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WALT WHITMAN. BY
LOUISE
COLLIES
WILLCOX.
Talking of Whitman, said, is like talking of the Symonds Cosmos. Indeed, to talk of any very great man is something like can one one has the when the best universe; and, done, exploring own is one's to found to considered of have have view, hope point some ground for the faith that is in one and to have given account of one's little personal acquisitions upon the journey through a bigger
consciousness.
it is interesting to note Whatever one may feel of Whitman?and that very few people who know him at all feel indifferently?one cannot but see that he fares better in the hands of the great than in the hands of the average man and that the profounder the mind that comes to him the greater the appreciation The given. won from men like Emerson, instant recognition which Whitman Edmund Gosse, John Ad (despite his recanting), John William Michael Bossetti, dington Burroughs, Symonds, Bell Dante William Frederic Bossetti, Scott, Tennyson, Myers, and the exquisitely sensitive Edward Carpenter, must count for the personality and power of the man, no something in weighing less than his great attraction for children, for women like Mrs. Swinburne
and for the so-called Gilchrist, Mrs. Berenson, Mrs. Burroughs, man a and is the There savage. plain pretty tale of how Whit in man, when he was out West, visited a lot of captive Indians the company of a number of well-known government politicians, The distinguished officials and editors. guests were duly an and their offices explained to the Indians, who remained at the end of the line, impassive and stolid. perfectly Finally, or in then too little known to be announced slouched Whitman, troduced. The Indian chief looked him steadily in the eye for a " moment and then advanced, extending his hand, and said How I" nounced
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all the other Indians followed him, suit, surrounding his hand him their single word of English and shaking offering "How!" President Lincoln, greeting, standing at the window one day, saw Whitman of the White House sauntering by, and " a man is said while Emerson looks like he "; commented, Well, " " to O'Con to have handed the first edition of Leaves of Grass " nor with the words, abroad may now come home, for Americans unto us a man is born!" This impression of force and virility, of power to cope with life for himself and for others, is a definite He seems in his life in the factor in Whitman's personality. war in times to have been hospital during positively health-giving
while
and his assertions of this power tally with the doctrines himself, of the varying new cults that rely upon the power of mind over " " I can testify," he wrote at that time, that friendship matter. of daily affection a has literally cured a fever, and the medicine wound."
bad
His brother George was Whitman did not go to the war. one of the first to enlist; and it is once more a fact bearing that he seems never to have considered upon his own personality the question as to whether or not he would be justified in bearing arms for his country. His whole feeling about life forbade kill or
ing
on
quarrelling
" My Merged As a wheel
for
terms,
did the war make
other American
in
any
book
and
any
so profound
the war
I and mine?as
its
spirit, on its axis Around
cause.
are the
this Book, turns, the idea of thee."
no
upon
Perhaps
an impression:
one, contest unwitting
hinged to
on thee. itself
to have conceived But his part in it he seems from the beginning as that of helper, consoler and healer, and never that of the His one phrase of reproach against the South was cut fighter. out of the later editions of his poems; and he maintained, except of the non the attitude for his enthusiastic love for Lincoln, observer.
partisan " We
and assertions, disputes is asserted; that anything are and din?we the bawling hear
walk
among
but
reject
not
the
disputers
nor We
ousies, Yet
we
recriminations walk
unheld,
on
free."
every
side,
reached
at
by
divisions,
jeal
WALT WHITMAN.
