beauty. But the Poet is the master of beauty, and his mastery consists in commanding and causing things which were not before considered beautiful to become so. How does he do this? Before this question can be answered we must understand why one thing is beautiful to us and another not-why persons, combinations, etc., that are beautiful to one are often not so to another-and why one man sees so much beauty in the world, another so little. The explanation is, that beauty and love are correlatives; they are the objective and subjective aspects of the same thing. Beauty has no existence apart from love, and love has no existence apart from beauty. Beauty is the shadow of love thrown upon the outer world. We do not love a person or thing because the person or thing is beautiful, but whatever we love, that is beautiful to us, and whatever we do not love, is not beautiful. And the function of the true Poet is to love and appreciate all things, nationalities, laws, combinations, individuals. He alone illustrates the sublime reality and ideality of that verse of Genesis, how God after His entire creation looked forth, "and pronounced it all good." A parallel statement would be true of Faith. As that which is seen from without inwards is love, and seen from within outwards is beauty, so that which seen from without in wards is faith, is goodness when seen from within outwards.

The human race began by fearing or distrusting nearly everything, and trusting almost nothing; and this is yet the condition of savages. But from time to time, men arose who distrusted and feared less and less. These men have always been considered impious by those about them; but for all that, they have been the saviors and progressists of the race, and have been recognized as such when their views and feelings penetrated the generations succeeding them. Such evolution has always been going on, and will continue. So far, fear has been a part of every accepted religion, and it is still taught that to destroy fear is to destroy religion. But if faith is to increase, fear, its opposite, must continually decrease and at last disappear. Fear is the basis of superstition. Faith, its opposite, along with love, is the basis of

religion. I know it is still said by some to-day in the name of religion, that men should hate this and that-sin for instance, and the devil, and that they should fear certain things, such as God and the Judgment. But this really is irreligion, not religion.

An important feature of Leaves of Grass is what I would call its continuity or endlessness. It does not teach something, and rest there. It does not make, in morals and religion, an important step in advance, and stop satisfied with that. It has unlimited vista. It clears the way ahead, with allowance and provision for new advances far, far beyond anything contained in itself. It brings no one to "a terminus," nor teaches any one to be "content and full." It is a ceaseless goad, a never-resting spur. To those to whom it speaks, it cries continually, forward! forward! and admits of no pause in the race. A second trait is its universality. There is nothing of which humanity has experience that it does not touch upon more or less directly. There must have been a deliberate intention on the part of the author to give the book this all-embracing character, and no doubt that was one reason for the catalogues of objects in a few of the poems which have so irritated the critics. I have often tried to think of something objective or subjective, material or immaterial, that was not taken cognizance of by Leaves of Grass, but always failed. A third feature is the manner in which the author avoids (either of set purpose, or more likely by a sure instinct) dealing specifically with any topics of mere class or ephemeral interest (though he really treats these too through the bases upon which they rest), and concerns himself solely with the elementary subjects of human life, which must necessarily have perennial interest.

Leaves of Grass is curiously a different book to each reader. To some, its merit consists in the keen thought which pierces to the kernel of things-or a perpetual and sunny cheeriness, in which respect it is the synonyme of pure air and health; to others it is chiefly valuable as being full of pictorial suggestions; to a third class of men it is a new Gospel containing fresh reve

>

lations of divine truth; to a fourth it is charged with ideas and suggestions in practical life and manners; to some its large, sweet, clear, animal physiology is its especial charm; to some, the strange abysses of its fervid emotions.* Upon still others (on whom it produces its full effect), it exerts an irresistible and divine power, strengthening and elevating their lives unspeakably, driving them from all meanness and toward all good, giving them no rest, but compelling them to watch every act, word, thought, feeling-to guard their days and nights from weakness, baseness, littleness, or impurity-at the same time giving them extraordinary power to accomplish these ends.

There is still another class (altogether the most numerous so far), who see in the book nothing of all these fine things or good uses. To them it suggests contempt for laws and social forms, appears coarse, prosaic, senseless, full of impure ideas, and as seeking the destruction of religion, and all that is decent in human life. If men were really, as theologians tell us, inclined by Nature to evil, I could imagine Leaves of Grass might on the whole do some serious harm. But since, as I think is certainly the case, (for who would not rather be healthy than sick? loved than hated? happy than wretched ?) humanity on the whole is far more disposed to good than evil, there is no question that whatever stimulates and encourages the native growth and independent vigor of the mind, as it does, must in the final result be beneficial.

