction he had,
+for the common, unlettered people and for children. I think that even his
+literary friends often sought his presence less for conversation than to
+bask in his physical or psychical sunshine, and to rest upon his boundless
+charity. The great service he rendered to the wounded and homesick
+soldiers in the hospitals during the war came from his copious endowment
+of this broad, sweet, tender democratic nature. He brought father and
+mother to them, and the tonic and cheering atmosphere of simple,
+affectionate home life.</p>
+
+<p>In person Whitman was large and tall, above six feet, with a breezy,
+open-air look. His temperament was sanguine; his voice was a tender
+baritone. The dominant impression he made was that of something fresh and
+clean. I remember the first time I met him, which was in Washington, in
+the fall of 1863. I was impressed by the fine grain and clean, fresh
+quality of the man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect
+something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a
+bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His
+body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar
+fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was
+undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did
+not appear till he was past sixty. After that, I have little doubt, it was
+the finest head this age or country has seen. Every artist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> who saw him
+was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch him. The lines were so
+simple, so free, and so strong. High, arching brows; straight, clear-cut
+nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized,
+but a vital part of a symmetrical, dome-shaped head; ear large, and the
+most delicately carved I have ever seen; the mouth and chin hidden by a
+soft, long, white beard. It seems to me his face steadily refined and
+strengthened with age. Time depleted him in just the right way,&mdash;softened
+his beard and took away the too florid look; subdued the carnal man, and
+brought out more fully the spiritual man. When I last saw him (December
+26, 1891), though he had been very near death for many days, I am sure I
+had never seen his face so beautiful. There was no breaking-down of the
+features, or the least sign of decrepitude, such as we usually note in old
+men. The expression was full of pathos, but it was as grand as that of a
+god. I could not think of him as near death, he looked so unconquered.</p>
+
+<p>In Washington I knew Whitman intimately from the fall of 1863 to the time
+he left in 1873. In Camden I visited him yearly after that date, usually
+in the late summer or fall. I will give one glimpse of him from my diary,
+under date of August 18, 1887. I reached his house in the morning, before
+he was up. Presently he came slowly down stairs and greeted me. "Find him
+pretty well,&mdash;looking better than last year. With<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> his light-gray suit,
+and white hair, and fresh pink face, he made a fine picture. Among other
+things, we talked of the Swinburne attack (then recently published). W.
+did not show the least feeling on the subject, and, I clearly saw, was
+absolutely undisturbed by the article. I told him I had always been more
+disturbed by S.'s admiration for him than I was now by his condemnation.
+By and by W. had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, ten
+miles distant, to see young Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a
+level farming and truck-gardening country; warm, but breezy. W. drives
+briskly, and salutes every person we meet, little and big, black and
+white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he
+knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old
+Long Island custom of his people, to speak to every one on the road, was
+strong upon him. One tipsy man in a buggy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye
+do, pap?' etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W., as
+something I had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what
+the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would
+have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the
+centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of
+Christianity to check and curb them, etc. W. knew the history of many
+prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two colored men
+to look after him; there, in that fine house among the trees, an old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+maid, who had spent a large fortune on her house and lands, and was now
+destitute, yet she was a woman of remarkable good sense, etc. We returned
+to Camden before dark, W. apparently not fatigued by the drive of twenty
+miles."</p>
+
+<p>In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry. It
+was such a face, said Mr. Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected from a
+million. "It is the face of an aged loving child. As I looked, it was with
+the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never
+heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being.
+I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an avatar, was more
+gentle to all men, women, children, and living things."</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
+to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
+visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
+which the doctor printed on his return home:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
+and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
+of his presence as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
+in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure
+white linen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt
+buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown
+open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of
+his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned
+almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned
+up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of
+the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire
+visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and
+massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong,
+white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an
+eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was
+not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is
+concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon
+his broad, square shoulders; and it is almost entirely covered with long,
+fine, straggling hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit
+snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streaming over
+and around his large but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big
+neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of
+his face, right down to the middle of his chest, like a cataract of
+materialized, white, glistening vapor, giving him a most venerable and
+patriarchal appearance. His high, massive forehead is seamed with
+wrinkles. His nose is large, strong, broad,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> and prominent, but
+beautifully chiseled and proportioned, almost straight, very slightly
+depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to
+the angles of the mouth. The eyebrows are thick and shaggy, with strong,
+white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes,
+which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, small, rather deeply set,
+calm, clear, penetrating, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness,
+kindness, and sympathy. The upper eyelids droop considerably over the
+eyeballs. The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache,
+are full. The whole face impresses one with a sense of resoluteness,
+strength, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness,
+unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly
+pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man.
+There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in
+them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But
+it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in
+his <i>tout ensemble</i>, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic
+presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and
+exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing
+an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I
+felt that I was here face to face with the living embodiment of all that
+was good, noble, and lovable in humanity."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic
+temperament, etc., but he was in no sense a muscular man, an athlete. His
+body, though superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in
+its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin. He
+took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports. He
+walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he
+always had an air of infinite leisure. For several years, while a clerk in
+the Attorney-General's Office in Washington, his exercise for an hour each
+day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round,
+smooth stone, of about one pound weight, and catching it as it fell. Later
+in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked
+to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that
+way. In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and
+sweetness of body, but none upon mere brute strength. This is what he says
+"To a Pupil:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">1. Is reform needed? Is it through you?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The greater the reform needed, the greater the <span class="smcap">Personality</span> you need to accomplish it.</span><br />
+<br />
+2. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet?<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and Soul, that when you enter the crowd,</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impressed</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">with your personality?</span><br />
+<br />
+3. O the magnet! the flesh over and over!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality,</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
+of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,&mdash;the
+freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
+perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
+several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
+face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
+was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
+majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
+looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
+seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
+friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
+would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
+all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
+upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
+identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
+poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
+poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> he says, "the body
+includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
+soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
+of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
+strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
+knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
+singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
+curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.</p>
+
+<p>The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
+to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
+the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
+distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
+power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
+face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
+face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
+face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
+mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature.
+It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow.</p>
+
+<p>And the influence of his poems is always on the side of physiological
+cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes
+morbid and mean. He says the "expression of a well-made man appears not
+only in his face: it is in his limbs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> and joints also; it is curiously in
+the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his
+neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the
+strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
+flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more.
+You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."
+He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: "To be
+surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,&mdash;I
+do not ask any more delight; I swim in it, as in a sea. There is something
+in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact
+and odor of them, that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul,
+but these please the soul well." Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he
+found in the society of the common people that satisfied him so; for his
+part, he could not find anything. The subordination by Whitman of the
+purely intellectual to the human and physical, which runs all through his
+poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, who was deficient in the
+sensuous, probably could not appreciate.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of Whitman personally was that of a large, tolerant,
+tender, sympathetic, restful man, easy of approach, indifferent to any
+special social or other distinctions and accomplishments that might be
+yours, and regarding you from the start for yourself alone.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>Children were very fond of him; and women, unless they had been prejudiced
+against him, were strongly drawn toward him. His personal magnetism was
+very great, and was warming and cheering. He was rich in temperament,
+probably beyond any other man of his generation,&mdash;rich in all the purely
+human and emotional endowments and basic qualities. Then there was a look
+about him hard to describe, and which I have seen in no other face,&mdash;a
+gray, brooding, elemental look, like the granite rock, something primitive
+and Adamic that might have belonged to the first man; or was it a
+suggestion of the gray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was
+born, and that had surely set its seal upon him? I know not, but I feel
+the man with that look is not of the day merely, but of the centuries. His
+eye was not piercing, but absorbing,&mdash;"draining" is the word happily used
+by William O'Connor; the soul back of it drew things to himself, and
+entered and possessed them through sympathy and personal force and
+magnetism, rather than through mere intellectual force.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>Walt Whitman was of the people, the common people, and always gave out
+their quality and atmosphere. His commonness, his nearness, as of the
+things you have always known,&mdash;the day, the sky, the soil, your own
+parents,&mdash;were in no way veiled, or kept in abeyance, by his culture or
+poetic gifts. He was redolent of the human and the fa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>miliar. Though
+capable, on occasions, of great pride and hauteur, yet his habitual mood
+and presence was that of simple, average, healthful humanity,&mdash;the virtue
+and flavor of sailors, soldiers, laborers, travelers, or people who live
+with real things in the open air. His commonness rose into the uncommon,
+the extraordinary, but without any hint of the exclusive or specially
+favored. He was indeed "no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women
+or apart from them."</p>
+
+<p>The spirit that animates every page of his book, and that it always
+effuses, is the spirit of common, universal humanity,&mdash;humanity apart from
+creeds, schools, conventions, from all special privileges and refinements,
+as it is in and of itself in its relations to the whole system of things,
+in contradistinction to the literature of culture which effuses the spirit
+of the select and exclusive.</p>
+
+<p>His life was the same. Walt Whitman never stood apart from or above any
+human being. The common people&mdash;workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the
+outcast&mdash;saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction
+was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity.
+Specially intellectual people rather repelled him; the wit, the scholar,
+the poet, must have a rich endowment of the common, universal, human
+attributes and qualities to pass current with him. He sought the society
+of boatmen, railroad men, farmers, mechanics, printers, teamsters, mothers
+of families, etc., rather than the society of pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>fessional men or
+scholars. Men who had the quality of things in the open air&mdash;the virtue of
+rocks, trees, hills&mdash;drew him most; and it is these qualities and virtues
+that he has aimed above all others to put into his poetry, and to put them
+there in such a way that he who reads must feel and imbibe them.</p>
+
+<p>The recognized poets put into their pages the virtue and quality of the
+fine gentleman, or of the sensitive, artistic nature: this poet of
+democracy effuses the atmosphere of fresh, strong Adamic man,&mdash;man acted
+upon at first hand by the shows and forces of universal nature.</p>
+
+<p>If our poet ever sounds the note of the crude, the loud, the exaggerated,
+he is false to himself and to his high aims. I think he may be charged
+with having done so a few times, in his earlier work, but not in his
+later. In the 1860 edition of his poems stands this portraiture, which may
+stand for himself, with one or two features rather overdrawn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"His shape arises<br />
+Arrogant, masculine, na&iuml;ve, rowdyish,<br />
+Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman,<br />
+Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea,<br />
+Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed,</span><br />
+Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">round the breast and back,<br />
+Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,</span><br />
+Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck gray and open, of slow movement on foot,<br />
+Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his friends, companion of the street,<br />
+Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches, and never their meanest.<br />
+A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the life of the wharves and the great ferries,<br />
+Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, easily understood after all,<br />
+Never offering others, always offering himself, corroborating his phrenology,<br />
+Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive, of copious friendship, sublimity,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">firmness, self-esteem, comparison, individuality, form, locality, eventuality,</span><br />
+Avowing by life, manners, words to contribute illustrations of results of These States,<br />
+Teacher of the unquenchable creed namely egotism,<br />
+Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against his."</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was determined, at whatever risk to his own reputation, to make
+the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of
+American humanity, and to do this the rowdy element could not be entirely
+ignored. Hence he unflinchingly imputes it to himself, as, for that
+matter, he has nearly every sin and dereliction mankind are guilty of.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman developed slowly and late upon the side that related him to social
+custom and usage,&mdash;to the many fictions, concealments, make-believes, and
+subterfuges of the world of parlors and drawing-rooms. He never was an
+adept in what is called "good form;" the natural man that he was shows
+crude in certain relations. His publication of Emerson's letter with its
+magnificent eulogium of "Leaves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> of Grass" has been much commented upon.
+There may be two opinions as to the propriety of his course in this
+respect: a letter from a stranger upon a matter of public interest is not
+usually looked upon as a private letter. Emerson never spoke with more
+felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for
+Whitman's own sake that we would have had him practice self-denial in the
+matter; he greatly plumed himself upon Emerson's endorsement, and was
+guilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon
+the cover of the next edition of his book. Grant that it showed a certain
+crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; later in life, he could not
+have erred in this way. Ruskin is reported saying that he never in his
+life wrote a letter to any human being that he would not be willing should
+be posted up in the market-place, or cried by the public crier through the
+town. But Emerson was a much more timid and conforming man than Ruskin,
+and was much more likely to be shocked by such a circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the publication of this letter much annoyed Emerson,
+and that he never forgave Whitman the offense. That he was disturbed by it
+and by the storm that arose there can be little doubt; but there is no
+evidence that he allowed the fact to interfere with his friendship for the
+poet. Charles W. Eldridge, who personally knew of the relations of the two
+men, says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There was not a year from 1855 (the date of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> Emerson letter and its
+publication) down to 1860 (the year Walt came to Boston to supervise the
+issue of the Thayer &amp; Eldridge edition of 'Leaves of Grass'), that Emerson
+did not personally seek out Walt at his Brooklyn home, usually that they
+might have a long symposium together at the Astor House in New York.
+Besides that, during these years Emerson sent many of his closest friends,
+including Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of
+introduction to him. This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who
+has committed an unpardonable offense.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently
+came down from Concord to see him, and that they had many walks and talks
+together, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American
+House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel. On several occasions
+they met by appointment in our counting-room. Their relations were as
+cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Emerson who sought out
+Walt, and never the other way, although, of course, Walt appreciated and
+enjoyed Emerson's companionship very much. In truth, Walt never sought the
+company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary
+society. I know that at this time Walt was invited by Emerson to Concord,
+but declined to go, probably through his fear that he would see too much
+of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around
+Emerson."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman gave himself to men as men and not as scholars or poets, and gave
+himself purely as a man. While not specially averse to meeting people on
+literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was more to his taste to meet on
+the broadest, commonest, human grounds. What you had seen or felt or
+suffered or done was of much more interest to him than what you had read
+or thought; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the
+last person you had met, or the last chore you had done.</p>
+
+<p>Any glimpse of the farm, the shop, the household&mdash;any bit of real life,
+anything that carried the flavor and quality of concrete reality&mdash;was very
+welcome to him; herein, no doubt, showing the healthy, objective, artist
+mind. He never tired of hearing me talk about the birds or wild animals,
+or my experiences in camp in the woods, the kind of characters I had met
+there, and the flavor of the life of remote settlements in Maine or
+Canada. His inward, subjective life was ample of itself; he was familiar
+with all your thoughts and speculations beforehand: what he craved was
+wider experience,&mdash;to see what you had seen, and feel what you had felt.
+He was fond of talking with returned travelers and explorers, and with
+sailors, soldiers, mechanics; much of his vast stores of information upon
+all manner of subjects was acquired at firsthand, in the old way, from the
+persons who had seen or done or been what they described or related.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>He had almost a passion for simple, unlettered humanity,&mdash;an attraction
+which specially intellectual persons will hardly understand. Schooling and
+culture are so often purchased at such an expense to the innate,
+fundamental human qualities! Ignorance, with sound instincts and the
+quality which converse with real things imparts to men, was more
+acceptable to him than so much of our sophisticated knowledge, or our
+studied wit, or our artificial poetry.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>At the time of Whitman's death, one of our leading literary journals
+charged him with having brought on premature decay by leading a riotous
+and debauched life. I hardly need say that there was no truth in the
+charge. The tremendous emotional strain of writing his "Leaves," followed
+by his years of service in the army hospitals, where he contracted
+blood-poison, resulted at the age of fifty-four in the rupture of a small
+blood-vessel in the brain, which brought on partial paralysis. A sunstroke
+during his earlier manhood also played its part in the final break-down.</p>
+
+<p>That, tried by the standard of the lives of our New England poets,
+Whitman's life was a blameless one, I do not assert; but that it was a
+sane, temperate, manly one, free from excesses, free from the perversions
+and morbidities of a mammonish, pampered, over-stimulated age, I do
+believe. Indeed, I may say I know. The one impression he never failed to
+make&mdash;physically, morally, intellectually&mdash;on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> young and old, women and
+men, was that of health, sanity, sweetness. This is the impression he
+seems to have made upon Mr. Howells, when he met the poet at Pfaff's early
+in the sixties.</p>
+
+<p>The critic I have alluded to inferred license in the man from liberty in
+the poet. He did not have the gumption to see that Whitman made the
+experience of all men his own, and that his scheme included the evil as
+well as the good; that especially did he exploit the unloosed, all-loving,
+all-accepting natural man,&mdash;the man who is done with conventions,
+illusions and all morbid pietisms, and who gives himself lavishly to all
+that begets and sustains life. Yet not the natural or carnal man for his
+own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual meanings and values to which
+he is the key. Indeed, Whitman is about the most uncompromising
+spiritualist in literature; with him, all things exist by and for the
+soul. He felt the tie of universal brotherhood, also, as few have felt it.
+It was not a theory with him, but a fact that shaped his life and colored
+his poems. "Whoever degrades another degrades me," and the thought fired
+his imagination.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+<p>The student of Whitman's life and works will be early struck by three
+things,&mdash;his sudden burst into song, the maturity of his work from the
+first, and his self-knowledge and self-estimate. The fit of inspiration
+came upon him suddenly; it was like the flowering of the orchards in
+spring; there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> little or no hint of it till almost the very hour of
+the event. Up to the time of the appearance of the first edition of
+"Leaves of Grass," he had produced nothing above mediocrity. A hack writer
+on newspapers and magazines, then a carpenter and house-builder in a small
+way, then that astounding revelation "Leaves of Grass," the very audacity
+of it a gospel in itself. How dare he do it? how could he do it, and not
+betray hesitation or self-consciousness? It is one of the exceptional
+events in literary history. The main body of his work was produced in five
+or six years, or between 1854 and 1859. Of course it was a sudden
+flowering, which, consciously or unconsciously, must have been long
+preparing in his mind. His work must have had a long foreground, as
+Emerson suggested. Dr. Bucke, his biographer, thinks it was a special
+inspiration,&mdash;something analogous to Paul's conversion, a sudden opening
+of what the doctor calls "cosmic consciousness."</p>
+
+<p>Another student and lover of Whitman says: "It is certain that some time
+about his thirty-fifth year [probably a little earlier] there came over
+him a decided change: he seemed immensely to broaden and deepen; he became
+less interested in what are usually regarded as the more practical affairs
+of life. He lost what little ambition he ever had for money-making, and
+permitted good business opportunities to pass unheeded. He ceased to write
+the somewhat interesting but altogether commonplace and respectable
+stories and verses which he had been in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> the habit of contributing to
+periodicals. He would take long trips into the country, no one knew where,
+and would spend more time in his favorite haunts about the city, or on the
+ferries, or the tops of omnibuses, at the theatre and opera, in picture
+galleries, and wherever he could observe men and women and art and
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>Then the maturity of his work from the first line of it! It seems as if he
+came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one
+bound,&mdash;never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do.
+What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint.
+He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he
+first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first poem, "Starting
+from Paumanok," and he has kept the letter and the spirit of every promise
+therein made. We never see him doubtful or hesitating; we never see him
+battling for his territory, and uncertain whether or not he is upon his
+own ground. He has an air of contentment, of mastery and triumph, from the
+start.</p>
+
+<p>His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.
+We should probably have to go back to sacred history to find a parallel
+case. The manner of man he was, his composite character, his relation to
+his country and times, his unlikeness to other poets, his affinity to the
+common people, how he would puzzle and elude his critics, how his words
+would itch at our ears till we understood them, etc.,&mdash;how did he know all
+this from the first?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RULING_IDEAS_AND_AIMS" id="HIS_RULING_IDEAS_AND_AIMS"></a>HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">Let</span> me here summarize some of the ideas and principles in which "Leaves of
+Grass" has its root, and from which it starts. A collection of poems in
+the usual sense, a variety of themes artistically treated and appealing to
+our &aelig;sthetic perceptibilities alone, it is not. It has, strictly speaking,
+but one theme,&mdash;personality, the personality of the poet himself. To
+exploit this is always the main purpose, and, in doing so, to make the
+book both directly and indirectly a large, impassioned utterance upon all
+the main problems of life and of nationality. It is primitive, like the
+early literature of a race or people, in that its spirit and purpose are
+essentially religious. It is like the primitive literatures also in its
+prophetic cry and in its bardic simplicity and homeliness, and unlike them
+in its faith and joy and its unconquerable optimism.</p>
+
+<p>It has been not inaptly called the bible of democracy. Its biblical
+features are obvious enough with the darker negative traits left out. It
+is Israel with science and the modern added.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman was swayed by a few great passions,&mdash;the passion for country, the
+passion for comrades, the cosmic passion, etc. His first concern seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+always to have been for his country. He has touched no theme, named no
+man, not related in some way to America. The thought of it possessed him
+as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
+Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
+power,&mdash;the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
+suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
+cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
+all-inclusive:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth,<br />
+I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands;<br />
+I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.<br />
+<br />
+"O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">for reasons,</span><br />
+I think I have blown with you, O winds,<br />
+O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,&mdash;of
+absolute social equality.</p>
+
+<p>It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
+distinguished from the old theological conception,&mdash;namely, that creation
+is good and sound in all its parts.</p>
+
+<p>It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
+friend and not the enemy of life.</p>
+
+<p>It places comradeship, manly attachment, above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> sex love, and indicates it
+as the cement of future states and republics.</p>
+
+<p>It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.</p>
+
+<p>It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
+trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
+sexuality,&mdash;upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
+at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
+frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.</p>
+
+<p>It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
+conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
+works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.</p>
+
+<p>It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
+man,&mdash;a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
+have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
+parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
+the heroes of land and sea.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
+real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and
+concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore,
+the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man.</p>
+
+<p>Its purpose is to stimulate and arouse, rather than to soothe and satisfy.
+It addresses the character, the intuitions, the ego, more than the
+intel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>lect or the purely &aelig;sthetic faculties. Its end is not taste, but
+growth in the manly virtues and powers.</p>
+
+<p>Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.</p>
+
+<p>It aspires to a candor and a directness like that of Nature herself.</p>
+
+<p>It aims to let Nature speak without check, with original energy. The only
+checks are those which health and wholeness demand.</p>
+
+<p>Its standards are those of the natural universal.</p>
+
+<p>Its method is egocentric. The poet never goes out of himself, but draws
+everything into himself and makes it all serve to illustrate his
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>Its form is not what is called artistic. Its suggestion is to be found in
+organic nature, in trees, clouds, and in the vital and flowing currents.</p>
+
+<p>In its composition the author was doubtless greatly influenced by the
+opera and the great singers, and the music of the great composers. He
+would let himself go in the same manner and seek his effects through
+multitude and the quality of the living voice.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, "Leaves of Grass" is an utterance out of the depths of
+primordial, aboriginal human nature. It embodies and exploits a character
+not rendered an&aelig;mic by civilization, but preserving a sweet and sane
+savagery, indebted to culture only as a means to escape culture, reaching
+back always, through books, art, civilization, to fresh, unsophisticated
+nature, and drawing his strength thence.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>Another of the ideas that master Whitman and rule him is the idea of
+identity,&mdash;that you are you and I am I, and that we are henceforth secure
+whatever comes or goes. He revels in this idea; it is fruitful with him;
+it begets in him the ego-enthusiasm, and is at the bottom of his
+unshakable faith in immortality. It leavens all his work. It cannot be too
+often said that the book is not merely a collection of pretty poems,
+themes elaborated and followed out at long removes from the personality of
+the poet, but a series of <i>sorties</i> into the world of materials, the
+American world, piercing through the ostensible shows of things to the
+interior meanings, and illustrating in a free and large way the genesis
+and growth of a man, his free use of the world about him, appropriating it
+to himself, seeking his spiritual identity through its various objects and
+experiences, and giving in many direct and indirect ways the meaning and
+satisfaction of life. There is much in it that is not poetical in the
+popular sense, much that is neutral and negative, and yet is an integral
+part of the whole, as is the case in the world we inhabit. If it offends,
+it is in a wholesome way, like objects in the open air.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman rarely celebrates exceptional characters. He loves the common
+humanity, and finds his ideals among the masses. It is not difficult to
+reconcile his attraction toward the average man, towards workingmen and
+"powerful, uneducated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> persons," with the ideal of a high excellence,
+because he finally rests only upon the most elevated and heroic personal
+qualities,&mdash;elevated but well grounded in the common and universal.</p>
+
+<p>The types upon which he dwells the most fondly are of the common people.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"I knew a man,<br />
+He was a common farmer&mdash;he was the father of five sons,<br />
+And in them were the fathers of sons&mdash;and in them were the fathers of sons.<br />
+<br />
+"This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,<br />
+The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">and the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes,</span><br />
+These I used to go and visit him to see&mdash;he was wise also,<br />
+He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old&mdash;his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,<br />
+They and his daughters loved him&mdash;all who saw him loved him,<br />
+They did not love him by allowance&mdash;they loved him with personal love;<br />
+He drank water only&mdash;the blood showed like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face,<br />
+He was a frequent gunner and fisher&mdash;he sailed his boat himself&mdash;he had a fine one presented to him by a<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">ship-joiner&mdash;he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him;</span><br />
+When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">beautiful and vigorous of the gang,</span><br />
+You would wish long and long to be with him&mdash;you would wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and he might<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">touch each other."</span></p>
+
+<p>All the <i>motifs</i> of his work are the near, the vital, the universal;
+nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are
+democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality,
+comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> the
+sexes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it
+sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems
+are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a
+look, a gesture, a tone of voice.</p>
+
+<p>"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand
+at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass" requires a large perspective; you must not get your face
+too near the book. You must bring to it a magnanimity of spirit,&mdash;a
+charity and faith equal to its own. Looked at too closely, it often seems
+incoherent and meaningless; draw off a little and let the figure come out.
+The book is from first to last a most determined attempt, on the part of a
+large, reflective, loving, magnetic, rather primitive, thoroughly
+imaginative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth
+century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career
+upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiasm as to lift and
+fill it with the deepest meanings of the spirit and disclose the order of
+universal nature. The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or
+criticism, or partiality whatever, but has squarely and lovingly faced the
+oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and
+fused them in his fervid humanity, and imbued them with deepest poetic
+meanings. One of the most striking features of the book is the adequacy
+and composure, even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence
+of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era. He
+spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no
+part; and his quality, his individuality, shines through it all, as the
+sun through vapors. The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of
+Walt Whitman. It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man
+exploited and illustrated. Walt Whitman does not write poems, strictly
+speaking,&mdash;does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel
+and carve it into a beautiful image or object, or polish and elaborate a
+thought, embodying it in pleasing tropes and pictures. His purpose is
+rather to show a towering, loving, composite personality moving amid all
+sorts of materials, taking them up but for a moment, disclosing new
+meanings and suggestions in them, passing on, bestowing himself upon
+whoever or whatever will accept him, tossing hints and clues right and
+left, provoking and stimulating the thought and imagination of his reader,
+but finishing nothing for him, leaving much to be desired, much to be
+completed by him in his turn.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>The reader who would get at the spirit and meaning of "Leaves of Grass"
+must remember that its animating principle, from first to last, is
+Democracy,&mdash;that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit
+of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New
+World,&mdash;and that all things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> characteristically American (trades, tools,
+occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places
+in it. It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the
+life of the poet fell, and to show one master personality accepting,
+absorbing all and rising superior to it,&mdash;namely, the poet himself. Yet it
+is never Whitman that speaks so much as it is Democracy that speaks
+through him. He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in
+this character launches forth his "omnivorous words." What would seem
+colossal egotism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with
+low, rude persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and
+vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the
+boundless compassion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal
+Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain
+and easy in the works of this much misunderstood poet.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the single poem that throws most light upon his aims and methods,
+and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in "Calamus," and is as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Whoever you are holding me now in hand,<br />
+Without one thing all will be useless,<br />
+I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,<br />
+I am not what you suppos'd, but far different.<br />
+<br />
+"Who is he that would become my follower?<br />
+Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?<br />
+<br />
+"The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard,<br />
+Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,<br />
+The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon'd,<br />
+Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders,<br />
+Put me down and depart on your way.<br />
+<br />
+"Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,<br />
+Or back of a rock in the open air,<br />
+(For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,<br />
+And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)<br />
+But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares,<br />
+Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island,<br />
+Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,<br />
+With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,<br />
+For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.<br />
+<br />
+"Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,<br />
+Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,<br />
+Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;<br />
+For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,<br />
+And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.<br />
+<br />
+"But these leaves conning you con at peril,<br />
+For these leaves and me you will not understand,<br />
+They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you,<br />
+Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!<br />
+Already you see I have escaped from you.<br />
+<br />
+"For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,<br />
+Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,<br />
+Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,<br />
+Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more,<br />
+For all is useless without that for which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at,<br />
+Therefore release me and depart on your way."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>When one has fully mastered this poem he has got a pretty good hold upon
+Whitman's spirit and method. His open-air standards, the baffling and
+elusive character of his work, the extraordinary demand it makes, its
+radical and far-reaching effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil
+as a necessary part of the good (there was a human need of sin, said
+Margaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and
+suggestive method, that it can be fully read only through our acquaintance
+with life and real things at first hand, etc.,&mdash;all this and more is in
+the poem.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_SELF-RELIANCE" id="HIS_SELF-RELIANCE"></a>HIS SELF-RELIANCE</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">It</span> is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a German author was to
+be a German martyr. I presume things have changed in Germany since those
+times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and
+hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In
+Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an
+American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the
+great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Moli&egrave;re, or Byron, was
+Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times;
+but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and
+self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His
+unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise. It was of a kind
+that tries a man's mettle, and brings out his heroic traits if he has any.
+One almost envies him his unpopularity. It was of the kind that only the
+greatest ones have experienced, and that attests something extraordinary
+in the recipient of it. He said he was more resolute because all had
+denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor ridicule."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>There are no more precious and tonic pages in history than the records of
+men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in
+obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature.
+Whitman's is the most striking case in our literary annals,&mdash;probably the
+most striking one in our century outside of politics and religion. The
+inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: "My commission obeying, to
+question it never daring."</p>
+
+<p>The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained
+it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and
+cannot be avoided.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you and were tender with you? and stood aside for you?<br />
+Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?"</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Every man is a partaker in the triumph of him who is always true to
+himself and makes no compromises with customs, schools, or opinions.
+Whitman's life, underneath its easy tolerance and cheerful good-will, was
+heroic. He fought his battle against great odds and he conquered; he had
+his own way, he yielded not a hair to the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The pressure brought to bear upon him by the press, by many of his
+friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to
+change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served
+as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the
+more deeply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The
+fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and
+aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could
+have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no
+publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was
+threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy
+Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would
+omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for
+one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always
+did.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down
+Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which
+was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable
+conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so,
+whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet
+probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had
+not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your
+own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your
+private heart is true of all men,&mdash;that is genius."</p>
+
+<p>In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson
+invoked and prayed for,&mdash;the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who
+should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be
+Greek, or Italian, or French,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> or English, but only himself; who should
+not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate,
+or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debasements of
+our times the lineaments of the same gods that so ravished the bards of
+old.</p>
+
+<p>The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the
+books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
+thank and revere him."</p>
+
+<p>Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has
+done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works
+in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a
+time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures
+itself by its contempt of some external good,"&mdash;popularity, for instance.
+"The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have chosen your
+part abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the
+world." "Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
+something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous
+age." Heroism "is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality
+in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of
+hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent
+than all actual and all possible antagonists." "A man is to carry himself
+in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and
+ephemeral but he."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> "Great works of art," he again says, "teach us to
+abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility, the
+more when the whole cry of voices is on the other side."</p>
+
+<p>These brave sayings of Emerson were all illustrated and confirmed by
+Whitman's course. The spectacle of this man sitting there by the window of
+his little house in Camden, poor and partially paralyzed, and looking out
+upon the trite and commonplace scenes and people, or looking athwart the
+years and seeing only detraction and denial, yet always serene, cheerful,
+charitable, his wisdom and tolerance ripening and mellowing with time, is
+something to treasure and profit by. He was a man who needed no
+assurances. He had the patience and the leisure of nature. He welcomed
+your friendly and sympathetic word, or with equal composure he did without it.</p>
+
+<p>I remember calling upon him shortly after Swinburne's fierce onslaught
+upon him had been published, some time in the latter part of the eighties.
+I was curious to see how Whitman took it, but I could not discover either
+in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly
+of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne's
+account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat
+upon himself as Swinburne had done. In fact I think hostile criticism,
+fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it
+not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> shadows.
+Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was
+trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think
+Whitman took any interest in it from the first.</p>
+
+<p>Self-reliance, or self-trust, is one of the principles Whitman announces
+in his "Laws for Creations." He saw that no first-class work is possible
+except it issue from a man's deepest, most radical self.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"What do you suppose creation is?<br />
+What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no superior?<br />
+What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God?<br />
+And that there is no God any more divine than yourself?<br />
+And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?<br />
+And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>I think it probable that Whitman anticipated a long period of comparative
+oblivion for himself and his works. He knew from the first that the public
+would not be with him; he knew that the censors of taste, the critics and
+literary professors, would not be with him; he knew that the vast army of
+Philistia, the respectable, fashionable mammon-worshiping crowd, would not
+be with him,&mdash;that the timid, the pampered, the prurient, the conforming,
+the bourgeoisie spirit, the class spirit, the academic spirit, the
+Pharisaic spirit in all its forms, would all work against him; and that,
+as in the case of nearly all original, first-class men, he would have to
+wait to be understood for the growth of the taste of himself. None knew
+more clearly than he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> did how completely our people were under the
+illusion of the genteel and the conventional, and that, even among the
+emancipated few, the possession of anything like robust &aelig;sthetic
+perception was rare enough. America, so bold and original and independent
+in the world of practical politics and material endeavor, is, in spiritual
+and imaginative regions, timid, conforming, imitative. There is, perhaps,
+no civilized country in the world wherein the native, original man, the
+real critter, as Whitman loved to say, that underlies all our culture and
+conventions, crops out so little in manners, in literature, and in social
+usages. The fear of being unconventional is greater with us than the fear
+of death. A certain evasiveness, polish, distrust of ourselves, amounting
+to insipidity and insincerity, is spoken of by observant foreigners. In
+other words, we are perhaps the least like children of any people in the
+world. All these things were against Whitman, and will continue to be
+against him for a long time. With the first stroke he broke through the
+conventional and took his stand upon the natural. With rude hands he tore
+away the veils and concealments from the body and from the soul. He
+ignored entirely all social and conventional usages and hypocrisies, not
+by revolt against them, but by choosing a point of view from which they
+disappeared. He embraced the unrefined and the savage as well as the
+tender and human. The illusions of the past, the models and standards, he
+freed himself of at once, and declared for the beauty and the divinity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> of
+the now and the here. The rude realism of his "Leaves" shocked like a
+plunge in the surf, but it invigorated also, if we were strong enough to
+stand it.</p>
+
+<p>Out of Whitman's absolute self-trust arose his prophetic egotism,&mdash;the
+divine fervor and audacity of the simple ego. He shared the conviction of
+the old prophets that man is a part of God, and that there is nothing in
+the universe any more divine than the individual soul. "I, too," he says,
+and this line is the key to much there is in his work&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I, too, have felt the resistless call of myself."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>With the old Biblical writers the motions of their own spirits, their
+thoughts, their dreams, were the voice of God. There is something of the
+same sort in Whitman. The voice of that inner self was final and
+authoritative with him. It was the voice of God. He could drive through
+and over all the conventions of the world in obedience to that voice. This
+call to him was as a voice from Sinai. One of his mastering thoughts was
+the thought of identity,&mdash;that you are you, and I am I. This was the final
+meaning of things, and the meaning of immortality. "Yourself, <i>yourself</i>,
+<span class="smcap">yourself</span>," he says, with swelling vehemence, "forever and ever." To be
+compacted and riveted and fortified in yourself, so as to be a law unto
+yourself, is the final word of the past and of the present.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The shadow of Whitman's self-reliance and heroic self-esteem&mdash;the sort of
+eddy or back-water&mdash;was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> undoubtedly a childlike fondness for praise and
+for seeing his name in print. In his relaxed moments, when the stress of
+his task was not upon him, he was indeed in many respects a child. He had
+a child's delight in his own picture. He enjoyed hearing himself lauded as
+Colonel Ingersoll lauded him in his lecture in Philadelphia, and as his
+friends lauded him at his birthday dinner parties during the last two or
+three years of his life; he loved to see his name in print, and items
+about himself in the newspapers; he sometimes wrote them himself and gave
+them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his
+life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in
+fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him
+dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him
+to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be
+frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men
+also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature,
+and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human
+nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be
+kept up to the heroic pitch.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>It was difficult to appreciate his liking for the newspaper. But he had
+been a newspaper man himself; the printer's ink had struck in; he had many
+associations with the press-room and the com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>posing-room; he loved the
+common, democratic character of the newspaper; it was the average man's
+library. The homely uses to which it was put, and the humble firesides to
+which it found its way, endeared it to him, and made him love to see his
+name in it.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's vanity was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as
+tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy
+sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life
+there was none.</p>
+
+<p>His egotism is of the large generous species that never irritates or
+pricks into you like that of the merely conceited man. His love, his
+candor, his sympathy are on an equal scale.</p>
+
+<p>His egotism comes finally to affect one like the independence and
+indifference of natural law. It takes little heed of our opinion, whether
+it be for or against, and keeps to its own way whatever befall.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's absolute faith in himself was a part of his faith in creation.
+He felt himself so keenly a part of the whole that he shared its soundness
+and excellence; he must be good as it is good.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
+manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
+give rise to the charge that he was a <i>poseur</i>. He was a <i>poseur</i> in the
+sense, and to the extent, that any man is a <i>poseur</i> who tries to live up
+to a certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
+clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
+apart and looking upon himself as another person. Hence his extraordinary
+self-knowledge, and, we may also say, his extraordinary self-appreciation,
+or to use his own words, "the quite changed attitude of the ego, the one
+chanting or talking, towards himself." Of course there is danger in this
+attitude, but Whitman was large enough and strong enough to escape it. He
+saw himself to be the typical inevitable democrat that others have seen
+him to be, and with perfect candor and without ever forcing the note, he
+portrays himself as such. As his work is confessedly the poem of himself,
+himself magnified and projected, as it were, upon the canvas of a great
+age and country, all his traits and qualities stand out in heroic
+proportions, his pride and egotism as well as his love and tolerance.</p>
+
+<p>"How beautiful is candor," he says. "All faults may be forgiven of him who
+has perfect candor." The last thing that could ever be charged of Whitman
+is that he lacked openness, or was guilty of any deceit or concealments in
+his life or works.</p>
+
+<p>From the studies, notes, and scrap-books which Whitman left, it appears
+that he was long preparing and disciplining himself for the work he had in
+view. "The long foreground," to which Emerson referred in his letter, was
+of course a reality. But this self-consciousness and self-adjustment to a
+given end is an element of strength and not of weakness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>In the famous vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the
+first "Leaves of Grass" he assumes an attitude and is in a sense a
+<i>poseur</i>; but the reader comes finally to wonder at the marvelous
+self-knowledge the picture displays, and how strictly typical it is of the
+poet's mental and spiritual attitude towards the world,&mdash;independent,
+unconventional, audacious, yet inquiring and sympathetic in a wonderful
+degree. In the same way he posed in other portraits. A favorite with him
+is the one in which he sits contemplating a butterfly upon his
+forefinger&mdash;typical of a man "preoccupied of his own soul." In another he
+peers out curiously as from behind a mask. In an earlier one he stands,
+hat in hand, in marked <i>neglig&eacute;</i> costume,&mdash;a little too intentional, one
+feels. The contempt of the polished ones is probably very strong within
+him at this time. I say contempt, though I doubt if Whitman ever felt
+contempt for any human being.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Then Whitman had a curious habit of standing apart, as it were, and
+looking upon himself and his career as of some other person. He was
+interested in his own cause, and took a hand in the discussion. From first
+to last he had the habit of regarding himself objectively. On his deathbed
+he seemed to be a spectator of his own last moments, and was seen to feel
+his pulse a few minutes before he breathed his last.</p>
+
+<p>He has recorded this trait in his poems:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+"Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,<br />
+Stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, waiting,<br />
+Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,<br />
+Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it."</p>
+
+<p>As also in this from "Calamus:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood, chattering, chaffering,<br />
+How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,<br />
+How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;<br />
+But among my lovers, and caroling these songs,<br />
+Oh, I never doubt whether that is really me."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman always speaks as one having authority and not as a scribe, not as
+a mere man of letters. This is the privilege of the divine egoism of the
+prophet.</p>
+
+<p>Like the utterances of the biblical writers, without argument, without
+elaboration, his mere dictum seems the word of fate. It is not the voice
+of a man who has made his way through the world by rejecting and denying,
+but by accepting all and rising superior. What the "push of reading" or
+the push of argument could not start is often started and clinched by his
+mere authoritative "I say."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery draws the blood out of liberty,"...<br />
+"I say the human shape or face is so great it must never be made ridiculous;<br />
+I say for ornaments nothing outr&eacute; can be allowed,<br />
+And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,<br />
+And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology and in other persons' physiologies also.<br />
+<br />
+"Think of the past;<br />
+I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and your times....<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>Think of spiritual results.<br />
+Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results.<br />
+Think of manhood, and you to be a man;<br />
+Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?<br />
+Think of womanhood and you to be a woman;<br />
+The Creation is womanhood;<br />
+Have I not said that womanhood involves all?<br />
+Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Egotism is usually intolerant, but Whitman was one of the most tolerant of men.</p>
+
+<p>A craving for sympathy and personal affection he certainly had; to be
+valued as a human being was more to him than to be valued as a poet. His
+strongest attachments were probably for persons who had no opinion, good
+or bad, of his poetry at all.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Under close scrutiny his egotism turns out to be a kind of altru-egotism,
+which is vicarious and all-inclusive of his fellows. It is one phase of
+his democracy, and is vital and radical in his pages. It is a high,
+imperturbable pride in his manhood and in the humanity which he shares
+with all. It is the exultant and sometimes almost arrogant expression of
+the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world&mdash;the
+feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws,
+institutions, conventions, bibles, religions&mdash;that the divinity of kings,
+and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to the humblest
+person.</p>
+
+<p>It was a passion that united him to his fellows rather than separated him
+from them. His pride<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> was not that of a man who sets himself up above
+others, or who claims some special advantage or privilege, but that
+godlike quality that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence
+we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for
+mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and
+follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is
+the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there
+might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that
+his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate
+the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves,"
+flowing curiously out of its pride and egotism, is the lesson of charity,
+of self-surrender, and the free bestowal of yourself upon all hands.</p>
+
+<p>The law of life of great art is the law of life in ethics, and was long
+ago announced.</p>
+
+<p>He that would lose his life shall find it; he who gives himself the most
+freely shall the most freely receive. Whitman made himself the brother and
+equal of all, not in word, but in very deed; he was in himself a compend
+of the people for which he spoke, and this breadth of sympathy and free
+giving of himself has resulted in an unexpected accession of power.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_ART" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_ART"></a>HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">Whitman</span> protests against his "Leaves" being judged merely as literature;
+but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends
+the matter. Still while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are
+paramount in most other poets,&mdash;certainly in all third and fourth rate
+poets, in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values.</p>
+
+<p>In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates
+that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary
+productions.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries," he says in one of the
+"Inscriptions,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"For that which was lacking in all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring.<br />
+Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,<br />
+The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,<br />
+A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,<br />
+But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Not linked with the studied and scholarly productions, not open to the
+mere bookish mind, but more akin to the primitive utterances and oracles
+of historic humanity. A literary age like ours lays<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> great stress upon the
+savor of books, art, culture, and has little taste for the savor of real
+things, the real man, which we get in Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the true breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit,
+that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes
+on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would
+not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is
+beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson,
+begat Browning, begat the New England poets, but it did not in the same
+sense beget Whitman, any more than it begat Homer or Job or Isaiah. The
+artist may delight in him and find his own ideals there; the critic may
+study him and find the poet master of all his weapons; the disciple of
+culture will find, as Professor Triggs has well said, that "there is no
+body of writings in literature which demands a wider conversancy with the
+best that has been thought or said in the world,"&mdash;yet the poet escapes
+from all hands that would finally hold him and monopolize him. Whitman is
+an immense solvent,&mdash;forms, theories, rules, criticisms, disappear in his
+fluid, teeming pages. Much can be deduced from him, because much went to
+the making up of his point of view. He makes no criticism, yet a
+far-reaching criticism is implied in the very start of his poems. No
+modern poet presupposes so much, or requires so much preliminary study and
+reflection. He brings a multitude of questions and problems, and, what is
+singular, he brings them in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> himself; they are implied in his temper, and
+in his attitude toward life and reality.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman says he has read his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, that he
+has tried himself by the elemental laws; and tells us in many ways, direct
+and indirect, that the standards he would be tried by are not those of art
+or books, but of absolute nature. He has been laughed at for calling
+himself a "Kosmos," but evidently he uses the term to indicate this
+elemental, dynamic character of his work,&mdash;its escape from indoor,
+artificial standards, its aspiration after the "amplitude of the earth,
+and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of
+the earth, and the equilibrium also."</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Unless the poetic perception is fundamental in us, and can grasp the
+poetry of things, actions, characters, multitudes, heroisms, we shall read
+Whitman with very poor results. Unless America, the contemporary age,
+life, nature, are poetical to us, Whitman will not be. He has aimed at the
+larger poetry of forces, masses, persons, enthusiasms, rather than at the
+poetry of the specially rare and fine. He kindles in me the delight I have
+in space, freedom, power, the elements, the cosmic, democracy, and the
+great personal qualities of self-reliance, courage, candor, charity.</p>
+
+<p>Always in the literary poets are we impressed with the art of the poet as
+something distinct from the poet himself, and more or less put on. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+poet gets himself up for the occasion; he assumes the pose and the
+language of the poet, as the priest assumes the pose and the language of
+devotion. In Whitman the artist and the man are one. He never gets himself
+up for the occasion. Our pleasure in him is rarely or never our pleasure
+in the well-dressed, the well-drilled, the cultivated, the refined, the
+orderly, but it is more akin to our pleasure in real things, in human
+qualities and powers, in freedom, health, development. Yet I never open
+his book without being struck afresh with its pictural quality, its grasp
+of the concrete, its vivid realism, its intimate sense of things, persons,
+truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such
+as we can never get in mere prose. It is as direct as a challenge, as
+personal as a handshake, and yet withal how mystical, how elusive, how
+incommensurable! To deny that Whitman belongs to the fraternity of great
+artists, the shapers and moulders of the ideal,&mdash;those who breathe the
+breath of life into the clay or stone of common facts and objects, who
+make all things plastic and the vehicles of great and human emotions,&mdash;is
+to read him very inadequately, to say the least. To get at Walt Whitman
+you must see through just as much as you do in dealing with nature; you
+are to bring the same interpretive imagination. You are not to be balked
+by what appears to be the coarse and the familiar, or his rank
+contemporaneity; after a time you will surely see the lambent spiritual
+flames that play about it all.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+"Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering about me,"</p>
+
+<p>and his cosmic splendor, depth, and power. It is not the denial of art, it
+is a new affirmation of life. It is one phase of his democracy. It is the
+logical conclusion of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself that
+appeared in the first edition of his poems. He would give us more of the
+man, a fuller measure of personal, concrete, human qualities, than any
+poet before him. He strips away the artificial wrappings and illusions
+usual in poetry, and relies entirely upon the native and intrinsic. He
+will have no curtains, he says,&mdash;not the finest,&mdash;between himself and his
+reader.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,<br />
+You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of suns left),<br />
+You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">nor feed on the spectres in books,</span><br />
+You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,<br />
+You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This is a hint of his democracy as applied to literature,&mdash;more direct and
+immediate contact with the primary and universal, less of the vestments
+and trappings of art and more of the push and power of original character
+and of nature.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>It seems to me it is always in order to protest against the narrow and
+dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticism touching this
+matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of art. "The boundaries of art are jealously guarded," says a
+recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that
+had been accurately surveyed and fixed,&mdash;as if art was a fact and not a
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that
+art is in any sense an "enclosure,"&mdash;a province fenced off and set apart
+from the rest,&mdash;any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many
+people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human
+spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the
+sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has
+but one principle, one aim,&mdash;to produce an impression, a powerful
+impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the
+canons of taste and criticism. Name any principle, so called, and some day
+a genius shall be born who will produce his effects in defiance of it, or
+by appearing to reverse it. Such a man as Turner seemed, at first sight,
+to set at defiance all correct notions of art. The same with Wagner in
+music, the same with Whitman in poetry. The new man is impossible till he
+appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power
+does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical
+standards to him. But it is sure to do so at last. There is nothing final
+in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are
+deductions from his work, not its inspiration. We demand of the new man,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+of the overthrower of our idols, but one thing,&mdash;has he authentic
+inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded.
+If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of
+nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case. Is
+there no room for the new man? But the new man makes room for himself, and
+if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is
+appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>The trouble with most of us is that we found our taste for poetry upon
+particular authors, instead of upon literature as a whole, or, better yet,
+upon life and reality. Hence we form standards instead of principles.
+Standards are limited, rigid, uncompromising, while principles are
+flexible, expansive, creative. If we are wedded to the Miltonic standard
+of poetry, the classic standards, we shall have great difficulties with
+Whitman; but if we have founded our taste upon natural principles&mdash;if we
+have learned to approach literature through reality, instead of reality
+through literature&mdash;we shall not be the victims of any one style or model;
+we shall be made free of all. The real test of art, of any art, as Burke
+long ago said, and as quoted by Mr. Howells in his trenchant little volume
+called "Criticism and Fiction," is to be sought outside of art, namely, in
+nature. "I can judge but poorly of anything while I measure it by no other
+standard than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's
+power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the
+meanest, things in nature will give the truest lights." It is thought that
+the pre&euml;minence of the Greek standards is settled when we say they are
+natural. Yes, but Nature is not Greek. She is Asiatic, German, English, as
+well.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>In poetry, in art, a man must sustain a certain vital relation to his
+work, and that work must sustain a certain vital relation to the laws of
+mind and of life. That is all, and that leaves the doors very wide. We are
+not to ask, Is it like this or like that? but, Is it vital, is it real, is
+it a consistent, well-organized whole?</p>
+
+<p>The poet must always interpret himself and nature after his own fashion.
+Is his fashion adequate? Is the interpretation vivid and real? Do his
+lines cut to the quick, and beget heat and joy in the soul? If we cannot
+make the poet's ideal our own by sharing his enthusiasm for it, the
+trouble is as likely to be in ourselves as in him. In any case he must be
+a law unto himself.</p>
+
+<p>The creative artist differs from the mere writer or thinker in this: he
+sustains a direct personal relation to his subject through emotion,
+intuition, will. The indirect, impersonal relation which works by
+reflection, comparison, and analysis is that of the critic and
+philosopher. The man is an artist when he gives us a concrete and
+immediate impression of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> reality: from his hands we get the thing itself;
+from the critic and thinker we get ideas <i>about</i> the thing. The poet does
+not merely say the world is beautiful; he shows it as beautiful: he does
+not describe the flower; he places it before us. What are the enemies of
+art? Reflection, didacticism, description, the turgid, the obscure. A poet
+with a thesis to sustain is more or less barred from the freedom of pure
+art. It is by direct and unconsidered expression, says Scherer, that art
+communicates with reality. The things that make for art, then, are
+feeling, intuition, sentiment, soul, a fresh and vigorous sense of real
+things,&mdash;in fact, all that makes for life, health, and wholeness. Goethe
+is more truly an artist in the first part of Faust than in the second;
+Arnold has a more truly artistic mind than Lowell.</p>
+
+<p>The principles of art are always the same in the respect I have indicated,
+just as the principles of life are always the same, or of health and
+longevity are always the same. No writer is an artist who is related to
+his subject simply by mental or logical grip alone: he must have a certain
+emotional affiliation and identity with it; he does not so much convey to
+us ideas and principles as pictures, parables, impressions,&mdash;a lively
+sense of real things. When we put Whitman outside the pale of art, we must
+show his shortcomings here; we must show that he is not fluid and
+generative,&mdash;that he paints instead of interprets, that he gives us
+reasons instead of impulses, a stone when we ask for bread.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> "I do not
+give a little charity," he says; "when I give, I give myself." This the
+artist always does, not his mind merely, but his soul, his personality.
+"Leaves of Grass" is as direct an emanation from a central personal force
+as any book in literature, and always carries its own test and its own
+proof. It never hardens into a system, it never ceases to be penetrated
+with will and emotion, it never declines from the order of deeds to the
+order of mere thoughts. All is movement, progress, evolution, picture,
+parable, impulse.</p>
+
+<p>It is on these grounds that Whitman, first of all, is an artist. He has
+the artist temperament. His whole life was that of a man who lives to
+ideal ends,&mdash;who lived to bestow himself upon others, to extract from life
+its meaning and its joy.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman has let himself go, and trusted himself to the informal and
+spontaneous, to a degree unprecedented. His course required a
+self-reliance of the highest order; it required an innate cohesion and
+homogeneity, a firmness and consistency of individual outline, that few
+men have. It would seem to be much easier to face the poet's problem in
+the old, well-worn forms&mdash;forms that are so winsome and authoritative in
+themselves&mdash;than, to stand upon a basis so individual and intrinsic as
+Whitman chose to stand upon. His course goes to the quick at once. How
+much of a man are you? How vital and fundamental is your poetic gift? Can
+it go alone? Can it face us in undress?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>Never did the artist more cunningly conceal himself; never did he so
+completely lose himself in the man, identifying himself with the natural
+and spontaneous; never emerging and challenging attention on his own
+account, denying us when we too literally seek him, mocking us when we
+demand his credentials, and revealing himself only when we have come to
+him upon his own terms.</p>
+
+<p>The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no
+outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader. "This is
+no book," he says: "who touches this touches a man." In one sense Whitman
+is without art,&mdash;the impression which he always seeks to make is that of
+reality itself. He aims to give us reality without the usual literary
+veils and illusions,&mdash;the least possible amount of the artificial, the
+extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader. He banishes from
+his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,&mdash;all
+atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and
+decoration,&mdash;and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers.
+The verse does not seem to have been shaped; it might have grown: it takes
+no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular,
+rhythmical, and always fluid and real. A cry will always be raised against
+the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and
+falls back upon simple Nature, or upon himself, as Millet did in painting,
+and Wagner in music, and Whitman in poetry.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>Whitman's working ideas, the principles that inspired him, are all
+directly related to life and the problems of life; they are democracy,
+nature, freedom, love, personality, religion: while the ideas from which
+our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,&mdash;they are
+literary ideas, such as lucidity, form, beauty.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>Much light is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark
+which he once made in conversation with Dr. Bucke:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have aimed to make the book simple,&mdash;tasteless, or with little
+taste,&mdash;with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or
+writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is
+not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her
+productions&mdash;her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, meats&mdash;with
+faint and delicate flavor and fragrance, but these in the long run make
+the deepest impression. Man, dealing with natural things, constantly aims
+to increase their piquancy. By crossing and selection he deepens and
+intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so
+on. He pursues the same method in poetry,&mdash;that is, strives for strong
+light or shade, for high color, perfume, pungency, in all ways for the
+greatest immediate effect. In so doing he leaves the true way, the way of
+Nature, and, in the long run, comes far short of producing her effects."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>More light of the same kind is thrown upon his methods by the following
+passage from the preface to the first edition of his poems in 1855.</p>
+
+<p>"To speak in literature," he says, "with the perfect rectitude and
+insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the
+sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless
+triumph of art." And again: "The great poet has less a marked style, and
+is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution,
+and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be
+meddlesome; I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or
+originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I
+will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell,
+I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate
+or soothe, I will have purpose, as health or heat or snow has, and be as
+regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my
+composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side
+and look in the mirror with me."</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>But in view of the profound impression Whitman's work has made upon widely
+different types of mind on both sides of the Atlantic, and in view of the
+persistent vitality of his fame, the question whether he is inside or
+outside the pale of art amounts to very little. I quite agree with the
+late<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Mrs. Gilchrist, that, when "great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please."</p>
+
+<p>That Whitman has expressed great meanings and great emotions with adequate
+power, even his unfriendly critics admit. Thus Professor Wendell, in an
+admirable essay on American literature, says that "though Whitman is
+uncouth, inarticulate, and lacking in a grotesque degree artistic form,
+yet for all that he can make you feel for the moment how even the
+ferry-boats plying from New York to Brooklyn are fragments of God's
+eternities." In the same way Mr. William Clark, his British critic and
+expounder, says that he is wanting in discrimination and art, "flings his
+ideas at us in a heap," etc., and yet that the effect of his work is "to
+stir our emotions, widen our interests, and rally the forces of our moral
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that a man who, through the printed page, can do these
+things, must have some kind of art worth considering. If, through his
+impassioned treatment of a prosy, commonplace object like a ferry-boat, he
+can so dignify and exalt it, and so fill it with the meanings of the
+spirit, that it seems like a part of God's eternities, his methods are at
+least worth inquiring into.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, Whitman's art, in its lack of extrinsic form and finish, is
+Oriental rather than Occidental, and is an offense to a taste founded upon
+the precision and finish of a mechanical age. His verse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> is like the
+irregular, slightly rude coin of the Greeks compared with the exact,
+machine-cut dies of our own day, or like the unfinished look of Japanese
+pottery beside the less beautiful but more perfect specimens of modern
+ceramic art.</p>
+
+<p>For present purposes, we may say there are two phases of art,&mdash;formal art
+and creative art. By formal art I mean that which makes a direct appeal to
+our sense of form,&mdash;our sense of the finely carved, the highly wrought,
+the deftly planned; and by creative art I mean that quickening,
+fructifying power of the masters, that heat and passion that make the
+world plastic and submissive to their hands, teeming with new meanings and
+thrilling with new life.</p>
+
+<p>Formal art is always in the ascendant. Formal anything&mdash;formal dress,
+formal manners, formal religion, formal this and that&mdash;always counts for
+more than the informal, the spontaneous, the original. It is easier, it
+can be put off and on.</p>
+
+<p>Formal art is nearly always the gift of the minor poet, and often of the
+major poet also. In such a poet as Swinburne, formal art leads by a great
+way. The content of his verse,&mdash;what is it? In Tennyson as well I should
+say formal art is in the ascendant. Creative art is his also; Tennyson
+reaches and moves the spirit, yet his skill is more noteworthy than his
+power. In Wordsworth, on the other hand, I should say creative art led:
+the content of his verse is more than its form; his spiritual and
+religious values are greater than his literary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> and artistic. The same is
+true of our own Emerson. Poe, again, is much more as an artist than as a
+man or a personality.</p>
+
+<p>I hardly need say that in Whitman formal art, the ostensibly artistic,
+counts for but very little. The intentional artist, the professional poet,
+is kept entirely in abeyance, or is completely merged and hidden in the
+man, more so undoubtedly than in any poet this side the old Oriental
+bards. We call him formless, chaotic, amorphous, etc., because he makes no
+appeal to our modern highly stimulated sense of art or artificial form. We
+must discriminate this from our sense of power, our sense of life, our
+sense of beauty, of the sublime, of the all, which clearly Whitman would
+reach and move. Whitman certainly has a form of his own: what would a
+poet, or any writer or worker in the ideal, do without some kind of form?