283
refusal to take sides falls together, of course, with his re or to read any fusal in later life to take any part in discussions literature. books with the of discussions Any polemical dealing science and religion he rejected, apparently the always realizing As science was the analysis of unity at the apex of diversities. so religion was its synthesis reality through knowledge, again on one side or the and to set himself he refused through love,
This
other.
were no more a part of his health, vigor, and peacefulness than his for democracy, for the equality, even feeling personality the unity, of all races and peoples. It is more difficult to do away with distinctions than one thinks. One can realize that it is the only fine and real way to do so; and, seen from a great enough the ridiculousness of the stress we lay upon our little height, To the supreme creative and is of course evident. differences in force one can easily see that our little variations upholding His
in tastes, in intelligence, must seem infinitely worldly conditions, smaller than to us the microscopic differences in the size of wasps' waists would be, and as absurd a matter for pluming oneself upon; and yet the whole of human civilization has been built up upon these differences between man and man. vision car Whitman's ried at once beyond any such small matter. He uttered the word en masse, realizing that humanity was in reality one and a total ity, and that no man can reach very much higher than the whole to which he belongs, any more than a chain can be stronger than its weakest link. To every man who should be drawn to him he desires to assert two things ? that the possibilities of are and and evil is not To that fatal. infinite, growth goodness and thwarted?and his every one, however weak and repulsive in list of such is, as all his lists are, singularly and complete " the life that is in immense clusive?he message brings passion, There pulse and power, cheerful and for freest action formed." is a profound to wishes in human he sacredness, assert, every since to bring it to the birth, the globe lay preparing experience, one plant or animal. of years without quintillions "
none
be And
snow
I will
And
in
I will
to more
the
show
beautiful beautiful
that
there
future; that whatever results?and than
death."
is no
imperfection
to happens I will show
in the
present
and
can
it may be turned anybody, can happen that nothing
mE
284
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any such large meas Any man bearing within him habitually ure of health and hope can easily be understood to have healing can we result in that realize how should and the powers, thought one of his friends "almost which, joyousness" irrepressible " shone from his face and seemed to pervade his whole records, body." He has the force and consoling power of being sure of himself, "
I am
I know
And
me
To And
solid
the
converging are written
all
and objects to me,
sound, of the and
universe-perpetually I must out what find
flow; the writing
means."
There is, indeed, a very effective force to be built on and of this sensation that the universe and the eternal processes are all right, is to be alive enough to understand and that the only difficulty and to cope with them. Seen from the outside, the events of life were certainly not what one could label flamboy Whitman's but his sense of life, his conviction of the Tight successful; antly ness and success of the part he was playing, is, I suppose, the in other than sacred literatures. most assured ever recorded had somewhat the same feeling and somewhat the same Browning sort of health-giving but, in his case, the antagonism personality; less strong, aroused was much weaker and the assurance much as any one may see who studies La Saisiaz, Christmas Eve and in His Easter Day. verdict was that sorrow preponderated life, unless this life proved to be the threshold of real life, the If one compare this of experience. pupil's place, the beginning one to the finds it difference be between ques with Whitman, between and asserting, Whether seeking and finding. tioning Whitman was justified or not is far too wide a question to answer, he says is:
but what "
I am
I know I do not
as
I exist no
If One
in the
world
And
whether
million I can
my
spirit
I am?that
other if each
And
august;
trouble
and
is enough; be aware, I sit be aware,
world
all
or be understood;
itself
to vindicate
I
sit
content;
content.
and by far the largest is aware, own I come to my to-day,
to me, and that is myself; or ten in ten thousand
or
years,
cheerfully
take
it now,
or with
equal
cheerfulness
I can wait."
WALT WHITMAN.
285
and In the mean time he lived and believed firmly in himself, his mission and his life were ruled by love and faith; intense love of the world and of man permeates every leaf of his book, un man and, taken separately, shakable faith, too, in humanity?in in men. he asserts it: Aggressively "
me
Voices
voices; many long dumb of slaves; interminable generations of prostitutes and of deformed persons; of the diseased and the despairing, and
Voices
of
Through Voices Voices
And
of
And Of
of
cycles threads
the
of the the
trivial
I embody myself And feel
This
preparation that connect
of them rights flat, foolish,
others
of
thieves
and
dwarfs;
and
of
the are
accretion, stars?
down
upon,
etc.
