I.

Whitman, it cannot be too soon explained, writes up to a system. He was

a theoriser about society before he was a poet. He first perceived

something wanting, and then sat down squarely to supply the want. The

reader, running over his works, will find that he takes nearly as much

pleasure in critically expounding his theory of poetry as in making

poems. This is as far as it can be from the case of the spontaneous

village minstrel dear to elegy, who has no theory whatever, although

sometimes he may have fully as much poetry as Whitman. The whole of

Whitman’s work is deliberate and preconceived. A man born into a society

comparatively new, full of conflicting elements and interests, could not

fail, if he had any thoughts at all, to reflect upon the tendencies

around him. He saw much good and evil on all sides, not yet settled down

into some more or less unjust compromise as in older nations, but still

in the act of settlement. And he could not but wonder what it would turn

out; whether the compromise would be very just or very much the reverse,

and give great or little scope for healthy human energies. From idle

wonder to active speculation is but a step; and he seems to have been

early struck with the inefficacy of literature and its extreme

unsuitability to the conditions. What he calls “Feudal Literature” could

have little living action on the tumult of American democracy; what he

calls the “Literature of Wo,” meaning the whole tribe of Werther and

Byron, could have no action for good in any time or place. Both

propositions, if art had none but a direct moral influence, would be true

enough; and as this seems to be Whitman’s view, they were true enough for

him. He conceived the idea of a Literature which was to inhere in the

life of the present; which was to be, first, human, and next, American;

which was to be brave and cheerful as per contract; to give culture in a

popular and poetical presentment; and, in so doing, catch and stereotype

some democratic ideal of humanity which should be equally natural to all

grades of wealth and education, and suited, in one of his favourite

phrases, to “the average man.” To the formation of some such literature

as this his poems are to be regarded as so many contributions, one

sometimes explaining, sometimes superseding, the other: and the whole

together not so much a finished work as a body of suggestive hints. He

does not profess to have built the castle, but he pretends he has traced

the lines of the foundation. He has not made the poetry, but he flatters

himself he has done something towards making the poets.

His notion of the poetic function is ambitious, and coincides roughly

with what Schopenhauer has laid down as the province of the

metaphysician. The poet is to gather together for men, and set in order,

the materials of their existence. He is “The Answerer;” he is to find

some way of speaking about life that shall satisfy, if only for the

moment, man’s enduring astonishment at his own position. And besides

having an answer ready, it is he who shall provoke the question. He must

shake people out of their indifference, and force them to make some

election in this world, instead of sliding dully forward in a dream.

Life is a business we are all apt to mismanage; either living recklessly

from day to day, or suffering ourselves to be gulled out of our moments

by the inanities of custom. We should despise a man who gave as little

activity and forethought to the conduct of any other business. But in

this, which is the one thing of all others, since it contains them all,

we cannot see the forest for the trees. One brief impression obliterates

another. There is something stupefying in the recurrence of unimportant

things. And it is only on rare provocations that we can rise to take an

outlook beyond daily concerns, and comprehend the narrow limits and great

possibilities of our existence. It is the duty of the poet to induce

such moments of clear sight. He is the declared enemy of all living by

reflex action, of all that is done betwixt sleep and waking, of all the

pleasureless pleasurings and imaginary duties in which we coin away our

hearts and fritter invaluable years. He has to electrify his readers

into an instant unflagging activity, founded on a wide and eager

observation of the world, and make them direct their ways by a superior

prudence, which has little or nothing in common with the maxims of the

copy-book. That many of us lead such lives as they would heartily disown

after two hours’ serious reflection on the subject is, I am afraid, a

true, and, I am sure, a very galling thought. The Enchanted Ground of

dead-alive respectability is next, upon the map, to the Beulah of

considerate virtue. But there they all slumber and take their rest in

the middle of God’s beautiful and wonderful universe; the drowsy heads

have nodded together in the same position since first their fathers fell

asleep; and not even the sound of the last trumpet can wake them to a

single active thought.

The poet has a hard task before him to stir up such fellows to a sense of

their own and other people’s principles in life.

And it happens that literature is, in some ways, but an indifferent means

to such an end. Language is but a poor bull’s-eye lantern wherewith to

show off the vast cathedral of the world; and yet a particular thing once

said in words is so definite and memorable, that it makes us forget the

absence of the many which remain unexpressed; like a bright window in a

distant view, which dazzles and confuses our sight of its surroundings.