+some consistent and adequate vehicle of expression? But Whitman's form is
+not what is called artistic, because it is not brought within the rules of
+the prosodical system, and does not appeal to our sense of the consciously
+shaped and cultivated. It is essentially the prose form heightened and
+intensified by a deep, strong, lyric and prophetic note.</p>
+
+<p>The bonds and shackles of regular verse-form Whitman threw off. This
+course seemed to be demanded by the spirit to which he had dedicated
+himself,&mdash;the spirit of absolute unconstraint. The restrictions and
+hamperings of the scholastic forms did not seem to be consistent with this
+spirit, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> he identified with democracy and the New World. A poet who
+sets out to let down the bars everywhere, to remove veils and
+obstructions, to emulate the freedom of the elemental forces, to effuse
+always the atmosphere of open-air growths and objects, to be as
+"regardless of observation" as the processes of nature, etc., will not be
+apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression. The
+essentially prose form which Whitman chose is far more in keeping with the
+spirit and aim of his work than any conventional metrical system could
+have been. Had he wrought solely as a conscious artist, aiming at the
+effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have chosen a
+different medium.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman threw himself with love and enthusiasm upon this great, crude,
+seething, materialistic American world. The question is, Did he master it?
+Is he adequate to absorb and digest it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is
+it plastic in his hands? Does he stamp it with his own image? I do not
+ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make
+it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because
+evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it. He is content if he
+present America and the modern to us as they are inwrought into his own
+personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character,
+passion, will, motive, conviction. He would show them subjectively and as
+living impulses in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> himself. Of course a great constructive, dramatic poet
+like Shakespeare would have solved his problem in a different manner, or
+through the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters. But the
+poet and prophet of democracy and of egotism shows us all things in and
+through himself.</p>
+
+<p>His egotism, or egocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work.
+It colors all and determines all. The poems are the direct outgrowth of
+the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it
+were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon
+the trunk. His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most
+poets. He never leads us away from himself into pleasant paths with
+enticing flowers of fancy or forms of art. He carves or shapes nothing for
+its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent
+grounds as pure art. His work is not material made precious by elaboration
+and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life.</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was compelled to this negation of extrinsic art by the problem he
+had set before himself,&mdash;first, to arouse, to suggest, rather than to
+finish or elaborate, less to display any theme or thought than "to bring
+the reader into the atmosphere of the theme or thought;" secondly, to make
+his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that
+the dominant impression should always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> be that of the living, breathing
+man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see
+him and feel him in books or art,&mdash;the man in the form and garb of actual,
+concrete life, not as poet or artist, but simply as man. This is doubtless
+the meaning of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to
+the first issue of the "Leaves," to which I have referred. This portrait
+is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task. It was a
+hint that we must take this poet with very little literary tailoring; it
+was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and
+spoke in their spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It is never the theme treated, but always the character exploited; never
+the structure finished, but always the plan suggested; never the work
+accomplished, but always the impulse imparted,&mdash;freedom, power, growth.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"Allons! we must not stop here.<br />
+However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here,<br />
+However sheltered this port, or however calm these waters, we must not anchor here,<br />
+However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.<br />
+<br />
+"Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!<br />
+Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;<br />
+Allons! from all formulas!<br />
+From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This magnificent poem, "The Song of the Open Road," is one of the most
+significant in Whitman's work. He takes the open road as his type,&mdash;not an
+end in itself, not a fulfillment, but a start,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> a journey, a progression.
+It teaches him the profound lesson of reception, "no preference nor
+denial," and the profounder lesson of liberty and truth:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"From this hour, freedom!<br />
+From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,<br />
+Going where I list&mdash;my own master, total and absolute,<br />
+Listening to others, and considering well what they say,<br />
+Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,<br />
+Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.<br />
+<br />
+"I inhale great draughts of air,<br />
+The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine."</p>
+
+<p>He will not rest with art, he will not rest with books, he will press his
+way steadily toward the largest freedom.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Only the kernel of every object nourishes.<br />
+Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?<br />
+Where is he who undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman was not a builder. If he had the architectural power which the
+great poets have shown, he gave little proof of it. It was not required by
+the task he set before himself. His book is not a temple: it is a wood, a
+field, a highway; vista, vista, everywhere,&mdash;vanishing lights and shades,
+truths half disclosed, successions of objects, hints, suggestions, brief
+pictures, groups, voices, contrasts, blendings, and, above all, the tonic
+quality of the open air. The shorter poems are like bunches of herbs or
+leaves, or a handful of sprays gathered in a walk; never a thought
+carefully carved, and appealing to our sense of artistic form.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>The main poem of the book, "The Song of Myself," is a series of
+utterances, ejaculations, apostrophes, enumerations, associations,
+pictures, parables, incidents, suggestions, with little or no structural
+or logical connection, but all emanating from a personality whose presence
+dominates the page, and whose eye is ever upon us. Without this vivid and
+intimate sense of the man back of all, of a sane and powerful spirit
+sustaining ours, the piece would be wild and inchoate.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>The reader will be sure to demand of Whitman ample compensation for the
+absence from his work of those things which current poets give us in such
+full measure. Whether or not the compensation is ample, whether the music
+of his verse as of winds and waves, the long, irregular, dithyrambic
+movement, its fluid and tonic character, the vastness of conception, the
+large, biblical speech, the surging cosmic emotion, the vivid personal
+presence as of the living man looking into your eye or walking by your
+side,&mdash;whether all these things, the refreshing quality as of "harsh salt
+spray" which the poet Lanier found in the "Leaves," the electric currents
+which Mrs. Gilchrist found there, the "unexcelled imaginative justice of
+language" which Mr. Stevenson at times found, the religious liberation and
+faith which Mr. Symonds found, the "incomparable things incomparably well
+said" of Emerson, the rifle-bullets of Ruskin, the "supreme words"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> of
+Colonel Ingersoll, etc.,&mdash;whether qualities and effects like these, I say,
+make up to us for the absence of the traditional poetic graces and
+adornments, is a question which will undoubtedly long divide the reading
+world.</p>
+
+<p>In the works upon which our poetic taste is founded, artistic form is
+paramount; we have never been led to apply to such works open-air
+standards,&mdash;clouds, trees, rivers, spaces,&mdash;but the precision and
+definiteness of the cultured and the artificial. If Whitman had aimed at
+pure art and had failed, his work would be intolerable. As his French
+critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, has well said: "In the large work which Whitman
+attempted, there come no rules save those of nobility and strength of
+spirit; and these suffice amply to create a most unlooked-for and
+grandiose aspect of beauty." "Overcrowded and disorderly" as it may seem,
+"if heroic emotion and thought and enthusiasm vitalize it," the poet has
+reached his goal.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>Sometimes I define Whitman to myself as the poet of the open air,&mdash;not
+because he sings the praises of these things after the manner of the
+so-called nature-poets, but because he has the quality of things in the
+open air, the quality of the unhoused, the untamed, the elemental and
+aboriginal. He pleases and he offends, the same way things at large do. He
+has the brawn, the indifference, the rudeness, the virility, the
+coarseness,&mdash;something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> gray, unpronounced, elemental, about him, the
+effect of mass, size, distance, flowing, vanishing lines, neutral
+spaces,&mdash;something informal, multitudinous, and processional,&mdash;something
+regardless of criticism, that makes no bid for our applause, not
+calculated instantly to please, unmindful of details, prosaic if we make
+it so, common, near at hand, and yet that provokes thought and stirs our
+emotions in an unusual degree. The long lists and catalogues of objects
+and scenes in Whitman, that have so excited the mirth of the critics, are
+one phase of his out-of-doors character,&mdash;a multitude of concrete objects,
+a grove, a thicket, a field, a stretch of beach,&mdash;every object sharply
+defined, but no attempt at logical or artistic sequence, the effect of the
+whole informal, multitudinous. It may be objected to these pages that they
+consist of a mass of details that do not make a picture. But every line is
+a picture of a scene or an object. Whitman always keeps up the movement,
+he never pauses to describe; it is all action.</p>
+
+<p>Passing from such a poet as Tennyson to Whitman is like going from a warm,
+perfumed interior, with rich hangings, pictures, books, statuary, fine men
+and women, out into the street, or upon the beach, or upon the hill, or
+under the midnight stars. We lose something certainly, but do we not gain
+something also? Do we not gain just what Whitman had in view, namely,
+direct contact with the elements in which are the sources of our life and
+health? Do we not gain in scope and power what we lose in art and
+refinement?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>The title, "Leaves of Grass," is full of meaning. What self-knowledge and
+self-scrutiny it implies! The grass, perennial sprouting, universal,
+formless, common, the always spread feast of the herds, dotted with
+flowers, the herbage of the earth, so suggestive of the multitudinous,
+loosely aggregated, unelaborated character of the book; the lines
+springing directly out of the personality of the poet, the soil of his
+life.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me,"</p>
+
+<p>says the poet, and this turns out to be the case. We only look to see if
+in the common and the cheap he discloses new values and new meanings,&mdash;if
+his leaves of grass have the old freshness and nutriment, and be not a
+mere painted greenness.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,<br />
+The carpenter dresses his plank&mdash;the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,<br />
+The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,<br />
+The pilot seizes the king-pin&mdash;he heaves down with a strong arm,<br />
+The mate stands braced in the whale-boat&mdash;lance and harpoon are ready,<br />
+The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,<br />
+The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,<br />
+The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,<br />
+The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First Day loafe, and looks at the oats and rye,<br />
+The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case,<br />
+He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom;<br />
+The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;<br />
+The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,<br />
+What is removed drops horribly in a pail;<br />
+The quadroon girl is sold at the stand&mdash;the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove,<br />
+The machinist rolls up his sleeves&mdash;the policeman travels his beat&mdash;the gate-keeper marks who pass,<br />
+The young fellow drives the express-wagon&mdash;I love him, though I do not know him,<br />
+The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,<br />
+The western turkey-shooting draws old and young&mdash;some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,<br />
+Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;<br />
+The groups of newly-come emigrants cover the wharf or levee,<br />
+As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle,<br />
+The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other,<br />
+The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret, and harks to the musical rain,<br />
+The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,<br />
+The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground,<br />
+Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,<br />
+The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,<br />
+Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-wood or pekan-trees,<br />
+Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River, or through those drained by the Tennessee, or through<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">those of the Arkansas,</span><br />
+Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,<br />
+Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them,<br />
+In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport,<br />
+The city sleeps and the country sleeps,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,<br />
+The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his wife;<br />
+And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,<br />
+And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>What is this but tufts and tussocks of grass; not branching trees, nor yet
+something framed and deftly put together, but a succession of simple
+things, objects, actions, persons; handfuls of native growths, a stretch
+of prairie or savanna; no composition, no artistic wholes, no logical
+sequence, yet all vital and real; jets of warm life that shoot and play
+over the surface of contemporary America, and that the poet uses as the
+stuff out of which to weave the song of himself.</p>
+
+<p>This simple aggregating or cataloguing style as it has been called, and
+which often occurs in the "Leaves," has been much criticised, but it seems
+to me in perfect keeping in a work that does not aim at total artistic
+effects, at finished structural perfection like architecture, but to
+picture the elements of a man's life and character in outward scenes and
+objects and to show how all nature tends inward to him and he outward to
+it. Whitman showers the elements of American life upon his reader until,
+so to speak, his mind is drenched with them, but never groups them into
+patterns to tickle his sense of form. It is charged that his method is
+inartistic, and it is so in a sense, but it is the Whitman art and has its
+own value in his work. Only the artist instinct could prompt to this
+succession of one line genre word painting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>But this is not the way of the great artists. No, but it is Whitman's way,
+and these things have a certain artistic value in his work, a work that
+professedly aims to typify his country and times,&mdash;the value of multitude,
+processions, mass-movements, and the gathering together of elements and
+forces from wide areas.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's relation to art, then, is primary and fundamental, just as his
+relations to religion, to culture, to politics, to democracy, are primary
+and fundamental,&mdash;through his emotion, his soul, and not merely through
+his tools, his intellect. His artistic conscience is quickly revealed to
+any searching inquiry. It is seen in his purpose to convey his message by
+suggestion and indirection, or as an informing, vitalizing breath and
+spirit. His thought and meaning are enveloped in his crowded, concrete,
+and often turbulent pages, as science is enveloped in nature. He has a
+profound ethic, a profound metaphysic, but they are not formulated; they
+are vital in his pages as hearing or eyesight.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman studied effects, and shaped his means to his end, weighing values
+and subordinating parts, as only the great artist does. He knew the power
+of words as few know them; he knew the value of vista, perspective,
+vanishing lights and lines. He knew how to make his words itch at your
+ears till you understood them; how to fold up and put away in his
+sentences meanings, glimpses, that did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> at first reveal themselves. It
+is only the work of the great creative artist that is pervaded by will,
+and that emanates directly and inevitably from the personality of the man
+himself. As a man and an American, Whitman is as closely related to his
+work as &AElig;schylus to his, or Dante to his. This is always a supreme
+test,&mdash;the closeness and vitality of the relation of a man to his work.
+Could any one else have done it? Is it the general intelligence that
+speaks, the culture and refinement of the age? or have we a new revelation
+of life, a new mind and soul? The lesser poets sustain only a secondary
+relation to their works. It is other poets, other experiences, the past,
+the schools, the forms, that speak through them. In all Whitman's
+recitatives, as he calls them, the free-flowing ends of the sentences, the
+loose threads of meaning, the unraveled or unknitted threads and fringes,
+are all well considered, and are one phase of <i>his</i> art. He seeks his
+effects thus.</p>
+
+<p>His method is indirect, allegorical, and elliptical to an unusual degree;
+often a curious suspension and withholding in a statement, a suggestive
+incompleteness, both ends of his thought, as it were, left in the air;
+sometimes the substantive, sometimes the nominative, is wanting, and all
+for a purpose. The poet somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic
+screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are
+used to in prophecy. The forth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>rightness of utterance, the projectile
+force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the
+great prophetic souls, is here.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman is poetic in the same way in which he is democratic, in the same
+way in which he is religious, or American, or modern,&mdash;not by word merely,
+but by deed; not by the extrinsic, but by the intrinsic; not by art, but
+by life.</p>
+
+<p>I am never tired of saying that to put great personal qualities in a poem,
+or other literary work, not formulated or didactically stated, but in
+tone, manner, attitude, breadth of view, love, charity, good fellowship,
+etc., is the great triumph for our day. So put, they are a possession to
+the race forever; they grow and bear fruit perennially, like the grass and
+the trees. And shall it be said that the poet who does this has no worthy
+art?</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>Nearly all modern artificial products, when compared with the ancient, are
+characterized by greater mechanical finish and precision. Can we say,
+therefore, they are more artistic? Is a gold coin of the time of Pericles,
+so rude and simple, less artistic than the elaborate coins of our own day?
+Is Japanese pottery, the glazing often ragged and uneven, less artistic
+than the highly finished work of the moderns?</p>
+
+<p>Are we quite sure, after all, that what we call "artistic form" is in any
+high or fundamental sense artistic? Are the precise, the regular, the
+meas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>ured, the finished, the symmetrical, indispensable to our conception
+of art? If regular extrinsic form and measure and proportion are necessary
+elements of the artistic, then geometrical flower-beds, and trees set in
+rows or trained to some fancy pattern, ought to please the artist. But do
+they? If we look for the artistic in these things, then Addison is a
+greater artist than Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says, "Addison speaks the
+language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." Which is really the most
+artistic? The one is the coin from the die, the other the coin from the
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson's faultless form and finish are not what stamp him a great
+artist. He would no doubt be glad to get rid of them if he could, at least
+to keep them in abeyance and make them less obtrusive; he would give
+anything for the freedom, raciness, and wildness of Shakespeare. But he is
+not equal to these things. The culture, the refinement, the precision of a
+correct and mechanical age have sunk too deeply into his soul. He has not
+the courage or the spring to let himself go as Shakespeare did. Tennyson,
+too, speaks the language of poets, and not of men; he savors of the
+flower-garden, and not of the forest. Tennyson knows that he is an artist.
+Shakespeare, apparently, never had such a thought; he is intent solely
+upon holding the mirror up to nature. The former lived in an age of
+criticism, and when the poets loved poetry more than they did life and
+things; the latter, in a more virile time, and in "the full stream of the
+world."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>"Leaves of Grass" is not self-advertised as a work of art. The author had
+no thought that you should lay down his book and say, "What a great
+artist!" "What a master workman!" He would rather you should say, "What a
+great man!" "What a loving comrade!" "What a real democrat!" "What a
+healing and helpful force!" He would not have you admire his poetry: he
+would have you filled with the breath of a new and larger and saner life;
+he would be a teacher and trainer of men.</p>
+
+<p>The love of the precise, the exact, the methodical, is characteristic of
+an age of machinery, of a commercial and industrial age like ours. These
+things are indispensable in the mill and counting-house, but why should we
+insist upon them in poetry? Why should we cling to an arbitrary form like
+the sonnet? Why should we insist upon a perfect rhyme, as if it was a cog
+in a wheel? Why not allow and even welcome the freedom of half-rhymes, or
+suggestive rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it
+into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering
+and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the
+man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an
+artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair with great laws
+and forces?</p>
+
+<p>Of course it is much easier for a poet to use the regular verse-forms and
+verse language than it is to dispense with them; that is, a much less
+poetic capital is required in the former case than in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> latter. The
+stock forms and the stock language count for a good deal. A very small
+amount of original talent may cut quite an imposing figure in the robes of
+the great masters. Require the poet to divest himself of them, and to
+speak in the language of men and in the spirit of real things, and see how
+he fares.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman was afraid of what he called the beauty disease. He thought a poet
+of the first order should be sparing of the direct use of the beautiful,
+as Nature herself is. His aim should be larger, and beauty should follow
+and not lead. The poet should not say to himself, "Come, I will make
+something beautiful," but rather "I will make something true, and
+quickening, and powerful. I will not dress my verse up in fine words and
+pretty fancies, but I will breathe into it the grit and force and
+adhesiveness of real things." Beauty is the flowering of life and
+fecundity, and it must have deep root in the non-beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Beauty, as the master knows it, is a spirit and not an adornment. It is
+not merely akin to flowers and gems and rainbows: it is akin to the All.
+Looking through his eyes, you shall see it in the rude and the savage
+also, in rocks and deserts and mountains, in the common as well as in the
+rare, in wrinkled age as well as in rosy youth.</p>
+
+<p>The non-beautiful holds the world together, holds life together and
+nourishes it, more than the beau<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>tiful. Nature is beautiful because she is
+so much else first,&mdash;yes, and last, and all the time.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicates of the earth and of man,<br />
+And nothing endures but personal qualities."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Is there not in field, wood, or shore something more precious and tonic
+than any special beauties we may chance to find there,&mdash;flowers, perfumes,
+sunsets,&mdash;something that we cannot do without, though we can do without
+these? Is it health, life, power, or what is it?</p>
+
+<p>Whatever it is, it is something analogous to this that we get in Whitman.
+There is little in his "Leaves" that one would care to quote for its mere
+beauty, though this element is there also. One may pluck a flower here and
+there in his rugged landscape, as in any other; but the flowers are always
+by the way, and never the main matter. We should not miss them if they
+were not there. What delights and invigorates us is in the air, and in the
+look of things. The flowers are like our wild blossoms growing under great
+trees or amid rocks, never the camellia or tuberose of the garden or
+hot-house,&mdash;something rude and bracing is always present, always a breath
+of the untamed and aboriginal.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's work gives results, and never processes. There is no return of
+the mind upon itself; it descends constantly upon things, persons,
+realities. It is a rushing stream which will not stop to be analyzed. It
+has been urged that Whitman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> does not give the purely intellectual
+satisfaction that would seem to be warranted by his mental grasp and
+penetration. No, nor the &aelig;sthetic satisfaction warranted by his
+essentially artistic habit of mind. Well, he did not promise satisfaction
+in anything, but only to put us on the road to satisfaction. His book, he
+says, is not a "good lesson," but it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
+and that to another, and every one to another still.</p>
+
+<p>Let me repeat that the sharp, distinct intellectual note&mdash;the note of
+culture, books, clubs, etc., such as we get from so many modern writers,
+you will not get from Whitman. In my opinion, the note he sounds is deeper
+and better than that. It has been charged by an unfriendly critic that he
+strikes lower than the intellect. If it is meant by this that he misses
+the intellect, it is not true; he stimulates the intellect as few poets
+do. He strikes lower because he strikes farther. He sounds the note of
+character, personality, volition, the note of prophecy, of democracy, and
+of love. He seems unintellectual to an abnormally intellectual age; he
+seems unpoetic to a taste formed upon poetic tidbits; he seems irreligious
+to standards founded upon the old models of devotional piety; he seems
+disorderly, incoherent to all petty thumb and finger measurements. In his
+ideas and convictions, Whitman was a modern of the moderns; yet in his
+type, his tastes, his fundamental make-up, he was primitive, of an earlier
+race and age,&mdash;before, as Emerson suggests, the gods had cut Man up into
+men, with special talents of one kind or another.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+<p>Take any of Whitman's irregular-flowing lines, and clip and trim them, and
+compress them into artificial verse-forms, and what have we gained to make
+up for what we have lost? Take his lines called "Reconciliation," for
+instance:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Word over all beautiful as the sky,<br />
+Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,<br />
+That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;<br />
+For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,<br />
+I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin&mdash;I draw near,<br />
+Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."</p>
+
+<p>Or take his poem called "Old Ireland:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,<br />
+Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,<br />
+Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,<br />
+Her old white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,<br />
+At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,<br />
+Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,<br />
+Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.<br />
+<br />
+"Yet a word, ancient mother,<br />
+You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between your knees,<br />
+Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,<br />
+For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,<br />
+It was an illusion; the son you loved was not really dead,<br />
+The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another country.<br />
+Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And now with rosy and new blood,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Moves to-day in a new country."</span></p>
+
+<p>Or take these lines from "Children of Adam:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I pass'd the church,<br />
+Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,<br />
+I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;<br />
+Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head,<br />
+Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night under my ear."</p>
+
+<p>Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
+measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
+highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
+wanted to preserve at all hazards,&mdash;vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
+free-careering forces of nature.</p>
+
+<p>I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
+not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
+is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
+restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
+and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
+like him best without it.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVII</h4>
+
+<p>How well we know the language of the conventional poetic! In this
+language, the language of nine tenths of current poetry, the wind comes
+up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> out of the south and kisses the rose's crimson mouth, or it comes out
+of the wood and rumples the poppy's hood. Morning comes in glistening
+sandals, and her footsteps are jeweled with flowers. Everything is
+bedecked and bejeweled. Nothing is truly seen or truly reported. It is an
+attempt to paint the world beautiful. It is not beautiful as it is, and we
+must deck it out in the colors of the fancy. Now, I do not want the world
+painted for me. I want the grass green or brown, as the case may be; the
+sky blue, the rocks gray, the soil red; and that the sun should rise and
+set without any poetic claptrap. What I want is to see these things spin
+around a thought, or float on the current of an emotion, as they always do
+in real poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Beauty always follows, never leads the great poet. It arises out of the
+interior substance and structure of his work, like the bloom of health in
+the cheeks. The young poet thinks to win Beauty by direct and persistent
+wooing of her. He has not learned yet that she comes unsought to the
+truthful, the brave, the heroic. Let him think some great thought,
+experience some noble impulse, give himself with love to life and reality
+about him, and Beauty is already his. She is the reward of noble deeds.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVIII</h4>
+
+<p>The modern standard in art is becoming more and more what has been called
+the canon of the characteristic, as distinguished from the Greek or
+classic canon of formal beauty. It is this canon, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Professor Triggs
+suggests, that we are to apply to Whitman. Dr. Johnson had it in mind when
+he wrote thus of Shakespeare:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed
+and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers: the
+composition of Shakespeare is a forest in which oaks extend their
+branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds
+and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
+filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless
+diversity."</p>
+
+<p>Classic art holds to certain fixed standards; it seeks formal beauty; it
+holds to order and proportion in external parts; its ideal of natural
+beauty is the well-ordered park or grove or flower-garden. It has a horror
+of the wild and savage. Mountains and forests, and tempests and seas,
+filled the classic mind with terror. Not so with the modern romantic mind,
+which finds its best stimulus and delight in free, unhampered nature. It
+loves the element of mystery and the suggestion of uncontrollable power.
+The modern mind has a sense of the vast, the infinite, that the Greek had
+not, and it is drawn by informal beauty more than by the formal.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIX</h4>
+
+<p>It is urged against Whitman that he brings us the materials of poetry, but
+not poetry: he brings us the marble block, but not the statue; or he
+brings us the brick and mortar, but not the house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> False or superficial
+analogies mislead us. Poetry is not something made; it is something grown,
+it is a vital union of the fact and the spirit. If the verse awakens in us
+the poetic thrill, the material, whatever it be, must have been touched
+with the transforming spirit of poesy. Why does Whitman's material suggest
+to any reader that it is poetic material? Because it has already been
+breathed upon by the poetic spirit. A poet may bring the raw material of
+poetry in the sense that he may bring the raw material of a gold coin; the
+stamp and form you give it does not add to its value. It is doubtful if
+any of Whitman's utterances could be worked up into what is called poetry
+without a distinct loss of poetic value. What they would gain in finish
+they would lose in suggestiveness. This word "suggestiveness" affords one
+of the keys to Whitman. The objection to him I have been considering
+arises from the failure of the critic to see and appreciate his avowed
+purpose to make his page fruitful in poetic suggestion, rather than in
+samples of poetic elaboration. "I finish no specimens," he says. "I shower
+them by exhaustless laws, fresh and modern continually, as Nature does."
+He is quite content if he awaken the poetic emotion without at all
+satisfying it. He would have you more eager and hungry for poetry when you
+had finished with him than when you began. He brings the poetic stimulus,
+and brings it in fuller measure than any contemporary poet; and this is
+enough for him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that
+reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry
+did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in
+motion at once; he was so fruitful in themes, so suggestive of new
+harmonies and melodies. He gave the hints, and left his reader to follow
+them up. This is exactly what Whitman wanted to do. It defines his
+attitude toward poetry, towards philosophy, towards religion,&mdash;to suggest
+and set going, to arouse unanswerable questions, and to brace you to meet
+them; to bring the materials of poetry, if you will have it so, and leave
+you to make the poem; to start trains of thought, and leave you to pursue
+the flight alone. Not a thinker, several critics have urged; no, but the
+cause of thought in others to an unwonted degree. "Whether you agree with
+him or not," says an Australian essayist, "he will sting you into such an
+anguish of thought as must in the end be beneficial." It matters little to
+him whether or not you agree with him; what is important is, that you
+should think the matter out for yourself. He purposely avoids hemming you
+in by his conclusions; he would lead you in no direction but your own.
+"Once more I charge you give play to your self. I charge you leave all
+free, as I have left all free."</p>
+
+<p>No thought, no philosophy, no music, no poetry, in his pages; no, it is
+all character, impulse, emotion, suggestion. But the true reader of him
+expe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>riences all these things: he finds in his pages, if he knows how to
+look for it, a profound metaphysic, a profound ethic, a profound &aelig;sthetic;
+a theory of art and poetry which is never stated, but only hinted or
+suggested, and which is much more robust and vital than what we are used
+to; a theory of good and evil; a view of character and conduct; a theory
+of the state and of politics, of the relation of the sexes, etc., to give
+ample food for thought and speculation. The Hegelian philosophy is in the
+"Leaves" as vital as the red corpuscles in the blood, so much is implied
+that is not stated, but only suggested, as in Nature herself. The really
+vast erudition of the work is adroitly concealed, hidden like its
+philosophy, as a tree hides its roots. Readers should not need to be told
+that, in the region of art as of religion, mentality is not first, but
+spirituality, personality, imagination; and that we do not expect a poet's
+thoughts to lie upon his pages like boulders in the field, but rather to
+show their presence like elements in the soil.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,<br />
+Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,<br />
+If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume to you,<br />
+If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall branches and trees."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The early records and sacred books of most peoples contain what is called
+the materials of poetry. The Bible is full of such materials. English
+literature shows many attempts to work this material up into poetry, but
+always with a distinct loss of poetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> value. The gold is simply beaten
+out thin and made to cover more surface, or it is mixed with some base
+metal. A recent English poet has attempted to work up the New Testament
+records into poetry, and the result is for the most part a thin, windy
+dilution of the original. If the record or legend is full of poetic
+suggestion, that is enough; to elaborate it, and deck it out in poetic
+finery without loss of poetic value, is next to impossible.</p>
+
+<p>To me the Arthurian legends as they are given in the old books, are more
+poetic, more stimulating to the imagination, than they are after they have
+gone through the verbal upholstering and polishing of such a poet as
+Swinburne or even Tennyson. These poets add little but words and flowers
+of fancy, and the heroic simplicity of the original is quite destroyed.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XX</h4>
+
+<p>No critic of repute has been more puzzled and misled by this unwrought
+character of our poet's verse than Mr. Edmund Gosse, the London poet and
+essayist. Mr. Gosse finds Whitman only a potential or possible poet; his
+work is literature in the condition of protoplasm. He is a maker of poems
+in solution; the structural change which should have crystallized his
+fluid and teeming pages into forms of art never came. It does not occur to
+Mr. Gosse to inquire whether or not something like this may not have been
+the poet's intention. Perhaps this is the secret of the vitality of his
+work, which, as Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> Gosse says, now, after forty years, shows no sign of
+declining. Perhaps it was a large, fresh supply of poetic yeast that the
+poet really sought to bring us. Undoubtedly Whitman aimed to give his work
+just this fluid, generative quality, to put into it the very basic
+elements of life itself. He feared the "structural change" to which Mr.
+Gosse refers; he knew it was more or less a change from life to death: the
+cell and not the crystal; the leaf of grass, and not the gem, is the type
+of his sentences. He sacrificed fixed form; above all, did he stop short
+of that conscious intellectual elaboration so characteristic of later
+poetry, the better to give the impression and the stimulus of creative
+elemental power. It is not to the point to urge that this is not the
+method or aim of other poets; that others have used the fixed forms, and
+found them plastic and vital in their hands. It was Whitman's aim; these
+were the effects he sought. I think beyond doubt that he gives us the
+impression of something dynamic, something akin to the vital forces of the
+organic world, much more distinctly and fully than any other poet who has
+lived.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman always aimed to make his reader an active partner with him in his
+poetic enterprise. "I seek less," he says, "to state or display any theme
+or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
+theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." This trait is brought
+out by Mr. Gosse in a little allegory. "Every reader who comes to
+Whitman," he says,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> "starts upon an expedition to the virgin forest. He
+must take his conveniences with him. He will make of the excursion what
+his own spirit dictates. [We generally do, in such cases, Mr. Gosse.]
+There are solitudes, fresh air, rough landscape, and a well of water, but
+if he wishes to enjoy the latter he must bring his own cup with him." This
+phase of Whitman's work has never been more clearly defined. Mr. Gosse
+utters it as an adverse criticism. It is true exposition, however we take
+it, what we get out of Whitman depends so largely upon what we bring to
+him. Readers will not all get the same. We do not all get the same out of
+a walk or a mountain climb. We get out of him in proportion to the
+sympathetic and interpretative power of our own spirits. Have you the
+brooding, warming, vivifying mother-mind? That vague, elusive,
+incommensurable something in the "Leaves" that led Symonds to say that
+talking about Whitman was like talking about the universe,&mdash;that seems to
+challenge our pursuit and definition, that takes on so many different
+aspects to so many different minds,&mdash;it seems to be this that has led Mr.
+Gosse to persuade himself that there is no real Walt Whitman, no man whom
+we can take, as we take any other figure in literature, as an "entity of
+positive value and definite characteristics," but a mere mass of literary
+protoplasm that takes the instant impression of whatever mood approaches
+it. Stevenson finds a Stevenson in it, Mr. Symonds finds a Symonds,
+Emerson finds an Emerson, etc. Truly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> may our poet say, "I contain
+multitudes." In what other poet do these men, or others like them, find
+themselves?</p>
+
+<p>Whitman was a powerful solvent undoubtedly. He never hardens into anything
+like a system, or into mere intellectual propositions. One of his own
+phrases, "the fluid and swallowing soul," is descriptive of this trait of
+him. One source of his charm is, that we each see some phase of ourselves
+in him, as Mr. Gosse suggests. Above all things is he potential and
+indicative, bard of "flowing mouth and indicative hand." In his
+"Inscriptions" he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,<br />
+Leaving it to you to prove and define it,<br />
+Expecting the main things from you."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This withholding and half-averted glancing, then, on the part of the poet,
+is deliberate and enters into the scheme of the work. Mr. Gosse would have
+shown himself a sounder critic had he penetrated the poet's purpose in
+this respect, and shown whether or not he had violated the canons he had
+set up for his own guidance. We do not condemn a creative work when it
+departs from some rule or precedent, but when it violates its own
+principle, when it is not consistent with itself, when it hath not eyes to
+see, or ears to hear, or hands to reach what lies within its own sphere.
+Art, in the plastic realms of written language, may set its mind upon
+elaboration, upon structural finish and proportion, upon exact forms and
+compensations, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> in architecture, or it may set its mind upon
+suggestion, indirection, and the flowing, changing forms of organic
+nature. It is as much art in the one case as in the other. To get rid of
+all visible artifice is, of course, the great thing in both cases. There
+is so little apparent artifice in Whitman's case that he has been accused
+of being entirely without art, and of throwing his matter together in a
+haphazard way,&mdash;"without thought, without selection," without
+"composition, evolution, vertebration of style," says Mr. Gosse. Yet his
+work more than holds its own in a field where these things alone are
+supposed to insure success. Whitman covers up his processes well, and
+knows how to hit his mark without seeming to take aim. The verdicts upon
+him are mainly contradictory, because each critic only takes in a part of
+his scheme. Mr. Stedman finds him a formalist. Mr. Gosse finds in him a
+negation of all form. The London critic says he is without thought. A
+Boston critic speaks of what he happily calls the "waves of thought" in
+his work,&mdash;vast mind-impulses that lift and sway great masses of concrete
+facts and incidents. Whitman knew from the start that he would puzzle and
+baffle his critics, and would escape from them like air when they felt
+most sure they had him in their verbal nets. So it has been from the
+first, and so it continues to be. Without one thing, he says, it is
+useless to read him; and of what that one thing needful is, he gives only
+the vaguest hint, only a "significant look."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XXI</h4>
+
+<p>I may here notice two objections to Whitman urged by Mr. Stedman,&mdash;a
+critic for whose opinion I have great respect, and a man for whom I have a
+genuine affection. With all his boasted breadth and tolerance, Whitman,
+says my friend, is narrow; and, with all his vaunted escape from the
+shackles of verse-form, he is a formalist: his "irregular, manneristic
+chant" is as much at the extreme of artificiality as is the sonnet. These
+certainly are faults that one does not readily associate with the work of
+Whitman. But then I remember that the French critic, Scherer, charges
+Carlyle, the apostle of the gospel of sincerity, with being insincere and
+guilty of canting about cant. If Carlyle is insincere, I think it very
+likely that Whitman may be narrow and hide-bound. These things are so much
+a matter of temperament that one cannot judge for another. Yet one ought
+not to confound narrowness and breadth, or little and big. All earnest,
+uncompromising men are more or less open to the charge of narrowness. A
+man is narrow when he concentrates himself upon a point; even a
+cannon-shot is. Whitman was narrow in the sense that he was at times
+monotonous; that he sought but few effects, that he poured himself out
+mainly in one channel, that he struck chiefly the major chords of life.
+His "Leaves" do not show a great range of artistic motifs. A versatile,
+many-sided nature he certainly was not; a large, broad, tolerant nature
+he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> as certainly was. He does not assume many and diverse forms like a
+purely artistic talent, sporting with and masquerading in all the elements
+of life, like Shakespeare; but in his own proper form, and in his own
+proper person, he gives a sense of vastness and power that are
+unapproached in modern literature. He asserts himself uncompromisingly,
+but he would have you do the same. "He who spreads a wider breast than my
+own proves the width of my own." "He most honors my style who learns under
+it to destroy the teacher." His highest hope is to be the soil of superior
+poems.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stedman thinks he detects in the poet a partiality for the coarser,
+commoner elements of our humanity over the finer and choicer,&mdash;for the
+"rough" over the gentleman. But when all things have been duly considered,
+it will be found, I think, that he finally rests only with great personal
+qualities and traits. He is drawn by powerful, natural persons, wherever
+found,&mdash;men and women self-poised, fully equipped on all sides:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully arm'd,<br />
+I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>and much more to the same effect.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain:<br />
+If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman is a formalist, just as every man who has a way of his own of
+saying and doing things, no matter how natural, is a formalist; but he is
+not a stickler for form of any sort. He has his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> proper form, of
+course, which he rarely departs from. At one extreme of artificiality Mr.
+Stedman apparently places the sonnet. This is an arbitrary form; its rules
+are inflexible; it is something cut and shaped and fitted together after a
+predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial. If Whitman's
+irregularity was equally studied; if it gave us the same sense of
+something cunningly planned and wrought to a particular end, clipped here,
+curbed there, folded back in this line, drawn out in that, and attaining
+to a certain mechanical proportion and balance as a whole,&mdash;then there
+would be good ground for the critic's charge. But such is not the case.
+Whitman did not have, nor claim to have, the architectonic power of the
+great constructive poets. He did not build the lofty rhyme. He did not
+build anything, strictly speaking. He let himself go. He named his book
+after the grass, which makes a carpet over the earth, and which is a sign
+and a presence rather than a form.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect
+from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional
+cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might
+expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or
+grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a
+little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional
+obscurity; from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> mystic identification of himself with what is
+commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy;
+from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an
+average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"
+may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc. The price paid for his
+strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination
+to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision
+with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"
+with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious,"
+will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"
+will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his
+healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk
+to flight.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXIII</h4>
+
+<p>To say that Whitman is a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If
+it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of
+language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the
+saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the
+right word&mdash;for just the right word&mdash;than did Whitman. He would wait for
+days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the
+language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the
+evening call of the robin, and died without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> the sight! But his language
+never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not
+consciously challenge your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is
+never on dress parade. His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so
+much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to <i>stumble</i> upon
+them. His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial
+adjuncts of poetry,&mdash;no finery or stuck-on ornament,&mdash;nothing obtrusively
+beautiful or poetic; and because it bears itself with the freedom and
+nonchalance of a man in his every-day attire.</p>
+
+<p>But it is always in a measure misleading to compare language with dress,
+to say that a poet clothes his thought, etc. The language is the thought;
+it is an incarnation, not an outside tailoring. To improve the expression
+is to improve the thought. In the most vital writing, the thought is nude;
+the mind of the reader touches something alive and real. When we begin to
+hear the rustle of a pompous or highly wrought vocabulary, when the man
+begins to dress his commonplace ideas up in fine phrases, we have enough
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it is only the mechanical writer who may be said to "clothe" his
+ideas with words; the real poet thinks through words.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXIV</h4>
+
+<p>I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps
+has been made, that in him we find the big merely,&mdash;strength without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this
+impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious
+things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here
+is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great
+lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires
+a large space to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and
+multitude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The
+style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling,
+cloud-like masses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me
+there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not
+only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity;
+not only breadth, there is quality and charm. He is both Dantesque and
+Darwinian, as has been said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whitman, and,
+despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of
+literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,&mdash;the
+symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power. Thus, "he
+is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or
+buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a
+kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the
+world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise
+mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>&mdash;all seas,
+lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal
+earth."</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and
+plains, and to the globe itself.</p>
+
+<p>But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only
+claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size
+and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no
+impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to
+size,&mdash;breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of
+a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists
+are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast masses of
+humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the
+industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
+are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
+elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
+effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
+sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,&mdash;everywhere
+the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
+significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
+contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
+forces and objects of the universe, first with refer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>ence to character and
+personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
+of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
+in his first poem:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"Listen! I will be honest with you,<br />
+I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.<br />
+<br />
+"I tramp a perpetual journey,<br />
+My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,<br />
+No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,<br />
+I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,<br />
+I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,<br />
+But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,<br />
+My left hand hooking you round the waist,<br />
+My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public road."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
+effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
+and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
+the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
+before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
+views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
+disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
+disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
+things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
+His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
+in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
+bits and parts as from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
+of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a single second,<br />
+I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years,<br />
+Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house."</p>
+
+<p>In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
+as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.
+These are typical lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"A thousand perfect men and women appear,<br />
+Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings."<br />
+<br />
+"Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young,<br />
+The young are beautiful&mdash;but the old are more beautiful than the young."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same
+effect. Always wholes, total impressions,&mdash;always a view as of a "strong
+bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower,
+but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a
+city. The title of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might
+stand as the title of the book. When he gathers details and special
+features he masses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo
+carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always
+in the totals, the breadth, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> sweep of conception. The part that is
+local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality
+is the background across which it all flits.</p>
+
+<p>We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give
+us,&mdash;studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects,
+rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we
+inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He
+tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and
+processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the
+orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon
+he sees a spirit kindred to his own.</p>
+
+<p>He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and
+what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and
+equilibrium.</p>
+
+<p>"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either,<br />
+They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.<br />
+They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,<br />
+Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth&mdash;I utter and utter!"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"The earth does not argue,<br />
+Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,<br />
+Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,<br />
+Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,<br />
+Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.<br />
+Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He says the best of life</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Is not what you anticipated&mdash;it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"</p>
+
+<p>and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth,<br />
+No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless it compares with the amplitude of the earth,<br />
+Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the earth."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
+these and kindred passages:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,<br />
+His insight and power encircle things and the human race.<br />
+The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,<br />
+The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has the day been, likewise the spot,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">
+of the birth of the maker of poems, the Answerer,</span><br />
+(Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day, for all its names.)<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,<br />
+The words of true poems do not merely please,<br />
+The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty;<br />
+The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers,<br />
+The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.<br />
+<br />
+"Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness,<br />
+Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,<br />
+The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.<br />
+The words of the true poems give you more than poems;<br />
+They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">
+and everything else.</span><br />
+They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;<br />
+They do not seek beauty, they are sought,<br />
+Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.<br />
+They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,<br />
+They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,<br />
+Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,<br />
+To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"Of these States the poet is the equable man,<br />
+Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns,<br />
+Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,<br />
+He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less,<br />
+He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,<br />
+He is the equalizer of his age and land,<br />
+He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,<br />
+In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government,</span><br />
+In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as the engineer's, he can make every<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">
+word he speaks draw blood,</span><br />
+The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,<br />
+He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),<br />
+He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a helpless thing,<br />
+As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,<br />
+His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,<br />
+In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,<br />
+He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as dreams or dots.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass away,<br />
+The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,<br />
+Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's
+idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the
+beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in
+these lines of Tennyson:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."</p>
+
+<p>"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's
+pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's ideal poet is the most composite man, rich in temperament, rank
+in the human attributes, embracing races and eras in himself. All men see
+themselves in him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The mechanic takes him for a mechanic,<br />
+And the soldier supposes him to be a soldier, and the sailor that he has followed the sea,<br />
+And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,<br />
+And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,<br />
+No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has followed it,<br />
+No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>"The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,<br />
+The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him, he strangely<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">transmutes them,</span><br />
+They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so grown."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Let us hold the poet to his own ideals, and not condemn him because he has
+not aimed at something foreign to himself.</p>
+
+<p>The questions which Whitman puts to him who would be an American poet may
+fairly be put to himself.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">amativeness, heroic angers, teach?</span><br />
+Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?<br />
+Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions? are you very strong?<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">are you really of the whole people?</span><br />
+Are you not of some coterie? some school, or mere religion?<br />
+Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to life itself?<br />
+Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?<br />
+Have you, too, the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+What is this you bring my America?<br />
+Is it uniform with my country?<br />
+Is it not something that has been better done or told before?<br />
+Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?<br />
+Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?&mdash;is the good old cause in it?<br />
+Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, literats of enemies' lands?<br />
+Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?<br />
+Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?<br />
+Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?<br />
+Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face?<br />
+Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere amanuenses?</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>So far as Whitman's poetry falls within any of the old divisions it is
+lyrical,&mdash;a personal and individual utterance. Open the book anywhere and
+you are face to face with a man. His eye is fixed upon you. It is a man's
+voice you hear, and it is directed to <i>you</i>. He is not elaborating a
+theme: he is suggesting a relation or hinting a meaning. He is not
+chiseling, or carving a work of art: he is roughly outlining a man; he is
+planting a seed, or tilling a field.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXV</h4>
+
+<p>I believe it was the lamented Professor Clifford who first used the term
+"cosmic emotion" in connection with "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's
+atmosphere is so distinctly outside of and above that which ministers to
+our social and domestic wants,&mdash;the confined and perfumed air of an indoor
+life; his mood and temper are so habitually begotten by the contemplation
+of the orbs and the laws and processes of universal nature, that the
+phrase often comes to mind in considering him. He is not in any sense,
+except perhaps in a few minor pieces, a domestic and fireside poet,&mdash;a
+solace to our social instincts and cultivated ideals. He is too large, too
+aboriginal, too elemental, too strong for that. I seem to understand and
+appreciate him best when I keep in mind the earth as a whole, and its
+relation to the system. Any large view or thought, or survey of life or
+mankind, is a preparation for him. He demands the outdoor temper and
+habit,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> he demands a sense of space and power, he demands above all things
+a feeling for reality. "Vastness" is a word that applies to him; abysmal
+man, cosmic consciousness, the standards of the natural universal,&mdash;all
+hint some phase of his genius. His survey of life and duty is from a point
+not included in any four walls, or in any school or convention. It is a
+survey from out the depths of being; the breath of worlds and systems is
+in these utterances. His treatment of sex, of comradeship, of death, of
+democracy, of religion, of art, of immortality, is in the spirit of the
+great out-of-doors of the universe; the point of view is cosmic rather
+than personal or philanthropic. What charity is this!&mdash;the charity of
+sunlight that spares nothing and turns away from nothing. What "heroic
+nudity"! like the nakedness of rocks and winter trees. What sexuality!
+like the lust of spring or the push of tides. What welcome to death, as
+only the night which proves the day!</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXVI</h4>
+
+<p>This orbic nature which so thrills and fills Whitman is not at all akin to
+that which we get in the so-called nature-poets of Wordsworth and his
+school,&mdash;the charm of privacy, of the sequestered, the cosy,&mdash;qualities
+that belong to the art of a domestic, home-loving race, and to lovers of
+solitude. Tennyson's poetry abounds in these qualities; so does
+Wordsworth's. There is less of them in Browning, and more of them in the
+younger poets. That communing with nature, those dear friendships with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+birds and flowers, that gentle wooing of the wild and sylvan, that flavor
+of the rural, the bucolic,&mdash;all these are important features in the
+current popular poetry, but they are not to any marked extent
+characteristic of Whitman. The sentiment of domesticity, love as a
+sentiment; the attraction of children, home and fireside; the attraction
+of books, art, travel; our pleasure in the choice, the refined, the
+artificial,&mdash;these are not the things you are to demand of Whitman. You do
+not demand them of Homer or Dante or the Biblical writers. We are to
+demand of him the major things, primary things; the lift of great
+emotions; the cosmic, the universal; the joy of health, of selfhood; the
+stimulus of the real, the modern, the American; always the large, the
+virile; always perfect acceptance and triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's free use of the speech of the common people is doubtless
+offensive to a fastidious literary taste. Such phrases as "I will be even
+with you," "what would it amount to," "give in," "not one jot less;"
+"young fellows," "old fellows," "stuck up," "every bit as much," "week in
+and week out," and a thousand others, would jar on the page of any other
+poet more than on his.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XXVII</h4>
+
+<p>William Rossetti says his language has a certain ultimate quality. Another
+critic speaks of his absolute use of language. Colonel Ingersoll credits
+him with more supreme words than have been uttered by any other man of our
+time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The power to use words was in Whitman's eyes a divine power, and was
+bought with a price:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship, procreation, prudence, and nakedness,<br />
+After treading ground, and breasting river and lake,<br />
+After a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races, after knowledge, freedom, crimes,<br />
+After complete faith, after clarifying elevations and removing obstructions,<br />
+After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman, the divine power to speak words."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman's sense of composition and his rare artistic faculty of using
+language are seen, as John Addington Symonds says, in the "countless clear
+and perfect phrases" "which are hung, like golden medals of consummate
+workmanship and incised form, in rich clusters over every poem he
+produced. And, what he aimed at above all, these phrases are redolent of
+the very spirit of the emotions they suggest, communicate the breadth and
+largeness of the natural things they indicate, embody the essence of
+realities in living words which palpitate and burn forever."</p>
+
+<p>The great poet is always more or less the original, the abysmal man. He is
+face to face with universal laws and conditions. He speaks out of a
+greater exaltation of sentiment than the prose-writer. He takes liberties;
+he speaks for all men; he is a bird on "pinions free."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+<h4>XXVIII</h4>
+
+<p>In saying or implying that Whitman's aim was not primarily literary or
+artistic, I am liable to be misunderstood; and when Whitman himself says,
+"No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
+performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward
+art or &aelig;stheticism," he exposes himself to the same misconception. It is
+the literary and poetic value of his verses alone that can save them.
+Their philosophy, their democracy, their vehement patriotism, their
+religious ardor, their spirit of comradeship, or what not, will not alone
+suffice. All depends upon the manner in which these things are presented
+to us. Do we get the reality, or words about the reality? No matter what
+the content of the verse, unless into the whole is breathed the breath of
+the true creative artist they will surely perish. Oblivion awaits every
+utterance not touched with the life of the spirit. Whitman was as
+essentially an artist as was Shakespeare or Dante; his work shows the same
+fusion of imagination, will, emotion, personality; it carries the same
+quality of real things,&mdash;not the same shaping, constructive power, but the
+same quickening, stimulating power, the same magic use of words. The
+artist in him is less conscious of itself, is less differentiated from the
+man, than in the other poets. He objected to having his work estimated for
+its literary value alone, but in so doing he used the word in a narrow
+sense.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>After all these ages of the assiduous cultivation of literature, there has
+grown up in men a kind of lust of the mere art of writing, just as, after
+so many generations of religious training, there has grown up a passion
+for religious forms and observances. "Mere literature" has come to be a
+current phrase in criticism, meaning, I suppose, that the production to
+which it is applied is notable only for good craftsmanship. In the same
+spirit one speaks of mere scholarship, or of a certain type of man as a
+mere gentleman. It was mere literature that Whitman was afraid of, the
+&aelig;sthetic disease, the passion for letters, for poetry, divorced from love
+of life and of things. None knew better than he that the ultimate value of
+any imaginative and emotional work, even of the Bible, is its literary
+value. Its spiritual and religious value is inseparably connected with its
+literary value.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass" is not bookish; it is always the voice of a man, and not
+of a scholar or conventional poet, that addresses us. We all imbue words
+more or less with meanings of our own; but, from the point of view I am
+now essaying, literature is the largest fact, and embraces all inspired
+utterances. The hymn-book seeks to embody or awaken religious emotion
+alone; would its religious value be less if its poetic value were more? I
+think not. The best of the Psalms of David, from the religious point of
+view, are the best from the literary point of view. What reaches and
+thrills the soul,&mdash;that is great art. What arouses the passions&mdash;mirth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+anger, indignation, pity&mdash;may or may not be true art. No one, for
+instance, can read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" without tears, laughter, anger; but
+no one, I fancy, could ever get from it that deep, tranquil pleasure and
+edification that the great imaginative works impart. Keble's poetry is
+more obviously religious than Wordsworth's or Arnold's, but how
+short-lived, because it is not embalmed in the true artistic spirit! In
+all the great poems, there is something as deep and calm as the light and
+the sky, and as common and universal. I find this something in Whitman. In
+saying, therefore, that his aim was ulterior to that of art, that he was
+not begotten by the literary spirit, I only mean that his aim was that of
+the largest art, and of the most vital and comprehensive literature. We
+should have heard the last of his "Leaves" long ago had they not possessed
+unmistakably the vitality of true literature, "incomparable things,
+incomparably well said," as Emerson remarked.</p>
+
+<p>A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary
+merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its
+literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words
+"literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital
+and imaginative use of language which is the characteristic of all true
+literature. The most effective way of saying a thing in the region of the
+sentiments and emotions,&mdash;that is the true literary way.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_LIFE" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_LIFE"></a>HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">I have</span> divided my subject into many chapters, and given to each a separate
+heading, yet I am aware that they are all but slight variations of a
+single theme,&mdash;viz., Whitman's reliance upon absolute nature. That there
+might be no mistake about it, and that his reader might at once be put in
+possession of his point of view, the poet declared at the outset of his
+career that at every hazard he should let nature speak.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Creeds and schools in abeyance<br />
+Retiring back awhile, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,<br />
+I harbor for good or bad,<br />
+I permit to speak at every hazard,<br />
+Nature without check, with original energy."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The hazard of letting nature speak will, of course, be great,&mdash;the hazard
+of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and
+inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely
+passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his
+criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former
+contingency&mdash;the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser
+public&mdash;has been astounding. He has been read in a narrow, literal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+bourgeois spirit. The personal pronoun, which he uses so freely, has been
+taken to stand for the private individual Walt Whitman, so that he has
+been looked upon as a compound of egotism and licentiousness. His
+character has been traduced, and his purpose in the "Leaves" entirely
+misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p>We see at a glance that his attitude towards nature, towards God, towards
+the body and the soul, reverses many of the old ascetic theological
+conceptions.</p>
+
+<p>All is good, all is as it should be; to abase the body is to abase the
+soul. Man is divine inside and out, and is no more divine about the head
+than about the loins. It is from this point of view that he has launched
+his work. He believed the time had come for an utterance out of radical,
+uncompromising human nature; let conventions and refinements stand back,
+let nature, let the soul, let the elemental forces speak; let the body,
+the passions, sex, be exalted; the stone rejected by the builders shall be
+the chief stone in the corner. Evil shall be shown to be a part of the
+good, and death shall be welcomed as joyously as life.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman says his poems will do just as much evil as good, and perhaps
+more. To many readers this confession of itself would be his condemnation.
+To others it would be an evidence of his candor and breadth of view. I
+suppose all great vital forces, whether embodied in a man or in a book,
+work evil as well as good. If they do not, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> only tickle the surface
+of things. Has not the Bible worked evil also? Some think more evil than
+good. The dews and the rains and the sunshine work evil.</p>
+
+<p>From Whitman's point of view, there is no good without evil; evil is an
+unripe kind of good. There is no light without darkness, no life without
+death, no growth without pain and struggle. Beware the emasculated good,
+the good by exclusion rather than by victory. "Leaves of Grass" will work
+evil on evil minds,&mdash;on narrow, unbalanced minds. It is not a guide, but
+an inspiration; not a remedy, but health and strength. Art does not preach
+directly, but indirectly; it is moral by its spirit, and the mood and
+temper it begets.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman, in celebrating manly pride, self-reliance, the deliciousness of
+sex; in glorifying the body, the natural passions and appetites, nativity;
+in identifying himself with criminals and low or lewd persons; in frankly
+imputing to himself all sins men are guilty of, runs the risk, of course,
+of being read in a spirit less generous and redemptive than his own.</p>
+
+<p>The charity of the poet may stimulate the license of the libertine; the
+optimism of the seer may confirm the evil-doer; the equality of the
+democrat may foster the insolence of the rowdy. This is our lookout and
+not the poet's. We take the same chances with him that we do with nature;
+we are to trim our sails to the breeze he brings; we are to sow wheat and
+not tares for his rains to water.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>Whitman's glorification of the body has led some critics to say that he is
+the poet of the body only. But it is just as true to say he is the poet of
+the soul only. He always seeks the spiritual through the material. He
+treats the body and the soul as one, and he treats all things as having
+reference to the soul.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"I will not make a poem, nor the least part, of a poem, but has reference to the soul,<br />
+Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one, nor any particle of one,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">but has reference to the soul."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The curious physiological strain which runs through the poems is to be
+considered in the light of this idea. He exalts the body because in doing
+so he exalts the soul.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results."</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The reader of Whitman must do his or her own moralizing; the poet is here
+not to deprecate or criticise, but to love and celebrate; he has no
+partialities; our notions of morality do not concern him; he exploits the
+average man just as he finds him; he <i>is</i> the average man for the time
+being and confesses to all his sins and shortcomings, and we will make of
+the result good or evil, according to our mental horizon. That his work is
+unmixed good is the last thing the poet would claim for it. He has not,
+after the easy fashion of the moralist, set the good here and the bad
+there; he has blended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> them as they are in nature and in life; our profit
+and discipline begin when we have found out whither he finally tends, or
+when we have mastered him and extracted the good he holds. If we expect he
+is going to preach an austere system of morality to us, or any system of
+morality, we are doomed to disappointment. Does Nature preach such a
+system? does Nature preach at all? neither will he. He presents you the
+elements of good and evil in himself in vital fusion and play; your part
+is to see how the totals are at last good.</p>
+
+<p>It is objected that Whitman is too persistent in declaring himself an
+animal, when the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he is an
+animal and the thing he is least likely to remember is that he is a spirit
+and a child of God. But Whitman insists with the same determination that
+he is a spirit and an heir of immortality,&mdash;not as one who has cheated the
+devil of his due, but as one who shares the privileges and felicities of
+all, and who finds the divine in the human. Indeed it is here that he
+sounds his most joyous and triumphant note. No such faith in spiritual
+results, no such conviction of the truth of immortality, no such
+determined recognition of the unseen world as the final reality is to be
+found in modern poetry.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, Whitman aimed to put his whole nature in a poem&mdash;the
+physical or physiological, the spiritual, the &aelig;sthetic and
+intellectual,&mdash;without giving any undue prominence to either. If he has
+not done so, if he has made the animal and sexual too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> pronounced, more so
+than nature will justify in the best proportioned man, then and then only
+is his artistic scheme vitiated and his work truly immoral.</p>
+
+<p>It may be true that the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he
+is an animal; what he is most likely to forget, is that the animal is just
+as sacred and important as any other part; indeed that it is the basis of
+all, and that a sane and healthful and powerful spirituality and
+intellectuality can only flow out of a sane and healthful animality.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,<br />
+And you must not be abased to the other."</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Furthermore, Whitman's main problem is to project into literature the new
+democratic man as he conceives him,&mdash;the man of the future, intensely
+American, but in the broadest sense human and cosmopolitan; he is to
+project him on a scale large enough for all uses and conditions, ignoring
+the feudal and aristocratic types which have for the most part dominated
+literature, and matching them with a type more copious in friendship,
+charity, sympathy, religion, candor, and of equal egoism and power.</p>
+
+<p>It is to exploit and enforce and illustrate this type or character that
+"Leaves of Grass" is written. The poems are the drama of this new
+democratic man. This type Whitman finds in himself. He does not have to
+create it as Shakespeare did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> Hamlet or Lear; he has only to discover it
+in himself. He is it and he gives it free utterance. His work is,
+therefore, as he says, the poem of himself,&mdash;himself written
+large,&mdash;written as upon the face of the continent, written in the types
+and events he finds on all sides. He sees himself in all men, the bad as
+well as the good, and he sees all men in himself. All the stupendous
+claims he makes for himself he makes for others. His egotism is vicarious
+and embraces the world. It is not the private individual Walt Whitman that
+makes these stupendous claims for himself; it is Walt Whitman as the
+spokesman of the genius of American democracy. He is not to discuss a
+question. He is to outline a character, he is to incarnate a principle.