despised,
or suffering, outlawed presences in prison like another man, shaped the dull unintermittal pain." all
See
good,
the
feeling of being united this indignant assertion, " Who "The
weakest
to all the evil as well
another, degrades degrades and shallowest is deathless
as all the
me." in me;'
this sense given to so few mortals, that the soul is not only the little bit of consciousness and that filters through the defective and trifling organism of one's own brain, but is all consciousness all life, rising ecstatic through all the universe and sweeping with the true gravitation, speeding through space?speeding through heaven and the stars: " Speeding diameter Speeding Storming, Backing I tread
amid of with
the eighty tailed
seven thousand
satellites, miles.
meteors?throwing
and
the
broad
fireballs
like
ring the
and
the
rest,
enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, and filling, and disappearing, appearing such roads," day and night
is the sense to be taken mainly into account when we attempt to sum up Whitman's personality. " I am not contained between my hat and my boots," he says lest propounding the same truth more transcendent colloquially,
286
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or fancy him to ly some plain, holy man may miss his meaning, a some distant be uttering truth, thing for scholars philosopher's to know. He said it so that it might carry conviction to all who, running, should read. To the commonest day-laborer, digging the road, to his pets, the 'bus-drivers and the firemen, he addresses it: you, too, you are not contained between your hat and your boots. like the invisible Invisible, unseen threads, like spider's filaments, weave out from ether connecting these you and mesh them stars, You are continually selves into the infinite web of the Cosmos. sending out thoughts that journey through endless intricacies of in and breathing immeasurable you are drawing consciousness, the ditch, and forth again immortal soul-stuff, there, digging over hat and between your your boots, is the apparently bending is the concen of there you unutterable, unending significance, trated point of all that you see and think, all that you dimly con ceive and dream, all that you are to become; for, when you reach and stand upon what is now but your distant vista, there will be new horizons stretching beyond toward which you may journey, new sites, beyond and beyond and ever beyond that. For, in due time, accomplishment journeys after conception, and no man need be fretted and worried lest out of the root of his being no growth spring up. In every man, the seed of the divine is sown and there of flower and fruit; what seems stunted is infinite possibility time for fruition. and sterile is but that which waits upon is part of and its rhythmic is good, The universe swing between the goodness; and, as it balances light and shade, success and failure, night and day, joy and sorrow, hope and it is bearing more and more into life and conscious frustration, ness. Only, no point is final; there is no graspable goal; knocked down, we must rise up the stronger to the fight; as a horse, when sets him he has run, runs again, as a man who has accomplished or something like this, is the mood self a larger task. This, each man to liberate himself which Whitman induces, helping from his personal fate and to identify himself with the whole of all life, with the prisoner and the president equally, transforming events into the power to wait grandly upon eternal issues. It is easy, in a general way, to admit the value and the worth of such a doctrine; but the difficulty arises when we try to ap cases. of training and hardening Generations ply it to specific into the habit of selection have made life almost wholly a matter
WALT WHITMAN.
