dist.

I wished that the youths of America could hear him, and that he might go through the land, reading as he A rhapso did that night, from town to town. I saw that he was by nature a rhapsodist, like them of old, and should be, more than other poets, a reciter of the verse that so aptly reflects himself. He had the round forehead and head which often mark the orator, rather than the logician. He surely feels with Ben Jonson, as to a language, that "the writing of it is but an accident," and this is a good thing to feel and know. His view of the dramatic value of Lincoln's death to the future artist and poet was significant. It was the culminating act of the civil war, he said: "Ring down the curtain, with its muses of History and Tragedy on either side." Elsewhere his claim to be an American of the Americans was strengthened by a pecul iarly national mistake, that of confounding quantity with quality, of setting mere size and vastness above dramatic essence. When the brief discourse was ended, he was induced to read the shorter dirge, “O Captain! My Captain!" It is, of his poems, among those nearest to a wonted lyrical form, as if the genuine sorrow of his theme had given him new pinions. He read it simply and well, and as I listened to its strange, pathetic melodies, my eyes filled with tears, and I felt that here, indeed, was a minstrel of whom it would be said, if he could reach the ears of the multitude and stand in their presence, that not only the cultured, but "the common people heard him gladly."

Summary.

Although no order of talent or temperament, in this age, can wholly defy classification, there nevertheless is a limbo of poets, artists, thinkers, men of genius, some of whose creations are so expressive, and

PARADOXICAL GENIUS.

others so feeble and ill-conceived, that any discussion of their quality must consist alternately of praise and adverse criticism. Reviewing what has been written, I see that the career and output of the poet under notice are provocative of each in some extreme, and unite to render him a striking figure in that disputed

estate.

393

Walt Whitman, then, has seemed to me a man who should think well of Nature, since he has received much at her hands; and well of Fortune, since his birth, training, localities, have individualized the character of his natural gifts; and well of Humanity, for his good works to men have come back to him in the devotion of the most loyal and efficient band of adherents that ever buoyed the purpose and advanced the interests of a reformer or poet. He has lived his life, and warmed both hands before its fire, and in middleage honored it with widely praised and not ignoble deeds. Experience and years have brought his virile, too lusty nature to a wiser harmony and repose. He has combined a sincere enthusiasm with the tact of a man of the world, and, with undoubted love for his kind, never has lost sight of his own aim and reputation. No follower, no critic, could measure him with a higher estimate than that which from the first he has set upon himself. As a poet, a word-builder, he Whitis equipped with touch, voice, vision, zest, all trained man's and freshened, in boyhood and manhood, by genuine ment. intercourse with Nature in her broadest and minutest forms. From her, indeed, he is true-born, no bastard child nor impostor. He is at home with certain classes of men; but here his limitations begin, for he is not great enough, unconscious enough, to do more than assume to include all classes in his sympathy and brotherhood. The merits of his verse are lyrical

equip

His genius and limita

tions.

passion and frequent originality, a copious, native, surprising range of diction, strong feeling, softened by consummate tendèrness and pity, a method lowered by hoarseness, coarseness, and much that is very pointless and dull, yet at its best charged with melody and meaning, or so near perfection that we are irked to have him miss the one touch needful, a skill that often is art, but very seldom mastery. As a man of convictions, he has reflected upon the idea of a true democracy, and sought to represent it by a true Americanism; yet, in searching for it and for the archetypal manhood chiefly in his own personality, it is not strange that he has frequently gratified his self-consciousness, while failing to present to others a satisfactory and well-proportioned type of either. His disposition and manner of growth always have led him to overrate the significance of his views, and inclined him to narrow theories of art, life and song. He utters a sensible protest against the imitativeness and complacency that are the bane of literature, yet is more formal than others in his non-conformity, and haughtier in his plainness than many in their pride. Finally, and in no invidious sense, it is true that he is the poet of a refined period, impossible in any other, and appeals most to those who long for a reaction, a new beginning; not a poet of the people, but eminently one who might be, could he in these days avail His future himself of their hearing as of their sight.

reputa

tion.

Is he,

therefore, not to be read in the future? Of our living poets, I should think him most sure of an intermittent remembrance hereafter, if not of a general reading. Of all, he is the one most sure — waiving the question of his popular fame― to be now and then examined; for, in any event, his verse will be revived from timė to time by dilettants on the hunt for curious treasures

HIS PLACE IN LITERATURE.

in the literature of the past, by men who will reprint and elucidate him, to join their names with his, or to do for this singer what their prototypes in our day have done for François Villon, for the author of "Joseph and his Brethren," and for William Blake.

395

Taylor's career to

be noted in

THI

CHAPTER XI.

BAYARD TAYLOR.

HIS poet, the last and youngest of those here made the subjects of distinct review, is no longer a living comrade. The consecrating hand that removed him enables us to free our judgment from conditions. bias of rivalry or affection.

illustration of

recent

The ques

cess.

"Far off is he, above desire and fear;

No more submitted to the change and chance

Of the unsteady planets."

He was taken in his prime, with work spread out before him, yet not until after years of unceasing production. We find ourselves observing one whose ideal was higher than anything which his writings, abundant as they are, express for us, and one who none the less has claims to be estimated in some degree by that ideal. His life was noteworthy; it was a display of heroic industry, zest, ambition, the bravest self-reliance, - and from slight beginnings he achieved much. But he was one whose success must

tion of suc- be gauged from within. What was his dream? Did he realize it? If not, what hindered him? These questions must be asked; and, in trying to answer them, we see the peculiar advantages which the career of Taylor proffers for an understanding of the literary movement, the social and working life, in which he was involved. Not that he was our most famous singer, nor one whose score was completed,