+The essayist or philosopher may discuss the value of any given idea,&mdash;may
+talk about it; the creative artist alone can give us the thing itself, the
+concrete flesh-and-blood reality. Whitman is not only to make this survey,
+to launch this criticism; he is to embody it in a living human
+personality, and enable us to see the world of man and morals through its
+eyes. What with the scientist, the philosopher, is thought, must be
+emotion and passion with him.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman promises that we shall share with him "two greatnesses, and a
+third one rising inclusive and more resplendent,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The greatness of Love and Democracy and the greatness of Religion"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>not merely as ideas, but as living impulses. He is to show the spirit of
+absolute, impartial nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> incarnated in a human being, imbued with
+love, democracy, and religion, moving amid the scenes and events of the
+New World, sounding all the joys and abandonments of life, and re-reading
+the oracles from the American point of view. And the utterance launched
+forth is to be imbued with poetic passion.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman always aims at a complete human synthesis, and leaves his reader
+to make of it what he can. It is not for the poet to qualify and explain.
+He seeks to reproduce his whole nature in a book,&mdash;reproduce it with all
+its contradictions and carnalities, the good and the bad, the coarse and
+the fine, the body and the soul,&mdash;to give free swing to himself, trusting
+to natural checks and compensations to ensure a good result at last, but
+not at all disturbed if you find parts of it bad as in creation itself.</p>
+
+<p>His method being that of the poet, and not that of the moralist or
+preacher, how shall he sort and sift, culling this virtue and that, giving
+parts and fragments instead of the entire man? He must give all, not
+abstractly, but concretely, synthetically.</p>
+
+<p>To a common prostitute Whitman says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you;<br />
+Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">glisten and rustle for you."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>We are housed in social usages and laws, we are sheltered and warmed and
+comforted by conventions and institutions and numberless traditions;
+their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> value no one disputes. But for purposes of his own Whitman ignores
+them all; he lets in upon us the free and maybe raw air of the great
+out-of-doors of absolute nature; his standards are not found inside of any
+four walls; he contemplates life, and would quicken it in its
+fundamentals; his survey is from a plane whence our arts and refinements
+and petty distinctions disappear. He sees the evil of the world no less
+necessary than the good; he sees death as a part of life itself; he sees
+the body and the soul as one; he sees the spiritual always issuing from
+the material; he sees not one result at last lamentable in the universe.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Unless, as I have already said, we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself,
+we can make little of him; unless we place ourselves at his absolute point
+of view, his work is an offense and without meaning. The only question is,
+Has he a law, has he a steady and rational point of view, is his work a
+consistent and well-organized whole? Ask yourself, What is the point of
+view of absolute, uncompromising science? It is that creation is all good
+and sound; things are as they should be or must be; there are no
+conceivable failures; there is no evil in the final analysis, or, if there
+is, it is necessary, and plays its part also; there is no more beginning
+nor ending than there is now, no more heaven or hell than we find or make
+here:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and rectified?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>It has been urged that Whitman violates his own canon of the excellence of
+nature. But what he violates is more a secondary or acquired nature. He
+violates our social conventions and instincts, he exposes what we cover
+up; but the spirit of his undertaking demanded this of him. Remember that
+at all hazards he is to let nature&mdash;absolute nature&mdash;speak; that he is to
+be the poet of the body as well as of the soul, and that no part of the
+body of a man or woman, "hearty and clean," is vile, and that "none shall
+be less familiar than the rest."</p>
+
+<p>His glory is, that he never flinched or hesitated in following his
+principle to its logical conclusions,&mdash;"my commission obeying, to question
+it never daring."</p>
+
+<p>It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones for the sins of us all,&mdash;the sins
+of perverting, denying, abusing the most sacred and important organs and
+functions of our bodies.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>In Whitman we find the most complete identification of the man with the
+subject. He always is, or becomes, the thing he portrays. Not merely does
+he portray America,&mdash;he speaks out of the American spirit, the spirit that
+has broken irrevocably with the past and turns joyously to the future; he
+does not praise equality, he illustrates it; he puts himself down beside
+the lowest and most despised person, and calls him brother.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>"You felons on trial in courts,<br />
+You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and handcuff'd with iron,<br />
+Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?<br />
+Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with iron, or my ankles with iron?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>He does not give a little charity, he gives himself as freely as the
+clouds give rain, or the sun gives light; he does not write a treatise on
+democracy, he applies the democratic spirit to everything in heaven and on
+earth, and redistributes the prizes from its points of view; he does not,
+except very briefly, sing the praises of science, but he launches his
+poems always from the scientific view of the world, in contradistinction
+to the old theological and mythical point of view. It is always the
+example, it is always the thing itself, he gives us. Few precepts, no
+sermon, no reproof. Does he praise candor? No, he is candor; he confesses
+to everything; he shows us the inmost working of his mind. We know him
+better than we know our nearest friends. Does he exalt the pride of man in
+himself, or egoism? Again he illustrates it: he is egoism; he makes the
+whole universe revolve around himself; he never for a moment goes out of
+himself; he does not seek a theme; he is the theme. His egocentric method
+of treatment is what characterizes him as an artist. He elaborates no
+theme, he builds nothing, he carves nothing, but makes himself a source
+and centre of pulsing, vital energy. Wave after wave radiates from him.
+What we see and get always is Walt Whitman. Our attention is never fixed
+upon the writer, but always upon the man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>Of course this method of Whitman of becoming one with his subject, and
+speaking out of it, is always the method of the creative artist. It is
+this that distinguishes the artist from the mere thinker or prose-writer.
+The latter tells us about a thing; the former gives us the thing, or the
+spirit of the thing itself.</p>
+
+<p>If Whitman had put his criticism of our time and civilization in an
+argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As
+an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and
+tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we
+tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a
+personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a
+theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons and a challenge,
+and will not be easily put aside.</p>
+
+<p>The great philosophical poets, like Lucretius, try to solve the riddles.
+Whitman's aim is only to thrust the riddles before you, to give you a new
+sense of them, and start the game afresh. He knows what a complex,
+contradictory thing the universe is, and that the most any poet can do is
+to break the old firmament up into new forms. To put his arms around it?
+No. Put your arms around your fellow-man, and then you have encompassed it
+as nearly as mortal can do.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's attraction toward the common people was real. There is one thing
+that makes every-day humanity, the great, toiling, unlettered masses,
+forever welcome to men who unite great imagination with broad
+sympathies,&mdash;they give a sense of reality; they refresh, as nature always
+refreshes. There is a tang and a sting to the native, the spontaneous,
+that the cultivated rarely has. The farmer, the mechanic, the sailor, the
+soldier, savor of the primal and the hardy. In painting his own portrait,
+Whitman makes prominent the coarser, unrefined traits, because here the
+colors are fast,&mdash;here is the basis of all. The careful student of Whitman
+will surely come to see how all the elements of his picture&mdash;his pride,
+his candor, his democracy, his sensuality, his coarseness,&mdash;finally fit
+together, and correct and offset each other and make a perfect unity.</p>
+
+<p>No poet is so easily caricatured and turned into ridicule as Whitman. He
+is deficient in humor, and hence, like the Biblical writers, is sometimes
+on the verge of the grotesque without knowing it. The sense of the
+ridiculous has been enormously stimulated and developed in the modern
+mind, and&mdash;what is to be regretted&mdash;it has been mostly at the expense of
+the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this
+country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push
+and topple it over. The fear which all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> Americans have before their eyes,
+and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of
+appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked
+individuality of manners or dress, lest we expose ourselves to the shafts
+of ridicule. Emerson said he had heard with admiring submission the remark
+of a lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gave
+a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow;
+and what ranks before religion with us as a people is being in the mode,
+and writing our verse and cutting our coats in the approved style. Pride
+of the eye, a keen sense of the proprieties and the conventionalities, and
+a morbid feeling for the ridiculous, would have been death to Whitman's
+undertaking. He would have faltered, or betrayed self-consciousness. He
+certainly never could have spoken with that elemental aplomb and
+indifference which is so marked a feature of his work. Any hesitation, any
+knuckling, would have been his ruin. We should have seen he was not
+entirely serious, and should have laughed at him. We laugh now only for a
+moment; the spell of his earnestness and power is soon upon us.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>Thoreau considered Whitman's "Leaves" worth all the sermons in the country
+for preaching; and yet few poets have assumed so little the function of
+the preacher. His great cure-all is love; he gives himself instead of a
+sermon. His faith in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> the remedial power of affection, comradeship, is
+truly Christ-like. Lover of sinners is also his designation. The reproof
+is always indirect or implied. He brings to bear character rather than
+precept. He helps you as health, as nature, as fresh air, pure water help.
+He says to you:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The mockeries are not you;<br />
+Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;<br />
+I pursue you where none else has pursued you:<br />
+Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine,&mdash;if these conceal you from others,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me.</span><br />
+The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion,&mdash;if these balk others, they do not balk me.<br />
+The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death,&mdash;all these I part aside.<br />
+I track through your windings and turnings,&mdash;I come upon you where you thought eye should never come upon you."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Whitman said, in the now famous preface of 1855, that "the greatest poet
+does not moralize, or make applications of morals,&mdash;he knows the soul."
+There is no preaching or reproof in the "Leaves."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;<br />
+I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;<br />
+I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;<br />
+I see the wife misused by her husband; I see the treacherous seducer of the young woman;<br />
+I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid,&mdash;I see these sights on the earth,<br />
+I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and prisoners,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>I observe a famine at sea,&mdash;I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest,<br />
+I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">and the like;</span><br />
+All these&mdash;all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,<br />
+See, hear, and am silent."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Only once does he shame and rebuke the offender; then he holds up to him
+"a hand-mirror."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (who is it? is it you?)<br />
+Outside fair costume,&mdash;within, ashes and filth.<br />
+No more a flashing eye,&mdash;no more a sonorous voice or springy step,<br />
+Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,<br />
+A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,<br />
+Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,<br />
+Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,<br />
+Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,<br />
+Words babble, hearing and touch callous,<br />
+No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;<br />
+Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,<br />
+Such a result so soon&mdash;and from such a beginning!"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The poet's way is so different from the moralist's way! The poet confesses
+all, loves all,&mdash;has no preferences. He is moral only in his results. We
+ask ourselves, Does he breathe the air of health? Can he stand the test of
+nature? Is he tonic and inspiring? That he shocks us is nothing. The first
+touch of the sea is a shock. Does he toughen us, does he help make
+arterial blood?</p>
+
+<p>All that men do and are guilty of attracts him. Their vices and
+excesses,&mdash;he would make these his own also. He is jealous lest he be
+thought better than other men,&mdash;lest he seem to stand apart from even
+criminals and offenders. When the passion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> for human brotherhood is upon
+him, he is balked by nothing; he goes down into the social mire to find
+his lovers and equals. In the pride of our morality and civic well-being,
+this phase of his work shocks us; but there are moods when the soul says
+it is good, and we rejoice in the strong man that can do it.</p>
+
+<p>The restrictions, denials, and safeguards put upon us by the social order,
+and the dictates of worldly prudence, fall only before a still more fervid
+humanism, or a still more vehement love.</p>
+
+<p>The vital question is, Where does he leave us? On firmer ground, or in the
+mire? Depleted and enervated, or full and joyous? In the gloom of
+pessimism, or in the sunlight of its opposite?&mdash;-</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"<i>So long!</i><br />
+I announce a man or woman coming&mdash;perhaps you are the one;<br />
+I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed.<br />
+<br />
+"<i>So long!</i><br />
+I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,<br />
+And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.<br />
+<br />
+"I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded;<br />
+I announce a race of splendid and savage old men."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>There is no contradiction here. The poet sounds all the experiences of
+life, and he gives out the true note at last.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"No specification is necessary,&mdash;all that a male or female does, that is vigorous, benevolent, clean,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">is so much profit to him or her, in the unshakable order of the universe, and through the</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">whole scope of it forever."</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Nothing but the most uncompromising religious purpose can justify certain
+things in the "Leaves;" nothing but the most buoyant and pervasive
+spirituality can justify its overwhelming materiality; nothing but the
+most creative imagination can offset its tremendous realism; nothing but
+the note of universal brotherhood can atone for its vehement Americanism;
+nothing but the primal spirit of poesy itself can make amends for this
+open flouting of the routine poetic, and this endless procession before us
+of the common and the familiar.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman loved the word "unrefined." It was one of the words he would have
+us apply to himself. He was unrefined, as the air, the soil, the water,
+and all sweet natural things are unrefined (fine but not <i>re</i>fined). He
+applies the word to himself two or three times in the course of his poems.
+He loved the words sun-tan, air-sweetness, brawn, etc. He speaks of his
+"savage song," not to call forth the bards of the past, he says, but to
+invoke the bards of the future.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage songs?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The thought that his poems might help contribute to the production of a
+"race of splendid and savage old men" was dear to him. He feared the
+depleting and emasculating effects of our culture and conventions. The
+decay of maternity and pater<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>nity in this country, the falling off of the
+native populations, were facts full of evil omen. His ideal of manly or
+womanly character is rich in all the purely human qualities and
+attributes; rich in sex, in sympathy, in temperament; physiologically
+sound and clean, as well as mentally and morally so.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Fear grace, fear delicatesse;<br />
+Fear the mellow-sweet, the sucking of honey-juice:<br />
+Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!<br />
+Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>He was himself the savage old man he invoked. It was no part of his plan
+to preach, in refined and euphonious terms, hygiene and the value of the
+natural man, but to project into literature the thing itself, to exploit a
+character coarse as well as fine, and to imbue his poems with a
+physiological quality as well as a psychological and intellectual.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I will scatter the new roughness and gladness among them."</p>
+
+<p>He says to the pale, impotent victim of over-refinement, with intentional rudeness,</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you."</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>One of the key-words to Whitman both as a man and a poet is the word
+"composite." He was probably the most composite man this century has
+produced, and in this respect at least is representative of the American
+of the future, who must be the result of the blending of more diverse
+racial elements than any man of history. He seems to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> had an
+intuition of his composite character when he said in his first poem:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I am large,&mdash;I contain multitudes."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," in reluctantly
+conceding at the time of the poet's death something to the British
+admiration of him, said he was "rich in temperament." The phrase is well
+chosen. An English expert on the subject of temperament, who visited
+Whitman some years ago, said he had all four temperaments, the sanguine,
+the nervous, the melancholic, and the lymphatic, while most persons have
+but two temperaments, and rarely three.</p>
+
+<p>It was probably the composite character of Whitman that caused him to
+attract such diverse and opposite types of men,&mdash;scholars and workingmen,
+lawyers, doctors, scientists, and men of the world,&mdash;and that made him
+personally such a puzzle to most people,&mdash;so impossible to classify. On
+the street the promenaders would turn and look after him, and I have often
+heard them ask each other, "What man was that?" He has often been taken
+for a doctor, and during his services in the army hospitals various myths
+were floating about concerning him. Now he was a benevolent Catholic
+priest,&mdash;then some unknown army general, or retired sea captain; at one
+time he was reputed to be one of the owners of the Cunard line of
+steamers. To be taken for a Californian was common. One recalls the
+composite character of the poet whom he outlines in his poems (see
+quotation, <a href="#Page_159">page 159</a>).</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>The book is as composite as the man. It is all things to all men; it lends
+itself to a multitude of interpretations. Every earnest reader of it will
+find some clew or suggestion by the aid of which he fancies he can unlock
+the whole book, but in the end he will be pretty sure to discover that one
+key is not enough. To one critic, his book is the "hoarse song of a man,"
+its manly and masculine element attracts him; to another he is the poet of
+joy, to another the poet of health, to still another he is the bard of
+personality; others read him as the poet of nature, or the poet of
+democracy. His French critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, calls him an apostle,&mdash;the
+apostle of the idea that man is an indivisible fragment of the universal
+Divinity.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>What has a poet of Whitman's aims to do with decency or indecency, with
+modesty or immodesty? These are social or conventional virtues; he
+represents mainly primary qualities and forces. Does life, does death,
+does nature, respect our proprieties, our conventional veils and
+illusions? Neither will he. He will strip them all away. He will act and
+speak as if all things in the universe were equally sacred and divine; as
+if all men were really his brothers, all women his sisters; as if all
+parts of the human body were equally beautiful and wonderful; as if
+fatherhood and motherhood, birth and begetting, were sacred acts. Of
+course it is easy to see that this course will speedily bring him in
+collision<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> with the guardians of taste and social morality. But what of
+that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I
+behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question
+is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or
+betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and
+thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than
+the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he assumes to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is easier than to convict Walt Whitman of what is called
+indecency; he laughs indifferent when you have done so. It is not your
+gods that he serves. He says he would be as indifferent of observation as
+the trees or rocks. And it is here that we must look for his
+justification, upon ethical rather than upon the grounds of conventional
+art. He has taken our sins upon himself. He has applied to the morbid
+sex-consciousness, that has eaten so deeply into our social system, the
+heroic treatment; he has fairly turned it naked into the street. He has
+not merely in words denied the inherent vileness of sex; he has denied it
+in very deed. We should not have taken offense had he confined himself to
+words,&mdash;had he said sex is pure, the body is as clean about the loins as
+about the head; but being an artist, a creator, and not a mere thinker or
+preacher, he was compelled to act,&mdash;to do the thing instead of saying it.</p>
+
+<p>The same in other matters. Being an artist, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> could not merely say all
+men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and
+sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must
+make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of
+the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the
+concrete and not with the abstract,&mdash;fraternity and equality as a reality,
+not as a sentiment.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>In the phase in which we are now considering him, Whitman appears as the
+Adamic man re-born here in the nineteenth century, or with science and the
+modern added, and fully and fearlessly embodying himself in a poem. It is
+stronger than we can stand, but it is good for us, and one of these days,
+or one of these centuries, we shall be able to stand it and enjoy it.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"To the garden the world anew ascending,<br />
+Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,<br />
+The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,<br />
+Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber,<br />
+The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, having brought me again,<br />
+Amorous, mature&mdash;all beautiful to me&mdash;all wondrous,<br />
+My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons most wondrous;<br />
+Existing, I peer and penetrate still,<br />
+Content with the present&mdash;content with the past,<br />
+By my side, or back of me, Eve following,<br />
+Or in front, and I following her just the same."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The critics perpetually misread Whitman because they fail to see this
+essentially composite and dra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>matic character of his work,&mdash;that it is not
+the song of Walt Whitman the private individual, but of Walt Whitman as
+representative of, and speaking for, all types and conditions of men; in
+fact, that it is the drama of a new democratic personality, a character
+outlined on a larger, more copious, more vehement scale than has yet
+appeared in the world. The germs of this character he would sow broadcast
+over the land.</p>
+
+<p>In this drama of personality the poet always identifies himself with the
+scene, incident, experience, or person he delineates, or for whom he
+speaks. He says to the New Englander, or to the man of the South and the
+West, "I depict you as myself." In the same way he depicts offenders,
+roughs, criminals, and low and despised persons as himself; he lays claim
+to every sin of omission and commission men are guilty of, because, he
+says, "the germs are in all men." Men dare not tell their faults. He will
+make them all his own, and then tell them; there shall be full confession
+for once.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;<br />
+If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">and outlaw'd deeds?"</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It will not do to read this poet, or any great poet, in a narrow and
+exacting spirit. As Whitman himself says: "The messages of great poems to
+each man and woman are: Come to us on equal terms, only then can you
+understand us."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>In the much misunderstood group of poems called "Children of Adam" the
+poet speaks for the male generative principle, and all the excesses and
+abuses that grow out of it he unblushingly imputes to himself. What men
+have done and still do, while under the intoxication of the sexual
+passion, he does, he makes it all his own experience.</p>
+
+<p>That we have here a revelation of his own personal taste and experiences
+may or may not be the case, but we have no more right to assume it than we
+have to assume that all other poets speak from experience when they use
+the first person singular. When John Brown mounted the scaffold in
+Virginia, in 1860, the poet says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,<br />
+I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">you mounted the scaffold,"&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>very near him he stood in spirit; very near him he stood in the person of
+others, but not in his own proper person.</p>
+
+<p>If we take this poet literally, we shall believe he has been in California
+and Oregon; that he has set foot in every city on the continent; that he
+grew up in Virginia; that every Southern State has been by turns his home;
+that he has been a soldier, a sailor, a miner; that he has lived in
+Dakota's woods, his "diet meat, his drink from the spring;" that he has
+lived on the plains with hunters and ranchmen, etc. He lays claim to all
+these characters, all these experiences, because what others do, what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+others assume, or suffer, or enjoy, that he appropriates to himself.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,<br />
+Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,<br />
+I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of my skin,<br />
+I fall on the weeds and stones,<br />
+The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,<br />
+Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whipstocks.<br />
+<br />
+"Agonies are one of my changes of garments,<br />
+I do not ask the wounded person how he feels&mdash;I myself become the wounded person,<br />
+My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.<br />
+<br />
+"I become any presence or truth of humanity here,<br />
+See myself in prison shaped like another man,<br />
+And feel the dull unintermitted pain.<br />
+<br />
+"For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,<br />
+It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.<br />
+Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him and walk by his side."</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>It is charged against Whitman that he does not celebrate love at all, and
+very justly. He had no purpose to celebrate the sentiment of love.
+Literature is vastly overloaded with this element already. He celebrates
+fatherhood and motherhood, and the need of well-begotten, physiologically
+well-begotten, offspring. Of that veiled prurient suggestion which readers
+so delight in&mdash;of "bosoms mutinously fair," and "the soul-lingering loops
+of perfumed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> hair," as one of our latest poets puts it&mdash;there is no hint
+in his volume. He would have fallen from grace the moment he had attempted
+such a thing. Any trifling or dalliance on his part would have been his
+ruin. Love as a sentiment has fairly run riot in literature. From
+Whitman's point of view, it would have been positively immoral for him
+either to have vied with the lascivious poets in painting it as the
+forbidden, or with the sentimental poets in depicting it as a charm. Woman
+with him is always the mate and equal of the man, never his plaything.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman is seldom or never the poet of a sentiment, at least of the
+domestic and social sentiments. His is more the voice of the eternal,
+abysmal man.</p>
+
+<p>The home, the fireside, the domestic allurements, are not in him; love, as
+we find it in other poets, is not in him; the idyllic, except in touches
+here and there, is not in him; the choice, the finished, the perfumed, the
+romantic, the charm of art and the delight of form, are not to be looked
+for in his pages. The cosmic takes the place of the idyllic; the begetter,
+the Adamic man, takes the place of the lover; patriotism takes the place
+of family affection; charity takes the place of piety; love of kind is
+more than love of neighbor; the poet and the artist are swallowed up in
+the seer and the prophet.</p>
+
+<p>The poet evidently aimed to put in his sex poems a rank and healthful
+animality, and to make them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> as frank as the shedding of pollen by the
+trees, strong even to the point of offense. He could not make it pleasing,
+a sweet morsel to be rolled under the tongue; that would have been levity
+and sin, as in Byron and the other poets. It must be direct and rank,
+healthfully so. The courage that did it, and showed no wavering or
+self-consciousness, was more than human. Man is a begetter. How shall a
+poet in our day and land treat this fact? With levity and by throwing over
+it the lure of the forbidden, the attraction of the erotic? That is one
+way, the way of nearly all the poets of the past. But that is not
+Whitman's way. He would sooner be bestial than Byronic, he would sooner
+shock by his frankness than inflame by his suggestion. And this in the
+interest of health and longevity, not in the interest of a prurient and
+effeminate "art." In these poems Whitman for a moment emphasizes sex, the
+need of sex, and the power of sex. "All were lacking if sex were lacking."
+He says to men and women, Here is where you live after all, here is the
+seat of empire. You are at the top of your condition when you are fullest
+and sanest there. Fearful consequences follow any corrupting or abusing or
+perverting of sex. The poet stands in the garden of the world naked and
+not ashamed. It is a great comfort that he could do it in this age of
+hectic lust and Swinburnian impotence,&mdash;that he could do it and not be
+ridiculous. To have done it without offense would have been proof that he
+had failed utterly. Let us be shocked; it is a wholesome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> shock, like the
+douse of the sea, or the buffet of the wind. We shall be all the better
+for it by and by.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>The lover of Whitman comes inevitably to associate him with character and
+personal qualities. I sometimes meet women whom I say are of the Whitman
+type&mdash;the kind of woman he invoked and predicted. They bear children, and
+are not ashamed; motherhood is their pride and their joy: they are
+cheerful, tolerant, friendly, think no evil, meet high and low on equal
+terms; they walk, row, climb mountains; they reach forth into the actual
+world of questions and events, open-minded, sympathetic, frank, natural,
+good-natured; the mates and companions of their husbands, keeping pace
+with them in all matters; home-makers, but larger than home, considerate,
+forgiving, unceremonious,&mdash;in short, the large, fresh, wholesome open-air
+natures whose ideal so completely possessed Walt Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>A British critic wisely says the gift of Whitman to us is the gift of life
+rather than of literature, but it is the gift of life through literature.
+Indeed, Whitman means a life as much as Christianity means a life. He
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Writing and talk do not prove me."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing but the test of reality finally proves him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The proof of the poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country has absorbed him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>The proof of Whitman shall be deferred till he has borne fruit in actual,
+concrete life.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that merely intellectual and artistic tests did not settle matters
+in his case, or that we would not reach his final value by making a
+dead-set at him through the purely &aelig;sthetic faculties. Is he animating to
+life itself? Can we absorb and assimilate him? Does he nourish the manly
+and heroic virtues? Does he make us more religious, more tolerant, more
+charitable, more candid, more self-reliant? If not, he fails of his chief
+end. It is doubtful if the purely scholarly and literary poets, like
+Milton, say, or like our own Poe, are ever absorbed in the sense above
+implied; while there is little doubt that poets like Homer, like
+Shakespeare, are absorbed and modify a people's manners and ideals. Only
+that which we love affects our lives. Our admiration for art and
+literature as such is something entirely outside the sources of character
+and power of action.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman identifies himself with our lives. We associate him with reality,
+with days, scenes, persons, events. The youth who reads Poe or Lowell
+wants to be a scholar, a wit, a poet, a writer; the youth who reads
+Whitman wants to be a man, and to get at the meaning and value of life.
+Our author's bent towards real things, real men and women, and his power
+to feed and foster personality, are unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>Life, reality, alone proves him; a saner and more robust fatherhood and
+motherhood, more practical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> democracy, more charity, more love, more
+comradeship, more social equality, more robust ideals of womanly and manly
+character, prove him. When we are more tolerant and patient and
+long-suffering, when the strain of our worldly, commercial spirit relaxes,
+then is he justified. Whitman means a letting-up of the strain all along
+the line,&mdash;less hurry, less greed, less rivalry, more leisure, more
+charity, more fraternalism and altruism, more religion, less formality and
+convention.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"When America does what was promised,<br />
+When each part is peopled with free people,<br />
+When there is no city on earth to lead my city, the city of young men, the Mannahatta city&mdash;but when the Mannahatta leads all the cities of the earth,<br />
+When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,<br />
+When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,<br />
+When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,<br />
+When fathers, firm, unconstrained, open-eyed&mdash;when breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,<br />
+Then to me ripeness and conclusion."</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>After all I think it matters little whether we call him poet or not. Grant
+that he is not a poet in the usual or technical sense, but poet-prophet,
+or poet-seer, or all combined. He is a poet plus something else. It is
+when he is judged less than poet, or no poet at all, that we feel
+injustice is done him. Grant that his work is not art, that it does not
+give off the perfume, the atmosphere of the highly wrought artistic works
+like those of Tennyson, but of something quite different.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>We have all been slow to see that his cherished ends were religious rather
+than literary; that, over and above all else, he was a great religious
+teacher and prophet. Had he been strictly a literary poet, like Lowell, or
+Longfellow, or Tennyson,&mdash;that is, a writer working for purely artistic
+effects,&mdash;we should be compelled to judge him quite differently.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass" is a gospel&mdash;glad tidings of great joy to those who are
+prepared to receive it. Its final value lies in its direct, intense,
+personal appeal; in what it did for Symonds, who said it made a man of
+him; in what it did for Stevenson, who said it dispelled a thousand
+illusions; in what it did for Mrs. Gilchrist, who said it enabled her to
+find her own soul; in what it does for all earnest readers of it in
+blending with the inmost current of their lives. Whitman is the life-giver
+of our time. How shall a poet give us life but by making us share his
+larger measure of life, his larger hope, his larger love, his larger
+charity, his saner and wider outlook? What are the three great life-giving
+principles? Can we name them better than St. Paul named them eighteen
+hundred years ago,&mdash;faith, hope, charity? And these are the cornerstones
+of Whitman's work,&mdash;a faith so broad and fervent that it accepts death as
+joyously as life, and sees all things at last issue in spiritual results;
+a hope that sees the golden age ahead of us, not behind us; and a charity
+that balks at nothing, that makes him identify himself with offenders and
+outlaws; a charity as great as his who said to the thief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> on the cross,
+"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."</p>
+
+<p>To cry up faith, hope, and charity is not to make men partakers of them;
+but to exemplify them in a survey of the whole problem of life, to make
+them vital as hearing, or eyesight in a work of the imagination, to show
+them as motives and impulses controlling all the rest, is to beget and
+foster them in the mind of the beholder.</p>
+
+<p>He is more and he is less than the best of the other poets. The popular,
+the conventional poets are mainly occupied with the artistic side of
+things,&mdash;with that which refines, solaces, beautifies. Whitman is mainly
+occupied with the cosmic and universal side of things, and the human and
+spiritual values that may be extracted from them. His poetry is not the
+result of the same kind of selection and partiality as that we are more
+familiar with.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, while the message of Tennyson and his kind is the message of
+beauty, the message of Whitman is, in a much fuller sense, the message of
+life. He speaks the word of faith and power. This is his distinction; he
+is the life-giver. Such a man comes that we may have life, and have it
+more abundantly.</p>
+
+<p>The message of beauty,&mdash;who would undervalue it? The least poet and
+poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples
+and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of
+life, there is danger that we shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> not know it when we hear it. It is a
+harsher and more heroic strain than the other. It calls no man to his
+ease, or to be lulled and soothed. It is a summons and a challenge. It
+lays rude, strong hands upon you. It filters and fibres your blood. It is
+more of the frost, the rains, the winds, than of cushions or parlors.</p>
+
+<p>The call of life is a call to battle always. We are stronger by the
+strength of every obstacle or enemy overcome.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Listen! I will be honest with you,<br />
+I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,<br />
+These are the days that must happen to you:<br />
+<br />
+"You shall not heap up what is called riches,<br />
+You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;<br />
+You but arrive at the city to which you were destined&mdash;you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">before you are called by an irresistible call to depart.</span><br />
+You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you;<br />
+What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,<br />
+You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands toward you.<br />
+<br />
+"Allons! After the <span class="smcap">Great Companions</span>! and to belong to them!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman always avails himself of the poet's privilege and magnifies
+himself. He magnifies others in the same ratio, he magnifies all things.
+"Magnifying and applying come I," he says, "outbidding at the start the
+old cautious hucksters." Indeed, the character which speaks throughout
+"Leaves of Grass" is raised to the highest degree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> of personal exaltation.
+To it nothing is trivial, nothing is mean; all is good, all is divine. The
+usual distinctions disappear, burned up, the poet says, for religion's
+sake. All the human attributes are heightened and enlarged; sympathy as
+wide as the world; love that balks at nothing; charity as embracing as the
+sky; egotism like the force of gravity; religious fervor that consumes the
+coarsest facts like stubble; spirituality that finds God everywhere every
+hour of the day; faith that welcomes death as cheerfully as life;
+comradeship that would weld the nation into a family of brothers;
+sexuality that makes prudes shudder; poetic enthusiasm that scornfully
+dispenses with all the usual adventitious aids; and in general a
+largeness, coarseness, and vehemence that are quite appalling to the
+general reader. Lovers of poetry will of necessity be very slow in
+adjusting their notions to the standards of "Leaves of Grass." It is a
+survey of life and of the world from the cosmic rather than from the
+conventional standpoint. It carries the standards of the natural-universal
+into all fields.</p>
+
+<p>Some men have accepted poverty and privation with such contentment and
+composure as to make us almost envious of their lot; and Whitman accepts
+the coarser, commoner human elements which he finds in himself, and which
+most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception
+of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes.
+If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference
+for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an element of
+weakness.</p>
+
+<p>His precept and his illustration, carried out in life, would fill the land
+with strong, native, original types of men and women animated by the most
+vehement comradeship, selfism and otherism going hand in hand.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_CULTURE" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_CULTURE"></a>HIS RELATION TO CULTURE</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">"Leaves of Grass"</span> is not the poetry of culture, but it is to be said in
+the same breath that it is not such a work as an uncultured man produces,
+or is capable of producing.</p>
+
+<p>The uncultured man does not think Whitman's thoughts, or propose Whitman's
+problems to himself, or understand or appreciate them at all. The "Leaves"
+are perhaps of supreme interest only to men of deepest culture, because
+they contain in such ample measure that without which all culture is mere
+varnish or veneer. They are indirectly a tremendous criticism of American
+life and civilization, and they imply that breadth of view and that
+liberation of spirit&mdash;that complete disillusioning&mdash;which is the best
+result of culture, and which all great souls have reached, no matter who
+or what their schoolmasters may have been.</p>
+
+<p>Our reading public probably does not and cannot see itself in Whitman at
+all. He must be a great shock to its sense of the genteel and the
+respectable. Nor can the working people and the unlettered, though they
+were drawn to Whitman the man, be expected to respond to any considerable
+extent to Whitman the poet. His standpoint can be reached<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> only after
+passing through many things and freeing one's self from many illusions. He
+is more representative of the time-spirit out of which America grew, and
+which is now shaping the destiny of the race upon this continent. He
+strikes under and through our whole civilization.</p>
+
+<p>He despised our social gods, he distrusted our book-culture, he was
+alarmed at the tendency to the depletion and attenuation of the national
+type, and he aimed to sow broadcast the germs of more manly ideals. His
+purpose was to launch his criticism from the basic facts of human life,
+psychic and physiologic; to inject into the veins of our an&aelig;mic literature
+the reddest, healthiest kind of blood; and in doing so he has given free
+swing to the primary human traits and affections and to sexuality, and has
+charged his pages with the spirit of real things, real life.</p>
+
+<p>We have been so long used to verse which is the outcome of the literary
+impulse alone, which is written at so many removes from the primary human
+qualities, produced from the extreme verge of culture and artificial
+refinement, which is so innocent of the raciness and healthful coarseness
+of nature, that poetry which has these qualities, which implies the body
+as well as the mind, which is the direct outgrowth of a radical human
+personality, and which make demands like those made by real things, is
+either an offense to us or is misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman says his book is not a good lesson, but it takes down the bars to
+a good lesson, and that to another, and that to another still. To take
+down bars rather than to put them up is always Whitman's aim; to make his
+reader free of the universe, to turn him forth into the fresh and
+inexhaustible pastures of time, space, eternity, and with a smart slap
+upon his back with the halter as a spur and send-off, is about what he
+would do. His message, first and last, is "give play to yourself;" "let
+yourself go;"&mdash;happiness is in the quest of happiness; power comes to him
+who power uses.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Long enough have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore;<br />
+Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,<br />
+To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>To hold Whitman up to ridicule, and to convict him of grossness and
+tediousness, is easy enough; first, because he is so out of relation to
+the modes and taste of his times, and, secondly, because he has somewhat
+of the uncouthness and coarseness of large bodies. Then his seriousness
+and simplicity, like that of Biblical and Oriental writers,&mdash;a kind of
+childish inaptness and homeliness,&mdash;often exposes him to our keen, almost
+abnormal sense of the ridiculous. He was deficient in humor, and he wrote
+his book in entire obliviousness of social usages and conventions, so that
+the perspective of it is not the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> social or indoor perspective, but that
+of life and nature at large, careering and unhampered. It is probably the
+one modern poem whose standards are not social and what are called
+artistic.</p>
+
+<p>Its atmosphere is always that of the large, free spaces of vast, unhoused
+nature. It has been said that the modern world could be reconstructed from
+"Leaves of Grass," so compendious and all-inclusive is it in its details;
+but of the modern world as a social organization, of man as the creature
+of social usages and prohibitions, of fashions, of dress, of
+ceremony,&mdash;the indoor, parlor and drawing-room man,&mdash;there is no hint in
+its pages. In its matter and in its spirit, in its standards and in its
+execution, in its ideals and in its processes, it belongs to and
+affiliates with open-air nature, often reaching, I think, the cosmic and
+unconditioned. In a new sense is Whitman the brother of the orbs and
+cosmic processes, "conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth." All
+his enthusiasms, all his sympathies have to do with the major and
+fundamental elements of life. He is a world-poet. We do not readily adjust
+our indoor notions to him. Our culture-standards do not fit him.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The problem of the poet is doubtless more difficult in our day than in any
+past day; it is harder for him to touch reality.</p>
+
+<p>The accumulations of our civilization are enormous: an artificial world of
+great depth and potency<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> overlies the world of reality; especially does it
+overlie the world of man's moral and intellectual nature. Most of us live
+and thrive in this artificial world, and never know but it is the world of
+God's own creating. Only now and then a man strikes his roots down through
+this made land into fresh, virgin soil. When the religious genius strikes
+his roots through it, and insists upon a present revelation, we are apt to
+cry "heretic;" when the poet strikes his roots through it, as Whitman did,
+and insists upon giving us reality,&mdash;giving us himself before custom or
+law,&mdash;we cry "barbarian," or "art-heretic," or "outlaw of art."</p>
+
+<p>In the countless adjustments and accumulations, and in the oceanic
+currents of our day and land, the individual is more and more lost sight
+of,&mdash;merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See
+it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will.
+See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing
+power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a
+single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their
+types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite
+character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe
+with the old joy and contentment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p class="poem">"The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?<br />
+Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and master of it?"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Do we not, consciously or unconsciously, ask this or a similar question of
+every poet or artist whom we pass in review before us? Is he master of his
+culture, or does it master him? Does he strike back through it to simple,
+original nature, or is he a potted plant? Does he retain the native savage
+virtues, or is he entirely built up from the outside? We constantly
+mistake culture for mere refinement, which it is not: it is a liberating
+process; it is a clearing away of obstructions, and the giving to inherent
+virtues a chance to express themselves. It makes savage nature friendly
+and considerate. The aim of culture is not to get rid of nature, but to
+utilize nature. The great poet is always a "friendly and flowing savage,"
+the master and never the slave of the complex elements of our artificial
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>Though our progress and civilization are a triumph over nature, yet in an
+important sense we never get away from nature or improve upon her. Her
+standards are still our standards, her sweetness and excellence are still
+our aim. Her health, her fertility, her wholeness, her freshness, her
+innocence, her evolution, we would fain copy or reproduce. We would, if we
+could, keep the pungency and aroma of her wild fruit in our cultivated
+specimens, the virtue and hardiness of the savage in our fine gentlemen,
+the joy and spontaneity of her bird-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>songs in our poetry, the grace and
+beauty of her forms in our sculpture and carvings.</p>
+
+<p>A poetic utterance from an original individual standpoint, something
+definite and characteristic,&mdash;this is always the crying need. What a fine
+talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name!
+But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a
+kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste and intelligence that
+speak. When will he redeem all these promises, and become a fixed centre
+of thought and emotion in himself? To write poems is no distinction; to be
+a poem, to be a fixed point amid the seething chaos, a rock amid the
+currents, giving your own form and character to them,&mdash;that is something.</p>
+
+<p>It matters little, as Whitman himself says, who contributes the mass of
+poetic verbiage upon which any given age feeds.</p>
+
+<p>But for a national first-class poem, or a great work of the imagination of
+any sort, the man is everything, because such works finally rest upon
+primary human qualities and special individual traits. A richly endowed
+personality is always the main dependence in such cases, or, as Goethe
+says, "in the great work the great person is always present as the great
+factor."</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass" is as distinctly an emanation from Walt Whitman, from
+his quality and equipment as a man apart from anything he owed to books or
+to secondary influences, as a tree is an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> emanation from the soil. It is,
+moreover, an emanation from him as an American in the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, and as a typical democratic composite man, a man of
+the common people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but with
+an extraordinary endowment of spiritual and intellectual power, to which
+he has given full swing without abating one jot or tittle the influence of
+his heritage of the common stock.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>There is one important quality that enters into all first-class literary
+production and into all art, which is taken little account of in current
+criticism: I mean the quality of the manly,&mdash;the pulse and pressure of
+manly virility and strength. Goethe spoke of it to Eckermann as a certain
+urgent power in which the art of his time was lacking. The producers had
+taste and skill, but were not masterful as men. Goethe always looked
+straight through the work to the man behind it; in art and poetry the
+personality was everything. The special talent of one kind or another was
+quite secondary. The greatest works are the least literary. To speak in
+literature as a man, and not merely as a scholar or professional
+litterateur, is always the crying need. The new poet has this or that
+gift, but what is the human fund back of all? What is his endowment of the
+common universal human traits? How much of a man is he? His measure in
+this respect will be the measure of the final value of his contribution.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>The decadence of literature sets in when there is more talent than
+character in current production; when rare literary and artistic gifts no
+longer come wedded to large human and manly gifts; when taste is
+fastidious rather than robust and hearty. When was there a man born to
+English or American literature with a large endowment of the universal
+human qualities, or with those elements that give breadth and power, and
+which lead art rather than follow it? We are living in an age of great
+purity and refinement of taste in art and letters, but destitute of power.
+Goethe spoke of Walter Scott not merely as a great talent, but as a
+"comprehensive nature." Without this comprehensive nature as a setting,
+his great talent would have amounted to but little. This gives the weight,
+the final authority. How little there was on the surface of Scott of the
+literary keenness, subtlety, knowingness of later producers, and yet how
+far his contribution surpasses theirs in real human pathos and
+suggestiveness!</p>
+
+<p>The same might be said of Count Tolsto&iuml;, who is also, back of all, a great
+loving nature.</p>
+
+<p>One has great joy in Whitman because he is beyond and over all a large and
+loving personality; his work is but a thin veil through which a great
+nature clearly shows. The urgent power of which Goethe speaks is almost
+too strong,&mdash;too strong for current taste: we want more art and less man,
+more literature and less life. It is not merely a great mind that we feel,
+but a great character. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> penetrates every line, and indeed makes it true
+of the book that whoever "touches this touches a man."</p>
+
+<p>The lesson of the poet is all in the direction of the practical manly and
+womanly qualities and virtues,&mdash;health, temperance, sanity, power,
+endurance, aplomb,&mdash;and not at all in the direction of the literary and
+artistic qualities or culture.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat, to manage horses,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">to beget superb children,</span><br />
+To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,<br />
+To hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>All his aims, ideas, impulses, aspirations, relate to life, to
+personality, and to power to deal with real things; and if we expect from
+him only literary ideas&mdash;form, beauty, lucidity, proportion&mdash;we shall be
+disappointed. He seeks to make the impression of concrete forces and
+objects, and not of art.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Not for an embroiderer,<br />
+(There will always be plenty of embroiderers&mdash;I welcome them also),<br />
+But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.<br />
+<br />
+"Not to chisel ornaments,<br />
+But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme Gods, that The States may realize them,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">walking and talking."</span></p>
+
+<p>His whole work is a radiation from an exemplification of the idea that
+there is something better than to be an artist or a poet,&mdash;namely, to be a
+man. The poet's rapture springs not merely from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> the contemplation of the
+beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; from
+the contemplation of democracy, the common people, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors, his own body, death, sex, manly love, occupations, and the force
+and vitality of things. We are to look for the clews to him in the open
+air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forms and
+methods. He declares he will never again mention love or death inside of a
+house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay
+with him in the open air.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore;<br />
+The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key:<br />
+The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words.<br />
+<br />
+"No shuttered room or school can commune with me,<br />
+But roughs and little children better than they.<br />
+<br />
+"The young mechanic is closest to me&mdash;he knows me pretty well.<br />
+The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with him all day;<br />
+The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my voice:<br />
+In vessels that sail, my words sail&mdash;I go with fishermen and seamen, and love them.<br />
+<br />
+"My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket;<br />
+The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;<br />
+The young mother and old mother comprehend me;<br />
+The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where they are:<br />
+They and all would resume what I have told them."</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few,
+its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness
+of man rather than his strength; so far as it expresses a shrinking from
+reality and a refuge in sentimentalism; so far as it is aristocratic as in
+Tennyson, or mocking and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and mephitic as
+in Swinburne, or regretful and reminiscent as in Arnold, or a melodious
+baying of the moon as in Shelley, or the outcome of mere scholarly and
+technical acquirements as in so many of our younger poets,&mdash;so far as
+literature or poetry, I say, stand for these things, there is little of
+either in Whitman. Whitman stands for the primary and essential; he stands
+for that which makes the body as well as the mind, which makes life sane
+and joyous and masterful. Everything that tends to depletion, satiety, the
+abnormal, the erotic and exotic, that induces the stress and fever of
+life, is foreign to his spirit. He is less beautiful than the popular
+poets, yet more beautiful. He will have to do only with the inevitable
+beauty, the beauty that comes unsought, that resides in the interior
+meanings and affiliations,&mdash;the beauty that dare turn its back upon the
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman has escaped entirely the literary disease, the characteristic
+symptoms of which, according to Renan, is that people love less things
+themselves than the literary effects which they produce.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> He has escaped
+the art disease which makes art all in all; the religious disease, which
+runs to maudlin piety and seeks to win heaven by denying earth; the beauty
+disease, which would make of poesy a conventional flower-garden. He brings
+heroic remedies for our morbid sex-consciousness, and for all the
+pathological conditions brought about by our excess of refinement, and the
+dyspeptic depletions of our indoor artificial lives. Whitman withstood the
+&aelig;sthetic temptation, as Amiel calls it, to which most of our poets fall a
+victim,&mdash;the lust for the merely beautiful, the epicureanism of the
+literary faculties. We can make little of him if we are in quest of
+&aelig;sthetic pleasures alone. "In order to establish those literary
+authorities which are called classic centuries," says Renan, "something
+healthy and solid is necessary. Common household bread is of more value
+here than pastry." But the vast majority of literary producers aim at
+pastry, or, worse yet, confectionery,&mdash;something especially delightful and
+titivating to the taste. No doubt Renan himself was something of a
+literary epicure, but then he imposed upon himself large and serious
+tasks, and his work as a whole is solid and nourishing; his charm of style
+does not blind and seduce us. It makes all the difference in the world
+whether we seek the beautiful through the true, or the true through the
+beautiful. Seek ye the kingdom of truth first and all things shall be
+added. The novice aims to write beautifully, but the master aims to see
+truly and to feel vitally. Beauty follows him, and is never followed by
+him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>Nature is beautiful because she is something else first, yes, and last,
+too, and all the while. Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the
+whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with
+the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields
+compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuy&eacute;.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's ideal is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger&mdash;much more
+racy and democratic&mdash;than the ideal we are familiar with in current
+literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the
+democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,&mdash;excluding all the
+old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and
+legends, etc.,&mdash;but he applies it to the form as well, excluding rhyme and
+measure and all the conventional verse architecture. His work stands or it
+falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or
+power which it holds. This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest,
+nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated. His
+influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or
+extra-cultured humanity. The spirit of his work transferred to practice
+begets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, magnetic,
+tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple,
+healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he
+opposes that which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a
+scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature,
+and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and
+affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic
+spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our
+artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature.
+The people look askance at men who are above them without being of them,
+who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with
+unlettered humanity. Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit,
+and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Sumner.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman might be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned. His
+work is launched at a farther remove from our arts, conventions, usages,
+civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into
+our lives, than that of any other man. Absolute candor, absolute pride,
+absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature. It
+is not conditioned by what we deem modest or immodest, high or low, male
+or female. It is not conditioned by our notions of good and evil, by our
+notions of the refined and the select, by what we call good taste and bad
+taste. It is the voice of absolute man, sweeping away the artificial,
+throwing himself boldly, joyously, upon unconditioned nature. We are all
+engaged in upholding the correct and the conventional, and drawing the
+line sharply between good and evil, the high and the low, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> it is well
+that we should; but here is a man who aims to take absolute ground, and to
+look at the world as God himself might look at it, without partiality or
+discriminating,&mdash;it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection
+in the universe and can be none:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Open mouth of my Soul uttering gladness,<br />
+Eyes of my Soul seeing perfection,<br />
+Natural life of me, faithfully praising things,<br />
+Corroborating forever the triumph of things."</p>
+
+<p>He does not take sides against evil, in the usual way, he does not take
+sides with the good except as nature herself does. He celebrates the All.</p>
+
+<p>Can we accept the world as science reveals it to us, as all significant,
+as all in ceaseless transmutation, as every atom aspiring to be man, an
+endless unfolding of primal germs, without beginning, without end, without
+failure or imperfection, the golden age ahead of us, not behind us?</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Because of Whitman's glorification of pride, egoism, brawn, self-reliance,
+it is charged that the noble, the cultured, the self-denying, have no
+place in his system. What place have they in the antique bards?&mdash;in Homer,
+in Job, in Isaiah, in Dante? They have the same place in Whitman, yet it
+is to be kept in mind that Whitman does not stand for the specially social
+virtues, nor for culture, nor for the refinements which it induces, nor
+for art, nor for any conventionality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> There are flowers of human life
+which we are not to look for in Walt Whitman. The note of fine manners,
+chivalrous conduct, which we get in Emerson; the sweetness and light
+gospel of Arnold; the gospel of hero-worship of Carlyle; the gracious
+scholarship of our New England poets, etc.,&mdash;we do not get in Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him at war with these things, but he is
+concerned with more primal and elemental questions. He strikes under and
+beyond all these things.</p>
+
+<p>What are the questions or purposes, then, in which his work has root?
+Simply put, to lead the way to larger, saner, more normal, more robust
+types of men and women on this continent; to prefigure and help develop
+the new democratic man,&mdash;to project him into literature on a scale and
+with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep
+hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and
+influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and
+for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,&mdash;the air,
+the water, the soil, the sunshine,&mdash;and the more we pervert or shut out
+these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we
+pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the
+religious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny and belittle our bodies,
+the further we are from the spirit of Walt Whitman, and from the spirit of
+the All.</p>
+
+<p>With all Whitman's glorification of pride, self-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>esteem, self-reliance,
+etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,&mdash;the
+free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential
+nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you
+possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life
+and conditions of men, charity as broad as the sunlight, standing up for
+those whom others are down upon, claiming nothing for self which others
+may not have upon the same terms,&mdash;of such nobility and fine manners, I
+say, you shall find an abundance in the life and works of Walt Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of a man's work is everything; the letter, little or nothing.
+Though Whitman boasts of his affiliation with the common and near at hand,
+yet he is always saved from the vulgar, the mean, the humdrum, by the
+breadth of his charity and sympathy and his tremendous ideality.</p>
+
+<p>Of worldliness, materialism, commercialism, he has not a trace; his only
+values are spiritual and ideal; his only standards are the essential and
+the enduring. What Matthew Arnold called the Anglo-Saxon contagion, the
+bourgeois spirit, the worldly and sordid ideal, is entirely corrected in
+Whitman by the ascendant of the ethic and the universal. His democracy
+ends in universal brotherhood, his patriotism in the solidarity of
+nations, his glorification of the material in the final triumph of the
+spiritual, his egoism issues at last in complete otherism.</p>
+
+<p>A race that can produce a man of his fibre, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> continental type, is yet
+at its best estate. Did one begin to see evil omen in this perpetual
+whittling away and sharpening and lightening of the American type,&mdash;grace
+without power, clearness without mass, intellect without character,&mdash;then
+take comfort from the volume and the rankness of Walt Whitman. Did one
+begin to fear that the decay of maternity and paternity in our older
+communities and the falling off in the native population presaged the
+drying up of the race in its very sources? Then welcome to the rank
+sexuality and to the athletic fatherhood and motherhood celebrated by
+Whitman. Did our skepticism, our headiness, our worldliness, threaten to
+eat us up like a cancer? did our hardness, our irreligiousness, and our
+passion for the genteel point to a fugitive, superficial race? was our
+literature threatened with the artistic degeneration,&mdash;running all to art
+and not at all to power? were our communities invaded by a dry rot of
+culture? were we fast becoming a delicate, indoor, genteel race? were our
+women sinking deeper and deeper into the "incredible sloughs of fashion
+and all kinds of dyspeptic depletion,"&mdash;the antidote for all these ills is
+in Walt Whitman. In him nature shows great fullness and fertility, and an
+immense friendliness. He supplements and corrects most of the special
+deficiencies and weaknesses toward which the American type seems to tend.
+He brings us back to nature again. The perpetuity of the race is with the
+common people. The race is constantly crying out at the top, in our times
+at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> least; culture and refinement beget fewer and fewer and poorer and
+poorer children. Where struggle ceases, that family or race is doomed.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Now understand me well&mdash;it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success,<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>In more primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept
+in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest.
+War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and
+everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, power, longevity,
+manliness. The scholar poets are occupied with that which makes for
+culture, taste, refinement, ease, art.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves of Grass," taken as a whole, aims to exhibit a modern, democratic,
+archetypal man, here in America, confronting and subduing our enormous
+materialism to his own purposes, putting it off and on as a garment;
+identifying himself with all forms of life and conditions of men; trying
+himself by cosmic laws and processes, exulting in the life of his body and
+the delights of his senses; and seeking to clinch, to develop, and to
+realize himself through the shows and events of the visible world. The
+poet seeks to interpret life from the central point of absolute abysmal
+man.</p>
+
+<p>The wild and the savage in nature with which Whitman perpetually
+identifies himself, and the hirsute, sun-tanned, and aboriginal in
+humanity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> have misled many readers into looking upon him as expressive of
+these things only. Mr. Stedman thinks him guilty of a certain narrowness
+in preferring, or seeming to prefer, the laboring man to the gentleman.
+But the poet uses these elements only for checks and balances, and to keep
+our attention, in the midst of a highly refined and civilized age, fixed
+upon the fact that here are the final sources of our health, our power,
+our longevity. The need of the pre-scientific age was knowledge and
+refinement; the need of our age is health and sanity, cool heads and good
+digestion. And to this end the bitter and drastic remedies from the shore
+and the mountains are for us.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>The gospel of the average man, Matthew Arnold thought, was inimical to the
+ideal of a rare and high excellence. But, in holding up the average man,
+Whitman was only holding up the broad, universal human qualities, and
+showing that excellence may go with them also. As a matter of fact, are we
+not astonished almost daily by the superb qualities shown by the average
+man, the heroism shown by firemen, engineers, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors? Do we not know that true greatness, true nobility and strength of
+soul, may go and do go with commonplace, every-day humanity? Whitman would
+lift the average man to a higher average, and still to a higher, without
+at all weakening the qualities which he shares with universal humanity as
+it exists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> over and under all special advantages and social refinements.