287
of choice; the whole plane upon which our heritage has landed us is one of discrimination between better and worse, beautiful and ugly. But Whitman eliminates comparison. Art draws lines; out. breaks them Whitman mysticism industriously wipes erases masses of earth outlines and throws formless bounds, up a once more later outline will works, which, perhaps, generation into a larger, a more inclusive beauty than we have yet known. His personal task was not that of the finisher, the polisher. He a form but vaguely created masses half from which emerges, Like embodied and half melted into the formless chaos behind. one infinitely greater than he, he rejected only scribes and Phari " " sees. he says, It goes to the fourth-remove." Conformity," is interesting to note, in passing, that the one unpardonable sin in and Whitman's eyes is the same and only sin which Shelley un one that could it not and the is, likewise, Browning pardon, assailable virtue of average man, namely, conventionality, living instead of by the by rote, by imitation, by fear of disapproval, " Be of the inner voice. light of the soul and the inspiration " rather than virtuous out of conform wicked," Whitman writes, ity or fear," and this, perhaps, throws light upon the parable of the prodigal son. goes his glorification Together with his refusal of distinctions of the present moment. He turned his back upon the romantic, the studied, the far-fetched, to shed new glamour over the nearest, to and show their inherent and abiding divinity. easiest, meanest, not Not of chivalric adventure?the times, far-away fighting more and the of fair to him im ladies?were winning dragons portant, beautiful, joyous, than the passing faces in the street, the shifting aspects of sea and sky. Not carnage, and killing and war were to him more exciting than night and peace. No Euro contained more of God's grandeur and eternity pean Cathedral than the Brooklyn all He shifted from the per ferry. qualities ceived to the perceiver. It is true that the more dead we are the more stimulation we require to help us perceive beauty and grand eur, and the more alive we are the more significance we have power to project into daily sights and sounds. Whitman himself was so keenly alive that the flood of glory seems never to have run shallow for him. his tastes were of the simplest; he Personally, a of game enjoyed twenty questions with children, a day under a tree with a book, a ferry ride or a car ride or a walk alone by
REVIEW.
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288
Out of a salary of fifteen hundred dollars a year, he man night. an to feel very prosperous himself and to give his mother aged allowance.
in loving his He said of himself that he was most fully himself comrades and in singing his songs. That the whole of himself was never included in the casual and the temporal, was a most insistent sense with him, and one that pervades all his poems: "
askers
and
Trippers
I meet?the
People
I
city
live
or
in,
latest
dates,
dinner,
dress,
The
surround effect the
me; me of my
upon
or
life,
early
the world
and
nation,
discoveries,
societies,
inventions,
old
authors,
and
new, My
Battles, fitful These But
the
are
amused,
down, with Looking Both in and
And
fratricidal
go
from me
stands
what
and
hauling
compassionating, complacent, an arm on an or bends is erect, side-curved what curious head, of
out
the
of
fever
the
doubtfulness, again,
myself.
and
pulling
the
war,
nights
dues,
compliments,
and
game,
I am; idle,
and
watching
unitary; certain
impalpable, come will
rest,
next, at
wondering
it."
again: now
Aware
once
not But
looks,
and days the ME,
not the
from
Looks
"
of
horrors
events, come to me
they
** Apart Stands
associates,
that touched,
Withdrawn, bows, With peals Pointing
amid had
all the
before untold, far,
all
blab
that
least my
me
mocking
ironical these
echoes
or what poems
arrogant
altogether
of distant, in silence to
whose
idea who
unreached, with mock
laughter and
songs
recoil
upon
I am, the real ME -
at then
congratulatory
me,
stands
I have
yet signs
un and
I have written, everything to the sand beneath."
sense, ever present with him, of the hidden haunting is perhaps what gives the strange behind appearances, reality appearance of intimacy to his eyes. Of all the published portraits seem to give something there are two which of the personality of the man. One is the picture he himself preferred, taken when he was sixty-two, sitting in a rustic chair, turned in profile; on This
his finger, held out before him, a butterfly has alighted; his other hand is thrust in his pocket, an habitual if one may attitude, from the is of re The generalize pictures. general impression
WALT WHITMAN.
289
at ease,? pose and patience, of one considering profound matters " as of a man preoccupied with his own soul." The other signifi cant picture is a photograph of the head only, taken at the age of thirty-five. He has no tie on, a shirt open at the neck, showing the button of the undershirt. Eyes and mouth are the significant features. The eyes are gentle but searching, almost insistent, intimate. is large, loose, sensual; The mouth and, repellently the expression is, at though it shows tolerance and generosity, The face seems to rob us of all our reserves; it first, repellent. is so canny, so knowing that it almost suggests hypocrisy. Once one analyzes this impression, one understands that it is not that a he wilfully hides or disguises but that so profound himself, to the lesser mind is, by the nature of it, a mystery fault lies in us, not in him. Our revolt is that we him, and yet he, looking out, knows us better than ourselves. says that, when Whitman was Burroughs " head this age or country the finest doubtless he had sixty,
consciousness and that the cannot know we dare know past has
seen.
