conform to old formulas. Whether we say with Johnson that poetry lies in giving an elevated account of things, or with Coleridge, that it is a matter of choice expression, or with Mr Arnold that it is a subtle heightening of phrase and idea-definitions which harmonise obviously enough-Whitman's verse will be found to demand a certain concession for its acceptance. It precipitates the critic on the old paradox which is constantly coming up in all departments of art-criticism, and which is stated in the demand that the artist shall be at once spontaneous and self-controlled, inspired and artificial. The lover of English poetry who comes to Whitman for the first time will probably, in two cases out of three-unless he happens to be familiar with Blake-be merely astonished and irritated, and these sensations some readers never live down. Perhaps the best course for the reader of poetic taste who is capable of appreciating Whitman's ideas is to turn at the first shock from the poetry to the prose. That he is almost sure to find stimulating and rich in suggestion, and when he has thus got into sympathy with the man he will find the poetry much. more palatable. At first he will be disposed to insist that there is hardly any difference between the prose and the poetry; that the preface to "Leaves of Grass," dropped into clauses of systematically unequal length, might eke out "American Feuillage" with perfect propriety; that, in short, Whitman simply makes prose pass for poetry by poetry by a particular arrangement of type. Though, however, it will be found hardly possible to defend Whitman's artistic method in the long run, that particular criticism will have to be departed from. Taken all over, the verse, hopelessly unrhythmical as it so often seems, has distinctly that quality of “lilt,” C which is after all the generic difference between poetry and prose. It is the difference between walking and running the nervous tension belonging to the dance -the definition of which as "the poetry of motion" supplies the critic with a really instructive analogy. Add that it is only in his poetry he becomes dramatic or celebrates passion pure and simple, and the distinction between his poetry and his prose is broadly established. But to allow that his verse has poetic quality is one thing; to say it is a successful poetic product is another. Whitman, who has a decided opinion about poetic expression, would probably accept with Emerson the conception of poetry as having its form originally determined by the pulse-beat and the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs; but to all appearance he refuses to go any further. As in his thinking he takes his stand on primary facts and individual impulse, so in his verse he returns to elementary methods. It may fairly be said to bear to contemporary English poetry some such relation as does an African war-dance to the dances of Europe. The barbarian, like the civilised people in waltz and quadrille, is going through a calculated performance belonging to the domain of art, but his conformity to plan is of the slightest, and delicate precision is entirely beyond him. His excitement is too complete for sustained grace. It is not that the waltzer does not likewise undergo cerebral excitement, but that he attains a more complex form of gratification by planning and timing his motion. In a study of the dances of different ages, by the way, will be found a help to the appreciation of their poetry ; the stately constraint of gavotte and minuet having no less clear an affinity to the verse of the last century than have the dreamy languors and reckless movements in the dances of to-day to its poetry-dress in large measure exhibiting the same relation. Whitman, then, has simply reverted to a prior stage of development. The essence of modern poetry may be said to be indicated in Wordsworth's idea of emotion recollected in tranquillity and artistically expressed; while Whitman chafes at the drill, and rejects the artistic pains as belonging to the department of "polite kinks," grammar, and fine manners. And the upshot is that the world is impelled to view Whitman's aversion to graceful poetic form as it does his rejection of manners, and pronounce him a fine specimen of the barbarian. It is worth noting that Blake, much of whose verse is so curiously like Whitman's, likewise gave overt signs of strong leanings to the primitive, his partial insanity being perhaps responsible for such an emphatic exhibition as his appearance in the open air in the garb of Adam. There is, on the other hand, a danger of being too summary in writing Whitman down a magnificent barbarian in art. A mistaken notion of his culture has been inadvertently fostered in England by Mr. W. M. Rossetti and Mr. Moncure Conway; the former rather unfortunately representing him as having used Emerson's praise to advertise "Leaves of Grass" while entirely unacquainted with Emerson's books; and the latter apparently accepting too unreservedly the poet's remark that his reading was confined mostly to Homer and the Bible. Whitman has since given sketches of his life, from which it appears that at an early age he began to read novels omnivorously; that he did much miscellaneous work in journalism; and that he picked up plenty of general culture, as a recep tive American can, without being systematic in his studies. In his later years, it is interesting to observe, he has read more and more; indeed he is rather suspiciously given of late to laying stress on "The Hegelian Formulas," and taking bird's-eye views of literatures, with such results as finding Shakespeare inferior to Eschylus as an exponent of the passions. "Without being a scientist," he says in his general preface of 1876, "I have thoroughly adopted the conclusions of the great savans and experimentalists of our time, and of the last hundred years, and they have interiorly tinged the chyle of all my verse, for purposes beyond." Artistic Furthermore, he has always loved music. conformity apart, he has been about as much in the movement of the culture of his time as was Shakespeare. In the very act, then, of diving back to the primitive, such a poet may supply us with the germs of a new artistic growth. If such there be, they can best be got at by examining some of the finer passages in his poems. Whitmanites, when challenged to produce from his books a piece of real verse, are given with rather amusing unanimity to cite the lines, "O Captain, my Captain!" on the death of Lincoln, which are partly rhymed; but he has done better work in which there is no suggestion of imitation of accepted forms. "President Lincoln's Burial Hymn,” for instance, is rhythmic, and more or less beautiful throughout. Thus it begins : When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourned—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; It does not need the half-reluctant praise conceded to Tennyson in the essay on "Poetry to-day in America" to let the reader know that Whitman has read at least portions of "Maud." The same music recurs: Sing on sing on, you grey-brown bird! Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes; Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night, that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars, and ghostly pines so still. And the singer so shy to the rest received me; The gray-brown bird I know, received us comrades three; And he sang what seem'd the carol of death and a verse for him I love. From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars, and the ghostly pines so still, Came the carol of the bird. And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held, as if by their hands, my comrades in the night; The close of the Death Carol* is perhaps the most 1 So entitled in Whitman's Centennial Edition of his poems. In Messrs. Wilson and M'Cormick's edition (Glasgow 1883), which bears as a whole the old title "Leaves of Grass," the "Burial Hymn" and "Death Carol" read as parts of one poem, under the heading "Memories of President Lincoln." |