+He says that one of the convictions that underlie his "Leaves" is the
+conviction that the "crowning growth of the United States is to be
+spiritual and heroic,"&mdash;a prophecy which in our times, I confess, does not
+seem very near fulfillment.</p>
+
+<p>He does not look longingly and anxiously toward the genteel social gods,
+but quite the contrary. In the library and parlor, he confesses he is as a
+gawk or one dumb. The great middle-class ideal, which is mainly the ideal
+of our own people, Whitman flouts and affronts. There are things to him of
+higher import than to have wealth and be respectable and in the mode.</p>
+
+<p>We might charge him with narrowness and partiality and with seeing only
+half truths, as Mr. Stedman has done, did he simply rest with the native
+as opposed to the cultivated, with brawn as opposed to brains. What he
+does do, what the upshot of his teaching shows, is that he identifies
+himself with the masses, with those universal human currents out of which
+alone a national spirit arises, as opposed to isolated schools and
+coteries and a privileged few. Whitman decries culture only so far as it
+cuts a man off from his fellows, clips away or effaces the sweet, native,
+healthy parts of him, and begets a bloodless, superstitious, infidelistic
+class. "The best culture," he says, "will always be that of the manly and
+courageous instincts and loving perceptions, and of self-respect." For
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> most part, our schooling is like our milling, which takes the bone
+and nerve building elements out of our bread. The bread of life demands
+the coarse as well as the fine, and this is what Whitman stands for.</p>
+
+<p>In his spirit and affiliation with the great mass of the people, with the
+commoner, sturdier, human traits, Whitman is more of the type of Angelo,
+or Rembrandt, or the antique bards, than he is like modern singers. He was
+not a product of the schools, but of the race.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_HIS_COUNTRY" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_HIS_COUNTRY"></a>HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">It</span> has been said, and justly I think, that in Whitman we see the first
+appearance in literature of the genuinely democratic spirit on anything
+like an ample scale. Plenty of men of democratic tendencies and
+affiliations have appeared, but none that have carried the temper and
+quality of the people, the masses, into the same regions, or blended the
+same humanity and commonness with the same commanding personality and
+spirituality. In recent English poetry the names of Burns and Wordsworth
+occur to mind, but neither of these men had anything like Whitman's
+breadth of relation to the mass of mankind, or expressed anything like his
+sweeping cosmic emotion. Wordsworth's muse was clad in homespun, but in no
+strict sense was his genius democratic&mdash;using the word to express, not a
+political creed, but the genius of modern civilization. He made much of
+the common man, common life, common things, but always does the poet stand
+apart, the recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, loving and contemplating
+these things for purposes of his art. Only through intellectual sympathy
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> he a part of what he surveys. In Whitman the common or average man has
+grown haughty, almost aristocratic. He coolly confronts the old types, the
+man of caste, culture, privileges, royalties, and relegates him to the
+past. He readjusts the standards, and estimates everything from the human
+and democratic point of view. In his scheme, the old traditions&mdash;the
+aristocratic, the scholastic, the ecclesiastical, the military, the social
+traditions&mdash;play no part. He dared to look at life, past and present, from
+the American and scientific standpoint. He turns to the old types a pride
+and complacency equal to their own.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, we see in the character which Whitman has exploited and in the
+interest of which his poems are written, the democratic type fully
+realized,&mdash;pride and self-reliance equal to the greatest, and these
+matched with a love, a compassion, a spirit of fraternity and equality,
+that are entirely foreign to the old order of things.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>At first sight Whitman does not seem vitally related to his own country
+and people; he seems an anomaly, an exception, or like one of those
+mammoth sports that sometimes appear in the vegetable world. The Whitman
+ideal is not, and has never been, the conscious ideal of the mass of our
+people. We have aspired more to the ideal of the traditional fine
+gentleman as he has figured in British letters. There seems to have been
+no hint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> or prophecy of such a man as Whitman in our New England
+literature, unless it be in Emerson, and here it is in the region of the
+abstract and not of the concrete. Emerson's prayer was for the absolutely
+self-reliant man, but when Whitman refused to follow his advice with
+regard to certain passages in the "Leaves," the sage withheld further
+approval of the work.</p>
+
+<p>We must look for the origins of Whitman, I think, in the deep
+world-currents that have been shaping the destinies of the race for the
+past hundred years or more; in the universal loosening, freeing, and
+removing obstructions; in the emancipation of the people, and their coming
+forward and taking possession of the world in their own right; in the
+triumph of democracy and of science; the downfall of kingcraft and
+priestcraft; the growth of individualism and non-conformity; the
+increasing disgust of the soul of man with forms and ceremonies; the
+sentiment of realism and positivism, the religious hunger that flees the
+churches; the growing conviction that life, that nature, are not failures,
+that the universe is good, that man is clean and divine inside and out,
+that God is immanent in nature,&mdash;all these things and more lie back of
+Whitman, and hold a causal relation to him.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Of course the essential elements of all first-class artistic and literary
+productions are always the same, just as nature, just as man, are
+essentially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> the same everywhere. Yet the literature of every people has a
+stamp of its own, starts from and implies antecedents and environments
+peculiar to itself.</p>
+
+<p>Just as ripe, mellow, storied, ivy-towered, velvet-turfed England lies
+back of Tennyson, and is vocal through him; just as canny, covenanting,
+conscience-burdened, craggy, sharp-tongued Scotland lies back of Carlyle;
+just as thrifty, well-schooled, well-housed, prudent, and moral New
+England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them,&mdash;so
+America as a whole, our turbulent democracy, our self-glorification, our
+faith in the future, our huge mass movements, our continental spirit, our
+sprawling, sublime, and unkempt nature, lie back of Whitman and are
+implied by his work.</p>
+
+<p>He had not the shaping, manipulating gift to carve his American material
+into forms of ideal beauty, and did not claim to have. He did not value
+beauty as an abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>What Whitman did that is unprecedented was, to take up the whole country
+into himself, fuse it, imbue it with soul and poetic emotion, and recast
+it as a sort of colossal Walt Whitman. He has not so much treated American
+themes as he has identified himself with everything American, and made the
+whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross
+materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses
+with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them
+with something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> like the breath of universal nature. His special gift is
+his magnetic and unconquerable personality, his towering egoism united
+with such a fund of human sympathy. His power is centripetal, so to
+speak,&mdash;he draws everything into himself like a maelstrom; the centrifugal
+power of the great dramatic artists, the power to get out of and away from
+himself, he has not. It was not for Whitman to write the dramas and
+tragedies of democracy, as Shakespeare wrote those of feudalism, or as
+Tennyson sang in delectable verse the swan-song of an overripe
+civilization. It was for him to voice the democratic spirit, to show it
+full-grown, athletic, haughtily taking possession of the world and
+redistributing the prizes according to its own standards. It was for him
+to sow broadcast over the land the germs of larger, more sane, more robust
+types of men and women, indicating them in himself.</p>
+
+<p>In him the new spirit of democracy first completely knows itself, is proud
+of itself, has faith and joy in itself, is fearless, tolerant, religious,
+aggressive, triumphant, and bestows itself lavishly upon all sides. It is
+tentative, doubtful, hesitating no longer. It is at ease in the world, it
+takes possession, it fears no rival, it advances with confident step.</p>
+
+<p>No man was ever more truly fathered by what is formative and expansive in
+his country and times than was Whitman. Not by the literature of his
+country was he begotten, but by the spirit that lies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> back of all, and
+that begat America itself,&mdash;the America that Europe loves and fears, that
+she comes to this country to see, and looks expectantly, but for the most
+part vainly, in our books to find.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me he is distinctly a continental type. His sense of space, of
+magnitude, his processional pages, his unloosedness, his wide horizons,
+his vanishing boundaries,&mdash;always something unconfined and unconfinable,
+always the deferring and undemonstrable. The bad as well as the good
+traits of his country and his people are doubtless implied by his work.</p>
+
+<p>If he does not finally escape from our unripe Americanism, if he does not
+rise through it all and clarify it and turn it to ideal uses, draw out the
+spiritual meanings, then avaunt! we want nothing of him.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell.<br />
+The former I graft and increase upon myself,<br />
+The latter I translate into a new tongue."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The vital and the formative the true poet always engrafts and increases
+upon himself, and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the
+accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against
+Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers
+of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when
+his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the
+first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the
+modern; we see them translated into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> character; we see them tried by
+universal standards; we see them vivified by a powerful imagination. We
+see America as an idea, and see its relation to other ideas. We get a new
+conception of the value of the near, the common, the familiar. New light
+is thrown upon the worth and significance of the common people, and it is
+not the light of an abstract idea, but the light of a concrete example. We
+see the democratic type on a scale it has never before assumed; it is on a
+par with any of the types that have ruled the world in the past, the
+military, the aristocratic, the regal. It is at home, it has taken
+possession, it can hold its own. Henceforth the world is going its way. If
+it is over-confident, over-self-assertive, too American, that is the
+surplusage of the poet, of whom we do not want a penny prudence and
+caution; make your prophecy bold enough and it fulfills itself. Whitman
+has betrayed no doubt or hesitation in his poetry. His assumptions and
+vaticinations are tremendous, but they are uttered with an authority and
+an assurance that convince like natural law.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>I think he gives new meaning to democracy and America. In him we see a new
+type, rising out of new conditions, and fully able to justify itself and
+hold its own. It is the new man in the new world, no longer dependent upon
+or facing toward the old. I confess that to me America and the modern
+would not mean very much without Whitman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> The final proof was wanting
+till they gave birth to a personality equal to the old types.</p>
+
+<p>Discussions and speculations about democracy do not carry very far, after
+all; to preach equality is not much. But when we see these things made
+into a man, and see the world through his eyes, and see new joy and new
+meaning in it, our doubts and perplexities are cleared up. Our universal
+balloting, and schooling, and material prosperity prove nothing: can your
+democracy produce a man who shall carry its spirit into loftiest regions,
+and prove as helpful and masterful under the new conditions as the by-gone
+types were under the old?</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>I predict a great future for Whitman, because the world is so unmistakably
+going his way. The three or four great currents of the century&mdash;the
+democratic current, the scientific current, the humanitarian current, the
+new religious current, and what flows out of them&mdash;are underneath all
+Whitman has written. They shape all and make all. They do not appear in
+him as mere dicta, or intellectual propositions, but as impulses, will,
+character, flesh-and-blood reality. We get these things, not as sentiments
+or yet theories, but as a man. We see life and the world as they appear to
+the inevitable democrat, the inevitable lover, the inevitable believer in
+God and immortality, the inevitable acceptor of absolute science.</p>
+
+<p>We are all going his way. We are more and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> more impatient of formalities,
+ceremonies, and make-believe; we more and more crave the essential, the
+real. More and more we want to see the thing as in itself it is; more and
+more is science opening our eyes to see the divine, the illustrious, the
+universal in the common, the near at hand; more and more do we tire of
+words and crave things; deeper and deeper sinks the conviction that
+personal qualities alone tell,&mdash;that the man is all in all, that the
+brotherhood of the race is not a dream, that love covers all and atones
+for all.</p>
+
+<p>Everything in our modern life and culture that tends to broaden,
+liberalize, free; that tends to make hardy, self-reliant, virile; that
+tends to widen charity, deepen affection between man and man, to foster
+sanity and self-reliance; that tends to kindle our appreciation of the
+divinity of all things; that heightens our rational enjoyment of life;
+that inspires hope in the future and faith in the unseen,&mdash;are on
+Whitman's side. All these things prepare the way for him.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the strain and strife and hoggishness of our
+civilization, our trading politics, our worship of conventions, our
+millionaire ideals, our high-pressure lives, our pruriency, our
+sordidness, our perversions of nature, our scoffing caricaturing
+tendencies, are against him. He antagonizes all these things.</p>
+
+<p>The more democratic we become, the more we are prepared for Whitman; the
+more tolerant, fraternal, sympathetic we become, the more we are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> ready
+for Whitman; the more we inure ourselves to the open air and to real
+things, the more we value and understand our own bodies, the more the
+woman becomes the mate and equal of the man, the more social equality
+prevails,&mdash;the sooner will come to Whitman fullness and fruition.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Some of our own critics have been a good deal annoyed by the fact that
+many European scholars and experts have recognized Whitman as the only
+distinctive American poet thus far. It would seem as if our reputation for
+culture and good manners is at stake. We want Europe to see America in our
+literary poets like Lowell, or Longfellow, or Whittier. And Europe may
+well see much that is truly representative of America in these and in
+other New England poets. She may see our aspiration toward her own ideals
+of culture and refinement; she may see native and patriotic themes firing
+Lowell and Whittier; she may see a certain spirit and temper begotten by
+our natural environment reflected in Bryant, our delicate and gentle
+humanities and scholarly aptitudes shining in Longfellow. But in every
+case she sees a type she has long been familiar with. All the poets'
+thoughts, moods, points of view, effects, aims, methods, are what she has
+long known. These are not the poets of a new <i>world</i>, but of a new
+<i>England</i>. The new-world book implies more than a new talent, more than a
+fresh pair of eyes, a fresh and original mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> like the poets named; such
+men are required to keep up the old line of succession in English
+authorship. What is implied is a new national and continental spirit,
+which must arise and voice the old eternal truths through a large, new,
+democratic personality,&mdash;a new man, and, beyond and above him, a new
+heaven and a new earth.</p>
+
+<p>Our band of New England poets have carried the New England spirit into
+poetry,&mdash;its sense of fitness, order, propriety, its shrewdness,
+inventiveness, aptness, and its aspiration for the pure and noble in life.
+They have finely exemplified the best Yankee traits; but in no instance
+were these traits merged in a personality large enough, bold enough, and
+copious and democratic enough to give them national and continental
+significance. It would be absurd to claim that the pulse-beat of a great
+people or a great era is to be felt in the work of any of these poets.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman is responded to in Europe, because he expresses a new type with
+adequate power,&mdash;not, as has been so often urged, simply because he is
+strange, and gives the jaded literary palate over there a new fillip. He
+meets the demand for something in American literature that should not face
+toward Europe, that should joyfully stand upon its own ground and yet
+fulfill the conditions of greatness. He fully satisfies the thirst for
+individualism amid these awakening peoples, and the thirst for nationalism
+also. He realizes the democratic ideal, no longer tentative or apologetic,
+but taking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> possession of the world as its own and reappraising the wares
+it finds there.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>The American spirit is a continental spirit; there is nothing insular or
+narrow about it. It is informal, nonchalant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive,
+patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of
+particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable,
+unostentatious, inclined to exaggerate, generous, unrefined,&mdash;never
+meddlesome, never hypercritical, never hoggish, never exclusive. Whitman
+shared the hopeful optimistic temperament of his countrymen, the faith and
+confidence begotten by a great, fertile, sunny land. He expresses the
+independence of the people,&mdash;their pride, their jealousy of superiors,
+their contempt of authority (not always beautiful). Our want of reverence
+and veneration are supplemented in him with world-wide sympathies and
+good-fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson is our divine man, the precious quintessence of the New England
+type, invaluable for his stimulating and ennobling strain; but his genius
+is too astral, too select, too remote, to incarnate and give voice to the
+national spirit. Clothe him with flesh and blood, make his daring
+affirmations real and vital in a human personality and imbued with the
+American spirit, and we are on the way to Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the strong, undisguised man-flavor of "Leaves of Grass," the
+throb and pressure in it of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> those things that make life rank and make it
+masterful, and that make for the virility and perpetuity of the race, are,
+if it must be confessed, more keenly relished abroad than in this country,
+so thoroughly are we yet under the spell of the merely refined and
+conventional. We fail to see that in letters, as in life, the great prizes
+are not to the polished, but to the virile and the strong.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
+speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
+made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
+enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
+the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
+personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
+over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
+them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
+his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
+of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
+mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
+himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
+those who live in the open air, even laying claim to the "rowdyish." He is
+proud of freckles, sun-tan, brawn, and holds up the powerful and
+unrefined.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+"I am enamor'd of growing out-doors,<br />
+Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,<br />
+Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses;<br />
+I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>"Nothing endures," he says, "but personal qualities." "Produce great
+persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently
+bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union?
+but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout
+at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He
+is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He
+sees all and embraces and encloses all.</p>
+
+<p>Then we see united and harmonized in Whitman the two great paramount
+tendencies of our time and of the modern world,&mdash;the altruistic or
+humanitarian tendency and the individualistic tendency; or, democracy and
+individualism, pride and equality, or, rather, pride in equality. These
+two forces, as they appear in separate individuals, are often
+antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman
+they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and
+uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping
+fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one
+motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his
+fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him
+with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> claims for
+himself he demands in the same terms for all. He has set such an example
+of self-trust and self-assertion as has no parallel in our literature, at
+the same time that he has set an equal example in practical democracy and
+universal brotherhood.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's democracy is the breath of his nostrils, the light of his eyes,
+the blood in his veins. The reader does not feel that here is some fine
+scholar, some fine poet singing the praises of democracy; he feels that
+here is a democrat, probably, as Thoreau surmised, the greatest the world
+has yet seen, turning the light of a great love, a great intellect, a
+great soul, upon America, upon contemporary life and events, and upon the
+universe, and reading new lessons, new meanings, therein. He is a great
+poet and prophet, speaking through the average man, speaking as one of the
+people, and interpreting life from the point of view of absolute
+democracy.</p>
+
+<p>True, the people in their average taste and perceptions are crude and
+flippant and superficial, and often the victims of mountebanks and fools;
+yet, as forming the body of our social and political organism, and the
+chief factor in the world-problem of to-day, they are the exponents of
+great forces and laws, and often, in emergencies, show the wisdom and
+unimpeachableness of Nature herself. Deep-hidden currents and forces in
+them are liable to come to the surface, and when the politicians<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> get in
+their way, or miscalculate them, as so often happens, they are crushed.
+Whitman is a projection into literature of the cosmic sense and conscience
+of the people, and their participation in the forces that are shaping the
+world in our century. Much comes to a head in him. Much comes to joyous
+speech and song, that heretofore had only come to thought and speculation.
+A towering, audacious personality has appeared which is strictly the fruit
+of the democratic spirit, and which has voiced itself in an impassioned
+utterance touching the whole problem of national and individual life.</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>The Whitman literature is democratic, not in the sense that it caters to
+the taste of the masses or to the taste of the average man; for, as a
+matter of fact, the masses and the average man are likely to be the last
+to recognize its value. The common people, the average newspaper-reading
+citizens, are much more likely to be drawn by the artificial and the
+conventional. But it is democratic because it is filled with the spirit of
+absolute human equality and brotherhood, and gives out the atmosphere of
+the universal, primary, human traits. The social, artificial, accidental
+distinctions of wealth, culture, position, etc., have not influenced the
+poet in the slightest degree. Whitman finds his joy and his triumph, not
+in being better than other people or above them, but in being one with
+them, and sharing their sins as well as their virtues.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+"As if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself&mdash;as if it were not indispensable<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">to my own rights that others possess the same."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>This is one step further than others have taken, and makes democracy
+complete in itself. Again, his work identifies itself with the democratic
+ideal in getting rid of the professional and arbitrary elements of poetry,
+and appealing to the reader entirely through its spirit and content. It is
+as democratic in this respect as the workman in the field, or the mechanic
+at his bench.</p>
+
+<p>The poems are bathed and flooded with the quality of the common people;
+with the commonness and nearness which they share with real things and
+with all open-air nature,&mdash;with hunters, travelers, soldiers, workers in
+all fields, and with rocks, trees, and woods. It is only in the spirit of
+these things that a man himself can have health, sweetness, and
+proportion; and only in their spirit that he can give an essentially sound
+judgment of a work of art, no matter what the subject of it may be.</p>
+
+<p>This spirit of the "commonest, cheapest, nearest" is the only spirit in
+which man's concrete life can be carried forward. We do not live and
+breathe and grow and multiply, we do not have health and sanity and
+wholeness and proportion, we do not subdue and improve and possess the
+earth, in the spirit of something exclusive, exceptional, faraway,
+aristocratic, but in the spirit of the common and universal. The only
+demand is that, in a work of art, the common or universal shall be
+vitalized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> with poetic thought and enthusiasm, or imbued with the ideal of
+a rare and high excellence.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>Our critics have been fond of taunting Whitman with the fact that the
+common people, the workers, of whom he makes so much, and to whom he
+perpetually appeals, do not read him, or show any liking for his poems at all.</p>
+
+<p>Whitman's appeal to the common people, to the democratic masses, is an
+appeal to the future; it is an appeal to the universal human conscience
+and intelligence, as they exist above and beneath all special advantages
+of birth and culture and stand related to the total system of things. It
+also calls attention to the fact that the spirit in which he writes, and
+in which he is to be read, is the spirit of open-air life and nature.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"No school or shutter'd room commune with me,<br />
+But roughs and little children, better than they,"</p>
+
+<p>because the simple, unforced, unrefined elements of human nature are those
+out of which the poems sprang and with which they are charged. Their
+spirit is closer akin to unlettered humanity than to the over-intellectual
+and sophisticated products of the schools.</p>
+
+<p>Of course "roughs and little children" can make nothing of "Leaves of
+Grass," but unless the trained reader has that fund of fresh, simple,
+wholesome nature, and the love for real things, which unlettered humanity
+possesses, he will make nothing of it either.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>It has been truly said that "the noblest seer is ever over-possessed."
+This has been the case with nearly all original, first-class men. Carlyle
+furnished a good illustration of its truth in our own time. He was
+over-possessed with his idea of the hero and hero-worship. And it may be
+that Whitman was over-possessed with the idea of democracy, America,
+nationality, and the need of a radically new departure in poetic
+literature. Yet none knew better than he that in the long run the
+conditions of life and of human happiness and progress remain about the
+same; that the same price must still be paid for the same things; that
+character alone counts; that the same problem "how to live" ever confronts
+us; and that democracy, America, nationality, are only way stations, and
+by no means the end of the route. The all-leveling tendency of democracy
+is certainly not in the interest of literature. The world is not saved by
+the average man, but by the man much above the average, the rare and
+extraordinary man,&mdash;by the "remnant," as Arnold called them.</p>
+
+<p>No one knew this better than Whitman, and he said that "one main
+genesis-motive" of his "Leaves" was the conviction that the crowning
+growth of the United States was to be spiritual and heroic. Only "superb
+persons" can finally justify him.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_SCIENCE" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_SCIENCE"></a>HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE</h3>
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">The</span> stupendous disclosures of modern science, and what they mean when
+translated into the language of man's ethical and &aelig;sthetic nature, have
+not yet furnished to any considerable extent the inspiration of poems.
+That all things are alike divine, that this earth is a star in the
+heavens, that the celestial laws and processes are here underfoot, that
+size is only relative, that good and bad are only relative, that forces
+are convertible and interchangeable, that matter is indestructible, that
+death is the law of life, that man is of animal origin, that the sum of
+forces is constant, that the universe is a complexus of powers
+inconceivably subtle and vital, that motion is the law of all things,&mdash;in
+fact, that we have got rid of the notions of the absolute, the fixed, the
+arbitrary, and the notion of origins and of the dualism of the world,&mdash;to
+what extent will these and kindred ideas modify art and all &aelig;sthetic
+production? The idea of the divine right of kings and the divine authority
+of priests is gone; that, in some other time or some other place God was
+nearer man than now and here,&mdash;this idea is gone. Indeed, the whole of
+man's spiritual and religious belief which forms the background of
+literature has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> changed,&mdash;a change as great as if the sky were to change
+from blue to red or to orange. The light of day is different. But
+literature deals with life, and the essential conditions of life, you say,
+always remain the same. Yes, but the expression of their artistic values
+is forever changing. If we ask where is the modern imaginative work that
+is based upon these revelations of science, the work in which they are the
+blood and vital juices, I answer, "Leaves of Grass," and no other. The
+work is the outgrowth of science and modern ideas, just as truly as Dante
+is the outgrowth of medi&aelig;val ideas and superstitions; and the imagination,
+the creative spirit, is just as unhampered in Whitman as in Dante or in
+Shakespeare. The poet finds the universe just as plastic and ductile, just
+as obedient to his will, and just as ready to take the impress of his
+spirit, as did these supreme artists. Science has not hardened it at all.
+The poet opposes himself to it, and masters it and rises superior. He is
+not balked or oppressed for a moment. He knows from the start what science
+can bring him, what it can give, and what it can take away; he knows the
+universe is not orphaned; he finds more grounds than ever for a p&aelig;an of
+thanksgiving and praise. His conviction of the identity of soul and body,
+matter and spirit, does not shake his faith in immortality in the least.
+His faith arises, not from half views, but from whole views. In him the
+idea of the soul, of humanity, of identity, easily balanced the idea of
+the material universe. Man was more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> than a match for nature. It was all
+for him, and not for itself. His enormous egotism, or hold upon the
+central thought or instinct of human worth and import, was an anchor that
+never gave way. Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an
+iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world
+of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as
+immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and
+anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old
+bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the
+universe is directed to one man,&mdash;to you. His anthropomorphism is not a
+projection of himself into nature, but an absorption of nature in himself.
+The tables are turned. It is not alien or superhuman beings that he sees
+and hears in nature, but his own that he finds everywhere. All gods are
+merged in himself.</p>
+
+<p>Not the least fear, not the least doubt or dismay, in this book. Not one
+moment's hesitation or losing of the way. And it is not merely an
+intellectual triumph, but the triumph of soul and personality. The iron
+knots are not untied, they are melted. Indeed, the poet's contentment and
+triumph in view of the fullest recognition of all the sin and sorrow of
+the world, and of all that baffles and dwarfs, is not the least of the
+remarkable features of the book.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil
+under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and
+illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties
+perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and
+exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained
+more than we have lost. The world is anew created by science and
+democracy, and he pronounces it good with the joy and fervor of the old
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>He shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets of note in
+our time who have drawn inspiration from this source, or viewed the
+universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern
+poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious
+compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was
+stupendous; the other childish and empty. But Whitman and Tennyson were
+fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vision that
+matches the best science can do. Tennyson drew upon science more for his
+images and illustrations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and
+appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed
+Whitman's imagination and made him bold; its effects were moral and
+spiritual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellectual; it enlarged
+his vocabulary with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>out strengthening his faith. Indeed, one would say,
+from certain passages in "In Memoriam," that it had distinctly weakened
+his faith. Let us note for a moment the different ways these two poets use
+science. In his poem to Fitzgerald, Tennyson draws upon the nebular
+hypothesis for an image:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"A planet equal to the sun<br />
+Which cast it, that large infidel<br />
+Your Omar."</p>
+
+<p>In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
+"of an earth that is dead."</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space,<br />
+Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."</p>
+
+<p>In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The fires that arch this dusky dot&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yon myriad-worlded way&mdash;</span><br />
+The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">World-isles in lonely skies,</span><br />
+Whole heavens within themselves, amaze<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our brief humanities."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
+not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
+anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
+makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
+the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+"I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,<br />
+And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,<br />
+And call anything close again, when I desire it.<br />
+<br />
+"In vain the speeding or shyness,<br />
+In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,<br />
+In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,<br />
+In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,<br />
+In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,<br />
+In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,<br />
+In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,<br />
+In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,<br />
+In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,<br />
+I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+"I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.<br />
+My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,<br />
+On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,<br />
+All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.<br />
+<br />
+"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,<br />
+Afar down I see the huge first Nothing&mdash;I know I was even there,<br />
+I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,<br />
+And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.<br />
+<br />
+"Long I was hugged close&mdash;long and long.<br />
+Immense have been the preparations for me,<br />
+Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,<br />
+Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,<br />
+For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,<br />
+They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.<br />
+<br />
+"Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me,<br />
+My embryo has never been torpid&mdash;nothing could overlay it.<br />
+For it the nebula cohered to an orb,<br />
+The long, slow strata piled to rest it in,<br />
+Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care.<br />
+All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,<br />
+Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.<br />
+<br />
+"I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,<br />
+And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems:<br />
+Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,<br />
+Outward, outward, and forever outward:<br />
+My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels;<br />
+He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,<br />
+And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.<br />
+<br />
+"There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage.<br />
+If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run.<br />
+We should surely bring up again where we now stand,<br />
+And as surely go as much farther&mdash;and then farther and farther.<br />
+A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make it impatient.<br />
+They are but parts&mdash;anything is but a part,<br />
+See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,<br />
+Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."</p>
+
+<p>In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is
+always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of
+the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the
+man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality
+has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does
+not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional
+realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man
+refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the
+presence of the cosmic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all
+directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the
+"full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
+outside of itself.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,<br />
+And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="HIS_RELATION_TO_RELIGION" id="HIS_RELATION_TO_RELIGION"></a>HIS RELATION TO RELIGION</h3>
+
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">Whitman,</span> as I have elsewhere said, was swayed by two or three great
+passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He
+thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"The soul,<br />
+Forever and forever&mdash;longer than soil is brown and solid&mdash;longer than water ebbs and flows."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy
+manly or womanly development, without religion.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their Religion,<br />
+Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur."</p>
+
+<p>All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"Each is not for its own sake,<br />
+I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's sake."</p>
+
+<p>All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business
+pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth,<br />
+Any more than such are to Religion."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Again he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"My Comrade!<br />
+For you to share with me two greatnesses&mdash;And a third one, rising inclusive and more resplendent,<br />
+The greatness of Love and Democracy&mdash;and the greatness of Religion."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates
+is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It was larger than any creed that has
+yet been formulated. It was the conviction of the man of science touched
+and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his
+life its chief elements were faith, hope, charity. Its object was to
+prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind
+what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."</p>
+
+<p>The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse.
+Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had
+resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated.
+The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of
+the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was
+through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The
+great mass of the human race was doomed to endless perdition. Now there is
+no trace of this religion in Whitman, and it does not seem to have left
+any shadow upon him. Ecclesiasticism is dead; he clears the ground for a
+new growth. To the priests he says: "Your day is done."</p>
+
+<p>He sings a new song; he tastes a new joy in life. The earth is as divine
+as heaven, and there is no god more sacred than yourself. It is as if the
+world had been anew created, and Adam had once more been placed in the
+garden,&mdash;the world, with all consequences of the fall, purged from him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>Hence we have in Whitman the whole human attitude towards the universe,
+towards God, towards life and death, towards good and evil, completely
+changed. We have absolute faith and acceptance in place of the fear and
+repentance of the old creeds; we have death welcomed as joyously as life,
+we have political and social equality as motifs and impulses, and not
+merely as sentiments. He would show us the muse of poetry, as impartial,
+as sweeping in its vision, as modern, as real, as free from the morbid and
+make-believe, as the muse of science. He sees good in all, beauty in all.
+It is not the old piety, it is the new faith; it is not the old worship,
+it is the new acceptance; not the old, corroding religious pessimism, but
+the new scientific optimism.</p>
+
+<p>He does not deny, he affirms; he does not criticise, he celebrates; his is
+not a call to repentance, it is a call to triumph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">"I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,<br />
+None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,<br />
+None has begun to think how divine he himself is, or how certain the future is."</p>
+
+<p>He accepted science absolutely, yet science was not an end in itself: it
+was not his dwelling; he but entered by it to an area of his dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>The flower of science was religion. Without this religion, or something
+akin to it,&mdash;without some spiritual, emotional life that centred about an
+ideal,&mdash;Whitman urged that there could be no permanent national or
+individual development. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> past this ideal was found in the
+supernatural; for us and the future democratic ages, it must be found in
+the natural, in the now and the here.</p>
+
+<p>The aristocratic tradition not only largely shaped the literature of the
+past, it shaped the religion: man was a culprit, his life a rebellion; his
+proper attitude toward the unseen powers was that of a subject to his
+offended sovereign,&mdash;one of prostration and supplication. Heaven was a
+select circle reserved for the few,&mdash;the aristocracy of the pure and just.
+The religion of a democratic and scientific era, as voiced by Whitman and
+as exemplified in his life, is of quite another character,&mdash;not
+veneration, but joy and triumph; not fear, but love; not self-abasement,
+but self-exaltation; not sacrifice, but service: in fact, not religion at
+all in the old sense of the spiritual at war with the natural, the divine
+with the human, this world a vale of tears, and mundane things but filth
+and ashes, heaven for the good and hell for the bad; but in the new sense
+of the divinity of all things, of the equality of gods and men, of the
+brotherhood of the race, of the identity of the material and the
+spiritual, of the beneficence of death and the perfection of the universe.
+The poet turns his face to earth and not to heaven; he finds the
+miraculous, the spiritual, in the things about him, and gods and goddesses
+in the men and women he meets. He effaces the old distinctions; he
+establishes a sort of universal suffrage in spiritual matters; there are
+no select circles, no privileged persons. Is this the democracy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> of
+religion? liberty, fraternity, and equality carried out in the spiritual
+sphere? Death is the right hand of God, and evil plays a necessary part
+also. Nothing is discriminated against; there are no reprisals or
+postponements, no dualism or devilism. Everything is in its place; man's
+life and all the things of his life are well-considered.</p>
+
+<p>Carried out in practice, this democratic religion will not beget priests,
+or churches, or creeds, or rituals, but a life cheerful and full on all
+sides, helpful, loving, unworldly, tolerant, open-souled, temperate,
+fearless, free, and contemplating with pleasure, rather than alarm, "the
+exquisite transition of death."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="A_FINAL_WORD" id="A_FINAL_WORD"></a>A FINAL WORD</h3>
+
+
+<p class='dropcap'><span class="caps">After</span> all I have written about Whitman, I feel at times that the main
+thing I wanted to say about him I have not said, cannot say; the best
+about him cannot be told anyway. "My final merit I refuse you." His full
+significance in connection with the great modern movement; how he embodies
+it all and speaks out of it, and yet maintains his hold upon the
+primitive, the aboriginal; how he presupposes science and culture, yet
+draws his strength from that which antedates these things; how he glories
+in the present, and yet is sustained and justified by the past; how he is
+the poet of America and the modern, and yet translates these things into
+universal truths; how he is the poet of wickedness, while yet every fibre
+of him is sound and good; how his page is burdened with the material, the
+real, the contemporary, while yet his hold upon the ideal, the spiritual,
+never relaxes; how he is the poet of the body, while yet he is in even
+fuller measure the poet of the soul; in fact, how all contradictions are
+finally reconciled in him,&mdash;all these things and more, I say, I feel that
+I have not set forth with the clearness and emphasis the subject demanded.
+Other students of him will approach him on other lines, and will disclose
+meanings that I have missed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>Writing about him, as Symonds said, is enormously difficult. At times I
+feel as if I was almost as much at sea with regard to him as when I first
+began to study him; not at sea with regard to his commanding genius and
+power, but with regard to any adequate statement and summary of him in
+current critical terms. One cannot define and classify him as he can a
+more highly specialized poetic genius. What is he like? He is like
+everything. He is like the soil which holds the germs of a thousand forms
+of life; he is like the grass, common, universal, perennial, formless; he
+is like your own heart, mystical yearning, rebellious, contradictory, but
+ever throbbing with life. He is fluid, generative, electric; he is full of
+the germs, potencies, and latencies of things; he provokes thought without
+satisfying it; he is formless without being void; he is both Darwinian and
+Dantesque. He is the great reconciler, he united and harmonized so many
+opposites in himself. As a man he united the masculine and feminine
+elements in a remarkable degree; he united the innocent vanity of the
+child with the self-reliance of a god. In his moral aspects, he united
+egoism and altruism, pride and charity, individualism and democracy,
+fierce patriotism and the cosmopolitan spirit; in his literary aspects he
+united mysticism and realism, the poet and prophet, the local and the
+universal; in his religious aspects he united faith and agnosticism, the
+glorification of the body and all objective things, with an unshakable
+trust in the reality of the invisible world.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>Rich in the elements of poetry, a London critic says, almost beyond any
+other poet of his time, and yet the conscious, elaborate, crystallic,
+poetic work which the critic demanded of him, carefully stopping short of,
+quite content to hold it all in solution, and give his reader an impulse
+rather than a specimen.</p>
+
+<p>I have accepted Whitman entire and without reservation. I could not do
+otherwise. It was clear enough to me that he was to be taken as a whole or
+not at all. We cannot cut and carve a man. The latest poet brings us
+poetic wares, curiously and beautifully carved and wrought specimens, some
+of which we accept and some of which we pass by. Whitman brings us no
+cunning handicraft of the muses: he brings us a gospel, he brings us a
+man, he brings us a new revelation of life; and either his work appeals to
+us as a whole, or it does not so appeal. He will not live in separate
+passages, or in a few brief poems, any more than Shakespeare or Homer or
+Dante, or the Bible, so lives.</p>
+
+<p>The chief thing about the average literary poet is his poetic gift, apart
+from any other consideration; we select from what he brings us as we
+select from a basket of fruit. The chief thing about Whitman is the
+personality which the poetic gift is engaged in exploiting; the excitement
+of our literary or artistic sense is always less than the excitement of
+our sense of life and of real things. We get in him a fixed point of view,
+a new vantage-ground of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> personality from which to survey life. It is less
+what he brings, and more what he is, than with other poets. To take him by
+fragments, picking out poetic tidbits here and there, rejecting all the
+rest, were like valuing a walk through the fields and woods only for the
+flowers culled here and there, or the bits of color in the grass or
+foliage. Is the air, the sunshine, the free spaces, the rocks, the soil,
+the trees, and the exhilaration of it all, nothing? There are flowers in
+Whitman, too, but they are amid the rocks or under the trees, and seem
+quite unpremeditated and by the way, and never the main concern. If our
+quest is for these alone, we shall surely be disappointed. "In order to
+appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose," says Joel Chandler Harris,
+"it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp
+in instant and express admiration the vast group of facts that make
+man,&mdash;that make liberty,&mdash;that make America. There is no poetry in the
+details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of
+the mighty forces behind them,&mdash;the inevitable, unaccountable,
+irresistible forward movement of man in the making of this republic."</p>
+
+<p>And again: "Those who approach Walt Whitman's poetry from the literary
+side are sure to be disappointed. Whatever else it is, it is not literary.
+Its art is its own, and the melody of it must be sought in other
+suggestions than those of metre.... Those who are merely literary will
+find little substance in the great drama of Democracy which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> outlined
+by Walt Whitman in his writings,&mdash;it is no distinction to call them poems.
+But those who know nature at first hand&mdash;who know man, who see in this
+Republic something more than a political government&mdash;will find therein the
+thrill and glow of poetry and the essence of melody. Not the poetry that
+culture stands in expectation of, nor the melody that capers in verse and
+metre, but those rarer intimations and suggestions that are born in
+primeval solitudes, or come whirling from the vast funnel of the storm."
+How admirable! how true! No man has ever spoken more to the point upon
+Walt Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of such a man as Whitman involves deep world-forces of race
+and time. He is rooted in the very basic structure of his age. After what
+I have already said, my reader will not be surprised when I tell him that
+I look upon Whitman as the one mountain thus far in our literary
+landscape. To me he changes the whole aspect, almost the very climate, of
+our literature. He adds the much-needed ruggedness, breadth, audacity,
+independence, and the elements of primal strength and health. We owe much
+to Emerson. But Emerson was much more a <i>made</i> man than was Whitman,&mdash;much
+more the result of secondary forces, the college, the church, and of New
+England social and literary culture. With all his fervid humanity and
+deeply ingrained modernness, Whitman has the virtues of the primal and the
+savage. "Leaves of Grass" has not the charm, or the kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> of charm, of the
+more highly wrought artistic works, but it has the incentive of nature and
+the charm of real things. We shall not go to it to be soothed and lulled.
+It will always remain among the difficult and heroic undertakings,
+demanding our best moments, our best strength, our morning push and power.
+Like voyaging or mountain-climbing, or facing any danger or hardship by
+land or sea, it fosters manly endeavor and the great virtues of sanity and
+self-reliance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><b>Transcriber's Notes:</b></p>
+
+<p>Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.</p>
+
+<p>Printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphen usage have been retained.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Whitman, by John Burroughs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Whitman
+       A Study
+
+Author: John Burroughs
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2009 [EBook #30342]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Books by John Burroughs.
+
+  WORKS. 14 vols., uniform, 16mo, gilt top, $17.10;
+  half calf, $34.10; half polished morocco, $37.45.
+
+    WAKE-ROBIN.
+
+    WINTER SUNSHINE.
+
+    LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY.
+
+    FRESH FIELDS.
+
+    INDOOR STUDIES.
+
+    BIRDS AND POETS, with Other Papers.
+
+    PEPACTON, and Other Sketches.
+
+    SIGNS AND SEASONS.
+
+    RIVERBY.
+
+    WHITMAN: A STUDY.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.25.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. A Series of Literary Essays.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE.
+
+  Each of the above, $1.10, _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  WAYS OF NATURE. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage extra.
+
+  FAR AND NEAR. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50,
+  _net_. Postage 11 cents.
+
+  A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to
+  each season of the year, from the writings of John
+  Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON
+  JOHNSON. 12mo, $1.50.
+
+  WHITMAN: A Study. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_.
+
+  THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
+  Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist.
+  _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50, _net_.
+
+  LITERARY VALUES. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo,
+  $1.50, _net_. Postage, 11 cents.
+
+  WINTER SUNSHINE. _Cambridge Classics Series._
+  Crown 8vo, $1.00.
+
+  WAKE-ROBIN. _Riverside Aldine Series._ 16mo, $1.00.
+
+  SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illustrated.
+  Square 12mo, $1.00. _School Edition_, 60
+  cents, _net_.
+
+
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: WALT WHITMAN]
+
+
+
+
+  WHITMAN
+  _A STUDY_
+
+  BY
+  JOHN BURROUGHS
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1896,
+  BY JOHN BURROUGHS.
+
+  _All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+  PRELIMINARY                                    1
+
+  BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL                     23
+
+  HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS                     73
+
+  HIS SELF-RELIANCE                             85
+
+  HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE           101
+
+  HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS              169
+
+  HIS RELATION TO CULTURE                      205
+
+  HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES    229
+
+  HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE                      249
+
+  HIS RELATION TO RELIGION                     257
+
+  A FINAL WORD                                 263
+
+
+
+
+"_All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
+from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
+from elsewhere._"--TAINE.
+
+"_If you want to tell good Gothic, see if it has the sort of roughness and
+largeness and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness
+which seems always to be the sign manual of the broad vision and massy
+power of men who can see_ past _the work they are doing, and betray here
+and there something like disdain for it._"--RUSKIN.
+
+"_Formerly, during the period termed classic, when literature was governed
+by recognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the
+most perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the
+most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,--the AEneid,
+the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day something else is wanted. For us
+the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
+imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
+The greatest poet is not he who has done the best, it is he who suggests
+the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves
+you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your
+turn._"--SAINTE-BEUVE.
+
+
+
+
+WHITMAN
+
+
+PRELIMINARY
+
+
+I
+
+The writing of this preliminary chapter, and the final survey and revision
+of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild
+place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place
+Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,--an
+amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth
+of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site of
+an ancient lake, now a garden of unknown depth and fertility. Elemental
+ruggedness, savageness, and grandeur, combined with wonderful tenderness,
+modernness, and geniality. There rise the gray scarred cliffs, crowned
+here and there with a dead hemlock or pine, where, morning after morning,
+I have seen the bald-eagle perch, and here at their feet this level area
+of tender humus, with three perennial springs of delicious cold water
+flowing in its margin; a huge granite bowl filled with the elements and
+potencies of life. The scene has a strange fascination for me, and holds
+me here day after day. From the highest point of rocks I can overlook a
+long stretch of the river and of the farming country beyond; I can hear
+owls hoot, hawks scream, and roosters crow. Birds of the garden and
+orchard meet birds of the forest upon the shaggy cedar posts that uphold
+my porch. At dusk the call of the whippoorwill mingles with the chorus of
+the pickerel frogs, and in the morning I hear through the robins' cheerful
+burst the sombre plaint of the mourning-dove. When I tire of my
+manuscript, I walk in the woods, or climb the rocks, or help the men clear
+up the ground, piling and burning the stumps and rubbish. This scene and
+situation, so primitive and secluded, yet so touched with and adapted to
+civilization, responding to the moods of both sides of the life and
+imagination of a modern man, seems, I repeat, typical in many ways of my
+poet, and is a veritable Whitman land. Whitman does not to me suggest the
+wild and unkempt as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the
+elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my
+dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to
+him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and
+placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some
+of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and
+primitive aspects.
+
+His wildness is only the wildness of the great primary forces from which
+we draw our health and strength. Underneath all his unloosedness, or free
+launching forth of himself, is the sanity and repose of nature.
+
+
+II
+
+I first became acquainted with Whitman's poetry through the columns of the
+old "Saturday Press" when I was twenty or twenty-one years old (1858 or
+1859). The first things I remember to have read were "There was a child
+went forth," "This Compost," "As I ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Old
+Ireland," and maybe a few others. I was attracted by the new poet's work
+from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found
+in the current poetry. Meeting Bayard Taylor about this time, I spoke to
+him about Whitman. "Yes," he said, "there is something in him, but he is a
+man of colossal egotism."
+
+A few years later a friend sent me a copy of the Thayer & Eldridge edition
+of "Leaves of Grass" of 1860. It proved a fascinating but puzzling book to
+me. I grazed upon it like a colt upon a mountain, taking what tasted good
+to me, and avoiding what displeased me, but having little or no conception
+of the purport of the work as a whole. I found passages and whole poems
+here and there that I never tired of reading, and that gave a strange
+fillip to my moral and intellectual nature, but nearly as many passages
+and poems puzzled or repelled me. My absorption of Emerson had prepared me
+in a measure for Whitman's philosophy of life, but not for the ideals of
+character and conduct which he held up to me, nor for the standards in art
+to which the poet perpetually appealed. Whitman was Emerson translated
+from the abstract into the concrete. There was no privacy with Whitman; he
+never sat me down in a corner with a cozy, comfortable shut-in feeling,
+but he set me upon a hill or started me upon an endless journey.
+Wordsworth had been my poet of nature, of the sequestered and the idyllic;
+but I saw that here was a poet of a larger, more fundamental nature,
+indeed of the Cosmos itself. Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the
+earth and the orbs. This much soon appeared to me, but I was troubled by
+the poet's apparent "colossal egotism," by his attitude towards evil,
+declaring himself "to be the poet of wickedness also;" by his seeming
+attraction toward the turbulent and the disorderly; and, at times, by what
+the critics had called his cataloguing style of treatment.
+
+When I came to meet the poet himself, which was in the fall of 1863, I
+felt less concern about these features of his work; he was so sound and
+sweet and gentle and attractive as a man, and withal so wise and tolerant,
+that I soon came to feel the same confidence in the book that I at once
+placed in its author, even in the parts which I did not understand. I saw
+that the work and the man were one, and that the former must be good as
+the latter was good. There was something in the manner in which both the
+book and its author carried themselves under the sun, and in the way they
+confronted America and the present time, that convinced beyond the power
+of logic or criticism.
+
+The more I saw of Whitman, and the more I studied his "Leaves," the more
+significance I found in both, and the clearer it became to me that a new
+type of a man and a new departure in poetic literature were here
+foreshadowed. There was something forbidding, but there was something
+vital and grand back of it. I found to be true what the poet said of
+himself,--
+
+  "Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,
+  To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
+  For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them,"--
+
+I have persevered in my study of the poet, though balked many times, and
+the effect upon my own mental and spiritual nature has been great; no such
+"solid prizes" in the way of a broader outlook upon life and nature, and,
+I may say, upon art, has any poet of my time afforded me. There are
+passages or whole poems in the "Leaves" which I do not yet understand
+("Sleep-Chasings" is one of them), though the language is as clear as
+daylight; they are simply too subtle or elusive for me; but my confidence
+in the logical soundness of the book is so complete that I do not trouble
+myself at all about these things.
+
+
+III
+
+I would fain make these introductory remarks to my essay a sort of window
+through which the reader may get a fairly good view of what lies beyond.
+If he does not here get any glimpse or suggestion of what pleases him, or
+of what he is looking for, it will hardly be worth while for him to
+trouble himself further.
+
+A great many readers, perhaps three fourths of the readers of current
+poetry, and not a few of the writers thereof, cannot stand Whitman at all,
+or see any reason for his being. To such my essay, if it ever comes to
+their notice, will be a curiosity, may be an offense. But I trust it will
+meet with a different reception at the hands of the smaller but rapidly
+growing circle of those who are beginning to turn to Whitman as the most
+imposing and significant figure in our literary annals.
+
+The rapidly growing Whitman literature attests the increasing interest to
+which I refer. Indeed, it seems likely that by the end of the century the
+literature which will have grown up around the name of this man will
+surpass in bulk and value that which has grown up around the name of any
+other man of letters born within the century.
+
+When Mr. Stedman wrote his essay upon the poet early in the eighties, he
+referred to the mass of this literature. It has probably more than doubled
+in volume in the intervening years: since Whitman's death in the spring of
+'92, it has been added to by William Clark's book upon the poet, Professor
+Trigg's study of Browning and Whitman, and the work of that accomplished
+critic and scholar, so lately gone to his rest, John Addington Symonds.
+This last is undoubtedly the most notable contribution that has yet been
+made, or is likely very soon to be made, to the Whitman literature. Mr.
+Symonds declares that "Leaves of Grass," which he first read at the age of
+twenty-five, influenced him more than any other book has done, except the
+Bible,--more than Plato, more than Goethe.
+
+When we remember that the man who made this statement was eminently a man
+of books, deeply read in all literatures, his testimony may well offset
+that of a score of our home critics who find nothing worthy or helpful in
+Whitman's work. One positive witness in such a matter outweighs any number
+of negative ones.
+
+
+IV
+
+For making another addition to the growing Whitman literature, I have no
+apology to offer. I know well enough that "writing and talk" cannot
+"prove" a poet; that he must be his own proof or be forgotten; and my main
+purpose in writing about Whitman, as in writing about nature, is to tell
+readers what I have found there, with the hope of inducing them to look
+for themselves. At the same time, I may say that I think no modern poet so
+much needs to be surrounded by an atmosphere of comment and
+interpretation, through which readers may approach him, as does Whitman.
+His work sprang from a habit or attitude of mind quite foreign to that
+with which current literature makes us familiar,--so germinal is it, and
+so little is it beholden to the formal art we so assiduously cultivate.
+The poet says his work "connects lovingly with precedents," but it does
+not connect lovingly with any body of poetry of this century. "Leaves of
+Grass" is bound to be a shock to the timid and pampered taste of the
+majority of current readers. I would fain lessen this shock by interposing
+my own pages of comment between the book and the public. The critic can
+say so many things the poet cannot. He can explain and qualify and
+analyze, whereas the creative artist can only hint or project. The poet
+must hasten on, he must infold and bind together, he must be direct and
+synthetic in every act. Reflection and qualification are not for him, but
+action, emotion, volition, the procreant blending and surrender. He works
+as Nature does, and gives us reality in every line.
+
+Whitman says:--
+
+  "I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot
+        expound myself."
+
+
+The type of mind of Whitman's, which seldom or never emerges as a mere
+mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a
+personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself,
+because its operations are synthetic and not analytic, its mainspring is
+love and not mere knowledge. In his prose essay called "A Backward Glance
+o'er Travel'd Roads," appended to the final edition of his poems, Whitman
+has not so much sought to expound himself as to put his reader in
+possession of his point of view, and of the considerations that lie back
+of his work. This chapter might render much that I have written
+superfluous, were there not always a distinct gain in seeing an author
+through another medium, or in getting the equivalents of him in the
+thoughts and ideals of a kindred and sympathetic mind. But I have not
+consciously sought to expound Whitman, any more than in my other books I
+have sought to expound the birds or wild nature. I have written out some
+things that he means to me, and the pleasure and profit I have found in
+his pages.
+
+There is no end to what can be drawn out of him. It has been said and
+repeated that he was not a thinker, and yet I find more food for thought
+in him than in all other poets. It has been often said and repeated that
+he is not a poet, and yet the readers that respond to him the most fully
+appear to be those in whom the poetic temperament is paramount. I believe
+he supplies in fuller measure that pristine element, something akin to the
+unbreathed air of mountain and shore, which makes the arterial blood of
+poetry and literature, than any other modern writer.
+
+
+V
+
+We can make little of Whitman unless we allow him to be a law unto
+himself, and seek him through the clews which he himself brings. When we
+try him by current modes, current taste, and demand of him formal beauty,
+formal art, we are disappointed. But when we try him by what we may call
+the scientific standard, the standard of organic nature, and demand of him
+the vital and the characteristic,--demand of him that he have a law of his
+own, and fulfill that law in the poetic sphere,--the result is quite
+different.
+
+More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other
+poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies, rather than
+in what he portrays; and more than any other poet must he wait to be
+understood by the growth of the taste of himself. "I make the only growth
+by which I can be appreciated," he truly says.
+
+His words are like the manna that descended upon the Israelites, "in which
+were all manner of tastes; and every one found in it what his palate was
+chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the young
+men tasted bread; the old men honey; and the children oil." Many young
+men,--poets, artists, teachers, preachers,--have testified that they have
+found bread in Whitman, the veritable bread of life; others have found
+honey, sweet poetic morsels; and not a few report having found only gall.
+
+
+VI
+
+In considering an original work like "Leaves of Grass," the search is
+always for the grounds upon which it is to be justified and explained.
+These grounds in this work are not easy to find; they lie deeper than the
+grounds upon which the popular poets rest. Because they are not at once
+seen, many readers have denied that there are any such grounds. But to
+deny a basis of reality to a work with the history of "Leaves of Grass,"
+and a basis well grounded on aesthetic and artistic principles, is not to
+be thought of.
+
+The more the poet eludes us, the more we know he has his hiding-place
+somewhere. The more he denies our standards, the more we know he has
+standards of his own which we must discover; the more he flouts at our
+literary conventions, the more we must press him for his own principles
+and methods. How does he justify himself to himself? Could any sane man
+have written the Children of Adam poems who was not sustained by deepest
+moral and aesthetic convictions? It is the business of the critic to search
+for these principles and convictions, and not shirk the task by ridicule
+and denial.
+
+
+VII
+
+If there was never any change in taste, if it always ran in the same
+channels,--indeed, if it did not at times run in precisely opposite
+channels,--there would be little hope that Walt Whitman's poetry would
+ever find any considerable number of readers. But one of the laws that
+dominate the progress of literature, as Edmond Sherer says, is incessant
+change, not only in thought and ideas, but in taste and the
+starting-points of art. A radical and almost violent change in these
+respects is indicated by Whitman,--a change which is in unison with many
+things in modern life and morals, but which fairly crosses the prevailing
+taste in poetry and in art. No such dose of realism and individualism
+under the guise of poetry has been administered to the reading public in
+this century. No such break with literary traditions--no such audacious
+attempt to tally, in a printed page, the living concrete man, an actual
+human presence, instead of the conscious, made-up poet--is to be found in
+modern literary records.
+
+
+VIII
+
+The much that I have said in the following pages about Whitman's radical
+differences from other poets--his changed attitude towards the universe,
+his unwonted methods and aims, etc.,--might seem to place him upon a
+ground so unique and individual as to contradict my claims for his breadth
+and universality. The great poets stand upon common ground; they excel
+along familiar lines, they touch us, and touch us deeply, at many points.
+What always saves Whitman is his enormous endowment of what is "commonest,
+nearest, easiest,"--his atmosphere of the common day, the common life, and
+his fund of human sympathy and love. He is strange because he gives us the
+familiar in such a direct, unexpected manner. His "Leaves" are like some
+new fruit that we have never before tasted. It is the product of another
+clime, another hemisphere. The same old rains and dews, the same old sun
+and soil, nursed it, yet in so many ways how novel and strange! We
+certainly have to serve a certain apprenticeship to this poet, familiarize
+ourselves with his point of view and with his democratic spirit, before we
+can make much of him. The spirit in which we come to him from the other
+poets--the poets of art and culture--is for the most part unfriendly to
+him. There is something rude, strange, and unpoetic about him at first
+sight that is sure to give most readers of poetry a shock. I think one
+might come to him from the Greek poets, or the old Hebrew or Oriental
+bards, with less shock than from our modern delicate and refined singers;
+because the old poets were more simple and elemental, and aimed less at
+the distilled dainties of poetry, than the modern. They were full of
+action, too, and volition,--of that which begets and sustains life.
+Whitman's poetry is almost entirely the expression of will and
+personality, and runs very little to intellectual subtleties and
+refinements. It fulfills itself in our wills and character, rather than in
+our taste.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman will always be a strange and unwonted figure among his country's
+poets, and among English poets generally,--a cropping out again, after so
+many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain. Had he dropped upon us
+from some other sphere, he could hardly have been a greater surprise and
+puzzle to the average reader or critic. Into a literature that was timid,
+imitative, conventional, he fell like leviathan into a duck-pond, and the
+commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All
+the reigning poets in this country except Emerson denied him, and many of
+our minor poets still keep up a hostile sissing and cackling. He will
+probably always be more or less a stumbling-block to the minor poet,
+because of his indifference to the things which to the minor poet are all
+in all. He was a poet without what is called artistic form, and without
+technique, as that word is commonly understood. His method was analogous
+to the dynamic method of organic nature, rather than to the mechanical or
+constructive method of the popular poets.
+
+
+X
+
+Of course the first thing that strikes the reader in "Leaves of Grass" is
+its seeming oddity and strangeness. If a man were to come into a dress
+reception in shirt sleeves and with his hat on, the feature would strike
+us at once, and would be magnified in our eyes; we should quite forget
+that he was a man, and in essentials differed but little from the rest of
+us, after all. The exterior habiliments on such occasions count for nearly
+everything; and in the popular poetry rhyme, measure, and the language and
+manners of the poets are much more than anything else. If Whitman did not
+do anything so outre as to come into a dress reception with his coat off
+and his hat on, he did come into the circle of the poets without the usual
+poetic habiliments. He was not dressed up at all, and he was not at all
+abashed or apologetic. His air was confident and self-satisfied, if it did
+not at times suggest the insolent and aggressive. It was the dress circle
+that was on trial, and not Walt Whitman.
+
+We could forgive a man in real life for such an audacious proceeding only
+on the ground of his being something extraordinary as a person, with an
+extraordinary message to convey; and we can pardon the poet only on
+precisely like grounds. He must make us forget his unwonted garb by his
+unique and lovable personality, and the power and wisdom of his utterance.
+If he cannot do this we shall soon tire of him.
+
+That Whitman was a personality the like of which the world has not often
+seen, and that his message to his country and to his race was of prime
+importance, are conclusions at which more and more thinking persons are
+surely arriving.
+
+His want of art, of which we have heard so much, is, it seems to me, just
+this want of the usual trappings and dress uniform of the poets. In the
+essentials of art, the creative imagination, the plastic and quickening
+spirit, the power of identification with the thing contemplated, and the
+absolute use of words, he has few rivals.
+
+
+XI
+
+I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
+Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
+colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
+such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
+is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
+appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
+violently for him or violently against, and it will require the
+perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
+significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
+show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.
+
+"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
+has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
+this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
+interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
+up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
+and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
+vanity."
+
+To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
+one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
+not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
+follows, I shall be more than content.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the world of literature, as in the world of physical forces, things
+adjust themselves after a while, and no impetus can be given to any man's
+name or fame that will finally carry it beyond the limit of his real
+worth. However "one-sided" my enthusiasm for Whitman may be, or that of
+any of his friends may be, there is no danger but that in time he will
+find exactly his proper place and level. My opinion, or any man's opinion,
+of the works of another, is like a wind that blows for a moment across
+the water, heaping it up a little on the shore or else beating it down,
+but not in any way permanently affecting its proper level.
+
+The adverse winds that have blown over Whitman's work have been many and
+persistent, and yet the tide has surely risen, his fame has slowly
+increased.
+
+It will soon be forty years since he issued the first thin quarto edition
+of "Leaves of Grass," and, though the opposition to him has been the most
+fierce and determined ever recorded in our literary history, often
+degenerating into persecution and willful misrepresentation, yet his fame
+has steadily grown both at home and abroad. The impression he early made
+upon such men as Emerson, Thoreau, William O'Connor, Mr. Stedman, Colonel
+Ingersoll, and others in this country, and upon Professors Dowden and
+Clifford, upon Symonds, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti, Lord Lytton, Mrs.
+Gilchrist, George Eliot, in England, has been followed by an equally deep
+or deeper impression upon many of the younger and bolder spirits of both
+hemispheres. In fact Whitman saw his battle essentially won in his own
+lifetime, though his complete triumph is of course a matter of the distant
+future.
+
+
+XIII
+
+But let me give without further delay a fuller hint of the attitude these
+pages assume and hold towards the subject they discuss.
+
+There are always, or nearly always, a few men born to each generation who
+embody the best thought and culture of that generation, and express it in
+approved literary forms. From Petrarch down to Lowell, the lives and works
+of these men fill the literary annals; they uphold the literary and
+scholarly traditions; they are the true men of letters; they are justly
+honored and beloved in their day and land. We in this country have
+recently, in the death of Dr. Holmes, mourned the loss of the last of the
+New England band of such men. We are all indebted to them for solace, and
+for moral and intellectual stimulus.
+
+Then, much more rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like
+an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who
+bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are
+not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times
+for the most part decry and disown,--the primal, original, elemental men.
+It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the
+minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He
+is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets,--nearer the
+founders and discoverers, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic,
+patriarchal men who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with
+the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the
+seer, the prophet. The specialization and differentiation of our latter
+ages of science and culture is less marked in him than in other poets.
+Poetry, philosophy, religion, are all inseparably blended in his pages. He
+is in many ways a reversion to an earlier type. Dr. Brinton has remarked
+that his attitude toward the principle of sex and his use of sexual
+imagery in his poems, are the same as in the more primitive religions.
+Whitman was not a poet by elaboration, but by suggestion; not an artist by
+formal presentation, but by spirit and conception; not a philosopher by
+system and afterthought, but by vision and temper.
+
+In his "Leaves," we again hear the note of destiny,--again see the
+universal laws and forces exemplified in the human personality, and turned
+upon life with love and triumph.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The world always has trouble with its primary men, or with the men who
+have any primary gifts, like Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Tolstoi,
+Ibsen. The idols of an age are nearly always secondary men: they break no
+new ground; they make no extraordinary demands; our tastes and wants are
+already adjusted to their type; we understand and approve of them at once.
+The primary men disturb us; they are a summons and a challenge; they break
+up the old order; they open up new territory which we are to subdue and
+occupy; the next age and the next make more of them. In my opinion, the
+next age and the next will make more of Whitman, and the next still more,
+because he is in the great world-current, in the line of the evolutionary
+movement of our time. Is it at all probable that Tennyson can ever be to
+any other age what he has been to this? Tennyson marks an expiring age,
+the sunset of the feudal world. He did not share the spirit to which the
+future belongs. There was not one drop of democratic blood in his veins.
+To him, the people were an hundred-headed beast.
+
+
+XV
+
+If my essay seems like one continual strain to attain the unattainable, to
+compass and define Whitman, who will not be compassed and defined, I can
+only say that I regret it, but could not well help it. Talking about
+Whitman, Symonds said, was like talking about the universe, and it is so.