.
. . The
lines
were
so
simple,
so free,
so
strong.
High
blue eyes; arching brows; straight, clear-cut nose; heavy-lidded, but a vital part of a forehead not thrust out and emphasized, dome-shaped head; ear large and the most delicate symmetrical, ever seen." It is a pity that this ear is covered I have carved ly and that the head, in in all the hair and beard photographs, by In the picture taken at the many of them, is covered by a hat. age of fifty, the shape of the forehead shows as the high and some what narrow forehead of the idealist, so different from the broad, of the full forehead of the artist, and the insistent knowingness comes in this out eyes picture. strongly, too, to his work, it is as difficult as from his personality Turning There are pages ever to sum up or to say anything conclusive. seems to be he when things or cogni enumerating monotonously as vast and as incom is ideas when he tions ; pages, too, presenting we feel that are as where There universe. the pages prehensible over and too is existence almost the light he is flooding glaring as a are obscure and dream, vague dazzling to bear, and parts that and we grapple in vain to find out what he is driving at. With to try to read him, out one thing, he warns you, it is useless one what the but he does not tell you thing is. You may guess he warns you, not hit at it many times and it; your novitiate, the whole past theory of your life must be long and exhausting, vol.
CLxxxm.?no.
597.
19
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REVIEW.
and all conformity to the lives around you must be abandoned. His poems, like all great forces, are as like to do evil as good, and is not to be come at by study. He will not emerge his meaning for you in company, or in a house and least of all in a library. It is just possible that alone upon a high hill, or sailing at sea, or on a quiet island or by merely carrying the book thrust in your clothing as you walk, its mystical meaning may penetrate you. If one compare Whitman with another contemporary genius, it seems and immense, with Eobert Browning, like him mystical a universe. Brown that Browning offers a world and Whitman ing gives us types, kings, bishops, priests, lovers, actors, painters, mediums,
charlatans,
musicians,
sculptors,
popes,
lawyers,
judges,
women, duchesses, saintly young women, girls, wives, worldly but Whitman women, wicked women; goes further: he does not or to set them into self-describing stop to describe his multitudes enumerates actions; he merely them; he hands you the catalogue, as it passes, and trusts of human the surge the great procession rest. the Southern to do the The you Yankee, planter, the Ken a boatman,
tuckian, man
from
man,
a
man, sician,
Vermont
learner, sailor, priest,
a teacher, Quaker, men,
a Canadian, a Badger, Buckeye, a Texan a rafts ranchman, Maine, a farmer, a mechanic, an artist, gentle
a Hoosier, or from
men,
prisoner, men
fancyman, of
every
hue,
rowdy, trade,
lawyer, caste
rank,
a
phy and
he and the New World, from Africa, religion, Europe, Asia, to and states them and show them, only gather together posits their one breathing their underlying unity, body, their similar course, being born, going round and round, passing and coming from the quahaug in its callous shell to the again, developing alive at to every wafted breeze. and thin-skinned every pore genius, he was born a poet; one who had a word to say Like Browning, to the world and was determined, to get despite all opposition, it was many years before he won any it said. Like Browning, he died before any sort of and, unlike Browning, was him. offered But he himself asserted general appreciation that the test of his poems could not be set for some hundred years. He felt a supreme and righteous contempt for the trade as a trade, and for the men "who write all over the of writing, surface of the earth and never dig a foot in the ground?just His own power of suggestion is very great. everlastingly write." Without indirect forms, such as parable and description, without way
at all;
WALT WHITMAN.
