whom poetry would degenerate into a mere literary trick, insincere and empty, valueless to all who set a true value on human life11.

William Rossetti, who edited an English edition of his poems, said1:

I consider him to be pre-eminent among the sons of men for a large human nature,-broad, deep, and full,-and for the power of giving the deepest and most universal expression to the deepest and most universal feelings11.

Robert Buchanan called him the wisest and noblest, the most truly great, of all modern literary men, and said:

I hope yet if I am spared to look upon him again, for well I know that the earth holds no such another nature. Nor do I write this with the wild heroworship of a boy, but as the calm, deliberate judgment of a man who is far beyond all literary predilections or passions. In Walt Whitman I see more than a mere maker of poems. I see a personality worthy of rank even above that of Socrates, akin, even, though lower and far distant, to that of Him who is considered, and rightly, the best of men. We have other poets, but we have no other divine poet*.

*

*

*

III

Criticism of his poems has even developed a new nomenclature.

How ranked by Critics

141

William Rossetti says that his language has a certain ultimate quality. Another critic speaks of his absolute use of language. Col. Ingersoll credits him with more supreme words than have been uttered by any other man of our time". The London Times spoke of his "heroic nudity". 4

Burroughs calls his method egocentric, and says one of the key-words to Whitman both as a man and a poet is the word "composite", and says 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.

As a

"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. 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. 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 writer5 ".

"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand at last," says Walt Whitman himself of his poems, "is the word Suggestiveness."5

IV

The late Prof. Clifford was the first to use the term cosmic emotion in connection with "Leaves of Grass "5.

Dr. Bucke ascribes to Walt Whitman a sixth sense, cosmic consciousness, and traces the evolution from unconsciousness through simple consciousness and self-consciousness. It comes suddenly upon a person as a clear conception, in outline, of the drift of the universe-a consciousness that the over-ruling power which resides in it is infinitely beneficent: a vision of the WHOLE, or at least, of an immense WHOLE, which dwarfs all conception, imagination, or speculation. springing from and belonging to ordinary self-consciousness, making the old attempts to mentally grasp the universe and its meaning petty and even ridiculous".

Dr. Bucke goes into detail, saying that there have been at least 18 persons endowed with this cosmic consciousness, including Buddha, Paul, Mohammed, Dante, Las Casas, and Balzac. In the last, he savs, as in the case of Walt Whitman, writings of absolutely no value were immediately followed by pages across each of which in letters of ethereal fire are written the words "ETERNAL LIFE"; pages covered not only by a masterpiece, but by such vital sentences as have not been written ten times in the history of the race.

V

Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819, on a farm in West Hills, on Long Island. The family moved not long after to Brooklyn, where he went to the public schools for a time. He learned the printer's trade and worked at it. He also lived in the country on Long Island, from sixteen to eighteen. years of age taught school; he worked on the farm, and published a weekly newspaper. In 1848 he went down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and worked there as editor. Returning to Brooklyn he spent his time in

literary and other work, following for a while his father's trade of house-building, until in 1862, he went to Washington as a volunteer nurse in the hospital camps, distributing money which was sent to him by friends at the North. He was afterwards appointed to a place in one of the departments, but discharged by Secretary Harlan on account of the alleged immorality of his "Leaves of Grass". He got an appointment in the attorney-general's department where he remained for eight years.

While in Washington from 1864 to 1870 he suffered from several partial paralytic attacks, the influence of which he succeeded in temporarily throwing off, but in 1873 he broke down, and for the rest of his life he lived in Camden, N. J., physically a wreck, in poverty, almost in squalors, till he died March 26, 1892.

VI

His literary work began early. He learned to set type at thirteen, and wrote for the newspapers. Before he was 20 he was editor and publisher of the Long Islander, a newspaper which has survived, for it is to-day