+There is somewhat incommensurable in his works. One may not hope to speak
+the final word about him, to sum him up in a sentence. He is so palpable,
+so real, so near at hand, that the critic or expounder of him promises
+himself an easy victory; but before one can close with him he is gone. He
+is, after all, as subtle and baffling as air or light.
+
+                    ... "I will certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you."
+
+
+It is probably this characteristic which makes Whitman an irrepressible
+figure in literature; he will not down for friend or foe. He escapes from
+all classification, and is larger than any definition of him that has yet
+been given. How many times has he been exploded by British and American
+critics; how many times has he been labeled and put upon the shelf, only
+to reappear again as vigorous and untranslatable as ever!
+
+
+XVI
+
+So far as Whitman stands merely for the spirit of revolt, or of reaction
+against current modes in life and literature, I have little interest in
+him. As the "apostle of the rough, the uncouth," to use Mr. Howells's
+words, the world would long ago have tired of him. The irruption into
+letters of the wild and lawless, or of the strained and eccentric, can
+amuse and interest us only for a moment. It is because these are only
+momentary phases of him, as it were, and because underneath all he
+embraces the whole of life and ministers to it, that his fame and
+influence are still growing in the world. One hesitates even to call
+Whitman the poet of "democracy," or of "personality," or of "the modern,"
+because such terms only half define him. He quickly escapes into that
+large and universal air which all great art breathes. We cannot sum him up
+in a phrase. He flows out on all sides, and his sympathies embrace all
+types and conditions of men. He is a great democrat, but, first and last
+and over all, he is a great man, a great nature, and deep world-currents
+course through him. He is distinctively an American poet, but his
+Americanism is only the door through which he enters upon the universal.
+
+
+XVII
+
+Call his work poetry or prose, or what you will: that it is an inspired
+utterance of some sort, any competent person ought to be able to see. And
+what else do we finally demand of any work than that it be inspired? How
+all questions of form and art, and all other questions, sink into
+insignificance beside that! The exaltation of mind and spirit shown in the
+main body of Whitman's work, the genuine, prophetic fervor, the
+intensification and amplification of the simple ego, and the resultant
+raising of all human values, seem to me as plain as daylight.
+
+Whitman is to be classed among the great names by the breadth and
+all-inclusiveness of his theme and by his irrepressible personality. I
+think it highly probable that future scholars and critics will find his
+work fully as significant and era-marking as that of any of the few
+supreme names of the past. It is the culmination of an age of
+individualism, and, as opposites meet, it is also the best lesson in
+nationalism and universal charity that this century has seen.
+
+
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL
+
+
+I
+
+Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 30, 1819, and died
+at Camden, N. J., March 26, 1892. Though born in the country, most of his
+life was passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New
+Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is
+buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,--free, unhampered,
+unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of
+money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole,
+joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter
+through the world,--no hurry, no fever, no strife; hence no bitterness, no
+depletion, no wasted energies. A farm boy, then a school-teacher, then a
+printer, editor, writer, traveler, mechanic, nurse in the army hospitals,
+and lastly government clerk; large and picturesque of figure, slow of
+movement; tolerant, passive, receptive, and democratic,--of the people; in
+all his tastes and attractions, always aiming to walk abreast with the
+great laws and forces, and to live thoroughly in the free, nonchalant
+spirit of his own day and land. His strain was mingled Dutch and English,
+with a decided Quaker tinge, which came from his mother's side, and which
+had a marked influence upon his work.
+
+The spirit that led him to devote his time and substance to the sick and
+wounded soldiers during the war may be seen in that earlier incident in
+his life when he drove a Broadway stage all one winter, that a disabled
+driver might lie by without starving his family. It is from this episode
+that the tradition of his having been a New York stage-driver comes. He
+seems always to have had a special liking for this class of workmen. One
+of the house surgeons of the old New York Hospital relates that in the
+latter part of the fifties Whitman was a frequent visitor to that
+institution, looking after and ministering to disabled stage-drivers.
+"These drivers," says the doctor, "like those of the omnibuses in London,
+were a set of men by themselves. A good deal of strength, intelligence,
+and skillful management of horses was required of a Broadway stage-driver.
+He seems to have been decidedly a higher order of man than the driver of
+the present horse-cars. He usually had his primary education in the
+country, and graduated as a thorough expert in managing a very difficult
+machine, in an exceptionally busy thoroughfare.
+
+"It was this kind of a man that so attracted Walt Whitman that he was
+constantly to be seen perched on the box alongside one of them going up
+and down Broadway. I often watched the poet and driver, as probably did
+many another New Yorker in those days.
+
+"I do not wonder as much now as I did in 1860 that a man like Walt Whitman
+became interested in these drivers. He was not interested in the news of
+every-day life--the murders and accidents and political convulsions--but
+he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not
+had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now
+that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then
+been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote
+them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said
+much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had satisfied
+himself of the nature of the injury and of the prospect of recovery.
+
+"Whitman appeared to be about forty years of age at that time. He was
+always dressed in a blue flannel coat and vest, with gray and baggy
+trousers. He wore a woolen shirt, with a Byronic collar, low in the neck,
+without a cravat, as I remember, and a large felt hat. His hair was iron
+gray, and he had a full beard and mustache of the same color. His face and
+neck were bronzed by exposure to the sun and air. He was large, and gave
+the impression of being a vigorous man. He was scrupulously careful of his
+simple attire, and his hands were soft and hairy."
+
+During the early inception of "Leaves of Grass" he was a carpenter in
+Brooklyn, building and selling small frame-houses to working people. He
+frequently knocked off work to write his poems. In his life Whitman was
+never one of the restless, striving sort. In this respect he was not
+typical of his countrymen. All his urgency and strenuousness he reserved
+for his book. He seems always to have been a sort of visitor in life,
+noting, observing, absorbing, keeping aloof from all ties that would hold
+him, and making the most of the hour and the place in which he happened to
+be. He was in no sense a typical literary man. During his life in New York
+and Brooklyn, we see him moving entirely outside the fashionable circles,
+the learned circles, the literary circles, the money-getting circles. He
+belongs to no set or club. He is seen more with the laboring
+classes,--drivers, boatmen, mechanics, printers,--and I suspect may often
+be found with publicans and sinners. He is fond of the ferries and of the
+omnibuses. He is a frequenter of the theatre and of the Italian opera.
+Alboni makes a deep and lasting impression upon him. It is probably to her
+that he writes these lines:--
+
+  "Here take this gift,
+  I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, general,
+  One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress
+        and freedom of the race,
+  Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
+  But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to
+        any."
+
+
+Elsewhere he refers to Alboni by name and speaks of her as
+
+  "The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
+  Sister of loftiest gods."
+
+
+Some of his poems were written at the opera. The great singers evidently
+gave him clews and suggestions that were applicable to his own art.
+
+His study was out of doors. He wrote on the street, on the ferry, at the
+seaside, in the fields, at the opera,--always from living impulses arising
+at the moment, and always with his eye upon the fact. He says he has read
+his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, and tried them by the realities
+of life and nature about him. Were they as real and alive as they?--this
+was the only question with him.
+
+At home in his father's family in Brooklyn we see him gentle, patient,
+conciliatory, much looked up to by all. Neighbors seek his advice. He is
+cool, deliberate, impartial. A marked trait is his indifference to money
+matters; his people are often troubled because he lets opportunities to
+make money pass by. When his "Leaves" appear, his family are puzzled, do
+not know what to make of it. His mother thinks that, if "Hiawatha" is
+poetry, may be Walt's book is, too. He never counsels with any one, and is
+utterly indifferent as to what people may say or think. He is not a
+stirring and punctual man, is always a little late; not an early riser,
+not prompt at dinner; always has ample time, and will not be hurried; the
+business gods do not receive his homage. He is gray at thirty, and is said
+to have had a look of age in youth, as he had a look of youth in age. He
+has few books, cares little for sport, never uses a gun; has no bad
+habits; has no entanglements with women, and apparently never contemplates
+marriage. It is said that during his earliest years of manhood he kept
+quite aloof from the "girls."
+
+At the age of nineteen he edited "The Long Islander," published at
+Huntington. A recent visitor to these early haunts of Whitman gathered
+some reminiscences of him at this date:--
+
+"Amid the deep revery of nature, on that mild October afternoon, we
+returned to the village of Huntington, there to meet the few, the very
+few, survivors who recall Walt's first appearance in the literary world as
+the editor of 'The Long Islander,' nigh sixty years ago (1838). Two of
+these forefathers of the hamlet clearly remembered his powerful
+personality, brimful of life, reveling in strength, careless of time and
+the world, of money and of toil; a lover of books and of jokes; delighting
+to gather round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of
+evenings, and tell them stories and read them poetry, his own and others'.
+That of his own he called his 'Yawps,' a word which he afterwards made
+famous. Both remembered him as a delightful companion, generous to a
+fault, glorying in youth, negligent of his affairs, issuing 'The Long
+Islander' at random intervals,--once a week, once in two weeks, once in
+three,--until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him
+out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt himself was editor,
+publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all in one."
+
+
+II
+
+Few men were so deeply impressed by our Civil War as was Whitman. It
+aroused all his patriotism, all his sympathies, and, as a poet, tested his
+power to deal with great contemporary events and scenes. He was first
+drawn to the seat of war on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel
+George W. Whitman, 51st New York Volunteers, who was wounded by the
+fragment of a shell at Fredericksburg. This was in the fall of 1862. This
+brought him in contact with the sick and wounded soldiers, and henceforth,
+as long as the war lasts and longer, he devoted his time and substance to
+ministering to them. The first two or three years of his life in
+Washington he supported himself by correspondence with Northern
+newspapers, mainly with the "New York Times." These letters, as well as
+the weekly letters to his mother during the same period, form an intensely
+pathetic and interesting record.
+
+They contain such revelations of himself, and such pictures of the scenes
+he moved among, that I shall here quote freely from them. The following
+extract is from a letter written from Fredericksburg the third or fourth
+day after the battle of December, 1862:--
+
+"Spent a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the
+Rappahannock, immediately opposite Fredericksburg. It is used as a
+hospital since the battle, and seems to have received only the worst
+cases. Out of doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front
+of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.,
+about a load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each
+covered with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, toward the river,
+are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of
+barrel-staves, or broken board, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies
+were subsequently taken up and transported North to their friends.)
+
+"The house is quite crowded, everything impromptu, no system, all bad
+enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds
+pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and
+bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a
+Mississippian,--a captain,--hit badly in leg, I talked with some time; he
+asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward
+in Washington, with leg amputated, doing well.)
+
+"I went through the rooms, down stairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
+I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks
+home, mothers, etc. Also talked to three or four who seemed most
+susceptible to it, and needing it."
+
+"December 22 to 31.--Am among the regimental, brigade, and division
+hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and
+sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their
+blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No
+cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around
+from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I
+cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me
+convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and
+sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.
+
+"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
+camps, talking with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups
+around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get
+acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well
+used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best."
+
+After continuing in front through the winter, he returns to Washington,
+where the wounded and sick have mainly been concentrated. The Capital
+city, truly, is now one huge hospital; and there Whitman establishes
+himself, and thenceforward, for several years, has but one daily and
+nightly avocation.
+
+He alludes to writing letters by the bedside, and says:--
+
+"I do a good deal of this, of course, writing all kinds, including
+love-letters. Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written home to
+parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives, for one reason or another, for
+a long, long time. Some are poor writers, some cannot get paper and
+envelopes; many have an aversion to writing, because they dread to worry
+the folks at home,--the facts about them are so sad to tell. I always
+encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them."
+
+A glimpse of the scenes after Chancellorsville:--
+
+"As I write this, in May, 1863, the wounded have begun to arrive from
+Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first
+arrivals. The men in charge of them told me the bad cases were yet to
+come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
+see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here foot of Sixth
+Street at night. Two boat-loads came about half past seven last night. A
+little after eight, it rained a long and violent shower. The poor, pale,
+helpless soldiers had been debarked, and lay around on the wharf and
+neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any
+rate they were exposed to it.
+
+"The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the
+ground, out on side places, etc., the men are lying on blankets and old
+quilts, with the bloody rags bound round heads, arms, legs, etc. The
+attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also,--only a few
+hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
+common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
+there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by
+the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is
+called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on
+stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their
+sufferings,--a few groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a
+scream of pain, as they lift a man into the ambulance.
+
+"To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the
+next day more, and so on for many days.
+
+"The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
+generally supposed,--I should say nine tenths are native-born. Among the
+arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
+and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
+are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
+a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was, perhaps,
+worse than usual. Amputations are going on,--the attendants are dressing
+wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw,
+the other day, a gentleman--a visitor, apparently, from curiosity--in one
+of the wards stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were
+probing, etc. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and
+fallen on the floor."
+
+An episode,--the death of a New York soldier:--
+
+"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
+have been with a good deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
+company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound
+also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
+and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
+opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
+the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
+crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
+chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
+feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
+me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
+mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It is my chief
+reliance.' He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: 'Why,
+Oscar, don't you think you will get well?' He said: 'I may, but it is not
+probable.' He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
+discharged much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that
+he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
+affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned
+fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
+post-office, Cattaraugus County, New York. I had several such interviews
+with him. He died a few days after the one just described."
+
+And here, also, a characteristic scene in another of those long
+barracks:--
+
+"It is Sunday afternoon (middle of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and
+very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now
+lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
+8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
+wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well.
+Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on,
+sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
+yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so
+handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over
+to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
+Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan."
+
+In a letter to his mother in 1863 he says, in reference to his hospital
+services: "I have got in the way, after going lightly, as it were, all
+through the wards of a hospital, and trying to give a word of cheer, if
+nothing else, to every one, then confining my special attention to the few
+where the investment seems to tell best, and who want it most.... Mother,
+I have real pride in telling you that I have the consciousness of saving
+quite a number of lives by keeping the men from giving up, and being a
+good deal with them. The men say it is so, and the doctors say it is so;
+and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I say it myself.
+I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you."
+
+Again he says: "I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity; I go
+among the smallpox, etc., just the same. I feel to go without
+apprehension, and so I go: nobody else goes; but, as the darkey said there
+at Charleston when the boat ran on a flat and the rebel sharpshooters were
+peppering them, '_somebody_ must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"
+
+In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
+wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
+hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
+large and well,--indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
+the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
+not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."
+
+As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
+letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
+Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
+a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
+do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
+secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,--a
+regular Carolina or Virginia planter."
+
+The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
+deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
+used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have seen so many
+cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
+hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
+and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."
+
+Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
+health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
+trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
+but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:--
+
+"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
+Hospital),--about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
+probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
+stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
+Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
+'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
+knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
+composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
+o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
+blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I told you,
+last letter, I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young
+men I knew well, especially two of whom I had strong hopes of their
+getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are
+crowded here in Washington in immense numbers, and all those that came up
+from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such
+plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from
+Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the
+largest proportion of worst cases get little or no attention.
+
+"We receive them here with their wounds full of worms,--some all swelled
+and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new
+feature is, that many of the poor, afflicted young men are crazy; every
+ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and
+it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is
+most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it; but I
+suppose it is because I have not felt firstrate myself."
+
+Of the Ohio soldier above referred to, Whitman had written a few days
+before: "You remember I told you of him a year ago, when he was first
+brought in. I thought him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I
+had seen. A real giant in size, and always with a smile on his face. Oh,
+what a change! He has long been very irritable to every one but me, and
+his frame is all wasted away."
+
+To his brother Jeff he wrote: "Of the many I have seen die, or known of
+the past year, I have not seen or known of one who met death with any
+terror. Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of
+seventeen named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
+Artillery, Battery M. He was brought into one of the hospitals mortally
+wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it
+ought to be a relief to his folks, after all, if they could see how little
+he suffered. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed;
+it was very warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat.
+At length he opened his eyes quite wide and clear, and looked inquiringly
+around. I said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said
+quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking
+around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he
+lay so peaceful in his dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England
+country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
+fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."
+
+Another extract from a letter to his mother in April, 1864:--
+
+"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
+active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
+gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,--the flag, the
+tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
+never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
+pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,--it belonged to one
+of our cavalry regiments,--presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
+taken by the rebs in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
+little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
+four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
+rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
+again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
+it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
+he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
+I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
+a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."
+
+[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
+movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
+principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
+simple, and on a low key,--to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
+and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
+certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
+carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
+of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
+trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
+flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
+summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
+white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
+air and sunshine.
+
+When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
+feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
+festival,--strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh
+underclothes. He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder,
+full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant
+pockets. He would sometimes come in summer with a good-sized basket filled
+with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing them among
+the feverish and thirsty.]
+
+Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses. A
+well-known correspondent of the "New York Herald" writes thus about him in
+April, 1876:--
+
+"I first heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle
+there. Subsequently I saw him, time and again, in the Washington
+hospitals, or wending his way there, with basket or haversack on his arm,
+and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed
+the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kindness,
+tenderness, and thoughtfulness.
+
+"Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds
+through a hospital filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism
+he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each
+cot bore its man. When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of
+affection and welcome on every face, however wan, and his presence seemed
+to light up the place as it might be lighted by the presence of the God of
+Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in
+whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To
+one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to
+others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a
+sheet of paper or a postage-stamp, all of which and many other things were
+in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message
+for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an
+errand; to another, some special friend very low, he would give a manly
+farewell kiss. He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do, and
+he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The
+lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it,
+and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of
+many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!'"
+
+
+III
+
+Out of that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called "Drum-Taps,"
+first published in 1865,--since merged in his "Leaves,"--were produced.
+Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, come from life. The vivid
+incidents of "The Dresser" are but daguerreotypes of the poet's own actual
+movements among the bad cases of the wounded after a battle. The same
+personal knowledge runs through "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and
+Dim," "Come up from the Fields, Father," etc., etc.
+
+The reader of this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not
+the purpose of the poet to portray battles and campaigns, or to celebrate
+special leaders or military prowess, but rather to chant the human aspects
+of anguish that follow in the train of war. He perhaps feels that the
+permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a
+business, as a means of growth, has served its time; and that,
+notwithstanding the vast difference between ancient and modern warfare,
+both in the spirit and in the means, Homer's pictures are essentially true
+yet, and no additions to them can be made. War can never be to us what it
+has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never the main
+fact, the paramount condition, tyrannizing over all the affairs of
+national and individual life, but only an episode, a passing interruption;
+and the poet, who in our day would be as true to his nation and times as
+Homer was to his, must treat of it from the standpoint of peace and
+progress, and even benevolence. Vast armies rise up in a night and
+disappear in a day; a million of men, inured to battle and to blood, go
+back to the avocations of peace without a moment's confusion or
+delay,--indicating clearly the tendency that prevails.
+
+Apostrophizing the genius of America in the supreme hour of victory, he
+says:--
+
+  "No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee--nor mastery's rapturous
+        verse:--
+  But a little book containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds,
+  And psalms of the dead."
+
+
+The collection is also remarkable for the absence of all sectional or
+partisan feeling. Under the head of "Reconciliation" are these lines:--
+
+  "Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
+  Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be
+        utterly lost!
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  ... For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
+  I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near;
+  I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the
+        coffin."
+
+
+Perhaps the most noteworthy of Whitman's war poems is the one called "When
+Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloomed," written in commemoration of
+President Lincoln.
+
+The main effect of this poem is of strong, solemn, and varied music; and
+it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great
+composers most work,--namely, spiritual auricular analogy. At first it
+would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect. No reference
+whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not
+even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone
+that of lamentation; but, with the intuitions of the grand art, which is
+the most complex when it seems most simple, he seizes upon three beautiful
+facts of nature, which he weaves into a wreath for the dead President's
+tomb. The central thought is of death, but around this he curiously
+twines, first, the early-blooming lilacs which the poet may have plucked
+the day the dark shadow came; next the song of the hermit thrush, the most
+sweet and solemn of all our songsters, heard at twilight in the dusky
+cedars; and with these the evening star, which, as many may remember,
+night after night in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in
+the west with unusual and tender brightness. These are the premises whence
+he starts his solemn chant.
+
+The attitude, therefore, is not that of being bowed down and weeping
+hopeless tears, but of singing a commemorative hymn, in which the voices
+of nature join, and fits that exalted condition of the soul which serious
+events and the presence of death induce. There are no words of mere
+eulogy, no statistics, and no story or narrative; but there are pictures,
+processions, and a strange mingling of darkness and light, of grief and
+triumph: now the voice of the bird, or the drooping lustrous star, or the
+sombre thought of death; then a recurrence to the open scenery of the land
+as it lay in the April light, "the summer approaching with richness and
+the fields all busy with labor," presently dashed in upon by a spectral
+vision of armies with torn and bloody battle-flags, and, again, of the
+white skeletons of young men long afterward strewing the ground. Hence the
+piece has little or nothing of the character of the usual productions on
+such occasions. It is dramatic; yet there is no development of plot, but
+a constant interplay, a turning and returning of images and sentiments.
+
+The poet breaks a sprig of lilac from the bush in the door-yard,--the dark
+cloud falls on the land,--the long funeral sets out,--and then the
+apostrophe:--
+
+  "Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
+  Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,
+  With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities draped in black,
+  With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women,
+        standing,
+  With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,
+  With the countless torches lit--with the silent sea of faces, and the
+        unbared heads,
+  With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
+  With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
+        and solemn;
+  With all the mournful voices of the dirges, pour'd around the coffin,
+  To dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--Where amid these you
+        journey,
+  With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;
+  Here! coffin that slowly passes,
+  I give you my sprig of lilac.
+
+  "(Nor for you, for one alone;
+  Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
+  For fresh as the morning--thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
+        and sacred death.
+
+  "All over bouquets of roses,
+  O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;
+  But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
+  Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes;
+  With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
+  For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)"
+
+
+Then the strain goes on:--
+
+  "O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
+  And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
+  And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?
+
+  "Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
+  Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till
+        there on the prairies meeting:
+  These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
+  I perfume the grave of him I love."
+
+
+The poem reaches, perhaps, its height in the matchless invocation to
+Death:--
+
+  "Come, lovely and soothing Death,
+  Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
+  In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
+  Sooner or later, delicate Death.
+
+  "Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
+  For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;
+  And for love, sweet love--but praise! O praise and praise,
+  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
+
+  "Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
+  Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
+  Then I chant it for thee--I glorify thee above all;
+  I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
+
+  "Approach, encompassing Death--strong Deliveress!
+  When it is so--when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
+  Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
+  Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
+
+  "From me to thee glad serenades,
+  Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee--adornments and feastings for
+        thee;
+  And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky are
+        fitting,
+  And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
+  The night, in silence, under many a star;
+  The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;
+  And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death,
+  And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman despised riches, and all mere worldly success, as heartily as ever
+did any of the old Christians. All outward show and finery were intensely
+distasteful to him. He probably would not have accepted the finest house
+in New York on condition that he live in it. During his hospital
+experiences he cherished the purpose, as soon as the war was over, of
+returning to Brooklyn, buying an acre or two of land in some by-place on
+Long Island, and building for himself and his family a cheap house. When
+his brother Jeff contemplated building, he advised him to build merely an
+Irish shanty. After what he had seen the soldiers put up with, he thought
+anything was good enough for him or his people. In one of his letters to
+his mother, he comments upon the un-American and inappropriate
+ornamentation of the rooms in the Capitol building, "without grandeur and
+without simplicity," he says. In the state the country was in, and with
+the hospital scenes before him, the "poppy-show goddesses" and the Italian
+style of decoration, etc., sickened him, and he got away from it all as
+quickly as he could.
+
+
+V
+
+During the war and after, I used to see a good deal of Whitman in
+Washington. Summer and winter he was a conspicuous figure on Pennsylvania
+Avenue, where he was wont to walk for exercise and to feed his hunger for
+faces. One would see him afar off, in the crowd but not of it,--a large,
+slow-moving figure, clad in gray, with broad-brimmed hat and gray
+beard,--or, quite as frequently, on the front platform of the street
+horse-cars with the driver. My eye used to single him out many blocks
+away.
+
+There were times during this period when his aspect was rather
+forbidding,--the physical man was too pronounced on first glance; the
+other man was hidden beneath the broad-brimmed hat. One needed to see the
+superbly domed head and classic brow crowning the rank physical man.
+
+In his middle manhood, judging from the photos, he had a hirsute, kindly
+look, but very far removed from the finely cut traditional poet's face.
+
+
+VI
+
+I have often heard Whitman say that he inherited most excellent blood from
+his mother,--the old Dutch Van Velser strain,--Long Island blood filtered
+and vitalized through generations by the breath of the sea. He was his
+mother's child unmistakably. With all his rank masculinity, there was a
+curious feminine undertone in him which revealed itself in the quality of
+his voice, the delicate texture of his skin, the gentleness of his touch
+and ways, the attraction he had for children and the common people. A lady
+in the West, writing to me about him, spoke of his "great mother-nature."
+He was receptive, sympathetic, tender, and met you, not in a positive,
+aggressive manner, but more or less in a passive or neutral mood. He did
+not give his friends merely his mind, he gave them himself. It is not
+merely his mind or intellect that he has put into his poems, it is
+himself. Indeed, this feminine mood or attitude might be dwelt upon at
+much length in considering his poems,--their solvent, absorbing power, and
+the way they yield themselves to diverse interpretations.
+
+The sea, too, had laid its hand upon him, as I have already suggested. He
+never appeared so striking and impressive as when seen upon the beach. His
+large and tall gray figure looked at home, and was at home, upon the
+shore. The simple, strong, flowing lines of his face, his always clean
+fresh air, his blue absorbing eye, his commanding presence, and something
+pristine and elemental in his whole expression, seemed at once to put him
+_en rapport_ with the sea. No phase of nature seems to have impressed him
+so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman was preeminently manly,--richly endowed with the universal,
+healthy human qualities and attributes. Mr. Conway relates that when
+Emerson handed him the first thin quarto edition of "Leaves of Grass,"
+while he was calling at his house in Concord, soon after the book
+appeared, he said, "Americans abroad may now come home: unto us a man is
+born."
+
+President Lincoln, standing one day during the war before a window in the
+White House, saw Whitman slowly saunter by. He followed him with his
+eyes, and, turning, said to those about him, "Well, _he_ looks like a
+_man_."
+
+  "Meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms."
+
+
+During Whitman's Western tour in 1879 or '80, at some point in Kansas, in
+company with several well-known politicians and government officials, he
+visited a lot of Indians who were being held as prisoners. The sheriff
+told the Indians who the distinguished men were who were about to see
+them, but the Indians paid little attention to them as, one after the
+other, the officials and editors passed by them. Behind all came Whitman.
+The old chief looked at him steadily, then extended his hand and said,
+"How!" All the other Indians followed, surrounding Whitman, shaking his
+hand and making the air melodious with their "Hows." The incident
+evidently pleased the old poet a good deal.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Whitman was of large mould in every way, and of bold, far-reaching
+schemes, and is very sure to fare better at the hands of large men than of
+small. The first and last impression which his personal presence always
+made upon one was of a nature wonderfully gentle, tender, and benignant.
+His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and dominated by his
+humanity, so that the impression you got from him was not that of a
+learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human
+nature,--such an impression, I fancy, only fuller, as one might have got
+from Walter Scott. This was perhaps the secret of the attraction he had,
+for the common, unlettered people and for children. I think that even his
+literary friends often sought his presence less for conversation than to
+bask in his physical or psychical sunshine, and to rest upon his boundless
+charity. The great service he rendered to the wounded and homesick
+soldiers in the hospitals during the war came from his copious endowment
+of this broad, sweet, tender democratic nature. He brought father and
+mother to them, and the tonic and cheering atmosphere of simple,
+affectionate home life.
+
+In person Whitman was large and tall, above six feet, with a breezy,
+open-air look. His temperament was sanguine; his voice was a tender
+baritone. The dominant impression he made was that of something fresh and
+clean. I remember the first time I met him, which was in Washington, in
+the fall of 1863. I was impressed by the fine grain and clean, fresh
+quality of the man. Some passages in his poems had led me to expect
+something different. He always had the look of a man who had just taken a
+bath. The skin was light and clear, and the blood well to the surface. His
+body, as I once noticed when we were bathing in the surf, had a peculiar
+fresh bloom and fineness and delicacy of texture. His physiology was
+undoubtedly remarkable, unique. The full beauty of his face and head did
+not appear till he was past sixty. After that, I have little doubt, it was
+the finest head this age or country has seen. Every artist who saw him
+was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch him. The lines were so
+simple, so free, and so strong. High, arching brows; straight, clear-cut
+nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized,
+but a vital part of a symmetrical, dome-shaped head; ear large, and the
+most delicately carved I have ever seen; the mouth and chin hidden by a
+soft, long, white beard. It seems to me his face steadily refined and
+strengthened with age. Time depleted him in just the right way,--softened
+his beard and took away the too florid look; subdued the carnal man, and
+brought out more fully the spiritual man. When I last saw him (December
+26, 1891), though he had been very near death for many days, I am sure I
+had never seen his face so beautiful. There was no breaking-down of the
+features, or the least sign of decrepitude, such as we usually note in old
+men. The expression was full of pathos, but it was as grand as that of a
+god. I could not think of him as near death, he looked so unconquered.
+
+In Washington I knew Whitman intimately from the fall of 1863 to the time
+he left in 1873. In Camden I visited him yearly after that date, usually
+in the late summer or fall. I will give one glimpse of him from my diary,
+under date of August 18, 1887. I reached his house in the morning, before
+he was up. Presently he came slowly down stairs and greeted me. "Find him
+pretty well,--looking better than last year. With his light-gray suit,
+and white hair, and fresh pink face, he made a fine picture. Among other
+things, we talked of the Swinburne attack (then recently published). W.
+did not show the least feeling on the subject, and, I clearly saw, was
+absolutely undisturbed by the article. I told him I had always been more
+disturbed by S.'s admiration for him than I was now by his condemnation.
+By and by W. had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, ten
+miles distant, to see young Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a
+level farming and truck-gardening country; warm, but breezy. W. drives
+briskly, and salutes every person we meet, little and big, black and
+white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he
+knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old
+Long Island custom of his people, to speak to every one on the road, was
+strong upon him. One tipsy man in a buggy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye
+do, pap?' etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W., as
+something I had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what
+the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would
+have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the
+centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of
+Christianity to check and curb them, etc. W. knew the history of many
+prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two colored men
+to look after him; there, in that fine house among the trees, an old
+maid, who had spent a large fortune on her house and lands, and was now
+destitute, yet she was a woman of remarkable good sense, etc. We returned
+to Camden before dark, W. apparently not fatigued by the drive of twenty
+miles."
+
+In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry. It
+was such a face, said Mr. Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected from a
+million. "It is the face of an aged loving child. As I looked, it was with
+the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never
+heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being.
+I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an avatar, was more
+gentle to all men, women, children, and living things."
+
+
+IX
+
+For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
+to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
+visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
+which the doctor printed on his return home:--
+
+"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
+and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
+of his presence as a whole.
+
+"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
+in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure
+white linen, with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt
+buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown
+open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of
+his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned
+almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned
+up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of
+the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire
+visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and
+massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong,
+white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an
+eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was
+not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is
+concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon
+his broad, square shoulders; and it is almost entirely covered with long,
+fine, straggling hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit
+snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streaming over
+and around his large but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big
+neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of
+his face, right down to the middle of his chest, like a cataract of
+materialized, white, glistening vapor, giving him a most venerable and
+patriarchal appearance. His high, massive forehead is seamed with
+wrinkles. His nose is large, strong, broad, and prominent, but
+beautifully chiseled and proportioned, almost straight, very slightly
+depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to
+the angles of the mouth. The eyebrows are thick and shaggy, with strong,
+white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes,
+which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, small, rather deeply set,
+calm, clear, penetrating, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness,
+kindness, and sympathy. The upper eyelids droop considerably over the
+eyeballs. The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache,
+are full. The whole face impresses one with a sense of resoluteness,
+strength, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness,
+unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly
+pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man.
+There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in
+them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But
+it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in
+his _tout ensemble_, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic
+presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and
+exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing
+an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I
+felt that I was here face to face with the living embodiment of all that
+was good, noble, and lovable in humanity."
+
+
+X
+
+British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic
+temperament, etc., but he was in no sense a muscular man, an athlete. His
+body, though superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in
+its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin. He
+took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports. He
+walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he
+always had an air of infinite leisure. For several years, while a clerk in
+the Attorney-General's Office in Washington, his exercise for an hour each
+day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round,
+smooth stone, of about one pound weight, and catching it as it fell. Later
+in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked
+to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that
+way. In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and
+sweetness of body, but none upon mere brute strength. This is what he says
+"To a Pupil:"--
+
+  1. Is reform needed? Is it through you?
+     The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you
+          need to accomplish it.
+
+  2. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,
+          complexion, clean and sweet?
+     Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and Soul,
+          that when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and
+          command enters with you, and every one is impressed with your
+          personality?
+
+  3. O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
+     Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to
+          inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
+          elevatedness,
+     Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
+
+
+It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
+of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,--the
+freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
+perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
+mind.
+
+A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
+several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
+face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
+was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
+majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
+looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
+seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
+friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
+would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
+all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
+upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
+identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
+poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
+poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold," he says, "the body
+includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
+soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
+of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
+strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
+knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
+singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
+curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.
+
+The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
+to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
+the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
+distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
+power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
+face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
+face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
+face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
+mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature.
+It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow.
+
+And the influence of his poems is always on the side of physiological
+cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes
+morbid and mean. He says the "expression of a well-made man appears not
+only in his face: it is in his limbs and joints also; it is curiously in
+the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his
+neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the
+strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
+flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more.
+You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."
+He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: "To be
+surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,--I
+do not ask any more delight; I swim in it, as in a sea. There is something
+in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact
+and odor of them, that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul,
+but these please the soul well." Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he
+found in the society of the common people that satisfied him so; for his
+part, he could not find anything. The subordination by Whitman of the
+purely intellectual to the human and physical, which runs all through his
+poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, who was deficient in the
+sensuous, probably could not appreciate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The atmosphere of Whitman personally was that of a large, tolerant,
+tender, sympathetic, restful man, easy of approach, indifferent to any
+special social or other distinctions and accomplishments that might be
+yours, and regarding you from the start for yourself alone.
+
+Children were very fond of him; and women, unless they had been prejudiced
+against him, were strongly drawn toward him. His personal magnetism was
+very great, and was warming and cheering. He was rich in temperament,
+probably beyond any other man of his generation,--rich in all the purely
+human and emotional endowments and basic qualities. Then there was a look
+about him hard to describe, and which I have seen in no other face,--a
+gray, brooding, elemental look, like the granite rock, something primitive
+and Adamic that might have belonged to the first man; or was it a
+suggestion of the gray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was
+born, and that had surely set its seal upon him? I know not, but I feel
+the man with that look is not of the day merely, but of the centuries. His
+eye was not piercing, but absorbing,--"draining" is the word happily used
+by William O'Connor; the soul back of it drew things to himself, and
+entered and possessed them through sympathy and personal force and
+magnetism, rather than through mere intellectual force.
+
+
+XII
+
+Walt Whitman was of the people, the common people, and always gave out
+their quality and atmosphere. His commonness, his nearness, as of the
+things you have always known,--the day, the sky, the soil, your own
+parents,--were in no way veiled, or kept in abeyance, by his culture or
+poetic gifts. He was redolent of the human and the familiar. Though
+capable, on occasions, of great pride and hauteur, yet his habitual mood
+and presence was that of simple, average, healthful humanity,--the virtue
+and flavor of sailors, soldiers, laborers, travelers, or people who live
+with real things in the open air. His commonness rose into the uncommon,
+the extraordinary, but without any hint of the exclusive or specially
+favored. He was indeed "no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women
+or apart from them."
+
+The spirit that animates every page of his book, and that it always
+effuses, is the spirit of common, universal humanity,--humanity apart from
+creeds, schools, conventions, from all special privileges and refinements,
+as it is in and of itself in its relations to the whole system of things,
+in contradistinction to the literature of culture which effuses the spirit
+of the select and exclusive.
+
+His life was the same. Walt Whitman never stood apart from or above any
+human being. The common people--workingmen, the poor, the illiterate, the
+outcast--saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction
+was mutual. He was always content with common, unadorned humanity.
+Specially intellectual people rather repelled him; the wit, the scholar,
+the poet, must have a rich endowment of the common, universal, human
+attributes and qualities to pass current with him. He sought the society
+of boatmen, railroad men, farmers, mechanics, printers, teamsters, mothers
+of families, etc., rather than the society of professional men or
+scholars. Men who had the quality of things in the open air--the virtue of
+rocks, trees, hills--drew him most; and it is these qualities and virtues
+that he has aimed above all others to put into his poetry, and to put them
+there in such a way that he who reads must feel and imbibe them.
+
+The recognized poets put into their pages the virtue and quality of the
+fine gentleman, or of the sensitive, artistic nature: this poet of
+democracy effuses the atmosphere of fresh, strong Adamic man,--man acted
+upon at first hand by the shows and forces of universal nature.
+
+If our poet ever sounds the note of the crude, the loud, the exaggerated,
+he is false to himself and to his high aims. I think he may be charged
+with having done so a few times, in his earlier work, but not in his
+later. In the 1860 edition of his poems stands this portraiture, which may
+stand for himself, with one or two features rather overdrawn:--
+
+  "His shape arises
+  Arrogant, masculine, naive, rowdyish,
+  Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman,
+  Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by
+        the sea,
+  Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from
+        taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia,
+        clean-breathed,
+  Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds,
+        full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and
+        back,
+  Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,
+  Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gentleman on equal terms,
+  Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck gray and open, of slow
+        movement on foot,
+  Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his friends, companion
+        of the street,
+  Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches, and never
+        their meanest.
+  A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the
+        life of the wharves and the great ferries,
+  Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, easily understood after all,
+  Never offering others, always offering himself, corroborating his
+        phrenology,
+  Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive,
+        of copious friendship, sublimity, firmness, self-esteem,
+        comparison, individuality, form, locality, eventuality,
+  Avowing by life, manners, words to contribute illustrations of results
+        of These States,
+  Teacher of the unquenchable creed namely egotism,
+  Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against
+        his."
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman was determined, at whatever risk to his own reputation, to make
+the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of
+American humanity, and to do this the rowdy element could not be entirely
+ignored. Hence he unflinchingly imputes it to himself, as, for that
+matter, he has nearly every sin and dereliction mankind are guilty of.
+
+Whitman developed slowly and late upon the side that related him to social
+custom and usage,--to the many fictions, concealments, make-believes, and
+subterfuges of the world of parlors and drawing-rooms. He never was an
+adept in what is called "good form;" the natural man that he was shows
+crude in certain relations. His publication of Emerson's letter with its
+magnificent eulogium of "Leaves of Grass" has been much commented upon.
+There may be two opinions as to the propriety of his course in this
+respect: a letter from a stranger upon a matter of public interest is not
+usually looked upon as a private letter. Emerson never spoke with more
+felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for
+Whitman's own sake that we would have had him practice self-denial in the
+matter; he greatly plumed himself upon Emerson's endorsement, and was
+guilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon
+the cover of the next edition of his book. Grant that it showed a certain
+crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; later in life, he could not
+have erred in this way. Ruskin is reported saying that he never in his
+life wrote a letter to any human being that he would not be willing should
+be posted up in the market-place, or cried by the public crier through the
+town. But Emerson was a much more timid and conforming man than Ruskin,
+and was much more likely to be shocked by such a circumstance.
+
+It has been said that the publication of this letter much annoyed Emerson,
+and that he never forgave Whitman the offense. That he was disturbed by it
+and by the storm that arose there can be little doubt; but there is no
+evidence that he allowed the fact to interfere with his friendship for the
+poet. Charles W. Eldridge, who personally knew of the relations of the two
+men, says:--
+
+"There was not a year from 1855 (the date of the Emerson letter and its
+publication) down to 1860 (the year Walt came to Boston to supervise the
+issue of the Thayer & Eldridge edition of 'Leaves of Grass'), that Emerson
+did not personally seek out Walt at his Brooklyn home, usually that they
+might have a long symposium together at the Astor House in New York.
+Besides that, during these years Emerson sent many of his closest friends,
+including Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of
+introduction to him. This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who
+has committed an unpardonable offense.
+
+"I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently
+came down from Concord to see him, and that they had many walks and talks
+together, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American
+House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel. On several occasions
+they met by appointment in our counting-room. Their relations were as
+cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Emerson who sought out
+Walt, and never the other way, although, of course, Walt appreciated and
+enjoyed Emerson's companionship very much. In truth, Walt never sought the
+company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary
+society. I know that at this time Walt was invited by Emerson to Concord,
+but declined to go, probably through his fear that he would see too much
+of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around
+Emerson."
+
+
+XIV
+
+Whitman gave himself to men as men and not as scholars or poets, and gave
+himself purely as a man. While not specially averse to meeting people on
+literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was more to his taste to meet on
+the broadest, commonest, human grounds. What you had seen or felt or
+suffered or done was of much more interest to him than what you had read
+or thought; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the
+last person you had met, or the last chore you had done.
+
+Any glimpse of the farm, the shop, the household--any bit of real life,
+anything that carried the flavor and quality of concrete reality--was very
+welcome to him; herein, no doubt, showing the healthy, objective, artist
+mind. He never tired of hearing me talk about the birds or wild animals,
+or my experiences in camp in the woods, the kind of characters I had met
+there, and the flavor of the life of remote settlements in Maine or
+Canada. His inward, subjective life was ample of itself; he was familiar
+with all your thoughts and speculations beforehand: what he craved was
+wider experience,--to see what you had seen, and feel what you had felt.
+He was fond of talking with returned travelers and explorers, and with
+sailors, soldiers, mechanics; much of his vast stores of information upon
+all manner of subjects was acquired at firsthand, in the old way, from the
+persons who had seen or done or been what they described or related.
+
+He had almost a passion for simple, unlettered humanity,--an attraction
+which specially intellectual persons will hardly understand. Schooling and
+culture are so often purchased at such an expense to the innate,
+fundamental human qualities! Ignorance, with sound instincts and the
+quality which converse with real things imparts to men, was more
+acceptable to him than so much of our sophisticated knowledge, or our
+studied wit, or our artificial poetry.
+
+
+XV
+
+At the time of Whitman's death, one of our leading literary journals
+charged him with having brought on premature decay by leading a riotous
+and debauched life. I hardly need say that there was no truth in the
+charge. The tremendous emotional strain of writing his "Leaves," followed
+by his years of service in the army hospitals, where he contracted
+blood-poison, resulted at the age of fifty-four in the rupture of a small
+blood-vessel in the brain, which brought on partial paralysis. A sunstroke
+during his earlier manhood also played its part in the final break-down.
+
+That, tried by the standard of the lives of our New England poets,
+Whitman's life was a blameless one, I do not assert; but that it was a
+sane, temperate, manly one, free from excesses, free from the perversions
+and morbidities of a mammonish, pampered, over-stimulated age, I do
+believe. Indeed, I may say I know. The one impression he never failed to
+make--physically, morally, intellectually--on young and old, women and
+men, was that of health, sanity, sweetness. This is the impression he
+seems to have made upon Mr. Howells, when he met the poet at Pfaff's early
+in the sixties.
+
+The critic I have alluded to inferred license in the man from liberty in
+the poet. He did not have the gumption to see that Whitman made the
+experience of all men his own, and that his scheme included the evil as
+well as the good; that especially did he exploit the unloosed, all-loving,
+all-accepting natural man,--the man who is done with conventions,
+illusions and all morbid pietisms, and who gives himself lavishly to all
+that begets and sustains life. Yet not the natural or carnal man for his
+own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual meanings and values to which
+he is the key. Indeed, Whitman is about the most uncompromising
+spiritualist in literature; with him, all things exist by and for the
+soul. He felt the tie of universal brotherhood, also, as few have felt it.
+It was not a theory with him, but a fact that shaped his life and colored
+his poems. "Whoever degrades another degrades me," and the thought fired
+his imagination.
+
+
+XVI
+
+The student of Whitman's life and works will be early struck by three
+things,--his sudden burst into song, the maturity of his work from the
+first, and his self-knowledge and self-estimate. The fit of inspiration
+came upon him suddenly; it was like the flowering of the orchards in
+spring; there was little or no hint of it till almost the very hour of
+the event. Up to the time of the appearance of the first edition of
+"Leaves of Grass," he had produced nothing above mediocrity. A hack writer
+on newspapers and magazines, then a carpenter and house-builder in a small
+way, then that astounding revelation "Leaves of Grass," the very audacity
+of it a gospel in itself. How dare he do it? how could he do it, and not
+betray hesitation or self-consciousness? It is one of the exceptional
+events in literary history. The main body of his work was produced in five
+or six years, or between 1854 and 1859. Of course it was a sudden
+flowering, which, consciously or unconsciously, must have been long
+preparing in his mind. His work must have had a long foreground, as
+Emerson suggested. Dr. Bucke, his biographer, thinks it was a special
+inspiration,--something analogous to Paul's conversion, a sudden opening
+of what the doctor calls "cosmic consciousness."
+
+Another student and lover of Whitman says: "It is certain that some time
+about his thirty-fifth year [probably a little earlier] there came over
+him a decided change: he seemed immensely to broaden and deepen; he became
+less interested in what are usually regarded as the more practical affairs
+of life. He lost what little ambition he ever had for money-making, and
+permitted good business opportunities to pass unheeded. He ceased to write
+the somewhat interesting but altogether commonplace and respectable
+stories and verses which he had been in the habit of contributing to
+periodicals. He would take long trips into the country, no one knew where,
+and would spend more time in his favorite haunts about the city, or on the
+ferries, or the tops of omnibuses, at the theatre and opera, in picture
+galleries, and wherever he could observe men and women and art and
+nature."
+
+Then the maturity of his work from the first line of it! It seems as if he
+came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one
+bound,--never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do.
+What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint.
+He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he
+first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first poem, "Starting
+from Paumanok," and he has kept the letter and the spirit of every promise
+therein made. We never see him doubtful or hesitating; we never see him
+battling for his territory, and uncertain whether or not he is upon his
+own ground. He has an air of contentment, of mastery and triumph, from the
+start.
+
+His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.
+We should probably have to go back to sacred history to find a parallel
+case. The manner of man he was, his composite character, his relation to
+his country and times, his unlikeness to other poets, his affinity to the
+common people, how he would puzzle and elude his critics, how his words
+would itch at our ears till we understood them, etc.,--how did he know all
+this from the first?
+
+
+
+
+HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS
+
+
+I
+
+Let me here summarize some of the ideas and principles in which "Leaves of
+Grass" has its root, and from which it starts. A collection of poems in
+the usual sense, a variety of themes artistically treated and appealing to
+our aesthetic perceptibilities alone, it is not. It has, strictly speaking,
+but one theme,--personality, the personality of the poet himself. To
+exploit this is always the main purpose, and, in doing so, to make the
+book both directly and indirectly a large, impassioned utterance upon all
+the main problems of life and of nationality. It is primitive, like the
+early literature of a race or people, in that its spirit and purpose are
+essentially religious. It is like the primitive literatures also in its
+prophetic cry and in its bardic simplicity and homeliness, and unlike them
+in its faith and joy and its unconquerable optimism.
+
+It has been not inaptly called the bible of democracy. Its biblical
+features are obvious enough with the darker negative traits left out. It
+is Israel with science and the modern added.
+
+Whitman was swayed by a few great passions,--the passion for country, the
+passion for comrades, the cosmic passion, etc. His first concern seems
+always to have been for his country. He has touched no theme, named no
+man, not related in some way to America. The thought of it possessed him
+as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
+Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
+power,--the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
+suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
+cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
+all-inclusive:--
+
+  "My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
+        earth,
+  I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
+        lands;
+  I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
+
+  "O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
+        continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
+  I think I have blown with you, O winds,
+  O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."
+
+
+II
+
+The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,--of
+absolute social equality.
+
+It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
+distinguished from the old theological conception,--namely, that creation
+is good and sound in all its parts.
+
+It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
+friend and not the enemy of life.
+
+It places comradeship, manly attachment, above sex love, and indicates it
+as the cement of future states and republics.
+
+It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.
+
+It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
+trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
+sexuality,--upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
+at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
+frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.
+
+It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
+conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
+works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.
+
+It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
+man,--a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
+have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
+parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
+the heroes of land and sea.
+
+Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
+real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and
+concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore,
+the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man.
+
+Its purpose is to stimulate and arouse, rather than to soothe and satisfy.
+It addresses the character, the intuitions, the ego, more than the
+intellect or the purely aesthetic faculties. Its end is not taste, but
+growth in the manly virtues and powers.
+
+Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.
+
+It aspires to a candor and a directness like that of Nature herself.
+
+It aims to let Nature speak without check, with original energy. The only
+checks are those which health and wholeness demand.
+
+Its standards are those of the natural universal.
+
+Its method is egocentric. The poet never goes out of himself, but draws
+everything into himself and makes it all serve to illustrate his
+personality.
+
+Its form is not what is called artistic. Its suggestion is to be found in
+organic nature, in trees, clouds, and in the vital and flowing currents.
+
+In its composition the author was doubtless greatly influenced by the
+opera and the great singers, and the music of the great composers. He
+would let himself go in the same manner and seek his effects through
+multitude and the quality of the living voice.
+
+Finally, "Leaves of Grass" is an utterance out of the depths of
+primordial, aboriginal human nature. It embodies and exploits a character
+not rendered anaemic by civilization, but preserving a sweet and sane
+savagery, indebted to culture only as a means to escape culture, reaching
+back always, through books, art, civilization, to fresh, unsophisticated
+nature, and drawing his strength thence.
+
+Another of the ideas that master Whitman and rule him is the idea of
+identity,--that you are you and I am I, and that we are henceforth secure
+whatever comes or goes. He revels in this idea; it is fruitful with him;
+it begets in him the ego-enthusiasm, and is at the bottom of his
+unshakable faith in immortality. It leavens all his work. It cannot be too
+often said that the book is not merely a collection of pretty poems,
+themes elaborated and followed out at long removes from the personality of
+the poet, but a series of _sorties_ into the world of materials, the
+American world, piercing through the ostensible shows of things to the
+interior meanings, and illustrating in a free and large way the genesis
+and growth of a man, his free use of the world about him, appropriating it
+to himself, seeking his spiritual identity through its various objects and
+experiences, and giving in many direct and indirect ways the meaning and
+satisfaction of life. There is much in it that is not poetical in the
+popular sense, much that is neutral and negative, and yet is an integral
+part of the whole, as is the case in the world we inhabit. If it offends,
+it is in a wholesome way, like objects in the open air.
+
+
+III
+
+Whitman rarely celebrates exceptional characters. He loves the common
+humanity, and finds his ideals among the masses. It is not difficult to
+reconcile his attraction toward the average man, towards workingmen and
+"powerful, uneducated persons," with the ideal of a high excellence,
+because he finally rests only upon the most elevated and heroic personal
+qualities,--elevated but well grounded in the common and universal.
+
+The types upon which he dwells the most fondly are of the common people.
+
+  "I knew a man,
+  He was a common farmer--he was the father of five sons,
+  And in them were the fathers of sons--and in them were the fathers of
+        sons.
+
+  "This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
+  The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale
+        yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable
+        meaning of his black eyes,
+  These I used to go and visit him to see--he was wise also,
+  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were
+        massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
+  They and his daughters loved him--all who saw him loved him,
+  They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal love;
+  He drank water only--the blood showed like scarlet through the
+        clear-brown skin of his face,
+  He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sailed his boat himself--he had
+        a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner--he had fowling-pieces
+        presented to him by men that loved him;
+  When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you
+        would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
+  You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by him
+        in the boat, that you and he might touch each other."
+
+All the _motifs_ of his work are the near, the vital, the universal;
+nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are
+democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality,
+comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of the
+sexes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it
+sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems
+are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a
+look, a gesture, a tone of voice.
+
+"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand
+at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" requires a large perspective; you must not get your face
+too near the book. You must bring to it a magnanimity of spirit,--a
+charity and faith equal to its own. Looked at too closely, it often seems
+incoherent and meaningless; draw off a little and let the figure come out.
+The book is from first to last a most determined attempt, on the part of a
+large, reflective, loving, magnetic, rather primitive, thoroughly
+imaginative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth
+century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career
+upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiasm as to lift and
+fill it with the deepest meanings of the spirit and disclose the order of
+universal nature. The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or
+criticism, or partiality whatever, but has squarely and lovingly faced the
+oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and
+fused them in his fervid humanity, and imbued them with deepest poetic
+meanings. One of the most striking features of the book is the adequacy
+and composure, even joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence
+of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era. He
+spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no
+part; and his quality, his individuality, shines through it all, as the
+sun through vapors. The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of
+Walt Whitman. It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man
+exploited and illustrated. Walt Whitman does not write poems, strictly
+speaking,--does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel
+and carve it into a beautiful image or object, or polish and elaborate a
+thought, embodying it in pleasing tropes and pictures. His purpose is
+rather to show a towering, loving, composite personality moving amid all
+sorts of materials, taking them up but for a moment, disclosing new
+meanings and suggestions in them, passing on, bestowing himself upon
+whoever or whatever will accept him, tossing hints and clues right and
+left, provoking and stimulating the thought and imagination of his reader,
+but finishing nothing for him, leaving much to be desired, much to be
+completed by him in his turn.
+
+
+IV
+
+The reader who would get at the spirit and meaning of "Leaves of Grass"
+must remember that its animating principle, from first to last, is
+Democracy,--that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit
+of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New
+World,--and that all things characteristically American (trades, tools,
+occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places
+in it. It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the
+life of the poet fell, and to show one master personality accepting,
+absorbing all and rising superior to it,--namely, the poet himself. Yet it
+is never Whitman that speaks so much as it is Democracy that speaks
+through him. He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in
+this character launches forth his "omnivorous words." What would seem
+colossal egotism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with
+low, rude persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and
+vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the
+boundless compassion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal
+Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain
+and easy in the works of this much misunderstood poet.
+
+Perhaps the single poem that throws most light upon his aims and methods,
+and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in "Calamus," and is as
+follows:--
+
+  "Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
+  Without one thing all will be useless,
+  I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
+  I am not what you suppos'd, but far different.
+
+  "Who is he that would become my follower?
+  Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
+
+  "The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
+  You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your
+        sole and exclusive standard,
+  Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
+  The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives
+        around you would have to be abandon'd,
+  Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let
+        go your hand from my shoulders,
+  Put me down and depart on your way.
+
+  "Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
+  Or back of a rock in the open air,
+  (For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
+  And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
+  But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any
+        person for miles around approach unawares,
+  Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or
+        some quiet island,
+  Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
+  With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,
+  For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
+
+  "Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
+  Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
+  Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
+  For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
+  And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
+
+  "But these leaves conning you con at peril,
+  For these leaves and me you will not understand,
+  They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
+        certainly elude you,
+  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+  Already you see I have escaped from you.
+
+  "For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
+  Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
+  Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
+  Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove
+        victorious,
+  Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps
+        more,
+  For all is useless without that for which you may guess at many times
+        and not hit, that which I hinted at,
+  Therefore release me and depart on your way."
+
+
+When one has fully mastered this poem he has got a pretty good hold upon
+Whitman's spirit and method. His open-air standards, the baffling and
+elusive character of his work, the extraordinary demand it makes, its
+radical and far-reaching effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil
+as a necessary part of the good (there was a human need of sin, said
+Margaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and
+suggestive method, that it can be fully read only through our acquaintance
+with life and real things at first hand, etc.,--all this and more is in
+the poem.
+
+
+
+
+HIS SELF-RELIANCE
+
+
+I
+
+It is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a German author was to
+be a German martyr. I presume things have changed in Germany since those
+times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and
+hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In
+Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an
+American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the
+great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Moliere, or Byron, was
+Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times;
+but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and
+self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His
+unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise. It was of a kind
+that tries a man's mettle, and brings out his heroic traits if he has any.
+One almost envies him his unpopularity. It was of the kind that only the
+greatest ones have experienced, and that attests something extraordinary
+in the recipient of it. He said he was more resolute because all had
+denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:--
+
+  "I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor
+        ridicule."
+
+
+There are no more precious and tonic pages in history than the records of
+men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in
+obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature.
+Whitman's is the most striking case in our literary annals,--probably the
+most striking one in our century outside of politics and religion. The
+inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: "My commission obeying, to
+question it never daring."
+
+The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained
+it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and
+cannot be avoided.
+
+  "Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you and were tender
+        with you? and stood aside for you?
+  Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace
+        themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute
+        the passage with you?"
+
+
+Every man is a partaker in the triumph of him who is always true to
+himself and makes no compromises with customs, schools, or opinions.
+Whitman's life, underneath its easy tolerance and cheerful good-will, was
+heroic. He fought his battle against great odds and he conquered; he had
+his own way, he yielded not a hair to the enemy.
+
+The pressure brought to bear upon him by the press, by many of his
+friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to
+change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served
+as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the
+more deeply he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The
+fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and
+aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could
+have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no
+publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was
+threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy
+Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would
+omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for
+one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always
+did.
+
+Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down
+Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which
+was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable
+conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so,
+whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet
+probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had
+not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your
+own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your
+private heart is true of all men,--that is genius."
+
+In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson
+invoked and prayed for,--the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who
+should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be
+Greek, or Italian, or French, or English, but only himself; who should
+not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate,
+or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debasements of
+our times the lineaments of the same gods that so ravished the bards of
+old.
+
+The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the
+books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
+thank and revere him."
+
+Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has
+done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works
+in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a
+time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures
+itself by its contempt of some external good,"--popularity, for instance.
+"The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have chosen your
+part abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the
+world." "Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
+something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous
+age." Heroism "is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality
+in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of
+hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent
+than all actual and all possible antagonists." "A man is to carry himself
+in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and
+ephemeral but he." "Great works of art," he again says, "teach us to
+abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility, the
+more when the whole cry of voices is on the other side."
+
+These brave sayings of Emerson were all illustrated and confirmed by
+Whitman's course. The spectacle of this man sitting there by the window of
+his little house in Camden, poor and partially paralyzed, and looking out
+upon the trite and commonplace scenes and people, or looking athwart the
+years and seeing only detraction and denial, yet always serene, cheerful,
+charitable, his wisdom and tolerance ripening and mellowing with time, is
+something to treasure and profit by. He was a man who needed no
+assurances. He had the patience and the leisure of nature. He welcomed
+your friendly and sympathetic word, or with equal composure he did without
+it.
+
+I remember calling upon him shortly after Swinburne's fierce onslaught
+upon him had been published, some time in the latter part of the eighties.
+I was curious to see how Whitman took it, but I could not discover either
+in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly
+of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne's
+account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat
+upon himself as Swinburne had done. In fact I think hostile criticism,
+fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it
+not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against shadows.
+Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was
+trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think
+Whitman took any interest in it from the first.
+
+Self-reliance, or self-trust, is one of the principles Whitman announces
+in his "Laws for Creations." He saw that no first-class work is possible
+except it issue from a man's deepest, most radical self.