291
classical or historical allusion, he draws the reader into narrative, his atmosphere and spreads his feeling of good comradeship, faith, The very obscurity of some of his trust, and cheer about him. lines seems to lend them thought-suggesting power. They give you no rest any more than the horizon-line which shifts as you move the difficulty arises from toward it, ever escaping you. Perhaps truth there is, and can be, no statement. the fact that of ultimate to One uses some tiny symbol, like the word "immortality," stand for a truth which no man can ever dream of in its actual in the opening like those contained ity. There are statements, in. chapter of St. John, deep enough to drown all our meanings of prenatal and Browning both give us intimations but the theory of the im and of future incarnations; and unity of the soul is never absent from Whitman; mortality it is his constant iteration: Shelley existence
" O,
always dying, living always, of me, and present, O, the burials past as ever, I stride O me, while visible, ahead, material, imperious now dead I was for years, I am content), O me, what not, (I lament from of me, which those I turn and O, to disengage corpses myself look To
pass
at, where on (O,
I
cast
living,
them, always
living!),
and
leave
the
corpses
behind!"
sense of eternity is never broken in upon; and, with his un into all life, and identify ability to project himself paralleled comes his unbending himself with all conceptions, power to trust the vast, ungraspable issues of eternity. in his Whitmania lack of essay, regrets Whitman's Swinburne, sense a in the education of education, using presumably sophistU cated intimacy with worldly distinctions,?the kind of education which is pumped into a man by tutors, university lectures, books an initiation into and travel?in elaborated mediocre fact, opin ions. As a matter of fact, Whitman was quite as well read, if not as much read, as Swinburne. He was thoroughly versed in the a profound books of and had and great original primal force,
His
education of the kind that is dug out of oneself. The faith that and experience are contained in the soul all human knowledge some place, if we but dig deep enough to get them, hold still enough and ponder long enough to catch and haul them to the shared with surface of consciousness, was a faith which Whitman all seers, prophets, and men of first rank, original genius. How
292
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much
of their achievement would Tolstoy and Ibsen, Browning and Wordsworth, and university to schools ascribe presumably And what would Isaiah and Jeremiah have thought education? of giving years to the study of theological Mr. Swin dispute? burne knows as well as any one that no great man is excusable
who
does other than search his soul for his truth and present it It was all of a piece with Whit again in his own personal form. use man's democracy to form he chose. the rough unmeasured He eschewed distinctions, he despised he rejected scholarship, he never quoted and never imitated. Dante quoted authority, Tennyson Virgil, quoted Dante, Shakespeare quoted everybody, and everybody since has quoted Shakespeare; but Whitman quoted no one. Mr. Swinburne is a poet, and so great a poet that it is for so small a himself to think he sometimes mistook pathetic as a mere critic. Never in his is he prose capable of speak thing and the unified from the whole consciousness. Some little ing or fit of anger, indignation, denial, raillery partial, hysterical admiration seizes him and spouts out a torrent of words from him, and records when they swing words that fit only into judgments measured in his long, majestic, lines, so intricately rhythmic, do words wonderful With such facility jut out at his rhymed. least idea that it is difficult to fancy what sort of fantastic play genius. they would have had with him but for his inborn metrical accuses Whitman Mr. Swinburne of trying to be a thinker and yet unable to think, a singer and unable to sing. One can easily enthusiastic admirers, comparing fancy that some of Whitman's him with Shakespeare and Shelley, to the detriment of the latter, vehement ire. It is quite true should have aroused Swinburne's below the delves that Whitman upper surface of log habitually and also true that in his work he ical reason for his thought, He had eliminates all process and presents only conclusions. at all of the artist and the craftsman; about him nothing per He haps he had fewer talents than any great poet ever known. a a not of for combination abilities, gift rhyme, a presents pretty keen visual sense, a delicate sensitiveness to verbal cadences; he as atmosphere; a robust whole indivisible he presents Whitman, of a scholar or an analyst; he is of the is not of the make-up of a prophet and seer. He never argues or coaxes. He make-up a truth down like a bomb in front of you, careless whether flings Like the prophet Isaiah it explode and annihilate you or not.
WALT WHITMAN.