There are not words enough in all Shakespeare to express the merest

fraction of a man’s experience in an hour. The speed of the eyesight and

the hearing, and the continual industry of the mind, produce, in ten

minutes, what it would require a laborious volume to shadow forth by

comparisons and roundabout approaches. If verbal logic were sufficient,

life would be as plain sailing as a piece of Euclid. But, as a matter of

fact, we make a travesty of the simplest process of thought when we put

it into words for the words are all coloured and forsworn, apply

inaccurately, and bring with them, from former uses ideas of praise and

blame that have nothing to do with the question in hand. So we must

always see to it nearly, that we judge by the realities of life and not

by the partial terms that represent them in man’s speech; and at times of

choice, we must leave words upon one side, and act upon those brute

convictions, unexpressed and perhaps inexpressible, which cannot be

flourished in an argument, but which are truly the sum and fruit of our

experience. Words are for communication, not for judgment. This is what

every thoughtful man knows for himself, for only fools and silly

schoolmasters push definitions over far into the domain of conduct; and

the majority of women, not learned in these scholastic refinements, live

all-of-a-piece and unconsciously, as a tree grows, without caring to put

a name upon their acts or motives. Hence, a new difficulty for Whitman’s

scrupulous and argumentative poet; he must do more than waken up the

sleepers to his words; he must persuade them to look over the book and at

life with their own eyes.

This side of truth is very present to Whitman; it is this that he means

when he tells us that “To glance with an eye confounds the learning of

all times.” But he is not unready. He is never weary of descanting on

the undebatable conviction that is forced upon our minds by the presence

of other men, of animals, or of inanimate things. To glance with an eye,

were it only at a chair or a park railing, is by far a more persuasive

process, and brings us to a far more exact conclusion, than to read the

works of all the logicians extant. If both, by a large allowance, may be

said to end in certainty, the certainty in the one case transcends the

other to an incalculable degree. If people see a lion, they run away; if

they only apprehend a deduction, they keep wandering around in an

experimental humour. Now, how is the poet to convince like nature, and

not like books? Is there no actual piece of nature that he can show the

man to his face, as he might show him a tree if they were walking

together? Yes, there is one: the man’s own thoughts. In fact, if the

poet is to speak efficaciously, he must say what is already in his

hearer’s mind. That, alone, the hearer will believe; that, alone, he

will be able to apply intelligently to the facts of life. Any

conviction, even if it be a whole system or a whole religion, must pass

into the condition of commonplace, or postulate, before it becomes fully

operative. Strange excursions and high-flying theories may interest, but

they cannot rule behaviour. Our faith is not the highest truth that we

perceive, but the highest that we have been able to assimilate into the

very texture and method of our thinking. It is not, therefore, by

flashing before a man’s eyes the weapons of dialectic; it is not by

induction, deduction, or construction; it is not by forcing him on from

one stage of reasoning to another, that the man will be effectually

renewed. He cannot be made to believe anything; but he can be made to

see that he has always believed it. And this is the practical canon. It

is when the reader cries, “Oh, I know!” and is, perhaps, half irritated

to see how nearly the author has forestalled his own thoughts, that he is

on the way to what is called in theology a Saving Faith.

Here we have the key to Whitman’s attitude. To give a certain unity of

ideal to the average population of America—to gather their activities

about some conception of humanity that shall be central and normal, if

only for the moment—the poet must portray that population as it is. Like

human law, human poetry is simply declaratory. If any ideal is possible,

it must be already in the thoughts of the people; and, by the same

reason, in the thoughts of the poet, who is one of them. And hence

Whitman’s own formula: “The poet is individual—he is complete in himself:

the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not.” To show

them how good they are, the poet must study his fellow-countrymen and

himself somewhat like a traveller on the hunt for his book of travels.

There is a sense, of course, in which all true books are books of travel;

and all genuine poets must run their risk of being charged with the

traveller’s exaggeration; for to whom are such books more surprising than

to those whose own life is faithfully and smartly pictured? But this

danger is all upon one side; and you may judiciously flatter the portrait

without any likelihood of the sitter’s disowning it for a faithful

likeness. And so Whitman has reasoned: that by drawing at first hand

from himself and his neighbours, accepting without shame the

inconsistencies and brutalities that go to make up man, and yet treating

the whole in a high, magnanimous spirit, he would make sure of belief,

and at the same time encourage people forward by the means of praise.