+
+  "What do you suppose creation is?
+  What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no
+        superior?
+  What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that
+        man or woman is as good as God?
+  And that there is no God any more divine than yourself?
+  And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
+  And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?"
+
+
+I think it probable that Whitman anticipated a long period of comparative
+oblivion for himself and his works. He knew from the first that the public
+would not be with him; he knew that the censors of taste, the critics and
+literary professors, would not be with him; he knew that the vast army of
+Philistia, the respectable, fashionable mammon-worshiping crowd, would not
+be with him,--that the timid, the pampered, the prurient, the conforming,
+the bourgeoisie spirit, the class spirit, the academic spirit, the
+Pharisaic spirit in all its forms, would all work against him; and that,
+as in the case of nearly all original, first-class men, he would have to
+wait to be understood for the growth of the taste of himself. None knew
+more clearly than he did how completely our people were under the
+illusion of the genteel and the conventional, and that, even among the
+emancipated few, the possession of anything like robust aesthetic
+perception was rare enough. America, so bold and original and independent
+in the world of practical politics and material endeavor, is, in spiritual
+and imaginative regions, timid, conforming, imitative. There is, perhaps,
+no civilized country in the world wherein the native, original man, the
+real critter, as Whitman loved to say, that underlies all our culture and
+conventions, crops out so little in manners, in literature, and in social
+usages. The fear of being unconventional is greater with us than the fear
+of death. A certain evasiveness, polish, distrust of ourselves, amounting
+to insipidity and insincerity, is spoken of by observant foreigners. In
+other words, we are perhaps the least like children of any people in the
+world. All these things were against Whitman, and will continue to be
+against him for a long time. With the first stroke he broke through the
+conventional and took his stand upon the natural. With rude hands he tore
+away the veils and concealments from the body and from the soul. He
+ignored entirely all social and conventional usages and hypocrisies, not
+by revolt against them, but by choosing a point of view from which they
+disappeared. He embraced the unrefined and the savage as well as the
+tender and human. The illusions of the past, the models and standards, he
+freed himself of at once, and declared for the beauty and the divinity of
+the now and the here. The rude realism of his "Leaves" shocked like a
+plunge in the surf, but it invigorated also, if we were strong enough to
+stand it.
+
+Out of Whitman's absolute self-trust arose his prophetic egotism,--the
+divine fervor and audacity of the simple ego. He shared the conviction of
+the old prophets that man is a part of God, and that there is nothing in
+the universe any more divine than the individual soul. "I, too," he says,
+and this line is the key to much there is in his work--
+
+  "I, too, have felt the resistless call of myself."
+
+
+With the old Biblical writers the motions of their own spirits, their
+thoughts, their dreams, were the voice of God. There is something of the
+same sort in Whitman. The voice of that inner self was final and
+authoritative with him. It was the voice of God. He could drive through
+and over all the conventions of the world in obedience to that voice. This
+call to him was as a voice from Sinai. One of his mastering thoughts was
+the thought of identity,--that you are you, and I am I. This was the final
+meaning of things, and the meaning of immortality. "Yourself, _yourself_,
+YOURSELF," he says, with swelling vehemence, "forever and ever." To be
+compacted and riveted and fortified in yourself, so as to be a law unto
+yourself, is the final word of the past and of the present.
+
+
+II
+
+The shadow of Whitman's self-reliance and heroic self-esteem--the sort of
+eddy or back-water--was undoubtedly a childlike fondness for praise and
+for seeing his name in print. In his relaxed moments, when the stress of
+his task was not upon him, he was indeed in many respects a child. He had
+a child's delight in his own picture. He enjoyed hearing himself lauded as
+Colonel Ingersoll lauded him in his lecture in Philadelphia, and as his
+friends lauded him at his birthday dinner parties during the last two or
+three years of his life; he loved to see his name in print, and items
+about himself in the newspapers; he sometimes wrote them himself and gave
+them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his
+life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in
+fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him
+dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him
+to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be
+frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men
+also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature,
+and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human
+nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be
+kept up to the heroic pitch.
+
+
+III
+
+It was difficult to appreciate his liking for the newspaper. But he had
+been a newspaper man himself; the printer's ink had struck in; he had many
+associations with the press-room and the composing-room; he loved the
+common, democratic character of the newspaper; it was the average man's
+library. The homely uses to which it was put, and the humble firesides to
+which it found its way, endeared it to him, and made him love to see his
+name in it.
+
+Whitman's vanity was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as
+tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy
+sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life
+there was none.
+
+His egotism is of the large generous species that never irritates or
+pricks into you like that of the merely conceited man. His love, his
+candor, his sympathy are on an equal scale.
+
+His egotism comes finally to affect one like the independence and
+indifference of natural law. It takes little heed of our opinion, whether
+it be for or against, and keeps to its own way whatever befall.
+
+Whitman's absolute faith in himself was a part of his faith in creation.
+He felt himself so keenly a part of the whole that he shared its soundness
+and excellence; he must be good as it is good.
+
+
+IV
+
+Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
+manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
+give rise to the charge that he was a _poseur_. He was a _poseur_ in the
+sense, and to the extent, that any man is a _poseur_ who tries to live up
+to a certain ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
+clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
+apart and looking upon himself as another person. Hence his extraordinary
+self-knowledge, and, we may also say, his extraordinary self-appreciation,
+or to use his own words, "the quite changed attitude of the ego, the one
+chanting or talking, towards himself." Of course there is danger in this
+attitude, but Whitman was large enough and strong enough to escape it. He
+saw himself to be the typical inevitable democrat that others have seen
+him to be, and with perfect candor and without ever forcing the note, he
+portrays himself as such. As his work is confessedly the poem of himself,
+himself magnified and projected, as it were, upon the canvas of a great
+age and country, all his traits and qualities stand out in heroic
+proportions, his pride and egotism as well as his love and tolerance.
+
+"How beautiful is candor," he says. "All faults may be forgiven of him who
+has perfect candor." The last thing that could ever be charged of Whitman
+is that he lacked openness, or was guilty of any deceit or concealments in
+his life or works.
+
+From the studies, notes, and scrap-books which Whitman left, it appears
+that he was long preparing and disciplining himself for the work he had in
+view. "The long foreground," to which Emerson referred in his letter, was
+of course a reality. But this self-consciousness and self-adjustment to a
+given end is an element of strength and not of weakness.
+
+In the famous vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the
+first "Leaves of Grass" he assumes an attitude and is in a sense a
+_poseur_; but the reader comes finally to wonder at the marvelous
+self-knowledge the picture displays, and how strictly typical it is of the
+poet's mental and spiritual attitude towards the world,--independent,
+unconventional, audacious, yet inquiring and sympathetic in a wonderful
+degree. In the same way he posed in other portraits. A favorite with him
+is the one in which he sits contemplating a butterfly upon his
+forefinger--typical of a man "preoccupied of his own soul." In another he
+peers out curiously as from behind a mask. In an earlier one he stands,
+hat in hand, in marked _neglige_ costume,--a little too intentional, one
+feels. The contempt of the polished ones is probably very strong within
+him at this time. I say contempt, though I doubt if Whitman ever felt
+contempt for any human being.
+
+
+V
+
+Then Whitman had a curious habit of standing apart, as it were, and
+looking upon himself and his career as of some other person. He was
+interested in his own cause, and took a hand in the discussion. From first
+to last he had the habit of regarding himself objectively. On his deathbed
+he seemed to be a spectator of his own last moments, and was seen to feel
+his pulse a few minutes before he breathed his last.
+
+He has recorded this trait in his poems:--
+
+  "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
+  Stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, waiting,
+  Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
+  Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it."
+
+As also in this from "Calamus:"--
+
+  "That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,
+        chattering, chaffering,
+  How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,
+  How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
+  But among my lovers, and caroling these songs,
+  Oh, I never doubt whether that is really me."
+
+
+Whitman always speaks as one having authority and not as a scribe, not as
+a mere man of letters. This is the privilege of the divine egoism of the
+prophet.
+
+Like the utterances of the biblical writers, without argument, without
+elaboration, his mere dictum seems the word of fate. It is not the voice
+of a man who has made his way through the world by rejecting and denying,
+but by accepting all and rising superior. What the "push of reading" or
+the push of argument could not start is often started and clinched by his
+mere authoritative "I say."
+
+  "I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery
+        draws the blood out of liberty,"...
+  "I say the human shape or face is so great it must never be made
+        ridiculous;
+  I say for ornaments nothing outre can be allowed,
+  And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,
+  And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology
+        and in other persons' physiologies also.
+
+  "Think of the past;
+  I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and
+        your times....
+  Think of spiritual results.
+  Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results.
+  Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
+  Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
+  Think of womanhood and you to be a woman;
+  The Creation is womanhood;
+  Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
+  Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
+        womanhood?"
+
+
+Egotism is usually intolerant, but Whitman was one of the most tolerant of
+men.
+
+A craving for sympathy and personal affection he certainly had; to be
+valued as a human being was more to him than to be valued as a poet. His
+strongest attachments were probably for persons who had no opinion, good
+or bad, of his poetry at all.
+
+
+VI
+
+Under close scrutiny his egotism turns out to be a kind of altru-egotism,
+which is vicarious and all-inclusive of his fellows. It is one phase of
+his democracy, and is vital and radical in his pages. It is a high,
+imperturbable pride in his manhood and in the humanity which he shares
+with all. It is the exultant and sometimes almost arrogant expression of
+the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world--the
+feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws,
+institutions, conventions, bibles, religions--that the divinity of kings,
+and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to the humblest
+person.
+
+It was a passion that united him to his fellows rather than separated him
+from them. His pride was not that of a man who sets himself up above
+others, or who claims some special advantage or privilege, but that
+godlike quality that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence
+we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for
+mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and
+follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is
+the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there
+might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that
+his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate
+the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves,"
+flowing curiously out of its pride and egotism, is the lesson of charity,
+of self-surrender, and the free bestowal of yourself upon all hands.
+
+The law of life of great art is the law of life in ethics, and was long
+ago announced.
+
+He that would lose his life shall find it; he who gives himself the most
+freely shall the most freely receive. Whitman made himself the brother and
+equal of all, not in word, but in very deed; he was in himself a compend
+of the people for which he spoke, and this breadth of sympathy and free
+giving of himself has resulted in an unexpected accession of power.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE
+
+
+I
+
+Whitman protests against his "Leaves" being judged merely as literature;
+but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends
+the matter. Still while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are
+paramount in most other poets,--certainly in all third and fourth rate
+poets, in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values.
+
+In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates
+that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary
+productions.
+
+"Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries," he says in one of the
+"Inscriptions,"--
+
+  "For that which was lacking in all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed
+        most, I bring.
+  Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
+  The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,
+  A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
+  But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."
+
+
+Not linked with the studied and scholarly productions, not open to the
+mere bookish mind, but more akin to the primitive utterances and oracles
+of historic humanity. A literary age like ours lays great stress upon the
+savor of books, art, culture, and has little taste for the savor of real
+things, the real man, which we get in Whitman.
+
+"It is the true breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit,
+that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes
+on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would
+not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is
+beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson,
+begat Browning, begat the New England poets, but it did not in the same
+sense beget Whitman, any more than it begat Homer or Job or Isaiah. The
+artist may delight in him and find his own ideals there; the critic may
+study him and find the poet master of all his weapons; the disciple of
+culture will find, as Professor Triggs has well said, that "there is no
+body of writings in literature which demands a wider conversancy with the
+best that has been thought or said in the world,"--yet the poet escapes
+from all hands that would finally hold him and monopolize him. Whitman is
+an immense solvent,--forms, theories, rules, criticisms, disappear in his
+fluid, teeming pages. Much can be deduced from him, because much went to
+the making up of his point of view. He makes no criticism, yet a
+far-reaching criticism is implied in the very start of his poems. No
+modern poet presupposes so much, or requires so much preliminary study and
+reflection. He brings a multitude of questions and problems, and, what is
+singular, he brings them in himself; they are implied in his temper, and
+in his attitude toward life and reality.
+
+Whitman says he has read his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, that he
+has tried himself by the elemental laws; and tells us in many ways, direct
+and indirect, that the standards he would be tried by are not those of art
+or books, but of absolute nature. He has been laughed at for calling
+himself a "Kosmos," but evidently he uses the term to indicate this
+elemental, dynamic character of his work,--its escape from indoor,
+artificial standards, its aspiration after the "amplitude of the earth,
+and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of
+the earth, and the equilibrium also."
+
+
+II
+
+Unless the poetic perception is fundamental in us, and can grasp the
+poetry of things, actions, characters, multitudes, heroisms, we shall read
+Whitman with very poor results. Unless America, the contemporary age,
+life, nature, are poetical to us, Whitman will not be. He has aimed at the
+larger poetry of forces, masses, persons, enthusiasms, rather than at the
+poetry of the specially rare and fine. He kindles in me the delight I have
+in space, freedom, power, the elements, the cosmic, democracy, and the
+great personal qualities of self-reliance, courage, candor, charity.
+
+Always in the literary poets are we impressed with the art of the poet as
+something distinct from the poet himself, and more or less put on. The
+poet gets himself up for the occasion; he assumes the pose and the
+language of the poet, as the priest assumes the pose and the language of
+devotion. In Whitman the artist and the man are one. He never gets himself
+up for the occasion. Our pleasure in him is rarely or never our pleasure
+in the well-dressed, the well-drilled, the cultivated, the refined, the
+orderly, but it is more akin to our pleasure in real things, in human
+qualities and powers, in freedom, health, development. Yet I never open
+his book without being struck afresh with its pictural quality, its grasp
+of the concrete, its vivid realism, its intimate sense of things, persons,
+truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such
+as we can never get in mere prose. It is as direct as a challenge, as
+personal as a handshake, and yet withal how mystical, how elusive, how
+incommensurable! To deny that Whitman belongs to the fraternity of great
+artists, the shapers and moulders of the ideal,--those who breathe the
+breath of life into the clay or stone of common facts and objects, who
+make all things plastic and the vehicles of great and human emotions,--is
+to read him very inadequately, to say the least. To get at Walt Whitman
+you must see through just as much as you do in dealing with nature; you
+are to bring the same interpretive imagination. You are not to be balked
+by what appears to be the coarse and the familiar, or his rank
+contemporaneity; after a time you will surely see the lambent spiritual
+flames that play about it all.
+
+  "Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering about me,"
+
+and his cosmic splendor, depth, and power. It is not the denial of art, it
+is a new affirmation of life. It is one phase of his democracy. It is the
+logical conclusion of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself that
+appeared in the first edition of his poems. He would give us more of the
+man, a fuller measure of personal, concrete, human qualities, than any
+poet before him. He strips away the artificial wrappings and illusions
+usual in poetry, and relies entirely upon the native and intrinsic. He
+will have no curtains, he says,--not the finest,--between himself and his
+reader.
+
+  "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
+        all poems,
+  You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of
+        suns left),
+  You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
+        through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
+  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+  You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."
+
+
+This is a hint of his democracy as applied to literature,--more direct and
+immediate contact with the primary and universal, less of the vestments
+and trappings of art and more of the push and power of original character
+and of nature.
+
+
+III
+
+It seems to me it is always in order to protest against the narrow and
+dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticism touching this
+matter of art. "The boundaries of art are jealously guarded," says a
+recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that
+had been accurately surveyed and fixed,--as if art was a fact and not a
+spirit.
+
+Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that
+art is in any sense an "enclosure,"--a province fenced off and set apart
+from the rest,--any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many
+people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human
+spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the
+sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has
+but one principle, one aim,--to produce an impression, a powerful
+impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the
+canons of taste and criticism. Name any principle, so called, and some day
+a genius shall be born who will produce his effects in defiance of it, or
+by appearing to reverse it. Such a man as Turner seemed, at first sight,
+to set at defiance all correct notions of art. The same with Wagner in
+music, the same with Whitman in poetry. The new man is impossible till he
+appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power
+does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical
+standards to him. But it is sure to do so at last. There is nothing final
+in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are
+deductions from his work, not its inspiration. We demand of the new man,
+of the overthrower of our idols, but one thing,--has he authentic
+inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded.
+If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of
+nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case. Is
+there no room for the new man? But the new man makes room for himself, and
+if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is
+appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.
+
+
+IV
+
+The trouble with most of us is that we found our taste for poetry upon
+particular authors, instead of upon literature as a whole, or, better yet,
+upon life and reality. Hence we form standards instead of principles.
+Standards are limited, rigid, uncompromising, while principles are
+flexible, expansive, creative. If we are wedded to the Miltonic standard
+of poetry, the classic standards, we shall have great difficulties with
+Whitman; but if we have founded our taste upon natural principles--if we
+have learned to approach literature through reality, instead of reality
+through literature--we shall not be the victims of any one style or model;
+we shall be made free of all. The real test of art, of any art, as Burke
+long ago said, and as quoted by Mr. Howells in his trenchant little volume
+called "Criticism and Fiction," is to be sought outside of art, namely, in
+nature. "I can judge but poorly of anything while I measure it by no other
+standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's
+power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the
+meanest, things in nature will give the truest lights." It is thought that
+the preeminence of the Greek standards is settled when we say they are
+natural. Yes, but Nature is not Greek. She is Asiatic, German, English, as
+well.
+
+
+V
+
+In poetry, in art, a man must sustain a certain vital relation to his
+work, and that work must sustain a certain vital relation to the laws of
+mind and of life. That is all, and that leaves the doors very wide. We are
+not to ask, Is it like this or like that? but, Is it vital, is it real, is
+it a consistent, well-organized whole?
+
+The poet must always interpret himself and nature after his own fashion.
+Is his fashion adequate? Is the interpretation vivid and real? Do his
+lines cut to the quick, and beget heat and joy in the soul? If we cannot
+make the poet's ideal our own by sharing his enthusiasm for it, the
+trouble is as likely to be in ourselves as in him. In any case he must be
+a law unto himself.
+
+The creative artist differs from the mere writer or thinker in this: he
+sustains a direct personal relation to his subject through emotion,
+intuition, will. The indirect, impersonal relation which works by
+reflection, comparison, and analysis is that of the critic and
+philosopher. The man is an artist when he gives us a concrete and
+immediate impression of reality: from his hands we get the thing itself;
+from the critic and thinker we get ideas _about_ the thing. The poet does
+not merely say the world is beautiful; he shows it as beautiful: he does
+not describe the flower; he places it before us. What are the enemies of
+art? Reflection, didacticism, description, the turgid, the obscure. A poet
+with a thesis to sustain is more or less barred from the freedom of pure
+art. It is by direct and unconsidered expression, says Scherer, that art
+communicates with reality. The things that make for art, then, are
+feeling, intuition, sentiment, soul, a fresh and vigorous sense of real
+things,--in fact, all that makes for life, health, and wholeness. Goethe
+is more truly an artist in the first part of Faust than in the second;
+Arnold has a more truly artistic mind than Lowell.
+
+The principles of art are always the same in the respect I have indicated,
+just as the principles of life are always the same, or of health and
+longevity are always the same. No writer is an artist who is related to
+his subject simply by mental or logical grip alone: he must have a certain
+emotional affiliation and identity with it; he does not so much convey to
+us ideas and principles as pictures, parables, impressions,--a lively
+sense of real things. When we put Whitman outside the pale of art, we must
+show his shortcomings here; we must show that he is not fluid and
+generative,--that he paints instead of interprets, that he gives us
+reasons instead of impulses, a stone when we ask for bread. "I do not
+give a little charity," he says; "when I give, I give myself." This the
+artist always does, not his mind merely, but his soul, his personality.
+"Leaves of Grass" is as direct an emanation from a central personal force
+as any book in literature, and always carries its own test and its own
+proof. It never hardens into a system, it never ceases to be penetrated
+with will and emotion, it never declines from the order of deeds to the
+order of mere thoughts. All is movement, progress, evolution, picture,
+parable, impulse.
+
+It is on these grounds that Whitman, first of all, is an artist. He has
+the artist temperament. His whole life was that of a man who lives to
+ideal ends,--who lived to bestow himself upon others, to extract from life
+its meaning and its joy.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman has let himself go, and trusted himself to the informal and
+spontaneous, to a degree unprecedented. His course required a
+self-reliance of the highest order; it required an innate cohesion and
+homogeneity, a firmness and consistency of individual outline, that few
+men have. It would seem to be much easier to face the poet's problem in
+the old, well-worn forms--forms that are so winsome and authoritative in
+themselves--than, to stand upon a basis so individual and intrinsic as
+Whitman chose to stand upon. His course goes to the quick at once. How
+much of a man are you? How vital and fundamental is your poetic gift? Can
+it go alone? Can it face us in undress?
+
+Never did the artist more cunningly conceal himself; never did he so
+completely lose himself in the man, identifying himself with the natural
+and spontaneous; never emerging and challenging attention on his own
+account, denying us when we too literally seek him, mocking us when we
+demand his credentials, and revealing himself only when we have come to
+him upon his own terms.
+
+The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no
+outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader. "This is
+no book," he says: "who touches this touches a man." In one sense Whitman
+is without art,--the impression which he always seeks to make is that of
+reality itself. He aims to give us reality without the usual literary
+veils and illusions,--the least possible amount of the artificial, the
+extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader. He banishes from
+his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,--all
+atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and
+decoration,--and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers.
+The verse does not seem to have been shaped; it might have grown: it takes
+no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular,
+rhythmical, and always fluid and real. A cry will always be raised against
+the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and
+falls back upon simple Nature, or upon himself, as Millet did in painting,
+and Wagner in music, and Whitman in poetry.
+
+Whitman's working ideas, the principles that inspired him, are all
+directly related to life and the problems of life; they are democracy,
+nature, freedom, love, personality, religion: while the ideas from which
+our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,--they are
+literary ideas, such as lucidity, form, beauty.
+
+
+VII
+
+Much light is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark
+which he once made in conversation with Dr. Bucke:--
+
+"I have aimed to make the book simple,--tasteless, or with little
+taste,--with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or
+writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is
+not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her
+productions--her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, meats--with
+faint and delicate flavor and fragrance, but these in the long run make
+the deepest impression. Man, dealing with natural things, constantly aims
+to increase their piquancy. By crossing and selection he deepens and
+intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so
+on. He pursues the same method in poetry,--that is, strives for strong
+light or shade, for high color, perfume, pungency, in all ways for the
+greatest immediate effect. In so doing he leaves the true way, the way of
+Nature, and, in the long run, comes far short of producing her effects."
+
+More light of the same kind is thrown upon his methods by the following
+passage from the preface to the first edition of his poems in 1855.
+
+"To speak in literature," he says, "with the perfect rectitude and
+insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the
+sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless
+triumph of art." And again: "The great poet has less a marked style, and
+is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution,
+and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be
+meddlesome; I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or
+originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I
+will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell,
+I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate
+or soothe, I will have purpose, as health or heat or snow has, and be as
+regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my
+composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side
+and look in the mirror with me."
+
+
+VIII
+
+But in view of the profound impression Whitman's work has made upon widely
+different types of mind on both sides of the Atlantic, and in view of the
+persistent vitality of his fame, the question whether he is inside or
+outside the pale of art amounts to very little. I quite agree with the
+late Mrs. Gilchrist, that, when "great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please."
+
+That Whitman has expressed great meanings and great emotions with adequate
+power, even his unfriendly critics admit. Thus Professor Wendell, in an
+admirable essay on American literature, says that "though Whitman is
+uncouth, inarticulate, and lacking in a grotesque degree artistic form,
+yet for all that he can make you feel for the moment how even the
+ferry-boats plying from New York to Brooklyn are fragments of God's
+eternities." In the same way Mr. William Clark, his British critic and
+expounder, says that he is wanting in discrimination and art, "flings his
+ideas at us in a heap," etc., and yet that the effect of his work is "to
+stir our emotions, widen our interests, and rally the forces of our moral
+nature."
+
+It seems to me that a man who, through the printed page, can do these
+things, must have some kind of art worth considering. If, through his
+impassioned treatment of a prosy, commonplace object like a ferry-boat, he
+can so dignify and exalt it, and so fill it with the meanings of the
+spirit, that it seems like a part of God's eternities, his methods are at
+least worth inquiring into.
+
+The truth is, Whitman's art, in its lack of extrinsic form and finish, is
+Oriental rather than Occidental, and is an offense to a taste founded upon
+the precision and finish of a mechanical age. His verse is like the
+irregular, slightly rude coin of the Greeks compared with the exact,
+machine-cut dies of our own day, or like the unfinished look of Japanese
+pottery beside the less beautiful but more perfect specimens of modern
+ceramic art.
+
+For present purposes, we may say there are two phases of art,--formal art
+and creative art. By formal art I mean that which makes a direct appeal to
+our sense of form,--our sense of the finely carved, the highly wrought,
+the deftly planned; and by creative art I mean that quickening,
+fructifying power of the masters, that heat and passion that make the
+world plastic and submissive to their hands, teeming with new meanings and
+thrilling with new life.
+
+Formal art is always in the ascendant. Formal anything--formal dress,
+formal manners, formal religion, formal this and that--always counts for
+more than the informal, the spontaneous, the original. It is easier, it
+can be put off and on.
+
+Formal art is nearly always the gift of the minor poet, and often of the
+major poet also. In such a poet as Swinburne, formal art leads by a great
+way. The content of his verse,--what is it? In Tennyson as well I should
+say formal art is in the ascendant. Creative art is his also; Tennyson
+reaches and moves the spirit, yet his skill is more noteworthy than his
+power. In Wordsworth, on the other hand, I should say creative art led:
+the content of his verse is more than its form; his spiritual and
+religious values are greater than his literary and artistic. The same is
+true of our own Emerson. Poe, again, is much more as an artist than as a
+man or a personality.
+
+I hardly need say that in Whitman formal art, the ostensibly artistic,
+counts for but very little. The intentional artist, the professional poet,
+is kept entirely in abeyance, or is completely merged and hidden in the
+man, more so undoubtedly than in any poet this side the old Oriental
+bards. We call him formless, chaotic, amorphous, etc., because he makes no
+appeal to our modern highly stimulated sense of art or artificial form. We
+must discriminate this from our sense of power, our sense of life, our
+sense of beauty, of the sublime, of the all, which clearly Whitman would
+reach and move. Whitman certainly has a form of his own: what would a
+poet, or any writer or worker in the ideal, do without some kind of form?
+some consistent and adequate vehicle of expression? But Whitman's form is
+not what is called artistic, because it is not brought within the rules of
+the prosodical system, and does not appeal to our sense of the consciously
+shaped and cultivated. It is essentially the prose form heightened and
+intensified by a deep, strong, lyric and prophetic note.
+
+The bonds and shackles of regular verse-form Whitman threw off. This
+course seemed to be demanded by the spirit to which he had dedicated
+himself,--the spirit of absolute unconstraint. The restrictions and
+hamperings of the scholastic forms did not seem to be consistent with this
+spirit, which he identified with democracy and the New World. A poet who
+sets out to let down the bars everywhere, to remove veils and
+obstructions, to emulate the freedom of the elemental forces, to effuse
+always the atmosphere of open-air growths and objects, to be as
+"regardless of observation" as the processes of nature, etc., will not be
+apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression. The
+essentially prose form which Whitman chose is far more in keeping with the
+spirit and aim of his work than any conventional metrical system could
+have been. Had he wrought solely as a conscious artist, aiming at the
+effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have chosen a
+different medium.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman threw himself with love and enthusiasm upon this great, crude,
+seething, materialistic American world. The question is, Did he master it?
+Is he adequate to absorb and digest it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is
+it plastic in his hands? Does he stamp it with his own image? I do not
+ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make
+it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because
+evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it. He is content if he
+present America and the modern to us as they are inwrought into his own
+personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character,
+passion, will, motive, conviction. He would show them subjectively and as
+living impulses in himself. Of course a great constructive, dramatic poet
+like Shakespeare would have solved his problem in a different manner, or
+through the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters. But the
+poet and prophet of democracy and of egotism shows us all things in and
+through himself.
+
+His egotism, or egocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work.
+It colors all and determines all. The poems are the direct outgrowth of
+the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it
+were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon
+the trunk. His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most
+poets. He never leads us away from himself into pleasant paths with
+enticing flowers of fancy or forms of art. He carves or shapes nothing for
+its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent
+grounds as pure art. His work is not material made precious by elaboration
+and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life.
+
+
+X
+
+Whitman was compelled to this negation of extrinsic art by the problem he
+had set before himself,--first, to arouse, to suggest, rather than to
+finish or elaborate, less to display any theme or thought than "to bring
+the reader into the atmosphere of the theme or thought;" secondly, to make
+his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that
+the dominant impression should always be that of the living, breathing
+man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see
+him and feel him in books or art,--the man in the form and garb of actual,
+concrete life, not as poet or artist, but simply as man. This is doubtless
+the meaning of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to
+the first issue of the "Leaves," to which I have referred. This portrait
+is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task. It was a
+hint that we must take this poet with very little literary tailoring; it
+was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and
+spoke in their spirit.
+
+It is never the theme treated, but always the character exploited; never
+the structure finished, but always the plan suggested; never the work
+accomplished, but always the impulse imparted,--freedom, power, growth.
+
+  "Allons! we must not stop here.
+  However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling,
+        we cannot remain here,
+  However sheltered this port, or however calm these waters, we must not
+        anchor here,
+  However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to
+        receive it but a little while.
+
+  "Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
+  Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
+  Allons! from all formulas!
+  From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!"
+
+
+This magnificent poem, "The Song of the Open Road," is one of the most
+significant in Whitman's work. He takes the open road as his type,--not an
+end in itself, not a fulfillment, but a start, a journey, a progression.
+It teaches him the profound lesson of reception, "no preference nor
+denial," and the profounder lesson of liberty and truth:--
+
+  "From this hour, freedom!
+  From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
+  Going where I list--my own master, total and absolute,
+  Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
+  Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
+  Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
+        would hold me.
+
+  "I inhale great draughts of air,
+  The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine."
+
+He will not rest with art, he will not rest with books, he will press his
+way steadily toward the largest freedom.
+
+  "Only the kernel of every object nourishes.
+  Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
+  Where is he who undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?"
+
+
+Whitman was not a builder. If he had the architectural power which the
+great poets have shown, he gave little proof of it. It was not required by
+the task he set before himself. His book is not a temple: it is a wood, a
+field, a highway; vista, vista, everywhere,--vanishing lights and shades,
+truths half disclosed, successions of objects, hints, suggestions, brief
+pictures, groups, voices, contrasts, blendings, and, above all, the tonic
+quality of the open air. The shorter poems are like bunches of herbs or
+leaves, or a handful of sprays gathered in a walk; never a thought
+carefully carved, and appealing to our sense of artistic form.
+
+The main poem of the book, "The Song of Myself," is a series of
+utterances, ejaculations, apostrophes, enumerations, associations,
+pictures, parables, incidents, suggestions, with little or no structural
+or logical connection, but all emanating from a personality whose presence
+dominates the page, and whose eye is ever upon us. Without this vivid and
+intimate sense of the man back of all, of a sane and powerful spirit
+sustaining ours, the piece would be wild and inchoate.
+
+
+XI
+
+The reader will be sure to demand of Whitman ample compensation for the
+absence from his work of those things which current poets give us in such
+full measure. Whether or not the compensation is ample, whether the music
+of his verse as of winds and waves, the long, irregular, dithyrambic
+movement, its fluid and tonic character, the vastness of conception, the
+large, biblical speech, the surging cosmic emotion, the vivid personal
+presence as of the living man looking into your eye or walking by your
+side,--whether all these things, the refreshing quality as of "harsh salt
+spray" which the poet Lanier found in the "Leaves," the electric currents
+which Mrs. Gilchrist found there, the "unexcelled imaginative justice of
+language" which Mr. Stevenson at times found, the religious liberation and
+faith which Mr. Symonds found, the "incomparable things incomparably well
+said" of Emerson, the rifle-bullets of Ruskin, the "supreme words" of
+Colonel Ingersoll, etc.,--whether qualities and effects like these, I say,
+make up to us for the absence of the traditional poetic graces and
+adornments, is a question which will undoubtedly long divide the reading
+world.
+
+In the works upon which our poetic taste is founded, artistic form is
+paramount; we have never been led to apply to such works open-air
+standards,--clouds, trees, rivers, spaces,--but the precision and
+definiteness of the cultured and the artificial. If Whitman had aimed at
+pure art and had failed, his work would be intolerable. As his French
+critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, has well said: "In the large work which Whitman
+attempted, there come no rules save those of nobility and strength of
+spirit; and these suffice amply to create a most unlooked-for and
+grandiose aspect of beauty." "Overcrowded and disorderly" as it may seem,
+"if heroic emotion and thought and enthusiasm vitalize it," the poet has
+reached his goal.
+
+
+XII
+
+Sometimes I define Whitman to myself as the poet of the open air,--not
+because he sings the praises of these things after the manner of the
+so-called nature-poets, but because he has the quality of things in the
+open air, the quality of the unhoused, the untamed, the elemental and
+aboriginal. He pleases and he offends, the same way things at large do. He
+has the brawn, the indifference, the rudeness, the virility, the
+coarseness,--something gray, unpronounced, elemental, about him, the
+effect of mass, size, distance, flowing, vanishing lines, neutral
+spaces,--something informal, multitudinous, and processional,--something
+regardless of criticism, that makes no bid for our applause, not
+calculated instantly to please, unmindful of details, prosaic if we make
+it so, common, near at hand, and yet that provokes thought and stirs our
+emotions in an unusual degree. The long lists and catalogues of objects
+and scenes in Whitman, that have so excited the mirth of the critics, are
+one phase of his out-of-doors character,--a multitude of concrete objects,
+a grove, a thicket, a field, a stretch of beach,--every object sharply
+defined, but no attempt at logical or artistic sequence, the effect of the
+whole informal, multitudinous. It may be objected to these pages that they
+consist of a mass of details that do not make a picture. But every line is
+a picture of a scene or an object. Whitman always keeps up the movement,
+he never pauses to describe; it is all action.
+
+Passing from such a poet as Tennyson to Whitman is like going from a warm,
+perfumed interior, with rich hangings, pictures, books, statuary, fine men
+and women, out into the street, or upon the beach, or upon the hill, or
+under the midnight stars. We lose something certainly, but do we not gain
+something also? Do we not gain just what Whitman had in view, namely,
+direct contact with the elements in which are the sources of our life and
+health? Do we not gain in scope and power what we lose in art and
+refinement?
+
+The title, "Leaves of Grass," is full of meaning. What self-knowledge and
+self-scrutiny it implies! The grass, perennial sprouting, universal,
+formless, common, the always spread feast of the herds, dotted with
+flowers, the herbage of the earth, so suggestive of the multitudinous,
+loosely aggregated, unelaborated character of the book; the lines
+springing directly out of the personality of the poet, the soil of his
+life.
+
+  "What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me,"
+
+says the poet, and this turns out to be the case. We only look to see if
+in the common and the cheap he discloses new values and new meanings,--if
+his leaves of grass have the old freshness and nutriment, and be not a
+mere painted greenness.
+
+  "The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
+  The carpenter dresses his plank--the tongue of his foreplane whistles
+        its wild ascending lisp,
+  The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving
+        dinner,
+  The pilot seizes the king-pin--he heaves down with a strong arm,
+  The mate stands braced in the whale-boat--lance and harpoon are ready,
+  The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
+  The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
+  The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
+  The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First Day loafe, and looks
+        at the oats and rye,
+  The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case,
+  He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
+        bedroom;
+  The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
+  He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
+  The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,
+  What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
+  The quadroon girl is sold at the stand--the drunkard nods by the
+        bar-room stove,
+  The machinist rolls up his sleeves--the policeman travels his beat--the
+        gate-keeper marks who pass,
+  The young fellow drives the express-wagon--I love him, though I do not
+        know him,
+  The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
+  The western turkey-shooting draws old and young--some lean on their
+        rifles, some sit on logs,
+  Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his
+        piece;
+  The groups of newly-come emigrants cover the wharf or levee,
+  As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them
+        from his saddle,
+  The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners,
+        the dancers bow to each other,
+  The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret, and harks to the
+        musical rain,
+  The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
+  The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and
+        the winter-grain falls in the ground,
+  Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the
+        frozen surface,
+  The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep
+        with his axe,
+  Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-wood or pekan-trees,
+  Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River, or through those
+        drained by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
+  Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,
+  Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons
+        around them,
+  In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their
+        day's sport,
+  The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
+  The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
+  The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his
+        wife;
+  And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
+  And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am."
+
+
+What is this but tufts and tussocks of grass; not branching trees, nor yet
+something framed and deftly put together, but a succession of simple
+things, objects, actions, persons; handfuls of native growths, a stretch
+of prairie or savanna; no composition, no artistic wholes, no logical
+sequence, yet all vital and real; jets of warm life that shoot and play
+over the surface of contemporary America, and that the poet uses as the
+stuff out of which to weave the song of himself.
+
+This simple aggregating or cataloguing style as it has been called, and
+which often occurs in the "Leaves," has been much criticised, but it seems
+to me in perfect keeping in a work that does not aim at total artistic
+effects, at finished structural perfection like architecture, but to
+picture the elements of a man's life and character in outward scenes and
+objects and to show how all nature tends inward to him and he outward to
+it. Whitman showers the elements of American life upon his reader until,
+so to speak, his mind is drenched with them, but never groups them into
+patterns to tickle his sense of form. It is charged that his method is
+inartistic, and it is so in a sense, but it is the Whitman art and has its
+own value in his work. Only the artist instinct could prompt to this
+succession of one line genre word painting.
+
+But this is not the way of the great artists. No, but it is Whitman's way,
+and these things have a certain artistic value in his work, a work that
+professedly aims to typify his country and times,--the value of multitude,
+processions, mass-movements, and the gathering together of elements and
+forces from wide areas.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Whitman's relation to art, then, is primary and fundamental, just as his
+relations to religion, to culture, to politics, to democracy, are primary
+and fundamental,--through his emotion, his soul, and not merely through
+his tools, his intellect. His artistic conscience is quickly revealed to
+any searching inquiry. It is seen in his purpose to convey his message by
+suggestion and indirection, or as an informing, vitalizing breath and
+spirit. His thought and meaning are enveloped in his crowded, concrete,
+and often turbulent pages, as science is enveloped in nature. He has a
+profound ethic, a profound metaphysic, but they are not formulated; they
+are vital in his pages as hearing or eyesight.
+
+Whitman studied effects, and shaped his means to his end, weighing values
+and subordinating parts, as only the great artist does. He knew the power
+of words as few know them; he knew the value of vista, perspective,
+vanishing lights and lines. He knew how to make his words itch at your
+ears till you understood them; how to fold up and put away in his
+sentences meanings, glimpses, that did not at first reveal themselves. It
+is only the work of the great creative artist that is pervaded by will,
+and that emanates directly and inevitably from the personality of the man
+himself. As a man and an American, Whitman is as closely related to his
+work as AEschylus to his, or Dante to his. This is always a supreme
+test,--the closeness and vitality of the relation of a man to his work.
+Could any one else have done it? Is it the general intelligence that
+speaks, the culture and refinement of the age? or have we a new revelation
+of life, a new mind and soul? The lesser poets sustain only a secondary
+relation to their works. It is other poets, other experiences, the past,
+the schools, the forms, that speak through them. In all Whitman's
+recitatives, as he calls them, the free-flowing ends of the sentences, the
+loose threads of meaning, the unraveled or unknitted threads and fringes,
+are all well considered, and are one phase of _his_ art. He seeks his
+effects thus.
+
+His method is indirect, allegorical, and elliptical to an unusual degree;
+often a curious suspension and withholding in a statement, a suggestive
+incompleteness, both ends of his thought, as it were, left in the air;
+sometimes the substantive, sometimes the nominative, is wanting, and all
+for a purpose. The poet somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic
+screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying
+in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are
+used to in prophecy. The forthrightness of utterance, the projectile
+force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the
+great prophetic souls, is here.
+
+Whitman is poetic in the same way in which he is democratic, in the same
+way in which he is religious, or American, or modern,--not by word merely,
+but by deed; not by the extrinsic, but by the intrinsic; not by art, but
+by life.
+
+I am never tired of saying that to put great personal qualities in a poem,
+or other literary work, not formulated or didactically stated, but in
+tone, manner, attitude, breadth of view, love, charity, good fellowship,
+etc., is the great triumph for our day. So put, they are a possession to
+the race forever; they grow and bear fruit perennially, like the grass and
+the trees. And shall it be said that the poet who does this has no worthy
+art?
+
+
+XIV
+
+Nearly all modern artificial products, when compared with the ancient, are
+characterized by greater mechanical finish and precision. Can we say,
+therefore, they are more artistic? Is a gold coin of the time of Pericles,
+so rude and simple, less artistic than the elaborate coins of our own day?
+Is Japanese pottery, the glazing often ragged and uneven, less artistic
+than the highly finished work of the moderns?
+
+Are we quite sure, after all, that what we call "artistic form" is in any
+high or fundamental sense artistic? Are the precise, the regular, the
+measured, the finished, the symmetrical, indispensable to our conception
+of art? If regular extrinsic form and measure and proportion are necessary
+elements of the artistic, then geometrical flower-beds, and trees set in
+rows or trained to some fancy pattern, ought to please the artist. But do
+they? If we look for the artistic in these things, then Addison is a
+greater artist than Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says, "Addison speaks the
+language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." Which is really the most
+artistic? The one is the coin from the die, the other the coin from the
+hand.
+
+Tennyson's faultless form and finish are not what stamp him a great
+artist. He would no doubt be glad to get rid of them if he could, at least
+to keep them in abeyance and make them less obtrusive; he would give
+anything for the freedom, raciness, and wildness of Shakespeare. But he is
+not equal to these things. The culture, the refinement, the precision of a
+correct and mechanical age have sunk too deeply into his soul. He has not
+the courage or the spring to let himself go as Shakespeare did. Tennyson,
+too, speaks the language of poets, and not of men; he savors of the
+flower-garden, and not of the forest. Tennyson knows that he is an artist.
+Shakespeare, apparently, never had such a thought; he is intent solely
+upon holding the mirror up to nature. The former lived in an age of
+criticism, and when the poets loved poetry more than they did life and
+things; the latter, in a more virile time, and in "the full stream of the
+world."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not self-advertised as a work of art. The author had
+no thought that you should lay down his book and say, "What a great
+artist!" "What a master workman!" He would rather you should say, "What a
+great man!" "What a loving comrade!" "What a real democrat!" "What a
+healing and helpful force!" He would not have you admire his poetry: he
+would have you filled with the breath of a new and larger and saner life;
+he would be a teacher and trainer of men.
+
+The love of the precise, the exact, the methodical, is characteristic of
+an age of machinery, of a commercial and industrial age like ours. These
+things are indispensable in the mill and counting-house, but why should we
+insist upon them in poetry? Why should we cling to an arbitrary form like
+the sonnet? Why should we insist upon a perfect rhyme, as if it was a cog
+in a wheel? Why not allow and even welcome the freedom of half-rhymes, or
+suggestive rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it
+into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering
+and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the
+man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an
+artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair with great laws
+and forces?
+
+Of course it is much easier for a poet to use the regular verse-forms and
+verse language than it is to dispense with them; that is, a much less
+poetic capital is required in the former case than in the latter. The
+stock forms and the stock language count for a good deal. A very small
+amount of original talent may cut quite an imposing figure in the robes of
+the great masters. Require the poet to divest himself of them, and to
+speak in the language of men and in the spirit of real things, and see how
+he fares.
+
+
+XV
+
+Whitman was afraid of what he called the beauty disease. He thought a poet
+of the first order should be sparing of the direct use of the beautiful,
+as Nature herself is. His aim should be larger, and beauty should follow
+and not lead. The poet should not say to himself, "Come, I will make
+something beautiful," but rather "I will make something true, and
+quickening, and powerful. I will not dress my verse up in fine words and
+pretty fancies, but I will breathe into it the grit and force and
+adhesiveness of real things." Beauty is the flowering of life and
+fecundity, and it must have deep root in the non-beautiful.
+
+Beauty, as the master knows it, is a spirit and not an adornment. It is
+not merely akin to flowers and gems and rainbows: it is akin to the All.
+Looking through his eyes, you shall see it in the rude and the savage
+also, in rocks and deserts and mountains, in the common as well as in the
+rare, in wrinkled age as well as in rosy youth.
+
+The non-beautiful holds the world together, holds life together and
+nourishes it, more than the beautiful. Nature is beautiful because she is
+so much else first,--yes, and last, and all the time.
+
+  "For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
+        delicates of the earth and of man,
+  And nothing endures but personal qualities."
+
+
+Is there not in field, wood, or shore something more precious and tonic
+than any special beauties we may chance to find there,--flowers, perfumes,
+sunsets,--something that we cannot do without, though we can do without
+these? Is it health, life, power, or what is it?
+
+Whatever it is, it is something analogous to this that we get in Whitman.
+There is little in his "Leaves" that one would care to quote for its mere
+beauty, though this element is there also. One may pluck a flower here and
+there in his rugged landscape, as in any other; but the flowers are always
+by the way, and never the main matter. We should not miss them if they
+were not there. What delights and invigorates us is in the air, and in the
+look of things. The flowers are like our wild blossoms growing under great
+trees or amid rocks, never the camellia or tuberose of the garden or
+hot-house,--something rude and bracing is always present, always a breath
+of the untamed and aboriginal.
+
+Whitman's work gives results, and never processes. There is no return of
+the mind upon itself; it descends constantly upon things, persons,
+realities. It is a rushing stream which will not stop to be analyzed. It
+has been urged that Whitman does not give the purely intellectual
+satisfaction that would seem to be warranted by his mental grasp and
+penetration. No, nor the aesthetic satisfaction warranted by his
+essentially artistic habit of mind. Well, he did not promise satisfaction
+in anything, but only to put us on the road to satisfaction. His book, he
+says, is not a "good lesson," but it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
+and that to another, and every one to another still.
+
+Let me repeat that the sharp, distinct intellectual note--the note of
+culture, books, clubs, etc., such as we get from so many modern writers,
+you will not get from Whitman. In my opinion, the note he sounds is deeper
+and better than that. It has been charged by an unfriendly critic that he
+strikes lower than the intellect. If it is meant by this that he misses
+the intellect, it is not true; he stimulates the intellect as few poets
+do. He strikes lower because he strikes farther. He sounds the note of
+character, personality, volition, the note of prophecy, of democracy, and
+of love. He seems unintellectual to an abnormally intellectual age; he
+seems unpoetic to a taste formed upon poetic tidbits; he seems irreligious
+to standards founded upon the old models of devotional piety; he seems
+disorderly, incoherent to all petty thumb and finger measurements. In his
+ideas and convictions, Whitman was a modern of the moderns; yet in his
+type, his tastes, his fundamental make-up, he was primitive, of an earlier
+race and age,--before, as Emerson suggests, the gods had cut Man up into
+men, with special talents of one kind or another.
+
+
+XVI
+
+Take any of Whitman's irregular-flowing lines, and clip and trim them, and
+compress them into artificial verse-forms, and what have we gained to make
+up for what we have lost? Take his lines called "Reconciliation," for
+instance:--
+
+  "Word over all beautiful as the sky,
+  Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
+        lost,
+  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
+        again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
+  For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
+  I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
+  Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."
+
+Or take his poem called "Old Ireland:"--
+
+  "Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
+  Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
+  Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
+  Her old white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,
+  At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
+  Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,
+  Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.
+
+  "Yet a word, ancient mother,
+  You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between
+        your knees,
+  Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,
+  For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
+  It was an illusion; the son you loved was not really dead,
+  The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another
+        country.
+  Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
+  What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,
+      The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,
+      And now with rosy and new blood,
+      Moves to-day in a new country."
+
+Or take these lines from "Children of Adam:"--
+
+  "I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I
+        pass'd the church,
+  Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your
+        long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,
+  I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
+        soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
+  Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the
+        wrists around my head,
+  Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last
+        night under my ear."
+
+Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
+measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
+highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
+wanted to preserve at all hazards,--vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
+free-careering forces of nature.
+
+I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
+not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
+is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
+restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
+and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
+like him best without it.
+
+
+XVII
+
+How well we know the language of the conventional poetic! In this
+language, the language of nine tenths of current poetry, the wind comes
+up out of the south and kisses the rose's crimson mouth, or it comes out
+of the wood and rumples the poppy's hood. Morning comes in glistening
+sandals, and her footsteps are jeweled with flowers. Everything is
+bedecked and bejeweled. Nothing is truly seen or truly reported. It is an
+attempt to paint the world beautiful. It is not beautiful as it is, and we
+must deck it out in the colors of the fancy. Now, I do not want the world
+painted for me. I want the grass green or brown, as the case may be; the
+sky blue, the rocks gray, the soil red; and that the sun should rise and
+set without any poetic claptrap. What I want is to see these things spin
+around a thought, or float on the current of an emotion, as they always do
+in real poetry.
+
+Beauty always follows, never leads the great poet. It arises out of the
+interior substance and structure of his work, like the bloom of health in
+the cheeks. The young poet thinks to win Beauty by direct and persistent
+wooing of her. He has not learned yet that she comes unsought to the
+truthful, the brave, the heroic. Let him think some great thought,
+experience some noble impulse, give himself with love to life and reality
+about him, and Beauty is already his. She is the reward of noble deeds.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+The modern standard in art is becoming more and more what has been called
+the canon of the characteristic, as distinguished from the Greek or
+classic canon of formal beauty. It is this canon, as Professor Triggs
+suggests, that we are to apply to Whitman. Dr. Johnson had it in mind when
+he wrote thus of Shakespeare:--
+
+"The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed
+and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers: the
+composition of Shakespeare is a forest in which oaks extend their
+branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds
+and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
+filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless
+diversity."
+
+Classic art holds to certain fixed standards; it seeks formal beauty; it
+holds to order and proportion in external parts; its ideal of natural
+beauty is the well-ordered park or grove or flower-garden. It has a horror
+of the wild and savage. Mountains and forests, and tempests and seas,
+filled the classic mind with terror. Not so with the modern romantic mind,
+which finds its best stimulus and delight in free, unhampered nature. It
+loves the element of mystery and the suggestion of uncontrollable power.
+The modern mind has a sense of the vast, the infinite, that the Greek had
+not, and it is drawn by informal beauty more than by the formal.
+
+
+XIX
+
+It is urged against Whitman that he brings us the materials of poetry, but
+not poetry: he brings us the marble block, but not the statue; or he
+brings us the brick and mortar, but not the house. False or superficial
+analogies mislead us. Poetry is not something made; it is something grown,
+it is a vital union of the fact and the spirit. If the verse awakens in us
+the poetic thrill, the material, whatever it be, must have been touched
+with the transforming spirit of poesy. Why does Whitman's material suggest
+to any reader that it is poetic material? Because it has already been
+breathed upon by the poetic spirit. A poet may bring the raw material of
+poetry in the sense that he may bring the raw material of a gold coin; the
+stamp and form you give it does not add to its value. It is doubtful if
+any of Whitman's utterances could be worked up into what is called poetry
+without a distinct loss of poetic value. What they would gain in finish
+they would lose in suggestiveness. This word "suggestiveness" affords one
+of the keys to Whitman. The objection to him I have been considering
+arises from the failure of the critic to see and appreciate his avowed
+purpose to make his page fruitful in poetic suggestion, rather than in
+samples of poetic elaboration. "I finish no specimens," he says. "I shower
+them by exhaustless laws, fresh and modern continually, as Nature does."
+He is quite content if he awaken the poetic emotion without at all
+satisfying it. He would have you more eager and hungry for poetry when you
+had finished with him than when you began. He brings the poetic stimulus,
+and brings it in fuller measure than any contemporary poet; and this is
+enough for him.
+
+An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that
+reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry
+did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in
+motion at once; he was so fruitful in themes, so suggestive of new
+harmonies and melodies. He gave the hints, and left his reader to follow
+them up. This is exactly what Whitman wanted to do. It defines his
+attitude toward poetry, towards philosophy, towards religion,--to suggest
+and set going, to arouse unanswerable questions, and to brace you to meet
+them; to bring the materials of poetry, if you will have it so, and leave
+you to make the poem; to start trains of thought, and leave you to pursue
+the flight alone. Not a thinker, several critics have urged; no, but the
+cause of thought in others to an unwonted degree. "Whether you agree with
+him or not," says an Australian essayist, "he will sting you into such an
+anguish of thought as must in the end be beneficial." It matters little to
+him whether or not you agree with him; what is important is, that you
+should think the matter out for yourself. He purposely avoids hemming you
+in by his conclusions; he would lead you in no direction but your own.
+"Once more I charge you give play to your self. I charge you leave all
+free, as I have left all free."
+
+No thought, no philosophy, no music, no poetry, in his pages; no, it is
+all character, impulse, emotion, suggestion. But the true reader of him
+experiences all these things: he finds in his pages, if he knows how to
+look for it, a profound metaphysic, a profound ethic, a profound aesthetic;
+a theory of art and poetry which is never stated, but only hinted or
+suggested, and which is much more robust and vital than what we are used
+to; a theory of good and evil; a view of character and conduct; a theory
+of the state and of politics, of the relation of the sexes, etc., to give
+ample food for thought and speculation. The Hegelian philosophy is in the
+"Leaves" as vital as the red corpuscles in the blood, so much is implied
+that is not stated, but only suggested, as in Nature herself. The really
+vast erudition of the work is adroitly concealed, hidden like its
+philosophy, as a tree hides its roots. Readers should not need to be told
+that, in the region of art as of religion, mentality is not first, but
+spirituality, personality, imagination; and that we do not expect a poet's
+thoughts to lie upon his pages like boulders in the field, but rather to
+show their presence like elements in the soil.
+
+  "Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
+  Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
+  If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
+        form, color, perfume to you,
+  If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
+        tall branches and trees."
+
+
+The early records and sacred books of most peoples contain what is called
+the materials of poetry. The Bible is full of such materials. English
+literature shows many attempts to work this material up into poetry, but
+always with a distinct loss of poetic value. The gold is simply beaten
+out thin and made to cover more surface, or it is mixed with some base
+metal. A recent English poet has attempted to work up the New Testament
+records into poetry, and the result is for the most part a thin, windy
+dilution of the original. If the record or legend is full of poetic
+suggestion, that is enough; to elaborate it, and deck it out in poetic
+finery without loss of poetic value, is next to impossible.
+
+To me the Arthurian legends as they are given in the old books, are more
+poetic, more stimulating to the imagination, than they are after they have
+gone through the verbal upholstering and polishing of such a poet as
+Swinburne or even Tennyson. These poets add little but words and flowers
+of fancy, and the heroic simplicity of the original is quite destroyed.
+
+
+XX
+
+No critic of repute has been more puzzled and misled by this unwrought
+character of our poet's verse than Mr. Edmund Gosse, the London poet and
+essayist. Mr. Gosse finds Whitman only a potential or possible poet; his
+work is literature in the condition of protoplasm. He is a maker of poems
+in solution; the structural change which should have crystallized his
+fluid and teeming pages into forms of art never came. It does not occur to
+Mr. Gosse to inquire whether or not something like this may not have been
+the poet's intention. Perhaps this is the secret of the vitality of his
+work, which, as Mr. Gosse says, now, after forty years, shows no sign of
+declining. Perhaps it was a large, fresh supply of poetic yeast that the
+poet really sought to bring us. Undoubtedly Whitman aimed to give his work
+just this fluid, generative quality, to put into it the very basic
+elements of life itself. He feared the "structural change" to which Mr.
+Gosse refers; he knew it was more or less a change from life to death: the
+cell and not the crystal; the leaf of grass, and not the gem, is the type
+of his sentences. He sacrificed fixed form; above all, did he stop short
+of that conscious intellectual elaboration so characteristic of later
+poetry, the better to give the impression and the stimulus of creative
+elemental power. It is not to the point to urge that this is not the
+method or aim of other poets; that others have used the fixed forms, and
+found them plastic and vital in their hands. It was Whitman's aim; these
+were the effects he sought. I think beyond doubt that he gives us the
+impression of something dynamic, something akin to the vital forces of the
+organic world, much more distinctly and fully than any other poet who has
+lived.
+
+Whitman always aimed to make his reader an active partner with him in his
+poetic enterprise. "I seek less," he says, "to state or display any theme
+or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
+theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." This trait is brought
+out by Mr. Gosse in a little allegory. "Every reader who comes to
+Whitman," he says, "starts upon an expedition to the virgin forest. He
+must take his conveniences with him. He will make of the excursion what
+his own spirit dictates. [We generally do, in such cases, Mr. Gosse.]
+There are solitudes, fresh air, rough landscape, and a well of water, but
+if he wishes to enjoy the latter he must bring his own cup with him." This
+phase of Whitman's work has never been more clearly defined. Mr. Gosse
+utters it as an adverse criticism. It is true exposition, however we take
+it, what we get out of Whitman depends so largely upon what we bring to
+him. Readers will not all get the same. We do not all get the same out of
+a walk or a mountain climb. We get out of him in proportion to the
+sympathetic and interpretative power of our own spirits. Have you the
+brooding, warming, vivifying mother-mind? That vague, elusive,
+incommensurable something in the "Leaves" that led Symonds to say that
+talking about Whitman was like talking about the universe,--that seems to
+challenge our pursuit and definition, that takes on so many different
+aspects to so many different minds,--it seems to be this that has led Mr.
+Gosse to persuade himself that there is no real Walt Whitman, no man whom
+we can take, as we take any other figure in literature, as an "entity of
+positive value and definite characteristics," but a mere mass of literary
+protoplasm that takes the instant impression of whatever mood approaches
+it. Stevenson finds a Stevenson in it, Mr. Symonds finds a Symonds,
+Emerson finds an Emerson, etc. Truly may our poet say, "I contain
+multitudes." In what other poet do these men, or others like them, find
+themselves?
+
+Whitman was a powerful solvent undoubtedly. He never hardens into anything
+like a system, or into mere intellectual propositions. One of his own
+phrases, "the fluid and swallowing soul," is descriptive of this trait of
+him. One source of his charm is, that we each see some phase of ourselves
+in him, as Mr. Gosse suggests. Above all things is he potential and
+indicative, bard of "flowing mouth and indicative hand." In his
+"Inscriptions" he says:--
+
+  "I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual
+        look upon you and then averts his face,
+  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
+  Expecting the main things from you."
+
+
+This withholding and half-averted glancing, then, on the part of the poet,
+is deliberate and enters into the scheme of the work. Mr. Gosse would have
+shown himself a sounder critic had he penetrated the poet's purpose in
+this respect, and shown whether or not he had violated the canons he had
+set up for his own guidance. We do not condemn a creative work when it
+departs from some rule or precedent, but when it violates its own
+principle, when it is not consistent with itself, when it hath not eyes to
+see, or ears to hear, or hands to reach what lies within its own sphere.