293
announces
visions and communica he exhorts, he predicts, he of vision and knowledge of tions; he claims supernal powers or evi reason with to refuses he you give you logical truth, but dence. He knew that the whole solution of life lay in love, and that to love God with all your might and your neighbor as your He knew himself the first and bravest end of man. were and divine all and that worthy equally of respect divine, instinct with life and vitality and honor; he knew the universe and divinity, and the very clay clods beneath our feet as latent, St. Francis he shared the ecstatic love of With possible man. desire animals, breezes, trees, and it is upon this whole-hearted belief in love unbounded this unlimited, for human brotherhood, that he based, as did Shelley and pardon and infinite growth, " Him Crucified." before him, bis claim to brotherhood with self was
to spirit not mind
"My Do
dear
yours, because
many
brother, sounding
your
name
do
not
understand
you, I do not
but I understand sound your name, you, to salute and to salute comrade, you you with joy, O my specify to come after, and those are with and those who since, you, before suc we same and the all labor That charge transmitting together I
cession Till
we
ages
time
saturate to
come,
may
and prove
the men that eras, brethren and lovers
and as we
women
of
races,
are."
it is certainly more irregular, more broken by of dissonances and difficult solu successions strange prolonged more of unmeasured and difficult tions, analysis than that of any nearer to having the comes it Indeed, preceding English poet. As
to his music,
of certain psalms, the fortieth swing and grandeur chapter of of in Isaiah and Deborah's James the Song Triumph King of any English version of the Bible than the measure It poem. is not to be overlooked between Whitman's that the difference music and that of our earlier, more lyrical poets is in the same that modern music has moved. line of progression That whereas music with Milton lyric intermezzos, produces splendid organ has at command a whole orchestra playing and Swinburne the flute the the various instruments note very separately, teaching or getting from the violin the weird, sad cry of the nightingale, of the sea-mew, or leading the whole orchestra in superb and final choruses,
Whitman
gives
the human
voice
alone,
in irregular,
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REVIEW.
introducing a little sing prolonged recitative, only here and there " " as in Tears, tears, tears," Come, lovely and soothing ing melody mere and Death," slangy colloquial talk of the street. occasionally On this matter of slang and common speech there are two things " to be said. Doubtless, the grave-digger's colloquy in Hamlet" in "Macbeth," and the porter's and other episodical interlude a now so of like nature, interruptions integral a part of the plays to us, were at the time but the appeal direct Shakespearian to the populace, the common jest and colloquialism of the street offered to bring the people into closer touch. There is something a little shocking in the familiarity, the lack of reserve and dignity in "
such I tucked You
as?
lines
my should
trowser-ends been
have
with
in my us
and went
boots that
over
day
and the
had a good chowder-kettle."
time,
and for One can only reflect that Whitman wrote for posterity and the ages. and in significance grows in dignity Language and power power by distance. Compare the sense of strangeness with which a foreign language or an archaism touches us and the it is of common familiar talk. "Be not afraid, insignificance I," lost all its serength when the little child, eager only for sub it into "Don't be scared, ifs me coming/' stance, translated Take that fine old passage from the Suttas: "
Like
a
Like
the wind
Like Let
lion
the me
not. startled not caught
lotus wander
not
stained
alone
like
at
noises, in a net, by the water, a
rhinoceros,"
in and practically all its beauty consists in its alien atmosphere, of strange, far-away sights and sounds. its suggestion So per with the shock of haps what comes upon us to-day, in Whitman, in its strangeness the commonplace may some day be as dignified and beauty as the lines: "Absent And To
thee
from
in this
harsh
tell
my
felicity world
awhile, draw thy
breath
in pain
story."
Two other points which Mr. Swinburne holds against Whitman are that he is a rhetorician; that he offers us mere words and that he shows no chivalry toward women. Now, rhetoric is the
Walt
whitman.