Leaves of Grass belongs to a religious era not yet reached, of which it is the revealer and herald. Toward that higher social and moral level the race was inevitably tending-and thither, even without such an avant-courier, it would still eventually have reached. This book, however, will be of incalculable assistance in the ascent. As John Burroughs has suggested, it may have to wait to be authoritatively assigned to literature's

The London "Nineteenth Century" (December, 1882), in the course of an article on Walt Whitman, says, “He has a power of passionate expression, of strong and simple utterance of the deepest tones of grief, which is almost or altogether without its counterpart in the world."

highest rank, first by the lawgivers of the Old World, before America really acknowledges her own offspring in Walt Whitman's work.* With the incoming moral state to which it belongs, certain cherished social and religious forms and usages are incompatible; hence the deep instinctive aversion and dread with which it is regarded by the ultra-conventional and conservative. Just so, in their far-back times, was Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, and every new birth received. Our whole theory of property, of individual ownership (for example) is by implication condemned by the spirit of the book, and when its level is reached, our present ideas and practice in this department will seem as backward and outré as the ownership and transfer of one man by another seems to us now. So also our church-going, bible-reading, creeds, and prayers, will appear from its vantage-ground mere make-believes of religion, hollow shells whose kernels have long since imperceptibly mouldered into dust. So does one birth of Time succeed another. So is it still as ever true that the gods are devoured by their own children-that what the deepest and holiest heart-throbs of the race have brought into being, is again successively overwhelmed and destroyed by the legitimate offspring of those same spiritual impulses.

Every marked rise in the moral nature, when it has become diffused over broad sections of the race, necessitates and inspires as its accompaniment, new manners, new social forms, new politics, new philosophies, new literatures, and above all, new religious forms. For moral elevation is the mainspring of all these, and of the world's progress—the rising tide upon which float all the fleets and argosies, as well as all the driftwood and foam,

The London "Nineteenth Century" of December, 1882, already alluded to, says :." The mass of his countrymen were not and are not strong enough to accept him. They have perhaps too little confidence in their own literary originality to appreciate duly one from among themselves who breaks through all the conventional usages of literature; they have too much squeamish delicacy to admit to their society one who is so brutally outspoken and unrefined. It is necessary perhaps that this writer, for we need not be zealous to claim for him the title of poet, should be first accepted in the Old World before he can be recognized by the New, which at present can see nothing in literature but by reflected light. Strange irony of fate, if such should be the destiny of one who cast off the conventional forms, in order to free himself and his country from Old-World influences !"

the ascending sap which vitalizes all the fruit of human life. Leaves of Grass is the initiative of such a rise, the preface and creator of a new era. This old world has seen many such new departures, and is to see many more before it is done. They have always been begun by one man, embodying what suspends in nebulous forms through the humanity of the time, and from him have spread more or less over the earth's surface. And for their basis these movements have had invariably, since the invention of writing, and in some instances before that time, a book, to embody themselves and radiate from. Leaves of Grass is such a book. What the Vedas were to Brahmanism, the Law and the Prophets to Judaism, the Avesta and Zend to Zoroastrianism, the Kings to Confucianism and Taoism, the Pitakas to Buddhism, the Gospels and Pauline writings to Christianity, the Quran to Mohammedanism, will Leaves of Grass be to the future of American civilization. Those were all Gospels; they all brought good news to man, fitting his case at the period, each in its way and degree. They were all "hard sayings" and the rankest heresy at first, just as Leaves of Grass is now. By and by it too will be received, and in the course of a few hundred years, more or less, do its work and become commonplace like the rest. Then new Gospels will be written upon a still higher plane.

In the mean time, Leaves of Grass is the bible of Democracy, containing the highest exemplar of life yet furnished, and suited to the present age and to America. Within it is folded (as the oak in the acorn, or the man in the new-born babe) a new spiritual life for myriads of men and women.

Very few people have any conception what such books are to those who first receive them-what enthusiasm and devotion they inspire-what reckless abandonment to the new feeling of spiritual exaltation they kindle-how they absorb all life, and make the old worldly interests poor and contemptible-how they light up new joys, and end by placing existence on a higher plane. As few to-day realize this, though they have heard and read of it all their lives, so no one, except those who have felt it, can realize what Leaves of Grass is to the first men and women who experience its power.

7