+Art, in the plastic realms of written language, may set its mind upon
+elaboration, upon structural finish and proportion, upon exact forms and
+compensations, as in architecture, or it may set its mind upon
+suggestion, indirection, and the flowing, changing forms of organic
+nature. It is as much art in the one case as in the other. To get rid of
+all visible artifice is, of course, the great thing in both cases. There
+is so little apparent artifice in Whitman's case that he has been accused
+of being entirely without art, and of throwing his matter together in a
+haphazard way,--"without thought, without selection," without
+"composition, evolution, vertebration of style," says Mr. Gosse. Yet his
+work more than holds its own in a field where these things alone are
+supposed to insure success. Whitman covers up his processes well, and
+knows how to hit his mark without seeming to take aim. The verdicts upon
+him are mainly contradictory, because each critic only takes in a part of
+his scheme. Mr. Stedman finds him a formalist. Mr. Gosse finds in him a
+negation of all form. The London critic says he is without thought. A
+Boston critic speaks of what he happily calls the "waves of thought" in
+his work,--vast mind-impulses that lift and sway great masses of concrete
+facts and incidents. Whitman knew from the start that he would puzzle and
+baffle his critics, and would escape from them like air when they felt
+most sure they had him in their verbal nets. So it has been from the
+first, and so it continues to be. Without one thing, he says, it is
+useless to read him; and of what that one thing needful is, he gives only
+the vaguest hint, only a "significant look."
+
+
+XXI
+
+I may here notice two objections to Whitman urged by Mr. Stedman,--a
+critic for whose opinion I have great respect, and a man for whom I have a
+genuine affection. With all his boasted breadth and tolerance, Whitman,
+says my friend, is narrow; and, with all his vaunted escape from the
+shackles of verse-form, he is a formalist: his "irregular, manneristic
+chant" is as much at the extreme of artificiality as is the sonnet. These
+certainly are faults that one does not readily associate with the work of
+Whitman. But then I remember that the French critic, Scherer, charges
+Carlyle, the apostle of the gospel of sincerity, with being insincere and
+guilty of canting about cant. If Carlyle is insincere, I think it very
+likely that Whitman may be narrow and hide-bound. These things are so much
+a matter of temperament that one cannot judge for another. Yet one ought
+not to confound narrowness and breadth, or little and big. All earnest,
+uncompromising men are more or less open to the charge of narrowness. A
+man is narrow when he concentrates himself upon a point; even a
+cannon-shot is. Whitman was narrow in the sense that he was at times
+monotonous; that he sought but few effects, that he poured himself out
+mainly in one channel, that he struck chiefly the major chords of life.
+His "Leaves" do not show a great range of artistic motifs. A versatile,
+many-sided nature he certainly was not; a large, broad, tolerant nature
+he as certainly was. He does not assume many and diverse forms like a
+purely artistic talent, sporting with and masquerading in all the elements
+of life, like Shakespeare; but in his own proper form, and in his own
+proper person, he gives a sense of vastness and power that are
+unapproached in modern literature. He asserts himself uncompromisingly,
+but he would have you do the same. "He who spreads a wider breast than my
+own proves the width of my own." "He most honors my style who learns under
+it to destroy the teacher." His highest hope is to be the soil of superior
+poems.
+
+Mr. Stedman thinks he detects in the poet a partiality for the coarser,
+commoner elements of our humanity over the finer and choicer,--for the
+"rough" over the gentleman. But when all things have been duly considered,
+it will be found, I think, that he finally rests only with great personal
+qualities and traits. He is drawn by powerful, natural persons, wherever
+found,--men and women self-poised, fully equipped on all sides:--
+
+  "I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully arm'd,
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,"--
+
+and much more to the same effect.
+
+  "I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain:
+  If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it."
+
+
+Whitman is a formalist, just as every man who has a way of his own of
+saying and doing things, no matter how natural, is a formalist; but he is
+not a stickler for form of any sort. He has his own proper form, of
+course, which he rarely departs from. At one extreme of artificiality Mr.
+Stedman apparently places the sonnet. This is an arbitrary form; its rules
+are inflexible; it is something cut and shaped and fitted together after a
+predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial. If Whitman's
+irregularity was equally studied; if it gave us the same sense of
+something cunningly planned and wrought to a particular end, clipped here,
+curbed there, folded back in this line, drawn out in that, and attaining
+to a certain mechanical proportion and balance as a whole,--then there
+would be good ground for the critic's charge. But such is not the case.
+Whitman did not have, nor claim to have, the architectonic power of the
+great constructive poets. He did not build the lofty rhyme. He did not
+build anything, strictly speaking. He let himself go. He named his book
+after the grass, which makes a carpet over the earth, and which is a sign
+and a presence rather than a form.
+
+
+XXII
+
+Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect
+from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional
+cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might
+expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or
+grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a
+little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional
+obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is
+commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy;
+from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an
+average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"
+may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc. The price paid for his
+strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination
+to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision
+with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"
+with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious,"
+will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"
+will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his
+healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk
+to flight.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+To say that Whitman is a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If
+it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of
+language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the
+saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the
+right word--for just the right word--than did Whitman. He would wait for
+days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the
+language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the
+evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language
+never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not
+consciously challenge your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is
+never on dress parade. His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so
+much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to _stumble_ upon
+them. His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial
+adjuncts of poetry,--no finery or stuck-on ornament,--nothing obtrusively
+beautiful or poetic; and because it bears itself with the freedom and
+nonchalance of a man in his every-day attire.
+
+But it is always in a measure misleading to compare language with dress,
+to say that a poet clothes his thought, etc. The language is the thought;
+it is an incarnation, not an outside tailoring. To improve the expression
+is to improve the thought. In the most vital writing, the thought is nude;
+the mind of the reader touches something alive and real. When we begin to
+hear the rustle of a pompous or highly wrought vocabulary, when the man
+begins to dress his commonplace ideas up in fine phrases, we have enough
+of him.
+
+Indeed, it is only the mechanical writer who may be said to "clothe" his
+ideas with words; the real poet thinks through words.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps
+has been made, that in him we find the big merely,--strength without
+power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this
+impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious
+things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here
+is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great
+lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires
+a large space to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and
+multitude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The
+style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling,
+cloud-like masses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me
+there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not
+only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity;
+not only breadth, there is quality and charm. He is both Dantesque and
+Darwinian, as has been said.
+
+Mr. Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whitman, and,
+despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of
+literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,--the
+symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power. Thus, "he
+is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or
+buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a
+kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the
+world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise
+mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,--all seas,
+lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal
+earth."
+
+Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and
+plains, and to the globe itself.
+
+But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only
+claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size
+and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no
+impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to
+size,--breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of
+a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists
+are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.
+
+Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast masses of
+humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the
+industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
+are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
+elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
+effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
+sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere
+the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
+significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
+contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
+forces and objects of the universe, first with reference to character and
+personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
+of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
+in his first poem:--
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.
+
+  "I tramp a perpetual journey,
+  My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
+        woods,
+  No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
+  I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
+  I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,
+  But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
+  My left hand hooking you round the waist,
+  My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public
+        road."
+
+
+He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
+effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
+and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
+the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
+before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
+views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
+disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
+disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
+things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
+His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
+in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
+bits and parts as from the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
+of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:--
+
+  "It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
+        exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the
+        untruth of a single second,
+  I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor
+        ten billions of years,
+  Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and
+        builds a house."
+
+In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
+as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.
+These are typical lines:--
+
+  "A thousand perfect men and women appear,
+  Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths,
+        with offerings."
+
+  "Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young,
+  The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young."
+
+
+"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same
+effect. Always wholes, total impressions,--always a view as of a "strong
+bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower,
+but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a
+city. The title of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might
+stand as the title of the book. When he gathers details and special
+features he masses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo
+carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always
+in the totals, the breadth, the sweep of conception. The part that is
+local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality
+is the background across which it all flits.
+
+We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give
+us,--studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects,
+rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we
+inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He
+tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and
+processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the
+orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon
+he sees a spirit kindred to his own.
+
+He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and
+what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and
+equilibrium.
+
+"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:--
+
+  "The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed
+        either,
+  They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.
+  They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,
+  Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The earth does not argue,
+  Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
+  Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
+  Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
+  Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.
+  Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."
+
+He says the best of life
+
+  "Is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"
+
+and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:--
+
+  "I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate
+        the theory of the earth,
+  No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless
+        it compares with the amplitude of the earth,
+  Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
+        earth."
+
+
+No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
+these and kindred passages:--
+
+  "The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
+  His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
+  The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
+  The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has
+        the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of
+        poems, the Answerer,
+  (Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day,
+        for all its names.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
+  The words of true poems do not merely please,
+  The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of
+        beauty;
+  The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
+        fathers,
+  The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
+
+  "Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness
+        of body, withdrawnness,
+  Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,
+  The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
+  The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all
+        these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
+  The words of the true poems give you more than poems;
+  They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
+        peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything
+        else.
+  They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;
+  They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
+  Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain,
+        love-sick.
+  They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the
+        outset,
+  They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,
+  Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to
+        learn one of the meanings,
+  To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings
+        and never be quiet again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Of these States the poet is the equable man,
+  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of
+        their full returns,
+  Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
+  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more
+        nor less,
+  He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
+  He is the equalizer of his age and land,
+  He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
+  In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
+        building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce,
+        lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality,
+        government,
+  In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as
+        the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
+  The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
+  He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),
+  He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a
+        helpless thing,
+  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
+  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
+  In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
+  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
+  He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as
+        dreams or dots.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass
+        away,
+  The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
+  Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."
+
+
+Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's
+idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the
+beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in
+centuries.
+
+We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in
+these lines of Tennyson:--
+
+  "The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."
+
+"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's
+pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.
+
+Whitman's ideal poet is the most composite man, rich in temperament, rank
+in the human attributes, embracing races and eras in himself. All men see
+themselves in him:--
+
+  "The mechanic takes him for a mechanic,
+  And the soldier supposes him to be a soldier, and the sailor that he
+        has followed the sea,
+  And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
+  And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,
+  No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has
+        followed it,
+  No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters
+        there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
+  The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
+        themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,
+  They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so
+        grown."
+
+
+Let us hold the poet to his own ideals, and not condemn him because he has
+not aimed at something foreign to himself.
+
+The questions which Whitman puts to him who would be an American poet may
+fairly be put to himself.
+
+  "Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what the land and sea, the
+        bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
+  Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
+  Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce
+        contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole
+        people?
+  Are you not of some coterie? some school, or mere religion?
+  Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to
+        life itself?
+  Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
+  Have you, too, the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  What is this you bring my America?
+  Is it uniform with my country?
+  Is it not something that has been better done or told before?
+  Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?
+  Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?--is the good old cause
+        in it?
+  Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
+        literats of enemies' lands?
+  Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
+  Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?
+  Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?
+  Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my
+        strength, gait, face?
+  Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere
+        amanuenses?
+
+
+So far as Whitman's poetry falls within any of the old divisions it is
+lyrical,--a personal and individual utterance. Open the book anywhere and
+you are face to face with a man. His eye is fixed upon you. It is a man's
+voice you hear, and it is directed to _you_. He is not elaborating a
+theme: he is suggesting a relation or hinting a meaning. He is not
+chiseling, or carving a work of art: he is roughly outlining a man; he is
+planting a seed, or tilling a field.
+
+
+XXV
+
+I believe it was the lamented Professor Clifford who first used the term
+"cosmic emotion" in connection with "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's
+atmosphere is so distinctly outside of and above that which ministers to
+our social and domestic wants,--the confined and perfumed air of an indoor
+life; his mood and temper are so habitually begotten by the contemplation
+of the orbs and the laws and processes of universal nature, that the
+phrase often comes to mind in considering him. He is not in any sense,
+except perhaps in a few minor pieces, a domestic and fireside poet,--a
+solace to our social instincts and cultivated ideals. He is too large, too
+aboriginal, too elemental, too strong for that. I seem to understand and
+appreciate him best when I keep in mind the earth as a whole, and its
+relation to the system. Any large view or thought, or survey of life or
+mankind, is a preparation for him. He demands the outdoor temper and
+habit, he demands a sense of space and power, he demands above all things
+a feeling for reality. "Vastness" is a word that applies to him; abysmal
+man, cosmic consciousness, the standards of the natural universal,--all
+hint some phase of his genius. His survey of life and duty is from a point
+not included in any four walls, or in any school or convention. It is a
+survey from out the depths of being; the breath of worlds and systems is
+in these utterances. His treatment of sex, of comradeship, of death, of
+democracy, of religion, of art, of immortality, is in the spirit of the
+great out-of-doors of the universe; the point of view is cosmic rather
+than personal or philanthropic. What charity is this!--the charity of
+sunlight that spares nothing and turns away from nothing. What "heroic
+nudity"! like the nakedness of rocks and winter trees. What sexuality!
+like the lust of spring or the push of tides. What welcome to death, as
+only the night which proves the day!
+
+
+XXVI
+
+This orbic nature which so thrills and fills Whitman is not at all akin to
+that which we get in the so-called nature-poets of Wordsworth and his
+school,--the charm of privacy, of the sequestered, the cosy,--qualities
+that belong to the art of a domestic, home-loving race, and to lovers of
+solitude. Tennyson's poetry abounds in these qualities; so does
+Wordsworth's. There is less of them in Browning, and more of them in the
+younger poets. That communing with nature, those dear friendships with
+birds and flowers, that gentle wooing of the wild and sylvan, that flavor
+of the rural, the bucolic,--all these are important features in the
+current popular poetry, but they are not to any marked extent
+characteristic of Whitman. The sentiment of domesticity, love as a
+sentiment; the attraction of children, home and fireside; the attraction
+of books, art, travel; our pleasure in the choice, the refined, the
+artificial,--these are not the things you are to demand of Whitman. You do
+not demand them of Homer or Dante or the Biblical writers. We are to
+demand of him the major things, primary things; the lift of great
+emotions; the cosmic, the universal; the joy of health, of selfhood; the
+stimulus of the real, the modern, the American; always the large, the
+virile; always perfect acceptance and triumph.
+
+Whitman's free use of the speech of the common people is doubtless
+offensive to a fastidious literary taste. Such phrases as "I will be even
+with you," "what would it amount to," "give in," "not one jot less;"
+"young fellows," "old fellows," "stuck up," "every bit as much," "week in
+and week out," and a thousand others, would jar on the page of any other
+poet more than on his.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+William Rossetti says his language has a certain ultimate quality. Another
+critic speaks of his absolute use of language. Colonel Ingersoll credits
+him with more supreme words than have been uttered by any other man of our
+time.
+
+The power to use words was in Whitman's eyes a divine power, and was
+bought with a price:--
+
+  "For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,
+        procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
+  After treading ground, and breasting river and lake,
+  After a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,
+        after knowledge, freedom, crimes,
+  After complete faith, after clarifying elevations and removing
+        obstructions,
+  After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman,
+        the divine power to speak words."
+
+
+Whitman's sense of composition and his rare artistic faculty of using
+language are seen, as John Addington Symonds says, in the "countless clear
+and perfect phrases" "which are hung, like golden medals of consummate
+workmanship and incised form, in rich clusters over every poem he
+produced. And, what he aimed at above all, these phrases are redolent of
+the very spirit of the emotions they suggest, communicate the breadth and
+largeness of the natural things they indicate, embody the essence of
+realities in living words which palpitate and burn forever."
+
+The great poet is always more or less the original, the abysmal man. He is
+face to face with universal laws and conditions. He speaks out of a
+greater exaltation of sentiment than the prose-writer. He takes liberties;
+he speaks for all men; he is a bird on "pinions free."
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+In saying or implying that Whitman's aim was not primarily literary or
+artistic, I am liable to be misunderstood; and when Whitman himself says,
+"No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
+performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward
+art or aestheticism," he exposes himself to the same misconception. It is
+the literary and poetic value of his verses alone that can save them.
+Their philosophy, their democracy, their vehement patriotism, their
+religious ardor, their spirit of comradeship, or what not, will not alone
+suffice. All depends upon the manner in which these things are presented
+to us. Do we get the reality, or words about the reality? No matter what
+the content of the verse, unless into the whole is breathed the breath of
+the true creative artist they will surely perish. Oblivion awaits every
+utterance not touched with the life of the spirit. Whitman was as
+essentially an artist as was Shakespeare or Dante; his work shows the same
+fusion of imagination, will, emotion, personality; it carries the same
+quality of real things,--not the same shaping, constructive power, but the
+same quickening, stimulating power, the same magic use of words. The
+artist in him is less conscious of itself, is less differentiated from the
+man, than in the other poets. He objected to having his work estimated for
+its literary value alone, but in so doing he used the word in a narrow
+sense.
+
+After all these ages of the assiduous cultivation of literature, there has
+grown up in men a kind of lust of the mere art of writing, just as, after
+so many generations of religious training, there has grown up a passion
+for religious forms and observances. "Mere literature" has come to be a
+current phrase in criticism, meaning, I suppose, that the production to
+which it is applied is notable only for good craftsmanship. In the same
+spirit one speaks of mere scholarship, or of a certain type of man as a
+mere gentleman. It was mere literature that Whitman was afraid of, the
+aesthetic disease, the passion for letters, for poetry, divorced from love
+of life and of things. None knew better than he that the ultimate value of
+any imaginative and emotional work, even of the Bible, is its literary
+value. Its spiritual and religious value is inseparably connected with its
+literary value.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not bookish; it is always the voice of a man, and not
+of a scholar or conventional poet, that addresses us. We all imbue words
+more or less with meanings of our own; but, from the point of view I am
+now essaying, literature is the largest fact, and embraces all inspired
+utterances. The hymn-book seeks to embody or awaken religious emotion
+alone; would its religious value be less if its poetic value were more? I
+think not. The best of the Psalms of David, from the religious point of
+view, are the best from the literary point of view. What reaches and
+thrills the soul,--that is great art. What arouses the passions--mirth,
+anger, indignation, pity--may or may not be true art. No one, for
+instance, can read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" without tears, laughter, anger; but
+no one, I fancy, could ever get from it that deep, tranquil pleasure and
+edification that the great imaginative works impart. Keble's poetry is
+more obviously religious than Wordsworth's or Arnold's, but how
+short-lived, because it is not embalmed in the true artistic spirit! In
+all the great poems, there is something as deep and calm as the light and
+the sky, and as common and universal. I find this something in Whitman. In
+saying, therefore, that his aim was ulterior to that of art, that he was
+not begotten by the literary spirit, I only mean that his aim was that of
+the largest art, and of the most vital and comprehensive literature. We
+should have heard the last of his "Leaves" long ago had they not possessed
+unmistakably the vitality of true literature, "incomparable things,
+incomparably well said," as Emerson remarked.
+
+A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary
+merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its
+literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words
+"literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital
+and imaginative use of language which is the characteristic of all true
+literature. The most effective way of saying a thing in the region of the
+sentiments and emotions,--that is the true literary way.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS
+
+
+I
+
+I have divided my subject into many chapters, and given to each a separate
+heading, yet I am aware that they are all but slight variations of a
+single theme,--viz., Whitman's reliance upon absolute nature. That there
+might be no mistake about it, and that his reader might at once be put in
+possession of his point of view, the poet declared at the outset of his
+career that at every hazard he should let nature speak.
+
+  "Creeds and schools in abeyance
+  Retiring back awhile, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
+  I harbor for good or bad,
+  I permit to speak at every hazard,
+  Nature without check, with original energy."
+
+
+The hazard of letting nature speak will, of course, be great,--the hazard
+of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and
+inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely
+passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his
+criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former
+contingency--the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser
+public--has been astounding. He has been read in a narrow, literal,
+bourgeois spirit. The personal pronoun, which he uses so freely, has been
+taken to stand for the private individual Walt Whitman, so that he has
+been looked upon as a compound of egotism and licentiousness. His
+character has been traduced, and his purpose in the "Leaves" entirely
+misunderstood.
+
+We see at a glance that his attitude towards nature, towards God, towards
+the body and the soul, reverses many of the old ascetic theological
+conceptions.
+
+All is good, all is as it should be; to abase the body is to abase the
+soul. Man is divine inside and out, and is no more divine about the head
+than about the loins. It is from this point of view that he has launched
+his work. He believed the time had come for an utterance out of radical,
+uncompromising human nature; let conventions and refinements stand back,
+let nature, let the soul, let the elemental forces speak; let the body,
+the passions, sex, be exalted; the stone rejected by the builders shall be
+the chief stone in the corner. Evil shall be shown to be a part of the
+good, and death shall be welcomed as joyously as life.
+
+Whitman says his poems will do just as much evil as good, and perhaps
+more. To many readers this confession of itself would be his condemnation.
+To others it would be an evidence of his candor and breadth of view. I
+suppose all great vital forces, whether embodied in a man or in a book,
+work evil as well as good. If they do not, they only tickle the surface
+of things. Has not the Bible worked evil also? Some think more evil than
+good. The dews and the rains and the sunshine work evil.
+
+From Whitman's point of view, there is no good without evil; evil is an
+unripe kind of good. There is no light without darkness, no life without
+death, no growth without pain and struggle. Beware the emasculated good,
+the good by exclusion rather than by victory. "Leaves of Grass" will work
+evil on evil minds,--on narrow, unbalanced minds. It is not a guide, but
+an inspiration; not a remedy, but health and strength. Art does not preach
+directly, but indirectly; it is moral by its spirit, and the mood and
+temper it begets.
+
+Whitman, in celebrating manly pride, self-reliance, the deliciousness of
+sex; in glorifying the body, the natural passions and appetites, nativity;
+in identifying himself with criminals and low or lewd persons; in frankly
+imputing to himself all sins men are guilty of, runs the risk, of course,
+of being read in a spirit less generous and redemptive than his own.
+
+The charity of the poet may stimulate the license of the libertine; the
+optimism of the seer may confirm the evil-doer; the equality of the
+democrat may foster the insolence of the rowdy. This is our lookout and
+not the poet's. We take the same chances with him that we do with nature;
+we are to trim our sails to the breeze he brings; we are to sow wheat and
+not tares for his rains to water.
+
+Whitman's glorification of the body has led some critics to say that he is
+the poet of the body only. But it is just as true to say he is the poet of
+the soul only. He always seeks the spiritual through the material. He
+treats the body and the soul as one, and he treats all things as having
+reference to the soul.
+
+  "I will not make a poem, nor the least part, of a poem, but has
+        reference to the soul,
+  Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there
+        is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul."
+
+
+The curious physiological strain which runs through the poems is to be
+considered in the light of this idea. He exalts the body because in doing
+so he exalts the soul.
+
+  "Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
+        objects pass into spiritual results."
+
+
+II
+
+The reader of Whitman must do his or her own moralizing; the poet is here
+not to deprecate or criticise, but to love and celebrate; he has no
+partialities; our notions of morality do not concern him; he exploits the
+average man just as he finds him; he _is_ the average man for the time
+being and confesses to all his sins and shortcomings, and we will make of
+the result good or evil, according to our mental horizon. That his work is
+unmixed good is the last thing the poet would claim for it. He has not,
+after the easy fashion of the moralist, set the good here and the bad
+there; he has blended them as they are in nature and in life; our profit
+and discipline begin when we have found out whither he finally tends, or
+when we have mastered him and extracted the good he holds. If we expect he
+is going to preach an austere system of morality to us, or any system of
+morality, we are doomed to disappointment. Does Nature preach such a
+system? does Nature preach at all? neither will he. He presents you the
+elements of good and evil in himself in vital fusion and play; your part
+is to see how the totals are at last good.
+
+It is objected that Whitman is too persistent in declaring himself an
+animal, when the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he is an
+animal and the thing he is least likely to remember is that he is a spirit
+and a child of God. But Whitman insists with the same determination that
+he is a spirit and an heir of immortality,--not as one who has cheated the
+devil of his due, but as one who shares the privileges and felicities of
+all, and who finds the divine in the human. Indeed it is here that he
+sounds his most joyous and triumphant note. No such faith in spiritual
+results, no such conviction of the truth of immortality, no such
+determined recognition of the unseen world as the final reality is to be
+found in modern poetry.
+
+As I have said, Whitman aimed to put his whole nature in a poem--the
+physical or physiological, the spiritual, the aesthetic and
+intellectual,--without giving any undue prominence to either. If he has
+not done so, if he has made the animal and sexual too pronounced, more so
+than nature will justify in the best proportioned man, then and then only
+is his artistic scheme vitiated and his work truly immoral.
+
+It may be true that the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he
+is an animal; what he is most likely to forget, is that the animal is just
+as sacred and important as any other part; indeed that it is the basis of
+all, and that a sane and healthful and powerful spirituality and
+intellectuality can only flow out of a sane and healthful animality.
+
+  "I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
+  And you must not be abased to the other."
+
+
+III
+
+Furthermore, Whitman's main problem is to project into literature the new
+democratic man as he conceives him,--the man of the future, intensely
+American, but in the broadest sense human and cosmopolitan; he is to
+project him on a scale large enough for all uses and conditions, ignoring
+the feudal and aristocratic types which have for the most part dominated
+literature, and matching them with a type more copious in friendship,
+charity, sympathy, religion, candor, and of equal egoism and power.
+
+It is to exploit and enforce and illustrate this type or character that
+"Leaves of Grass" is written. The poems are the drama of this new
+democratic man. This type Whitman finds in himself. He does not have to
+create it as Shakespeare did Hamlet or Lear; he has only to discover it
+in himself. He is it and he gives it free utterance. His work is,
+therefore, as he says, the poem of himself,--himself written
+large,--written as upon the face of the continent, written in the types
+and events he finds on all sides. He sees himself in all men, the bad as
+well as the good, and he sees all men in himself. All the stupendous
+claims he makes for himself he makes for others. His egotism is vicarious
+and embraces the world. It is not the private individual Walt Whitman that
+makes these stupendous claims for himself; it is Walt Whitman as the
+spokesman of the genius of American democracy. He is not to discuss a
+question. He is to outline a character, he is to incarnate a principle.
+The essayist or philosopher may discuss the value of any given idea,--may
+talk about it; the creative artist alone can give us the thing itself, the
+concrete flesh-and-blood reality. Whitman is not only to make this survey,
+to launch this criticism; he is to embody it in a living human
+personality, and enable us to see the world of man and morals through its
+eyes. What with the scientist, the philosopher, is thought, must be
+emotion and passion with him.
+
+Whitman promises that we shall share with him "two greatnesses, and a
+third one rising inclusive and more resplendent,"--
+
+  "The greatness of Love and Democracy and the greatness of Religion"--
+
+not merely as ideas, but as living impulses. He is to show the spirit of
+absolute, impartial nature, incarnated in a human being, imbued with
+love, democracy, and religion, moving amid the scenes and events of the
+New World, sounding all the joys and abandonments of life, and re-reading
+the oracles from the American point of view. And the utterance launched
+forth is to be imbued with poetic passion.
+
+Whitman always aims at a complete human synthesis, and leaves his reader
+to make of it what he can. It is not for the poet to qualify and explain.
+He seeks to reproduce his whole nature in a book,--reproduce it with all
+its contradictions and carnalities, the good and the bad, the coarse and
+the fine, the body and the soul,--to give free swing to himself, trusting
+to natural checks and compensations to ensure a good result at last, but
+not at all disturbed if you find parts of it bad as in creation itself.
+
+His method being that of the poet, and not that of the moralist or
+preacher, how shall he sort and sift, culling this virtue and that, giving
+parts and fragments instead of the entire man? He must give all, not
+abstractly, but concretely, synthetically.
+
+To a common prostitute Whitman says:--
+
+  "Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you;
+  Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle
+        for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you."
+
+
+We are housed in social usages and laws, we are sheltered and warmed and
+comforted by conventions and institutions and numberless traditions;
+their value no one disputes. But for purposes of his own Whitman ignores
+them all; he lets in upon us the free and maybe raw air of the great
+out-of-doors of absolute nature; his standards are not found inside of any
+four walls; he contemplates life, and would quicken it in its
+fundamentals; his survey is from a plane whence our arts and refinements
+and petty distinctions disappear. He sees the evil of the world no less
+necessary than the good; he sees death as a part of life itself; he sees
+the body and the soul as one; he sees the spiritual always issuing from
+the material; he sees not one result at last lamentable in the universe.
+
+
+IV
+
+Unless, as I have already said, we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself,
+we can make little of him; unless we place ourselves at his absolute point
+of view, his work is an offense and without meaning. The only question is,
+Has he a law, has he a steady and rational point of view, is his work a
+consistent and well-organized whole? Ask yourself, What is the point of
+view of absolute, uncompromising science? It is that creation is all good
+and sound; things are as they should be or must be; there are no
+conceivable failures; there is no evil in the final analysis, or, if there
+is, it is necessary, and plays its part also; there is no more beginning
+nor ending than there is now, no more heaven or hell than we find or make
+here:--
+
+  "Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and
+        rectified?"
+
+
+It has been urged that Whitman violates his own canon of the excellence of
+nature. But what he violates is more a secondary or acquired nature. He
+violates our social conventions and instincts, he exposes what we cover
+up; but the spirit of his undertaking demanded this of him. Remember that
+at all hazards he is to let nature--absolute nature--speak; that he is to
+be the poet of the body as well as of the soul, and that no part of the
+body of a man or woman, "hearty and clean," is vile, and that "none shall
+be less familiar than the rest."
+
+His glory is, that he never flinched or hesitated in following his
+principle to its logical conclusions,--"my commission obeying, to question
+it never daring."
+
+It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones for the sins of us all,--the sins
+of perverting, denying, abusing the most sacred and important organs and
+functions of our bodies.
+
+
+V
+
+In Whitman we find the most complete identification of the man with the
+subject. He always is, or becomes, the thing he portrays. Not merely does
+he portray America,--he speaks out of the American spirit, the spirit that
+has broken irrevocably with the past and turns joyously to the future; he
+does not praise equality, he illustrates it; he puts himself down beside
+the lowest and most despised person, and calls him brother.
+
+  "You felons on trial in courts,
+  You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and
+        handcuff'd with iron,
+  Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
+  Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with
+        iron, or my ankles with iron?"
+
+
+He does not give a little charity, he gives himself as freely as the
+clouds give rain, or the sun gives light; he does not write a treatise on
+democracy, he applies the democratic spirit to everything in heaven and on
+earth, and redistributes the prizes from its points of view; he does not,
+except very briefly, sing the praises of science, but he launches his
+poems always from the scientific view of the world, in contradistinction
+to the old theological and mythical point of view. It is always the
+example, it is always the thing itself, he gives us. Few precepts, no
+sermon, no reproof. Does he praise candor? No, he is candor; he confesses
+to everything; he shows us the inmost working of his mind. We know him
+better than we know our nearest friends. Does he exalt the pride of man in
+himself, or egoism? Again he illustrates it: he is egoism; he makes the
+whole universe revolve around himself; he never for a moment goes out of
+himself; he does not seek a theme; he is the theme. His egocentric method
+of treatment is what characterizes him as an artist. He elaborates no
+theme, he builds nothing, he carves nothing, but makes himself a source
+and centre of pulsing, vital energy. Wave after wave radiates from him.
+What we see and get always is Walt Whitman. Our attention is never fixed
+upon the writer, but always upon the man.
+
+Of course this method of Whitman of becoming one with his subject, and
+speaking out of it, is always the method of the creative artist. It is
+this that distinguishes the artist from the mere thinker or prose-writer.
+The latter tells us about a thing; the former gives us the thing, or the
+spirit of the thing itself.
+
+If Whitman had put his criticism of our time and civilization in an
+argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As
+an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and
+tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we
+tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a
+personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a
+theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons and a challenge,
+and will not be easily put aside.
+
+The great philosophical poets, like Lucretius, try to solve the riddles.
+Whitman's aim is only to thrust the riddles before you, to give you a new
+sense of them, and start the game afresh. He knows what a complex,
+contradictory thing the universe is, and that the most any poet can do is
+to break the old firmament up into new forms. To put his arms around it?
+No. Put your arms around your fellow-man, and then you have encompassed it
+as nearly as mortal can do.
+
+
+VI
+
+Whitman's attraction toward the common people was real. There is one thing
+that makes every-day humanity, the great, toiling, unlettered masses,
+forever welcome to men who unite great imagination with broad
+sympathies,--they give a sense of reality; they refresh, as nature always
+refreshes. There is a tang and a sting to the native, the spontaneous,
+that the cultivated rarely has. The farmer, the mechanic, the sailor, the
+soldier, savor of the primal and the hardy. In painting his own portrait,
+Whitman makes prominent the coarser, unrefined traits, because here the
+colors are fast,--here is the basis of all. The careful student of Whitman
+will surely come to see how all the elements of his picture--his pride,
+his candor, his democracy, his sensuality, his coarseness,--finally fit
+together, and correct and offset each other and make a perfect unity.
+
+No poet is so easily caricatured and turned into ridicule as Whitman. He
+is deficient in humor, and hence, like the Biblical writers, is sometimes
+on the verge of the grotesque without knowing it. The sense of the
+ridiculous has been enormously stimulated and developed in the modern
+mind, and--what is to be regretted--it has been mostly at the expense of
+the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this
+country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push
+and topple it over. The fear which all Americans have before their eyes,
+and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of
+appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked
+individuality of manners or dress, lest we expose ourselves to the shafts
+of ridicule. Emerson said he had heard with admiring submission the remark
+of a lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gave
+a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow;
+and what ranks before religion with us as a people is being in the mode,
+and writing our verse and cutting our coats in the approved style. Pride
+of the eye, a keen sense of the proprieties and the conventionalities, and
+a morbid feeling for the ridiculous, would have been death to Whitman's
+undertaking. He would have faltered, or betrayed self-consciousness. He
+certainly never could have spoken with that elemental aplomb and
+indifference which is so marked a feature of his work. Any hesitation, any
+knuckling, would have been his ruin. We should have seen he was not
+entirely serious, and should have laughed at him. We laugh now only for a
+moment; the spell of his earnestness and power is soon upon us.
+
+
+VII
+
+Thoreau considered Whitman's "Leaves" worth all the sermons in the country
+for preaching; and yet few poets have assumed so little the function of
+the preacher. His great cure-all is love; he gives himself instead of a
+sermon. His faith in the remedial power of affection, comradeship, is
+truly Christ-like. Lover of sinners is also his designation. The reproof
+is always indirect or implied. He brings to bear character rather than
+precept. He helps you as health, as nature, as fresh air, pure water help.
+He says to you:--
+
+  "The mockeries are not you;
+  Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
+  I pursue you where none else has pursued you:
+  Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed
+        routine,--if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they
+        do not conceal you from me.
+  The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion,--if these balk
+        others, they do not balk me.
+  The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature
+        death,--all these I part aside.
+  I track through your windings and turnings,--I come upon you where you
+        thought eye should never come upon you."
+
+
+Whitman said, in the now famous preface of 1855, that "the greatest poet
+does not moralize, or make applications of morals,--he knows the soul."
+There is no preaching or reproof in the "Leaves."
+
+  "I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
+        oppression and shame;
+  I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
+        remorseful after deeds done;
+  I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,
+        gaunt, desperate;
+  I see the wife misused by her husband; I see the treacherous seducer of
+        the young woman;
+  I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
+        hid,--I see these sights on the earth,
+  I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and
+        prisoners,
+  I observe a famine at sea,--I observe the sailors casting lots who shall
+        be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest,
+  I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
+        laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
+  All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out
+        upon,
+  See, hear, and am silent."
+
+
+Only once does he shame and rebuke the offender; then he holds up to him
+"a hand-mirror."
+
+  "Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (who is it? is it you?)
+  Outside fair costume,--within, ashes and filth.
+  No more a flashing eye,--no more a sonorous voice or springy step,
+  Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
+  A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,
+  Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
+  Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
+  Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
+  Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
+  No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
+  Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
+  Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!"
+
+
+The poet's way is so different from the moralist's way! The poet confesses
+all, loves all,--has no preferences. He is moral only in his results. We
+ask ourselves, Does he breathe the air of health? Can he stand the test of
+nature? Is he tonic and inspiring? That he shocks us is nothing. The first
+touch of the sea is a shock. Does he toughen us, does he help make
+arterial blood?
+
+All that men do and are guilty of attracts him. Their vices and
+excesses,--he would make these his own also. He is jealous lest he be
+thought better than other men,--lest he seem to stand apart from even
+criminals and offenders. When the passion for human brotherhood is upon
+him, he is balked by nothing; he goes down into the social mire to find
+his lovers and equals. In the pride of our morality and civic well-being,
+this phase of his work shocks us; but there are moods when the soul says
+it is good, and we rejoice in the strong man that can do it.
+
+The restrictions, denials, and safeguards put upon us by the social order,
+and the dictates of worldly prudence, fall only before a still more fervid
+humanism, or a still more vehement love.
+
+The vital question is, Where does he leave us? On firmer ground, or in the
+mire? Depleted and enervated, or full and joyous? In the gloom of
+pessimism, or in the sunlight of its opposite?---
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a man or woman coming--perhaps you are the one;
+  I announce a great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate,
+        compassionate, fully armed.
+
+  "_So long!_
+  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
+  And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its
+        translation.
+
+  "I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded;
+  I announce a race of splendid and savage old men."
+
+
+There is no contradiction here. The poet sounds all the experiences of
+life, and he gives out the true note at last.
+
+  "No specification is necessary,--all that a male or female does, that is
+        vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her, in
+        the unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope
+        of it forever."
+
+
+VIII
+
+Nothing but the most uncompromising religious purpose can justify certain
+things in the "Leaves;" nothing but the most buoyant and pervasive
+spirituality can justify its overwhelming materiality; nothing but the
+most creative imagination can offset its tremendous realism; nothing but
+the note of universal brotherhood can atone for its vehement Americanism;
+nothing but the primal spirit of poesy itself can make amends for this
+open flouting of the routine poetic, and this endless procession before us
+of the common and the familiar.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman loved the word "unrefined." It was one of the words he would have
+us apply to himself. He was unrefined, as the air, the soil, the water,
+and all sweet natural things are unrefined (fine but not _re_fined). He
+applies the word to himself two or three times in the course of his poems.
+He loved the words sun-tan, air-sweetness, brawn, etc. He speaks of his
+"savage song," not to call forth the bards of the past, he says, but to
+invoke the bards of the future.
+
+  "Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage songs?"
+
+
+The thought that his poems might help contribute to the production of a
+"race of splendid and savage old men" was dear to him. He feared the
+depleting and emasculating effects of our culture and conventions. The
+decay of maternity and paternity in this country, the falling off of the
+native populations, were facts full of evil omen. His ideal of manly or
+womanly character is rich in all the purely human qualities and
+attributes; rich in sex, in sympathy, in temperament; physiologically
+sound and clean, as well as mentally and morally so.
+
+  "Fear grace, fear delicatesse;
+  Fear the mellow-sweet, the sucking of honey-juice:
+  Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!
+  Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men."
+
+
+He was himself the savage old man he invoked. It was no part of his plan
+to preach, in refined and euphonious terms, hygiene and the value of the
+natural man, but to project into literature the thing itself, to exploit a
+character coarse as well as fine, and to imbue his poems with a
+physiological quality as well as a psychological and intellectual.
+
+  "I will scatter the new roughness and gladness among them."
+
+He says to the pale, impotent victim of over-refinement, with intentional
+rudeness,
+
+  "Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you."
+
+
+X
+
+One of the key-words to Whitman both as a man and a poet is the word
+"composite." He was probably the most composite man this century has
+produced, and in this respect at least is representative of the American
+of the future, who must be the result of the blending of more diverse
+racial elements than any man of history. He seems to have had an
+intuition of his composite character when he said in his first poem:--
+
+  "I am large,--I contain multitudes."
+
+
+The London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," in reluctantly
+conceding at the time of the poet's death something to the British
+admiration of him, said he was "rich in temperament." The phrase is well
+chosen. An English expert on the subject of temperament, who visited
+Whitman some years ago, said he had all four temperaments, the sanguine,
+the nervous, the melancholic, and the lymphatic, while most persons have
+but two temperaments, and rarely three.
+
+It was probably the composite character of Whitman that caused him to
+attract such diverse and opposite types of men,--scholars and workingmen,
+lawyers, doctors, scientists, and men of the world,--and that made him
+personally such a puzzle to most people,--so impossible to classify. On
+the street the promenaders would turn and look after him, and I have often
+heard them ask each other, "What man was that?" He has often been taken
+for a doctor, and during his services in the army hospitals various myths
+were floating about concerning him. Now he was a benevolent Catholic
+priest,--then some unknown army general, or retired sea captain; at one
+time he was reputed to be one of the owners of the Cunard line of
+steamers. To be taken for a Californian was common. One recalls the
+composite character of the poet whom he outlines in his poems (see
+quotation, page 159).
+
+The book is as composite as the man. It is all things to all men; it lends
+itself to a multitude of interpretations. Every earnest reader of it will
+find some clew or suggestion by the aid of which he fancies he can unlock
+the whole book, but in the end he will be pretty sure to discover that one
+key is not enough. To one critic, his book is the "hoarse song of a man,"
+its manly and masculine element attracts him; to another he is the poet of
+joy, to another the poet of health, to still another he is the bard of
+personality; others read him as the poet of nature, or the poet of
+democracy. His French critic, Gabriel Sarrazin, calls him an apostle,--the
+apostle of the idea that man is an indivisible fragment of the universal
+Divinity.
+
+
+XI
+
+What has a poet of Whitman's aims to do with decency or indecency, with
+modesty or immodesty? These are social or conventional virtues; he
+represents mainly primary qualities and forces. Does life, does death,
+does nature, respect our proprieties, our conventional veils and
+illusions? Neither will he. He will strip them all away. He will act and
+speak as if all things in the universe were equally sacred and divine; as
+if all men were really his brothers, all women his sisters; as if all
+parts of the human body were equally beautiful and wonderful; as if
+fatherhood and motherhood, birth and begetting, were sacred acts. Of
+course it is easy to see that this course will speedily bring him in
+collision with the guardians of taste and social morality. But what of
+that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I
+behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question
+is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or
+betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and
+thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than
+the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he assumes to speak.
+
+Nothing is easier than to convict Walt Whitman of what is called
+indecency; he laughs indifferent when you have done so. It is not your
+gods that he serves. He says he would be as indifferent of observation as
+the trees or rocks. And it is here that we must look for his
+justification, upon ethical rather than upon the grounds of conventional
+art. He has taken our sins upon himself. He has applied to the morbid
+sex-consciousness, that has eaten so deeply into our social system, the
+heroic treatment; he has fairly turned it naked into the street. He has
+not merely in words denied the inherent vileness of sex; he has denied it
+in very deed. We should not have taken offense had he confined himself to
+words,--had he said sex is pure, the body is as clean about the loins as
+about the head; but being an artist, a creator, and not a mere thinker or
+preacher, he was compelled to act,--to do the thing instead of saying it.
+
+The same in other matters. Being an artist, he could not merely say all
+men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and
+sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must
+make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of
+the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the
+concrete and not with the abstract,--fraternity and equality as a reality,
+not as a sentiment.
+
+
+XII
+
+In the phase in which we are now considering him, Whitman appears as the
+Adamic man re-born here in the nineteenth century, or with science and the
+modern added, and fully and fearlessly embodying himself in a poem. It is
+stronger than we can stand, but it is good for us, and one of these days,
+or one of these centuries, we shall be able to stand it and enjoy it.
+
+  "To the garden the world anew ascending,
+  Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
+  The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
+  Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber,
+  The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, having brought me again,
+  Amorous, mature--all beautiful to me--all wondrous,
+  My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
+        reasons most wondrous;
+  Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
+  Content with the present--content with the past,
+  By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
+  Or in front, and I following her just the same."
+
+
+The critics perpetually misread Whitman because they fail to see this
+essentially composite and dramatic character of his work,--that it is not
+the song of Walt Whitman the private individual, but of Walt Whitman as
+representative of, and speaking for, all types and conditions of men; in
+fact, that it is the drama of a new democratic personality, a character
+outlined on a larger, more copious, more vehement scale than has yet
+appeared in the world. The germs of this character he would sow broadcast
+over the land.
+
+In this drama of personality the poet always identifies himself with the
+scene, incident, experience, or person he delineates, or for whom he
+speaks. He says to the New Englander, or to the man of the South and the
+West, "I depict you as myself." In the same way he depicts offenders,
+roughs, criminals, and low and despised persons as himself; he lays claim
+to every sin of omission and commission men are guilty of, because, he
+says, "the germs are in all men." Men dare not tell their faults. He will
+make them all his own, and then tell them; there shall be full confession
+for once.
+
+  "If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;
+  If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think I cannot
+        remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?"
+
+
+It will not do to read this poet, or any great poet, in a narrow and
+exacting spirit. As Whitman himself says: "The messages of great poems to
+each man and woman are: Come to us on equal terms, only then can you
+understand us."
+
+In the much misunderstood group of poems called "Children of Adam" the
+poet speaks for the male generative principle, and all the excesses and
+abuses that grow out of it he unblushingly imputes to himself. What men
+have done and still do, while under the intoxication of the sexual
+passion, he does, he makes it all his own experience.
+
+That we have here a revelation of his own personal taste and experiences
+may or may not be the case, but we have no more right to assume it than we
+have to assume that all other poets speak from experience when they use
+the first person singular. When John Brown mounted the scaffold in
+Virginia, in 1860, the poet says:--
+
+  "I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,
+  I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling
+        with age and your unheal'd wounds, you mounted the scaffold,"--
+
+very near him he stood in spirit; very near him he stood in the person of
+others, but not in his own proper person.
+
+If we take this poet literally, we shall believe he has been in California
+and Oregon; that he has set foot in every city on the continent; that he
+grew up in Virginia; that every Southern State has been by turns his home;
+that he has been a soldier, a sailor, a miner; that he has lived in
+Dakota's woods, his "diet meat, his drink from the spring;" that he has
+lived on the plains with hunters and ranchmen, etc. He lays claim to all
+these characters, all these experiences, because what others do, what
+others assume, or suffer, or enjoy, that he appropriates to himself.
+
+  "I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+  Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+  I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of
+        my skin,
+  I fall on the weeds and stones,
+  The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+  Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whipstocks.
+
+  "Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
+  I do not ask the wounded person how he feels--I myself become the wounded
+        person,
+  My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
+
+  "I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
+  See myself in prison shaped like another man,
+  And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
+
+  "For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
+  It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.
+  Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him
+        and walk by his side."
+
+
+XIII
+
+It is charged against Whitman that he does not celebrate love at all, and
+very justly. He had no purpose to celebrate the sentiment of love.
+Literature is vastly overloaded with this element already. He celebrates
+fatherhood and motherhood, and the need of well-begotten, physiologically
+well-begotten, offspring. Of that veiled prurient suggestion which readers
+so delight in--of "bosoms mutinously fair," and "the soul-lingering loops
+of perfumed hair," as one of our latest poets puts it--there is no hint
+in his volume. He would have fallen from grace the moment he had attempted
+such a thing. Any trifling or dalliance on his part would have been his
+ruin. Love as a sentiment has fairly run riot in literature. From
+Whitman's point of view, it would have been positively immoral for him
+either to have vied with the lascivious poets in painting it as the
+forbidden, or with the sentimental poets in depicting it as a charm. Woman
+with him is always the mate and equal of the man, never his plaything.
+
+Whitman is seldom or never the poet of a sentiment, at least of the
+domestic and social sentiments. His is more the voice of the eternal,
+abysmal man.
+
+The home, the fireside, the domestic allurements, are not in him; love, as
+we find it in other poets, is not in him; the idyllic, except in touches
+here and there, is not in him; the choice, the finished, the perfumed, the
+romantic, the charm of art and the delight of form, are not to be looked
+for in his pages. The cosmic takes the place of the idyllic; the begetter,
+the Adamic man, takes the place of the lover; patriotism takes the place
+of family affection; charity takes the place of piety; love of kind is
+more than love of neighbor; the poet and the artist are swallowed up in
+the seer and the prophet.
+
+The poet evidently aimed to put in his sex poems a rank and healthful
+animality, and to make them as frank as the shedding of pollen by the
+trees, strong even to the point of offense. He could not make it pleasing,
+a sweet morsel to be rolled under the tongue; that would have been levity
+and sin, as in Byron and the other poets. It must be direct and rank,
+healthfully so. The courage that did it, and showed no wavering or
+self-consciousness, was more than human. Man is a begetter. How shall a
+poet in our day and land treat this fact? With levity and by throwing over
+it the lure of the forbidden, the attraction of the erotic? That is one
+way, the way of nearly all the poets of the past. But that is not
+Whitman's way. He would sooner be bestial than Byronic, he would sooner
+shock by his frankness than inflame by his suggestion. And this in the
+interest of health and longevity, not in the interest of a prurient and
+effeminate "art." In these poems Whitman for a moment emphasizes sex, the
+need of sex, and the power of sex. "All were lacking if sex were lacking."
+He says to men and women, Here is where you live after all, here is the
+seat of empire. You are at the top of your condition when you are fullest
+and sanest there. Fearful consequences follow any corrupting or abusing or
+perverting of sex. The poet stands in the garden of the world naked and
+not ashamed. It is a great comfort that he could do it in this age of
+hectic lust and Swinburnian impotence,--that he could do it and not be
+ridiculous. To have done it without offense would have been proof that he
+had failed utterly. Let us be shocked; it is a wholesome shock, like the
+douse of the sea, or the buffet of the wind. We shall be all the better
+for it by and by.
+
+
+XIV
+
+The lover of Whitman comes inevitably to associate him with character and
+personal qualities. I sometimes meet women whom I say are of the Whitman
+type--the kind of woman he invoked and predicted. They bear children, and
+are not ashamed; motherhood is their pride and their joy: they are
+cheerful, tolerant, friendly, think no evil, meet high and low on equal
+terms; they walk, row, climb mountains; they reach forth into the actual
+world of questions and events, open-minded, sympathetic, frank, natural,
+good-natured; the mates and companions of their husbands, keeping pace
+with them in all matters; home-makers, but larger than home, considerate,
+forgiving, unceremonious,--in short, the large, fresh, wholesome open-air
+natures whose ideal so completely possessed Walt Whitman.
+
+A British critic wisely says the gift of Whitman to us is the gift of life
+rather than of literature, but it is the gift of life through literature.
+Indeed, Whitman means a life as much as Christianity means a life. He
+says:--
+
+  "Writing and talk do not prove me."
+
+Nothing but the test of reality finally proves him:--
+
+  "The proof of the poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country has
+        absorbed him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."
+
+
+The proof of Whitman shall be deferred till he has borne fruit in actual,
+concrete life.
+
+He knew that merely intellectual and artistic tests did not settle matters
+in his case, or that we would not reach his final value by making a
+dead-set at him through the purely aesthetic faculties. Is he animating to
+life itself? Can we absorb and assimilate him? Does he nourish the manly
+and heroic virtues? Does he make us more religious, more tolerant, more
+charitable, more candid, more self-reliant? If not, he fails of his chief
+end. It is doubtful if the purely scholarly and literary poets, like
+Milton, say, or like our own Poe, are ever absorbed in the sense above
+implied; while there is little doubt that poets like Homer, like
+Shakespeare, are absorbed and modify a people's manners and ideals. Only
+that which we love affects our lives. Our admiration for art and
+literature as such is something entirely outside the sources of character
+and power of action.
+
+Whitman identifies himself with our lives. We associate him with reality,
+with days, scenes, persons, events. The youth who reads Poe or Lowell
+wants to be a scholar, a wit, a poet, a writer; the youth who reads
+Whitman wants to be a man, and to get at the meaning and value of life.
+Our author's bent towards real things, real men and women, and his power
+to feed and foster personality, are unmistakable.
+
+Life, reality, alone proves him; a saner and more robust fatherhood and
+motherhood, more practical democracy, more charity, more love, more
+comradeship, more social equality, more robust ideals of womanly and manly
+character, prove him. When we are more tolerant and patient and
+long-suffering, when the strain of our worldly, commercial spirit relaxes,
+then is he justified. Whitman means a letting-up of the strain all along
+the line,--less hurry, less greed, less rivalry, more leisure, more
+charity, more fraternalism and altruism, more religion, less formality and
+convention.
+
+  "When America does what was promised,
+  When each part is peopled with free people,
+  When there is no city on earth to lead my city, the city of young men,
+        the Mannahatta city--but when the Mannahatta leads all the cities
+        of the earth,
+  When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,
+  When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
+  When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,
+  When fathers, firm, unconstrained, open-eyed--when breeds of the most
+        perfect mothers denote America,
+  Then to me ripeness and conclusion."
+
+
+XV
+
+After all I think it matters little whether we call him poet or not. Grant
+that he is not a poet in the usual or technical sense, but poet-prophet,
+or poet-seer, or all combined. He is a poet plus something else. It is
+when he is judged less than poet, or no poet at all, that we feel
+injustice is done him. Grant that his work is not art, that it does not
+give off the perfume, the atmosphere of the highly wrought artistic works
+like those of Tennyson, but of something quite different.
+
+We have all been slow to see that his cherished ends were religious rather
+than literary; that, over and above all else, he was a great religious
+teacher and prophet. Had he been strictly a literary poet, like Lowell, or
+Longfellow, or Tennyson,--that is, a writer working for purely artistic
+effects,--we should be compelled to judge him quite differently.
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is a gospel--glad tidings of great joy to those who are
+prepared to receive it. Its final value lies in its direct, intense,
+personal appeal; in what it did for Symonds, who said it made a man of
+him; in what it did for Stevenson, who said it dispelled a thousand
+illusions; in what it did for Mrs. Gilchrist, who said it enabled her to
+find her own soul; in what it does for all earnest readers of it in
+blending with the inmost current of their lives. Whitman is the life-giver
+of our time. How shall a poet give us life but by making us share his
+larger measure of life, his larger hope, his larger love, his larger
+charity, his saner and wider outlook? What are the three great life-giving
+principles? Can we name them better than St. Paul named them eighteen
+hundred years ago,--faith, hope, charity? And these are the cornerstones
+of Whitman's work,--a faith so broad and fervent that it accepts death as
+joyously as life, and sees all things at last issue in spiritual results;
+a hope that sees the golden age ahead of us, not behind us; and a charity
+that balks at nothing, that makes him identify himself with offenders and
+outlaws; a charity as great as his who said to the thief on the cross,
+"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."
+
+To cry up faith, hope, and charity is not to make men partakers of them;
+but to exemplify them in a survey of the whole problem of life, to make
+them vital as hearing, or eyesight in a work of the imagination, to show
+them as motives and impulses controlling all the rest, is to beget and
+foster them in the mind of the beholder.
+
+He is more and he is less than the best of the other poets. The popular,
+the conventional poets are mainly occupied with the artistic side of
+things,--with that which refines, solaces, beautifies. Whitman is mainly
+occupied with the cosmic and universal side of things, and the human and
+spiritual values that may be extracted from them. His poetry is not the
+result of the same kind of selection and partiality as that we are more
+familiar with.
+
+Hence, while the message of Tennyson and his kind is the message of
+beauty, the message of Whitman is, in a much fuller sense, the message of
+life. He speaks the word of faith and power. This is his distinction; he
+is the life-giver. Such a man comes that we may have life, and have it
+more abundantly.
+
+The message of beauty,--who would undervalue it? The least poet and
+poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples
+and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of
+life, there is danger that we shall not know it when we hear it. It is a
+harsher and more heroic strain than the other. It calls no man to his
+ease, or to be lulled and soothed. It is a summons and a challenge. It
+lays rude, strong hands upon you. It filters and fibres your blood. It is
+more of the frost, the rains, the winds, than of cushions or parlors.
+
+The call of life is a call to battle always. We are stronger by the
+strength of every obstacle or enemy overcome.
+
+  "Listen! I will be honest with you,
+  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
+  These are the days that must happen to you:
+
+  "You shall not heap up what is called riches,
+  You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;
+  You but arrive at the city to which you were destined--you hardly settle
+        yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an irresistible
+        call to depart.
+  You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
+        remain behind you;
+  What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with
+        passionate kisses of parting,
+  You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands
+        toward you.
+
+  "Allons! After the GREAT COMPANIONS! and to belong to them!"
+
+
+XVI
+
+Whitman always avails himself of the poet's privilege and magnifies
+himself. He magnifies others in the same ratio, he magnifies all things.
+"Magnifying and applying come I," he says, "outbidding at the start the
+old cautious hucksters." Indeed, the character which speaks throughout
+"Leaves of Grass" is raised to the highest degree of personal exaltation.
+To it nothing is trivial, nothing is mean; all is good, all is divine. The
+usual distinctions disappear, burned up, the poet says, for religion's
+sake. All the human attributes are heightened and enlarged; sympathy as
+wide as the world; love that balks at nothing; charity as embracing as the
+sky; egotism like the force of gravity; religious fervor that consumes the
+coarsest facts like stubble; spirituality that finds God everywhere every
+hour of the day; faith that welcomes death as cheerfully as life;
+comradeship that would weld the nation into a family of brothers;
+sexuality that makes prudes shudder; poetic enthusiasm that scornfully
+dispenses with all the usual adventitious aids; and in general a
+largeness, coarseness, and vehemence that are quite appalling to the
+general reader. Lovers of poetry will of necessity be very slow in
+adjusting their notions to the standards of "Leaves of Grass." It is a
+survey of life and of the world from the cosmic rather than from the
+conventional standpoint. It carries the standards of the natural-universal
+into all fields.
+
+Some men have accepted poverty and privation with such contentment and
+composure as to make us almost envious of their lot; and Whitman accepts
+the coarser, commoner human elements which he finds in himself, and which
+most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception
+of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes.
+If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference
+for them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an element of
+weakness.
+
+His precept and his illustration, carried out in life, would fill the land
+with strong, native, original types of men and women animated by the most
+vehement comradeship, selfism and otherism going hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO CULTURE
+
+
+I
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is not the poetry of culture, but it is to be said in
+the same breath that it is not such a work as an uncultured man produces,
+or is capable of producing.
+
+The uncultured man does not think Whitman's thoughts, or propose Whitman's
+problems to himself, or understand or appreciate them at all. The "Leaves"
+are perhaps of supreme interest only to men of deepest culture, because
+they contain in such ample measure that without which all culture is mere
+varnish or veneer. They are indirectly a tremendous criticism of American
+life and civilization, and they imply that breadth of view and that
+liberation of spirit--that complete disillusioning--which is the best
+result of culture, and which all great souls have reached, no matter who
+or what their schoolmasters may have been.
+
+Our reading public probably does not and cannot see itself in Whitman at
+all. He must be a great shock to its sense of the genteel and the
+respectable. Nor can the working people and the unlettered, though they
+were drawn to Whitman the man, be expected to respond to any considerable
+extent to Whitman the poet. His standpoint can be reached only after
+passing through many things and freeing one's self from many illusions. He
+is more representative of the time-spirit out of which America grew, and
+which is now shaping the destiny of the race upon this continent. He
+strikes under and through our whole civilization.
+
+He despised our social gods, he distrusted our book-culture, he was
+alarmed at the tendency to the depletion and attenuation of the national
+type, and he aimed to sow broadcast the germs of more manly ideals. His
+purpose was to launch his criticism from the basic facts of human life,
+psychic and physiologic; to inject into the veins of our anaemic literature
+the reddest, healthiest kind of blood; and in doing so he has given free
+swing to the primary human traits and affections and to sexuality, and has
+charged his pages with the spirit of real things, real life.