2&S
fire-new words merely for the words' sake; love of high-sounding, but this is no accusation to bring against Whitman, who believed as fervently as ever Isaiah or himself a prophet with a message Jeremiah did. He was noticeably oblivious of the sound and tex ture of words, as well as negligent value. of their associational Whatever words conveyed his meaning most plainly, swiftly, pre His those words he used. cisely, familiarly, speech was forth right and plain, addressed to the common man, to the ditch-digger as no less important than the Hebrew scholar. As to the lack of chivalric sentiment toward woman, that must simply be handed over to each individual woman to decide whether she is more honored as Venus, Iseult, Dolores, Felise, the raven " in in the locked woman of Time," or in Whitman's Triumph of her as the race-mother, the equal of man, out of sistent mention whom all creation is unfolded. But it becomes Mr. Swinburne less than any other English poet to make this accusation. And now here one must glance at that peculiarity which cost his Whitman much support, many friends and final recognition, reserves. This mis stubborn refusal to accept the conventional take cost him Emerson's support; it is the flaw which robs him of many readers. In this connection, we must remember Whit of creation and of creative force. man's theory of the glorification in his work, there is much There are no so-called love-poems of fatherhood and as deep calleth and motherhood, glorification unto deep so his soul responds to the idea of thought and emo tion taking upon themselves flesh and form and and active in the material world. Woman was of the and the of man. race, keeper helpmate his own mother he records as the chief affection to after that, friendship or, as he preferred
becoming visible to him the great His love for of his life, and, call it, love of
comrades.
it is well to call to mind that it is the clean elemental Again, it is innocence and purity that most easily invest consciousness, all processes with holiness and dignity, and possibly as men grow more and more to this altitude will the offence of this part of factor. Whitman's writing become a negligible his life he practised faith, hope and charity. His Throughout whole object was to live and not to die, and to help other men to live and not to die, but to earn for the body and the mind what adheres and goes forward and is never dropped by death.
296
TEE WORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW.
There remains one more element in Whitman to remark and one repeatedly in three recent books of biog brought to mind the ascription of to Whitman raphy,* namely, by his friends almost supernal powers, and their unabashed him of comparison with the greatest masters of living. If we are to accept the state ment of Mr. Binns and Mr. Carpenter, Whitman's early life was he may However certainly not devoid of reproach. completely have turned from that part of his life afterward, it would seem to divorce him from the assumption of the highest legitimately holiness. His way of feeling life and humanity was large, patient, to descend far-seeing and loving, but his method was definitely into the midst of natural life and spread cheer and good-will. There is another method, which is, living above the general level of righteousness, gradually to exalt that level. This seems to have been the method of such masters of living as St. Francis and Buddha and, above all, of the Supreme Human Pattern. The note of the Christian Gospel, the note of self-surrender and is not in in sounded its Whit renunciation, certainly entirety and yet, disguised, it is there. That note of selflessness man; is unworldliness which and unconventionality, which refuses to with material itself and preen belongings things, that kind of renunciation which holds its whole life lightly on the hand for any man to take, that free and universal gift of the best of one's to whomsoever will partake, these Whitman most cer personality The complete overcoming of fear and desire, the tainly had. of death, are all forms of asceticism, unafraid for acceptance asceticism merely means out the lower that the choking higher may live; letting the small and partial self die to make room for the better and bigger self to thrive in the joyful assurance that wherever the little, the casual, the and the eternal are conceived and ness, his bigness, his extraordinary as these undeniable consciousness, for him by his enthusiastic friends, of Life. with the supreme Masters
temporal fade, the purposeful But not his unworldli grow. power, his cosmic prophetical are, justify the claims made that he stands on the pinnacle Louise
* " Walt Whitman," Henry with Walt Whitman," "Days 1906. "With Walt WThitman 1906. & Co., Maynard
Binns.
Collier E.
Willcox.
P. Dutton 1906. & Co., Bryan Edward The Macmillan Co., Carpenter. in Camden," Traubel. Horace Small,