+
+We have been so long used to verse which is the outcome of the literary
+impulse alone, which is written at so many removes from the primary human
+qualities, produced from the extreme verge of culture and artificial
+refinement, which is so innocent of the raciness and healthful coarseness
+of nature, that poetry which has these qualities, which implies the body
+as well as the mind, which is the direct outgrowth of a radical human
+personality, and which make demands like those made by real things, is
+either an offense to us or is misunderstood.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman says his book is not a good lesson, but it takes down the bars to
+a good lesson, and that to another, and that to another still. To take
+down bars rather than to put them up is always Whitman's aim; to make his
+reader free of the universe, to turn him forth into the fresh and
+inexhaustible pastures of time, space, eternity, and with a smart slap
+upon his back with the halter as a spur and send-off, is about what he
+would do. His message, first and last, is "give play to yourself;" "let
+yourself go;"--happiness is in the quest of happiness; power comes to him
+who power uses.
+
+  "Long enough have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore;
+  Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
+  To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
+        and laughingly dash with your hair."
+
+
+To hold Whitman up to ridicule, and to convict him of grossness and
+tediousness, is easy enough; first, because he is so out of relation to
+the modes and taste of his times, and, secondly, because he has somewhat
+of the uncouthness and coarseness of large bodies. Then his seriousness
+and simplicity, like that of Biblical and Oriental writers,--a kind of
+childish inaptness and homeliness,--often exposes him to our keen, almost
+abnormal sense of the ridiculous. He was deficient in humor, and he wrote
+his book in entire obliviousness of social usages and conventions, so that
+the perspective of it is not the social or indoor perspective, but that
+of life and nature at large, careering and unhampered. It is probably the
+one modern poem whose standards are not social and what are called
+artistic.
+
+Its atmosphere is always that of the large, free spaces of vast, unhoused
+nature. It has been said that the modern world could be reconstructed from
+"Leaves of Grass," so compendious and all-inclusive is it in its details;
+but of the modern world as a social organization, of man as the creature
+of social usages and prohibitions, of fashions, of dress, of
+ceremony,--the indoor, parlor and drawing-room man,--there is no hint in
+its pages. In its matter and in its spirit, in its standards and in its
+execution, in its ideals and in its processes, it belongs to and
+affiliates with open-air nature, often reaching, I think, the cosmic and
+unconditioned. In a new sense is Whitman the brother of the orbs and
+cosmic processes, "conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth." All
+his enthusiasms, all his sympathies have to do with the major and
+fundamental elements of life. He is a world-poet. We do not readily adjust
+our indoor notions to him. Our culture-standards do not fit him.
+
+
+III
+
+The problem of the poet is doubtless more difficult in our day than in any
+past day; it is harder for him to touch reality.
+
+The accumulations of our civilization are enormous: an artificial world of
+great depth and potency overlies the world of reality; especially does it
+overlie the world of man's moral and intellectual nature. Most of us live
+and thrive in this artificial world, and never know but it is the world of
+God's own creating. Only now and then a man strikes his roots down through
+this made land into fresh, virgin soil. When the religious genius strikes
+his roots through it, and insists upon a present revelation, we are apt to
+cry "heretic;" when the poet strikes his roots through it, as Whitman did,
+and insists upon giving us reality,--giving us himself before custom or
+law,--we cry "barbarian," or "art-heretic," or "outlaw of art."
+
+In the countless adjustments and accumulations, and in the oceanic
+currents of our day and land, the individual is more and more lost sight
+of,--merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See
+it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will.
+See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing
+power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a
+single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their
+types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite
+character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe
+with the old joy and contentment.
+
+
+IV
+
+  "The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
+  Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and master of it?"
+
+
+Do we not, consciously or unconsciously, ask this or a similar question of
+every poet or artist whom we pass in review before us? Is he master of his
+culture, or does it master him? Does he strike back through it to simple,
+original nature, or is he a potted plant? Does he retain the native savage
+virtues, or is he entirely built up from the outside? We constantly
+mistake culture for mere refinement, which it is not: it is a liberating
+process; it is a clearing away of obstructions, and the giving to inherent
+virtues a chance to express themselves. It makes savage nature friendly
+and considerate. The aim of culture is not to get rid of nature, but to
+utilize nature. The great poet is always a "friendly and flowing savage,"
+the master and never the slave of the complex elements of our artificial
+lives.
+
+Though our progress and civilization are a triumph over nature, yet in an
+important sense we never get away from nature or improve upon her. Her
+standards are still our standards, her sweetness and excellence are still
+our aim. Her health, her fertility, her wholeness, her freshness, her
+innocence, her evolution, we would fain copy or reproduce. We would, if we
+could, keep the pungency and aroma of her wild fruit in our cultivated
+specimens, the virtue and hardiness of the savage in our fine gentlemen,
+the joy and spontaneity of her bird-songs in our poetry, the grace and
+beauty of her forms in our sculpture and carvings.
+
+A poetic utterance from an original individual standpoint, something
+definite and characteristic,--this is always the crying need. What a fine
+talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name!
+But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a
+kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste and intelligence that
+speak. When will he redeem all these promises, and become a fixed centre
+of thought and emotion in himself? To write poems is no distinction; to be
+a poem, to be a fixed point amid the seething chaos, a rock amid the
+currents, giving your own form and character to them,--that is something.
+
+It matters little, as Whitman himself says, who contributes the mass of
+poetic verbiage upon which any given age feeds.
+
+But for a national first-class poem, or a great work of the imagination of
+any sort, the man is everything, because such works finally rest upon
+primary human qualities and special individual traits. A richly endowed
+personality is always the main dependence in such cases, or, as Goethe
+says, "in the great work the great person is always present as the great
+factor."
+
+"Leaves of Grass" is as distinctly an emanation from Walt Whitman, from
+his quality and equipment as a man apart from anything he owed to books or
+to secondary influences, as a tree is an emanation from the soil. It is,
+moreover, an emanation from him as an American in the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, and as a typical democratic composite man, a man of
+the common people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but with
+an extraordinary endowment of spiritual and intellectual power, to which
+he has given full swing without abating one jot or tittle the influence of
+his heritage of the common stock.
+
+
+V
+
+There is one important quality that enters into all first-class literary
+production and into all art, which is taken little account of in current
+criticism: I mean the quality of the manly,--the pulse and pressure of
+manly virility and strength. Goethe spoke of it to Eckermann as a certain
+urgent power in which the art of his time was lacking. The producers had
+taste and skill, but were not masterful as men. Goethe always looked
+straight through the work to the man behind it; in art and poetry the
+personality was everything. The special talent of one kind or another was
+quite secondary. The greatest works are the least literary. To speak in
+literature as a man, and not merely as a scholar or professional
+litterateur, is always the crying need. The new poet has this or that
+gift, but what is the human fund back of all? What is his endowment of the
+common universal human traits? How much of a man is he? His measure in
+this respect will be the measure of the final value of his contribution.
+
+The decadence of literature sets in when there is more talent than
+character in current production; when rare literary and artistic gifts no
+longer come wedded to large human and manly gifts; when taste is
+fastidious rather than robust and hearty. When was there a man born to
+English or American literature with a large endowment of the universal
+human qualities, or with those elements that give breadth and power, and
+which lead art rather than follow it? We are living in an age of great
+purity and refinement of taste in art and letters, but destitute of power.
+Goethe spoke of Walter Scott not merely as a great talent, but as a
+"comprehensive nature." Without this comprehensive nature as a setting,
+his great talent would have amounted to but little. This gives the weight,
+the final authority. How little there was on the surface of Scott of the
+literary keenness, subtlety, knowingness of later producers, and yet how
+far his contribution surpasses theirs in real human pathos and
+suggestiveness!
+
+The same might be said of Count Tolstoi, who is also, back of all, a great
+loving nature.
+
+One has great joy in Whitman because he is beyond and over all a large and
+loving personality; his work is but a thin veil through which a great
+nature clearly shows. The urgent power of which Goethe speaks is almost
+too strong,--too strong for current taste: we want more art and less man,
+more literature and less life. It is not merely a great mind that we feel,
+but a great character. It penetrates every line, and indeed makes it true
+of the book that whoever "touches this touches a man."
+
+The lesson of the poet is all in the direction of the practical manly and
+womanly qualities and virtues,--health, temperance, sanity, power,
+endurance, aplomb,--and not at all in the direction of the literary and
+artistic qualities or culture.
+
+  "To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat,
+        to manage horses, to beget superb children,
+  To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,
+  To hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea."
+
+
+All his aims, ideas, impulses, aspirations, relate to life, to
+personality, and to power to deal with real things; and if we expect from
+him only literary ideas--form, beauty, lucidity, proportion--we shall be
+disappointed. He seeks to make the impression of concrete forces and
+objects, and not of art.
+
+  "Not for an embroiderer,
+  (There will always be plenty of embroiderers--I welcome them also),
+  But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.
+
+  "Not to chisel ornaments,
+  But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme
+        Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking."
+
+His whole work is a radiation from an exemplification of the idea that
+there is something better than to be an artist or a poet,--namely, to be a
+man. The poet's rapture springs not merely from the contemplation of the
+beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; from
+the contemplation of democracy, the common people, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors, his own body, death, sex, manly love, occupations, and the force
+and vitality of things. We are to look for the clews to him in the open
+air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forms and
+methods. He declares he will never again mention love or death inside of a
+house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay
+with him in the open air.
+
+  "If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore;
+  The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key:
+  The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words.
+
+  "No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children better than they.
+
+  "The young mechanic is closest to me--he knows me pretty well.
+  The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with
+        him all day;
+  The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my
+        voice:
+  In vessels that sail, my words sail--I go with fishermen and seamen,
+        and love them.
+
+  "My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his
+        blanket;
+  The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;
+  The young mother and old mother comprehend me;
+  The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where
+        they are:
+  They and all would resume what I have told them."
+
+
+VI
+
+So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few,
+its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness
+of man rather than his strength; so far as it expresses a shrinking from
+reality and a refuge in sentimentalism; so far as it is aristocratic as in
+Tennyson, or mocking and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and mephitic as
+in Swinburne, or regretful and reminiscent as in Arnold, or a melodious
+baying of the moon as in Shelley, or the outcome of mere scholarly and
+technical acquirements as in so many of our younger poets,--so far as
+literature or poetry, I say, stand for these things, there is little of
+either in Whitman. Whitman stands for the primary and essential; he stands
+for that which makes the body as well as the mind, which makes life sane
+and joyous and masterful. Everything that tends to depletion, satiety, the
+abnormal, the erotic and exotic, that induces the stress and fever of
+life, is foreign to his spirit. He is less beautiful than the popular
+poets, yet more beautiful. He will have to do only with the inevitable
+beauty, the beauty that comes unsought, that resides in the interior
+meanings and affiliations,--the beauty that dare turn its back upon the
+beautiful.
+
+Whitman has escaped entirely the literary disease, the characteristic
+symptoms of which, according to Renan, is that people love less things
+themselves than the literary effects which they produce. He has escaped
+the art disease which makes art all in all; the religious disease, which
+runs to maudlin piety and seeks to win heaven by denying earth; the beauty
+disease, which would make of poesy a conventional flower-garden. He brings
+heroic remedies for our morbid sex-consciousness, and for all the
+pathological conditions brought about by our excess of refinement, and the
+dyspeptic depletions of our indoor artificial lives. Whitman withstood the
+aesthetic temptation, as Amiel calls it, to which most of our poets fall a
+victim,--the lust for the merely beautiful, the epicureanism of the
+literary faculties. We can make little of him if we are in quest of
+aesthetic pleasures alone. "In order to establish those literary
+authorities which are called classic centuries," says Renan, "something
+healthy and solid is necessary. Common household bread is of more value
+here than pastry." But the vast majority of literary producers aim at
+pastry, or, worse yet, confectionery,--something especially delightful and
+titivating to the taste. No doubt Renan himself was something of a
+literary epicure, but then he imposed upon himself large and serious
+tasks, and his work as a whole is solid and nourishing; his charm of style
+does not blind and seduce us. It makes all the difference in the world
+whether we seek the beautiful through the true, or the true through the
+beautiful. Seek ye the kingdom of truth first and all things shall be
+added. The novice aims to write beautifully, but the master aims to see
+truly and to feel vitally. Beauty follows him, and is never followed by
+him.
+
+Nature is beautiful because she is something else first, yes, and last,
+too, and all the while. Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the
+whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with
+the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields
+compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuye.
+
+
+VII
+
+Whitman's ideal is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger--much more
+racy and democratic--than the ideal we are familiar with in current
+literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the
+democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,--excluding all the
+old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and
+legends, etc.,--but he applies it to the form as well, excluding rhyme and
+measure and all the conventional verse architecture. His work stands or it
+falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or
+power which it holds. This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest,
+nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated. His
+influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or
+extra-cultured humanity. The spirit of his work transferred to practice
+begets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, magnetic,
+tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple,
+healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he
+opposes that which weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a
+scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature,
+and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and
+affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic
+spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our
+artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature.
+The people look askance at men who are above them without being of them,
+who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with
+unlettered humanity. Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit,
+and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Sumner.
+
+Whitman might be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned. His
+work is launched at a farther remove from our arts, conventions, usages,
+civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into
+our lives, than that of any other man. Absolute candor, absolute pride,
+absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature. It
+is not conditioned by what we deem modest or immodest, high or low, male
+or female. It is not conditioned by our notions of good and evil, by our
+notions of the refined and the select, by what we call good taste and bad
+taste. It is the voice of absolute man, sweeping away the artificial,
+throwing himself boldly, joyously, upon unconditioned nature. We are all
+engaged in upholding the correct and the conventional, and drawing the
+line sharply between good and evil, the high and the low, and it is well
+that we should; but here is a man who aims to take absolute ground, and to
+look at the world as God himself might look at it, without partiality or
+discriminating,--it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection
+in the universe and can be none:--
+
+  "Open mouth of my Soul uttering gladness,
+  Eyes of my Soul seeing perfection,
+  Natural life of me, faithfully praising things,
+  Corroborating forever the triumph of things."
+
+He does not take sides against evil, in the usual way, he does not take
+sides with the good except as nature herself does. He celebrates the All.
+
+Can we accept the world as science reveals it to us, as all significant,
+as all in ceaseless transmutation, as every atom aspiring to be man, an
+endless unfolding of primal germs, without beginning, without end, without
+failure or imperfection, the golden age ahead of us, not behind us?
+
+
+VIII
+
+Because of Whitman's glorification of pride, egoism, brawn, self-reliance,
+it is charged that the noble, the cultured, the self-denying, have no
+place in his system. What place have they in the antique bards?--in Homer,
+in Job, in Isaiah, in Dante? They have the same place in Whitman, yet it
+is to be kept in mind that Whitman does not stand for the specially social
+virtues, nor for culture, nor for the refinements which it induces, nor
+for art, nor for any conventionality. There are flowers of human life
+which we are not to look for in Walt Whitman. The note of fine manners,
+chivalrous conduct, which we get in Emerson; the sweetness and light
+gospel of Arnold; the gospel of hero-worship of Carlyle; the gracious
+scholarship of our New England poets, etc.,--we do not get in Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him at war with these things, but he is
+concerned with more primal and elemental questions. He strikes under and
+beyond all these things.
+
+What are the questions or purposes, then, in which his work has root?
+Simply put, to lead the way to larger, saner, more normal, more robust
+types of men and women on this continent; to prefigure and help develop
+the new democratic man,--to project him into literature on a scale and
+with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep
+hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and
+influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and
+for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,--the air,
+the water, the soil, the sunshine,--and the more we pervert or shut out
+these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we
+pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the
+religious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny and belittle our bodies,
+the further we are from the spirit of Walt Whitman, and from the spirit of
+the All.
+
+With all Whitman's glorification of pride, self-esteem, self-reliance,
+etc., the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,--the
+free, lavish giving of yourself to others. Of the innate and essential
+nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you
+possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life
+and conditions of men, charity as broad as the sunlight, standing up for
+those whom others are down upon, claiming nothing for self which others
+may not have upon the same terms,--of such nobility and fine manners, I
+say, you shall find an abundance in the life and works of Walt Whitman.
+
+The spirit of a man's work is everything; the letter, little or nothing.
+Though Whitman boasts of his affiliation with the common and near at hand,
+yet he is always saved from the vulgar, the mean, the humdrum, by the
+breadth of his charity and sympathy and his tremendous ideality.
+
+Of worldliness, materialism, commercialism, he has not a trace; his only
+values are spiritual and ideal; his only standards are the essential and
+the enduring. What Matthew Arnold called the Anglo-Saxon contagion, the
+bourgeois spirit, the worldly and sordid ideal, is entirely corrected in
+Whitman by the ascendant of the ethic and the universal. His democracy
+ends in universal brotherhood, his patriotism in the solidarity of
+nations, his glorification of the material in the final triumph of the
+spiritual, his egoism issues at last in complete otherism.
+
+A race that can produce a man of his fibre, his continental type, is yet
+at its best estate. Did one begin to see evil omen in this perpetual
+whittling away and sharpening and lightening of the American type,--grace
+without power, clearness without mass, intellect without character,--then
+take comfort from the volume and the rankness of Walt Whitman. Did one
+begin to fear that the decay of maternity and paternity in our older
+communities and the falling off in the native population presaged the
+drying up of the race in its very sources? Then welcome to the rank
+sexuality and to the athletic fatherhood and motherhood celebrated by
+Whitman. Did our skepticism, our headiness, our worldliness, threaten to
+eat us up like a cancer? did our hardness, our irreligiousness, and our
+passion for the genteel point to a fugitive, superficial race? was our
+literature threatened with the artistic degeneration,--running all to art
+and not at all to power? were our communities invaded by a dry rot of
+culture? were we fast becoming a delicate, indoor, genteel race? were our
+women sinking deeper and deeper into the "incredible sloughs of fashion
+and all kinds of dyspeptic depletion,"--the antidote for all these ills is
+in Walt Whitman. In him nature shows great fullness and fertility, and an
+immense friendliness. He supplements and corrects most of the special
+deficiencies and weaknesses toward which the American type seems to tend.
+He brings us back to nature again. The perpetuity of the race is with the
+common people. The race is constantly crying out at the top, in our times
+at least; culture and refinement beget fewer and fewer and poorer and
+poorer children. Where struggle ceases, that family or race is doomed.
+
+  "Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that
+        from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
+        something to make a greater struggle necessary."
+
+
+In more primitive communities, the sap and vitality of the race were kept
+in the best men, because upon them the strain and struggle were greatest.
+War, adventure, discovery, favor virility. Whitman is always and
+everywhere occupied with that which makes for life, power, longevity,
+manliness. The scholar poets are occupied with that which makes for
+culture, taste, refinement, ease, art.
+
+"Leaves of Grass," taken as a whole, aims to exhibit a modern, democratic,
+archetypal man, here in America, confronting and subduing our enormous
+materialism to his own purposes, putting it off and on as a garment;
+identifying himself with all forms of life and conditions of men; trying
+himself by cosmic laws and processes, exulting in the life of his body and
+the delights of his senses; and seeking to clinch, to develop, and to
+realize himself through the shows and events of the visible world. The
+poet seeks to interpret life from the central point of absolute abysmal
+man.
+
+The wild and the savage in nature with which Whitman perpetually
+identifies himself, and the hirsute, sun-tanned, and aboriginal in
+humanity, have misled many readers into looking upon him as expressive of
+these things only. Mr. Stedman thinks him guilty of a certain narrowness
+in preferring, or seeming to prefer, the laboring man to the gentleman.
+But the poet uses these elements only for checks and balances, and to keep
+our attention, in the midst of a highly refined and civilized age, fixed
+upon the fact that here are the final sources of our health, our power,
+our longevity. The need of the pre-scientific age was knowledge and
+refinement; the need of our age is health and sanity, cool heads and good
+digestion. And to this end the bitter and drastic remedies from the shore
+and the mountains are for us.
+
+
+IX
+
+The gospel of the average man, Matthew Arnold thought, was inimical to the
+ideal of a rare and high excellence. But, in holding up the average man,
+Whitman was only holding up the broad, universal human qualities, and
+showing that excellence may go with them also. As a matter of fact, are we
+not astonished almost daily by the superb qualities shown by the average
+man, the heroism shown by firemen, engineers, workingmen, soldiers,
+sailors? Do we not know that true greatness, true nobility and strength of
+soul, may go and do go with commonplace, every-day humanity? Whitman would
+lift the average man to a higher average, and still to a higher, without
+at all weakening the qualities which he shares with universal humanity as
+it exists over and under all special advantages and social refinements.
+He says that one of the convictions that underlie his "Leaves" is the
+conviction that the "crowning growth of the United States is to be
+spiritual and heroic,"--a prophecy which in our times, I confess, does not
+seem very near fulfillment.
+
+He does not look longingly and anxiously toward the genteel social gods,
+but quite the contrary. In the library and parlor, he confesses he is as a
+gawk or one dumb. The great middle-class ideal, which is mainly the ideal
+of our own people, Whitman flouts and affronts. There are things to him of
+higher import than to have wealth and be respectable and in the mode.
+
+We might charge him with narrowness and partiality and with seeing only
+half truths, as Mr. Stedman has done, did he simply rest with the native
+as opposed to the cultivated, with brawn as opposed to brains. What he
+does do, what the upshot of his teaching shows, is that he identifies
+himself with the masses, with those universal human currents out of which
+alone a national spirit arises, as opposed to isolated schools and
+coteries and a privileged few. Whitman decries culture only so far as it
+cuts a man off from his fellows, clips away or effaces the sweet, native,
+healthy parts of him, and begets a bloodless, superstitious, infidelistic
+class. "The best culture," he says, "will always be that of the manly and
+courageous instincts and loving perceptions, and of self-respect." For
+the most part, our schooling is like our milling, which takes the bone
+and nerve building elements out of our bread. The bread of life demands
+the coarse as well as the fine, and this is what Whitman stands for.
+
+In his spirit and affiliation with the great mass of the people, with the
+commoner, sturdier, human traits, Whitman is more of the type of Angelo,
+or Rembrandt, or the antique bards, than he is like modern singers. He was
+not a product of the schools, but of the race.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES
+
+
+I
+
+It has been said, and justly I think, that in Whitman we see the first
+appearance in literature of the genuinely democratic spirit on anything
+like an ample scale. Plenty of men of democratic tendencies and
+affiliations have appeared, but none that have carried the temper and
+quality of the people, the masses, into the same regions, or blended the
+same humanity and commonness with the same commanding personality and
+spirituality. In recent English poetry the names of Burns and Wordsworth
+occur to mind, but neither of these men had anything like Whitman's
+breadth of relation to the mass of mankind, or expressed anything like his
+sweeping cosmic emotion. Wordsworth's muse was clad in homespun, but in no
+strict sense was his genius democratic--using the word to express, not a
+political creed, but the genius of modern civilization. He made much of
+the common man, common life, common things, but always does the poet stand
+apart, the recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, loving and contemplating
+these things for purposes of his art. Only through intellectual sympathy
+is he a part of what he surveys. In Whitman the common or average man has
+grown haughty, almost aristocratic. He coolly confronts the old types, the
+man of caste, culture, privileges, royalties, and relegates him to the
+past. He readjusts the standards, and estimates everything from the human
+and democratic point of view. In his scheme, the old traditions--the
+aristocratic, the scholastic, the ecclesiastical, the military, the social
+traditions--play no part. He dared to look at life, past and present, from
+the American and scientific standpoint. He turns to the old types a pride
+and complacency equal to their own.
+
+Indeed, we see in the character which Whitman has exploited and in the
+interest of which his poems are written, the democratic type fully
+realized,--pride and self-reliance equal to the greatest, and these
+matched with a love, a compassion, a spirit of fraternity and equality,
+that are entirely foreign to the old order of things.
+
+
+II
+
+At first sight Whitman does not seem vitally related to his own country
+and people; he seems an anomaly, an exception, or like one of those
+mammoth sports that sometimes appear in the vegetable world. The Whitman
+ideal is not, and has never been, the conscious ideal of the mass of our
+people. We have aspired more to the ideal of the traditional fine
+gentleman as he has figured in British letters. There seems to have been
+no hint or prophecy of such a man as Whitman in our New England
+literature, unless it be in Emerson, and here it is in the region of the
+abstract and not of the concrete. Emerson's prayer was for the absolutely
+self-reliant man, but when Whitman refused to follow his advice with
+regard to certain passages in the "Leaves," the sage withheld further
+approval of the work.
+
+We must look for the origins of Whitman, I think, in the deep
+world-currents that have been shaping the destinies of the race for the
+past hundred years or more; in the universal loosening, freeing, and
+removing obstructions; in the emancipation of the people, and their coming
+forward and taking possession of the world in their own right; in the
+triumph of democracy and of science; the downfall of kingcraft and
+priestcraft; the growth of individualism and non-conformity; the
+increasing disgust of the soul of man with forms and ceremonies; the
+sentiment of realism and positivism, the religious hunger that flees the
+churches; the growing conviction that life, that nature, are not failures,
+that the universe is good, that man is clean and divine inside and out,
+that God is immanent in nature,--all these things and more lie back of
+Whitman, and hold a causal relation to him.
+
+
+III
+
+Of course the essential elements of all first-class artistic and literary
+productions are always the same, just as nature, just as man, are
+essentially the same everywhere. Yet the literature of every people has a
+stamp of its own, starts from and implies antecedents and environments
+peculiar to itself.
+
+Just as ripe, mellow, storied, ivy-towered, velvet-turfed England lies
+back of Tennyson, and is vocal through him; just as canny, covenanting,
+conscience-burdened, craggy, sharp-tongued Scotland lies back of Carlyle;
+just as thrifty, well-schooled, well-housed, prudent, and moral New
+England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them,--so
+America as a whole, our turbulent democracy, our self-glorification, our
+faith in the future, our huge mass movements, our continental spirit, our
+sprawling, sublime, and unkempt nature, lie back of Whitman and are
+implied by his work.
+
+He had not the shaping, manipulating gift to carve his American material
+into forms of ideal beauty, and did not claim to have. He did not value
+beauty as an abstraction.
+
+What Whitman did that is unprecedented was, to take up the whole country
+into himself, fuse it, imbue it with soul and poetic emotion, and recast
+it as a sort of colossal Walt Whitman. He has not so much treated American
+themes as he has identified himself with everything American, and made the
+whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross
+materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses
+with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them
+with something like the breath of universal nature. His special gift is
+his magnetic and unconquerable personality, his towering egoism united
+with such a fund of human sympathy. His power is centripetal, so to
+speak,--he draws everything into himself like a maelstrom; the centrifugal
+power of the great dramatic artists, the power to get out of and away from
+himself, he has not. It was not for Whitman to write the dramas and
+tragedies of democracy, as Shakespeare wrote those of feudalism, or as
+Tennyson sang in delectable verse the swan-song of an overripe
+civilization. It was for him to voice the democratic spirit, to show it
+full-grown, athletic, haughtily taking possession of the world and
+redistributing the prizes according to its own standards. It was for him
+to sow broadcast over the land the germs of larger, more sane, more robust
+types of men and women, indicating them in himself.
+
+In him the new spirit of democracy first completely knows itself, is proud
+of itself, has faith and joy in itself, is fearless, tolerant, religious,
+aggressive, triumphant, and bestows itself lavishly upon all sides. It is
+tentative, doubtful, hesitating no longer. It is at ease in the world, it
+takes possession, it fears no rival, it advances with confident step.
+
+No man was ever more truly fathered by what is formative and expansive in
+his country and times than was Whitman. Not by the literature of his
+country was he begotten, but by the spirit that lies back of all, and
+that begat America itself,--the America that Europe loves and fears, that
+she comes to this country to see, and looks expectantly, but for the most
+part vainly, in our books to find.
+
+It seems to me he is distinctly a continental type. His sense of space, of
+magnitude, his processional pages, his unloosedness, his wide horizons,
+his vanishing boundaries,--always something unconfined and unconfinable,
+always the deferring and undemonstrable. The bad as well as the good
+traits of his country and his people are doubtless implied by his work.
+
+If he does not finally escape from our unripe Americanism, if he does not
+rise through it all and clarify it and turn it to ideal uses, draw out the
+spiritual meanings, then avaunt! we want nothing of him.
+
+  "The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell.
+  The former I graft and increase upon myself,
+  The latter I translate into a new tongue."
+
+
+The vital and the formative the true poet always engrafts and increases
+upon himself, and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the
+accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against
+Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers
+of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when
+his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the
+first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the
+modern; we see them translated into character; we see them tried by
+universal standards; we see them vivified by a powerful imagination. We
+see America as an idea, and see its relation to other ideas. We get a new
+conception of the value of the near, the common, the familiar. New light
+is thrown upon the worth and significance of the common people, and it is
+not the light of an abstract idea, but the light of a concrete example. We
+see the democratic type on a scale it has never before assumed; it is on a
+par with any of the types that have ruled the world in the past, the
+military, the aristocratic, the regal. It is at home, it has taken
+possession, it can hold its own. Henceforth the world is going its way. If
+it is over-confident, over-self-assertive, too American, that is the
+surplusage of the poet, of whom we do not want a penny prudence and
+caution; make your prophecy bold enough and it fulfills itself. Whitman
+has betrayed no doubt or hesitation in his poetry. His assumptions and
+vaticinations are tremendous, but they are uttered with an authority and
+an assurance that convince like natural law.
+
+
+IV
+
+I think he gives new meaning to democracy and America. In him we see a new
+type, rising out of new conditions, and fully able to justify itself and
+hold its own. It is the new man in the new world, no longer dependent upon
+or facing toward the old. I confess that to me America and the modern
+would not mean very much without Whitman. The final proof was wanting
+till they gave birth to a personality equal to the old types.
+
+Discussions and speculations about democracy do not carry very far, after
+all; to preach equality is not much. But when we see these things made
+into a man, and see the world through his eyes, and see new joy and new
+meaning in it, our doubts and perplexities are cleared up. Our universal
+balloting, and schooling, and material prosperity prove nothing: can your
+democracy produce a man who shall carry its spirit into loftiest regions,
+and prove as helpful and masterful under the new conditions as the by-gone
+types were under the old?
+
+
+V
+
+I predict a great future for Whitman, because the world is so unmistakably
+going his way. The three or four great currents of the century--the
+democratic current, the scientific current, the humanitarian current, the
+new religious current, and what flows out of them--are underneath all
+Whitman has written. They shape all and make all. They do not appear in
+him as mere dicta, or intellectual propositions, but as impulses, will,
+character, flesh-and-blood reality. We get these things, not as sentiments
+or yet theories, but as a man. We see life and the world as they appear to
+the inevitable democrat, the inevitable lover, the inevitable believer in
+God and immortality, the inevitable acceptor of absolute science.
+
+We are all going his way. We are more and more impatient of formalities,
+ceremonies, and make-believe; we more and more crave the essential, the
+real. More and more we want to see the thing as in itself it is; more and
+more is science opening our eyes to see the divine, the illustrious, the
+universal in the common, the near at hand; more and more do we tire of
+words and crave things; deeper and deeper sinks the conviction that
+personal qualities alone tell,--that the man is all in all, that the
+brotherhood of the race is not a dream, that love covers all and atones
+for all.
+
+Everything in our modern life and culture that tends to broaden,
+liberalize, free; that tends to make hardy, self-reliant, virile; that
+tends to widen charity, deepen affection between man and man, to foster
+sanity and self-reliance; that tends to kindle our appreciation of the
+divinity of all things; that heightens our rational enjoyment of life;
+that inspires hope in the future and faith in the unseen,--are on
+Whitman's side. All these things prepare the way for him.
+
+On the other hand, the strain and strife and hoggishness of our
+civilization, our trading politics, our worship of conventions, our
+millionaire ideals, our high-pressure lives, our pruriency, our
+sordidness, our perversions of nature, our scoffing caricaturing
+tendencies, are against him. He antagonizes all these things.
+
+The more democratic we become, the more we are prepared for Whitman; the
+more tolerant, fraternal, sympathetic we become, the more we are ready
+for Whitman; the more we inure ourselves to the open air and to real
+things, the more we value and understand our own bodies, the more the
+woman becomes the mate and equal of the man, the more social equality
+prevails,--the sooner will come to Whitman fullness and fruition.
+
+
+VI
+
+Some of our own critics have been a good deal annoyed by the fact that
+many European scholars and experts have recognized Whitman as the only
+distinctive American poet thus far. It would seem as if our reputation for
+culture and good manners is at stake. We want Europe to see America in our
+literary poets like Lowell, or Longfellow, or Whittier. And Europe may
+well see much that is truly representative of America in these and in
+other New England poets. She may see our aspiration toward her own ideals
+of culture and refinement; she may see native and patriotic themes firing
+Lowell and Whittier; she may see a certain spirit and temper begotten by
+our natural environment reflected in Bryant, our delicate and gentle
+humanities and scholarly aptitudes shining in Longfellow. But in every
+case she sees a type she has long been familiar with. All the poets'
+thoughts, moods, points of view, effects, aims, methods, are what she has
+long known. These are not the poets of a new _world_, but of a new
+_England_. The new-world book implies more than a new talent, more than a
+fresh pair of eyes, a fresh and original mind like the poets named; such
+men are required to keep up the old line of succession in English
+authorship. What is implied is a new national and continental spirit,
+which must arise and voice the old eternal truths through a large, new,
+democratic personality,--a new man, and, beyond and above him, a new
+heaven and a new earth.
+
+Our band of New England poets have carried the New England spirit into
+poetry,--its sense of fitness, order, propriety, its shrewdness,
+inventiveness, aptness, and its aspiration for the pure and noble in life.
+They have finely exemplified the best Yankee traits; but in no instance
+were these traits merged in a personality large enough, bold enough, and
+copious and democratic enough to give them national and continental
+significance. It would be absurd to claim that the pulse-beat of a great
+people or a great era is to be felt in the work of any of these poets.
+
+Whitman is responded to in Europe, because he expresses a new type with
+adequate power,--not, as has been so often urged, simply because he is
+strange, and gives the jaded literary palate over there a new fillip. He
+meets the demand for something in American literature that should not face
+toward Europe, that should joyfully stand upon its own ground and yet
+fulfill the conditions of greatness. He fully satisfies the thirst for
+individualism amid these awakening peoples, and the thirst for nationalism
+also. He realizes the democratic ideal, no longer tentative or apologetic,
+but taking possession of the world as its own and reappraising the wares
+it finds there.
+
+
+VII
+
+The American spirit is a continental spirit; there is nothing insular or
+narrow about it. It is informal, nonchalant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive,
+patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of
+particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable,
+unostentatious, inclined to exaggerate, generous, unrefined,--never
+meddlesome, never hypercritical, never hoggish, never exclusive. Whitman
+shared the hopeful optimistic temperament of his countrymen, the faith and
+confidence begotten by a great, fertile, sunny land. He expresses the
+independence of the people,--their pride, their jealousy of superiors,
+their contempt of authority (not always beautiful). Our want of reverence
+and veneration are supplemented in him with world-wide sympathies and
+good-fellowship.
+
+Emerson is our divine man, the precious quintessence of the New England
+type, invaluable for his stimulating and ennobling strain; but his genius
+is too astral, too select, too remote, to incarnate and give voice to the
+national spirit. Clothe him with flesh and blood, make his daring
+affirmations real and vital in a human personality and imbued with the
+American spirit, and we are on the way to Whitman.
+
+Moreover, the strong, undisguised man-flavor of "Leaves of Grass," the
+throb and pressure in it of those things that make life rank and make it
+masterful, and that make for the virility and perpetuity of the race, are,
+if it must be confessed, more keenly relished abroad than in this country,
+so thoroughly are we yet under the spell of the merely refined and
+conventional. We fail to see that in letters, as in life, the great prizes
+are not to the polished, but to the virile and the strong.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
+speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
+made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
+enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
+the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
+personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
+over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
+them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
+his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
+of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
+mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
+himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
+those who live in the open air, even laying claim to the "rowdyish." He is
+proud of freckles, sun-tan, brawn, and holds up the powerful and
+unrefined.
+
+  "I am enamor'd of growing out-doors,
+  Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
+  Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes
+        and mauls, and the drivers of horses;
+  I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out."
+
+
+"Nothing endures," he says, "but personal qualities." "Produce great
+persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently
+bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union?
+but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout
+at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He
+is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He
+sees all and embraces and encloses all.
+
+Then we see united and harmonized in Whitman the two great paramount
+tendencies of our time and of the modern world,--the altruistic or
+humanitarian tendency and the individualistic tendency; or, democracy and
+individualism, pride and equality, or, rather, pride in equality. These
+two forces, as they appear in separate individuals, are often
+antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman
+they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and
+uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping
+fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one
+motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his
+fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him
+with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he claims for
+himself he demands in the same terms for all. He has set such an example
+of self-trust and self-assertion as has no parallel in our literature, at
+the same time that he has set an equal example in practical democracy and
+universal brotherhood.
+
+
+IX
+
+Whitman's democracy is the breath of his nostrils, the light of his eyes,
+the blood in his veins. The reader does not feel that here is some fine
+scholar, some fine poet singing the praises of democracy; he feels that
+here is a democrat, probably, as Thoreau surmised, the greatest the world
+has yet seen, turning the light of a great love, a great intellect, a
+great soul, upon America, upon contemporary life and events, and upon the
+universe, and reading new lessons, new meanings, therein. He is a great
+poet and prophet, speaking through the average man, speaking as one of the
+people, and interpreting life from the point of view of absolute
+democracy.
+
+True, the people in their average taste and perceptions are crude and
+flippant and superficial, and often the victims of mountebanks and fools;
+yet, as forming the body of our social and political organism, and the
+chief factor in the world-problem of to-day, they are the exponents of
+great forces and laws, and often, in emergencies, show the wisdom and
+unimpeachableness of Nature herself. Deep-hidden currents and forces in
+them are liable to come to the surface, and when the politicians get in
+their way, or miscalculate them, as so often happens, they are crushed.
+Whitman is a projection into literature of the cosmic sense and conscience
+of the people, and their participation in the forces that are shaping the
+world in our century. Much comes to a head in him. Much comes to joyous
+speech and song, that heretofore had only come to thought and speculation.
+A towering, audacious personality has appeared which is strictly the fruit
+of the democratic spirit, and which has voiced itself in an impassioned
+utterance touching the whole problem of national and individual life.
+
+
+X
+
+The Whitman literature is democratic, not in the sense that it caters to
+the taste of the masses or to the taste of the average man; for, as a
+matter of fact, the masses and the average man are likely to be the last
+to recognize its value. The common people, the average newspaper-reading
+citizens, are much more likely to be drawn by the artificial and the
+conventional. But it is democratic because it is filled with the spirit of
+absolute human equality and brotherhood, and gives out the atmosphere of
+the universal, primary, human traits. The social, artificial, accidental
+distinctions of wealth, culture, position, etc., have not influenced the
+poet in the slightest degree. Whitman finds his joy and his triumph, not
+in being better than other people or above them, but in being one with
+them, and sharing their sins as well as their virtues.
+
+  "As if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as
+        myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that
+        others possess the same."
+
+
+This is one step further than others have taken, and makes democracy
+complete in itself. Again, his work identifies itself with the democratic
+ideal in getting rid of the professional and arbitrary elements of poetry,
+and appealing to the reader entirely through its spirit and content. It is
+as democratic in this respect as the workman in the field, or the mechanic
+at his bench.
+
+The poems are bathed and flooded with the quality of the common people;
+with the commonness and nearness which they share with real things and
+with all open-air nature,--with hunters, travelers, soldiers, workers in
+all fields, and with rocks, trees, and woods. It is only in the spirit of
+these things that a man himself can have health, sweetness, and
+proportion; and only in their spirit that he can give an essentially sound
+judgment of a work of art, no matter what the subject of it may be.
+
+This spirit of the "commonest, cheapest, nearest" is the only spirit in
+which man's concrete life can be carried forward. We do not live and
+breathe and grow and multiply, we do not have health and sanity and
+wholeness and proportion, we do not subdue and improve and possess the
+earth, in the spirit of something exclusive, exceptional, faraway,
+aristocratic, but in the spirit of the common and universal. The only
+demand is that, in a work of art, the common or universal shall be
+vitalized with poetic thought and enthusiasm, or imbued with the ideal of
+a rare and high excellence.
+
+
+XI
+
+Our critics have been fond of taunting Whitman with the fact that the
+common people, the workers, of whom he makes so much, and to whom he
+perpetually appeals, do not read him, or show any liking for his poems at
+all.
+
+Whitman's appeal to the common people, to the democratic masses, is an
+appeal to the future; it is an appeal to the universal human conscience
+and intelligence, as they exist above and beneath all special advantages
+of birth and culture and stand related to the total system of things. It
+also calls attention to the fact that the spirit in which he writes, and
+in which he is to be read, is the spirit of open-air life and nature.
+
+  "No school or shutter'd room commune with me,
+  But roughs and little children, better than they,"
+
+because the simple, unforced, unrefined elements of human nature are those
+out of which the poems sprang and with which they are charged. Their
+spirit is closer akin to unlettered humanity than to the over-intellectual
+and sophisticated products of the schools.
+
+Of course "roughs and little children" can make nothing of "Leaves of
+Grass," but unless the trained reader has that fund of fresh, simple,
+wholesome nature, and the love for real things, which unlettered humanity
+possesses, he will make nothing of it either.
+
+
+XII
+
+It has been truly said that "the noblest seer is ever over-possessed."
+This has been the case with nearly all original, first-class men. Carlyle
+furnished a good illustration of its truth in our own time. He was
+over-possessed with his idea of the hero and hero-worship. And it may be
+that Whitman was over-possessed with the idea of democracy, America,
+nationality, and the need of a radically new departure in poetic
+literature. Yet none knew better than he that in the long run the
+conditions of life and of human happiness and progress remain about the
+same; that the same price must still be paid for the same things; that
+character alone counts; that the same problem "how to live" ever confronts
+us; and that democracy, America, nationality, are only way stations, and
+by no means the end of the route. The all-leveling tendency of democracy
+is certainly not in the interest of literature. The world is not saved by
+the average man, but by the man much above the average, the rare and
+extraordinary man,--by the "remnant," as Arnold called them.
+
+No one knew this better than Whitman, and he said that "one main
+genesis-motive" of his "Leaves" was the conviction that the crowning
+growth of the United States was to be spiritual and heroic. Only "superb
+persons" can finally justify him.
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE
+
+
+I
+
+The stupendous disclosures of modern science, and what they mean when
+translated into the language of man's ethical and aesthetic nature, have
+not yet furnished to any considerable extent the inspiration of poems.
+That all things are alike divine, that this earth is a star in the
+heavens, that the celestial laws and processes are here underfoot, that
+size is only relative, that good and bad are only relative, that forces
+are convertible and interchangeable, that matter is indestructible, that
+death is the law of life, that man is of animal origin, that the sum of
+forces is constant, that the universe is a complexus of powers
+inconceivably subtle and vital, that motion is the law of all things,--in
+fact, that we have got rid of the notions of the absolute, the fixed, the
+arbitrary, and the notion of origins and of the dualism of the world,--to
+what extent will these and kindred ideas modify art and all aesthetic
+production? The idea of the divine right of kings and the divine authority
+of priests is gone; that, in some other time or some other place God was
+nearer man than now and here,--this idea is gone. Indeed, the whole of
+man's spiritual and religious belief which forms the background of
+literature has changed,--a change as great as if the sky were to change
+from blue to red or to orange. The light of day is different. But
+literature deals with life, and the essential conditions of life, you say,
+always remain the same. Yes, but the expression of their artistic values
+is forever changing. If we ask where is the modern imaginative work that
+is based upon these revelations of science, the work in which they are the
+blood and vital juices, I answer, "Leaves of Grass," and no other. The
+work is the outgrowth of science and modern ideas, just as truly as Dante
+is the outgrowth of mediaeval ideas and superstitions; and the imagination,
+the creative spirit, is just as unhampered in Whitman as in Dante or in
+Shakespeare. The poet finds the universe just as plastic and ductile, just
+as obedient to his will, and just as ready to take the impress of his
+spirit, as did these supreme artists. Science has not hardened it at all.
+The poet opposes himself to it, and masters it and rises superior. He is
+not balked or oppressed for a moment. He knows from the start what science
+can bring him, what it can give, and what it can take away; he knows the
+universe is not orphaned; he finds more grounds than ever for a paean of
+thanksgiving and praise. His conviction of the identity of soul and body,
+matter and spirit, does not shake his faith in immortality in the least.
+His faith arises, not from half views, but from whole views. In him the
+idea of the soul, of humanity, of identity, easily balanced the idea of
+the material universe. Man was more than a match for nature. It was all
+for him, and not for itself. His enormous egotism, or hold upon the
+central thought or instinct of human worth and import, was an anchor that
+never gave way. Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an
+iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world
+of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as
+immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and
+anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old
+bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the
+universe is directed to one man,--to you. His anthropomorphism is not a
+projection of himself into nature, but an absorption of nature in himself.
+The tables are turned. It is not alien or superhuman beings that he sees
+and hears in nature, but his own that he finds everywhere. All gods are
+merged in himself.
+
+Not the least fear, not the least doubt or dismay, in this book. Not one
+moment's hesitation or losing of the way. And it is not merely an
+intellectual triumph, but the triumph of soul and personality. The iron
+knots are not untied, they are melted. Indeed, the poet's contentment and
+triumph in view of the fullest recognition of all the sin and sorrow of
+the world, and of all that baffles and dwarfs, is not the least of the
+remarkable features of the book.
+
+
+II
+
+Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil
+under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and
+illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties
+perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and
+exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained
+more than we have lost. The world is anew created by science and
+democracy, and he pronounces it good with the joy and fervor of the old
+faith.
+
+He shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets of note in
+our time who have drawn inspiration from this source, or viewed the
+universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern
+poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious
+compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was
+stupendous; the other childish and empty. But Whitman and Tennyson were
+fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vision that
+matches the best science can do. Tennyson drew upon science more for his
+images and illustrations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and
+appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed
+Whitman's imagination and made him bold; its effects were moral and
+spiritual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellectual; it enlarged
+his vocabulary without strengthening his faith. Indeed, one would say,
+from certain passages in "In Memoriam," that it had distinctly weakened
+his faith. Let us note for a moment the different ways these two poets use
+science. In his poem to Fitzgerald, Tennyson draws upon the nebular
+hypothesis for an image:--
+
+  "A planet equal to the sun
+  Which cast it, that large infidel
+  Your Omar."
+
+In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
+"of an earth that is dead."
+
+  "The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of
+        space,
+  Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."
+
+In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:--
+
+  "The fires that arch this dusky dot--
+    Yon myriad-worlded way--
+  The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,
+    World-isles in lonely skies,
+  Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
+    Our brief humanities."
+
+
+As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
+not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
+anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
+makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
+the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:--
+
+  "I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains,
+        esculent roots,
+  And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
+  And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
+  And call anything close again, when I desire it.
+
+  "In vain the speeding or shyness,
+  In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,
+  In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
+  In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
+  In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
+  In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
+  In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
+  In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
+  In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
+  I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.
+  My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
+  On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,
+  All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.
+
+  "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
+  Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there,
+  I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
+  And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
+
+  "Long I was hugged close--long and long.
+  Immense have been the preparations for me,
+  Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,
+  Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
+  For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
+  They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
+
+  "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me,
+  My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
+  For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
+  The long, slow strata piled to rest it in,
+  Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
+  Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with
+        care.
+  All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
+  Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.
+
+  "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
+  And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of
+        the farther systems:
+  Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
+  Outward, outward, and forever outward:
+  My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels;
+  He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
+  And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
+
+  "There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage.
+  If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the
+        palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float,
+        it would not avail in the long run.
+  We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
+  And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther.
+  A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not
+        hazard the span or make it impatient.
+  They are but parts--anything is but a part,
+  See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+  Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
+
+In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is
+always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of
+the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the
+man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality
+has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does
+not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional
+realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man
+refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the
+presence of the cosmic laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all
+directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the
+"full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
+outside of itself.
+
+  "I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
+  And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."
+
+
+
+
+HIS RELATION TO RELIGION
+
+
+Whitman, as I have elsewhere said, was swayed by two or three great
+passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He
+thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.
+
+  "The soul,
+  Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
+        water ebbs and flows."
+
+
+He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy
+manly or womanly development, without religion.
+
+  "I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these
+        States must be their Religion,
+  Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur."
+
+All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.
+
+  "Each is not for its own sake,
+  I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's
+        sake."
+
+All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business
+pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion.
+
+  "For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
+        life of the earth,
+  Any more than such are to Religion."
+
+
+Again he says:--
+
+  "My Comrade!
+  For you to share with me two greatnesses--And a third one, rising
+        inclusive and more resplendent,
+  The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion."
+
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates
+is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It was larger than any creed that has
+yet been formulated. It was the conviction of the man of science touched
+and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his
+life its chief elements were faith, hope, charity. Its object was to
+prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind
+what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."
+
+The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse.
+Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had
+resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated.
+The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of
+the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was
+through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The
+great mass of the human race was doomed to endless perdition. Now there is
+no trace of this religion in Whitman, and it does not seem to have left
+any shadow upon him. Ecclesiasticism is dead; he clears the ground for a
+new growth. To the priests he says: "Your day is done."
+
+He sings a new song; he tastes a new joy in life. The earth is as divine
+as heaven, and there is no god more sacred than yourself. It is as if the
+world had been anew created, and Adam had once more been placed in the
+garden,--the world, with all consequences of the fall, purged from him.
+
+Hence we have in Whitman the whole human attitude towards the universe,
+towards God, towards life and death, towards good and evil, completely
+changed. We have absolute faith and acceptance in place of the fear and
+repentance of the old creeds; we have death welcomed as joyously as life,
+we have political and social equality as motifs and impulses, and not
+merely as sentiments. He would show us the muse of poetry, as impartial,
+as sweeping in its vision, as modern, as real, as free from the morbid and
+make-believe, as the muse of science. He sees good in all, beauty in all.
+It is not the old piety, it is the new faith; it is not the old worship,
+it is the new acceptance; not the old, corroding religious pessimism, but
+the new scientific optimism.
+
+He does not deny, he affirms; he does not criticise, he celebrates; his is
+not a call to repentance, it is a call to triumph:--
+
+  "I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
+  None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,
+  None has begun to think how divine he himself is, or how certain the
+        future is."
+
+He accepted science absolutely, yet science was not an end in itself: it
+was not his dwelling; he but entered by it to an area of his dwelling.
+
+The flower of science was religion. Without this religion, or something
+akin to it,--without some spiritual, emotional life that centred about an
+ideal,--Whitman urged that there could be no permanent national or
+individual development. In the past this ideal was found in the
+supernatural; for us and the future democratic ages, it must be found in
+the natural, in the now and the here.
+
+The aristocratic tradition not only largely shaped the literature of the
+past, it shaped the religion: man was a culprit, his life a rebellion; his
+proper attitude toward the unseen powers was that of a subject to his
+offended sovereign,--one of prostration and supplication. Heaven was a
+select circle reserved for the few,--the aristocracy of the pure and just.
+The religion of a democratic and scientific era, as voiced by Whitman and
+as exemplified in his life, is of quite another character,--not
+veneration, but joy and triumph; not fear, but love; not self-abasement,
+but self-exaltation; not sacrifice, but service: in fact, not religion at
+all in the old sense of the spiritual at war with the natural, the divine
+with the human, this world a vale of tears, and mundane things but filth
+and ashes, heaven for the good and hell for the bad; but in the new sense
+of the divinity of all things, of the equality of gods and men, of the
+brotherhood of the race, of the identity of the material and the
+spiritual, of the beneficence of death and the perfection of the universe.
+The poet turns his face to earth and not to heaven; he finds the
+miraculous, the spiritual, in the things about him, and gods and goddesses
+in the men and women he meets. He effaces the old distinctions; he
+establishes a sort of universal suffrage in spiritual matters; there are
+no select circles, no privileged persons. Is this the democracy of
+religion? liberty, fraternity, and equality carried out in the spiritual
+sphere? Death is the right hand of God, and evil plays a necessary part
+also. Nothing is discriminated against; there are no reprisals or
+postponements, no dualism or devilism. Everything is in its place; man's
+life and all the things of his life are well-considered.
+
+Carried out in practice, this democratic religion will not beget priests,
+or churches, or creeds, or rituals, but a life cheerful and full on all
+sides, helpful, loving, unworldly, tolerant, open-souled, temperate,
+fearless, free, and contemplating with pleasure, rather than alarm, "the
+exquisite transition of death."
+
+
+
+
+A FINAL WORD
+
+
+After all I have written about Whitman, I feel at times that the main
+thing I wanted to say about him I have not said, cannot say; the best
+about him cannot be told anyway. "My final merit I refuse you." His full
+significance in connection with the great modern movement; how he embodies
+it all and speaks out of it, and yet maintains his hold upon the
+primitive, the aboriginal; how he presupposes science and culture, yet
+draws his strength from that which antedates these things; how he glories
+in the present, and yet is sustained and justified by the past; how he is
+the poet of America and the modern, and yet translates these things into
+universal truths; how he is the poet of wickedness, while yet every fibre
+of him is sound and good; how his page is burdened with the material, the
+real, the contemporary, while yet his hold upon the ideal, the spiritual,
+never relaxes; how he is the poet of the body, while yet he is in even
+fuller measure the poet of the soul; in fact, how all contradictions are
+finally reconciled in him,--all these things and more, I say, I feel that
+I have not set forth with the clearness and emphasis the subject demanded.
+Other students of him will approach him on other lines, and will disclose
+meanings that I have missed.
+
+Writing about him, as Symonds said, is enormously difficult. At times I
+feel as if I was almost as much at sea with regard to him as when I first
+began to study him; not at sea with regard to his commanding genius and
+power, but with regard to any adequate statement and summary of him in
+current critical terms. One cannot define and classify him as he can a
+more highly specialized poetic genius. What is he like? He is like
+everything. He is like the soil which holds the germs of a thousand forms
+of life; he is like the grass, common, universal, perennial, formless; he
+is like your own heart, mystical yearning, rebellious, contradictory, but
+ever throbbing with life. He is fluid, generative, electric; he is full of
+the germs, potencies, and latencies of things; he provokes thought without
+satisfying it; he is formless without being void; he is both Darwinian and
+Dantesque. He is the great reconciler, he united and harmonized so many
+opposites in himself. As a man he united the masculine and feminine
+elements in a remarkable degree; he united the innocent vanity of the
+child with the self-reliance of a god. In his moral aspects, he united
+egoism and altruism, pride and charity, individualism and democracy,
+fierce patriotism and the cosmopolitan spirit; in his literary aspects he
+united mysticism and realism, the poet and prophet, the local and the
+universal; in his religious aspects he united faith and agnosticism, the
+glorification of the body and all objective things, with an unshakable
+trust in the reality of the invisible world.
+
+Rich in the elements of poetry, a London critic says, almost beyond any
+other poet of his time, and yet the conscious, elaborate, crystallic,
+poetic work which the critic demanded of him, carefully stopping short of,
+quite content to hold it all in solution, and give his reader an impulse
+rather than a specimen.
+
+I have accepted Whitman entire and without reservation. I could not do
+otherwise. It was clear enough to me that he was to be taken as a whole or
+not at all. We cannot cut and carve a man. The latest poet brings us
+poetic wares, curiously and beautifully carved and wrought specimens, some
+of which we accept and some of which we pass by. Whitman brings us no
+cunning handicraft of the muses: he brings us a gospel, he brings us a
+man, he brings us a new revelation of life; and either his work appeals to
+us as a whole, or it does not so appeal. He will not live in separate
+passages, or in a few brief poems, any more than Shakespeare or Homer or
+Dante, or the Bible, so lives.
+
+The chief thing about the average literary poet is his poetic gift, apart
+from any other consideration; we select from what he brings us as we
+select from a basket of fruit. The chief thing about Whitman is the
+personality which the poetic gift is engaged in exploiting; the excitement
+of our literary or artistic sense is always less than the excitement of
+our sense of life and of real things. We get in him a fixed point of view,
+a new vantage-ground of personality from which to survey life. It is less
+what he brings, and more what he is, than with other poets. To take him by
+fragments, picking out poetic tidbits here and there, rejecting all the
+rest, were like valuing a walk through the fields and woods only for the
+flowers culled here and there, or the bits of color in the grass or
+foliage. Is the air, the sunshine, the free spaces, the rocks, the soil,
+the trees, and the exhilaration of it all, nothing? There are flowers in
+Whitman, too, but they are amid the rocks or under the trees, and seem
+quite unpremeditated and by the way, and never the main concern. If our
+quest is for these alone, we shall surely be disappointed. "In order to
+appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose," says Joel Chandler Harris,
+"it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp
+in instant and express admiration the vast group of facts that make
+man,--that make liberty,--that make America. There is no poetry in the
+details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of
+the mighty forces behind them,--the inevitable, unaccountable,
+irresistible forward movement of man in the making of this republic."
+
+And again: "Those who approach Walt Whitman's poetry from the literary
+side are sure to be disappointed. Whatever else it is, it is not literary.
+Its art is its own, and the melody of it must be sought in other
+suggestions than those of metre.... Those who are merely literary will
+find little substance in the great drama of Democracy which is outlined
+by Walt Whitman in his writings,--it is no distinction to call them poems.
+But those who know nature at first hand--who know man, who see in this
+Republic something more than a political government--will find therein the
+thrill and glow of poetry and the essence of melody. Not the poetry that
+culture stands in expectation of, nor the melody that capers in verse and
+metre, but those rarer intimations and suggestions that are born in
+primeval solitudes, or come whirling from the vast funnel of the storm."
+How admirable! how true! No man has ever spoken more to the point upon
+Walt Whitman.
+
+The appearance of such a man as Whitman involves deep world-forces of race
+and time. He is rooted in the very basic structure of his age. After what
+I have already said, my reader will not be surprised when I tell him that
+I look upon Whitman as the one mountain thus far in our literary
+landscape. To me he changes the whole aspect, almost the very climate, of
+our literature. He adds the much-needed ruggedness, breadth, audacity,
+independence, and the elements of primal strength and health. We owe much
+to Emerson. But Emerson was much more a _made_ man than was Whitman,--much
+more the result of secondary forces, the college, the church, and of New
+England social and literary culture. With all his fervid humanity and
+deeply ingrained modernness, Whitman has the virtues of the primal and the
+savage. "Leaves of Grass" has not the charm, or the kind of charm, of the
+more highly wrought artistic works, but it has the incentive of nature and
+the charm of real things. We shall not go to it to be soothed and lulled.
+It will always remain among the difficult and heroic undertakings,
+demanding our best moments, our best strength, our morning push and power.
+Like voyaging or mountain-climbing, or facing any danger or hardship by
+land or sea, it fosters manly endeavor and the great virtues of sanity and
+self-reliance.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as
+presented in the original text.
+
+The following misprint has been corrected:
+  "differentation" corrected to "differentiation" (page 18)
+
+Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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