I
The "good gray poet" is the supreme example of the Vagabond in
literature. It is quite possible for one not drawn towards the Vagabond
temperament to admire Stevenson, for Stevenson was a fine artist; to take
delight in the vigorous "John Bullism" of _Lavengro_; to sympathize with
the natural mysticism of Jefferies; the Puritan austerity of Thoreau. In
short, there are aspects in the writings of the other "Vagabonds" in this
volume which command attention quite apart from the characteristics
specifically belonging to the literary Vagabond.
But it is not possible to view Whitman apart from his Vagabondage. He is
proud of it, glories in it, and flings it in your face. Others, whatever
strain of wildness they may have had, whatever sympathies they may have
felt for the rough sweetness of the earth, however unconventional their
habits, accepted at any rate the recognized conventions of literature.
As men, as thinkers, they were unconventional; as artists conventional.
They retained at any rate the literary garments of civilized society.
Not so Whitman. He is the Orson of literature. Unconventionality he
carries out to its logical conclusion, and strides stark naked among our
academies of learning. A strange, uncouth, surprising figure, it is
impossible to ignore him however much he may shock our susceptibilities.
Many years ago Mr. Swinburne greeted him as "a strong-winged soul with
prophetic wings"; subsequently he referred to him as a "drunken
apple-woman reeling in a gutter." For this right-about-face he has been
upbraided by Whitman's admirers. Certainly it is unusual to find any
reader starting out to bless and ending with a curse. Usually it is the
precedent of Balaam that is followed. But Mr. Swinburne's mingled
feelings typify the attitude of every one who approaches the poet, though
few of us can express ourselves so resourcefully as the author of _Poems
and Ballads_.
There may be some students who accept Whitman without demur at the outset
on his own terms. All I can say is that I never heard of one. However
broad-minded you may consider yourself, however catholic in your
sympathies, Whitman is bound to get athwart some pet prejudice, to
discover some shred of conventionality. Gaily, heedlessly, you start out
to explore his writings, just as you might start on a walking tour. He
is in touch with the primal forces of Nature, you hear. "So much the
better," say you; "civilization has ceased to charm." "You are enamoured
of wildness." Thus men talk before camping out, captivated by the
picturesque and healthy possibilities, and oblivious to the
inconveniences of roughing it.
But just as some amount of training is wanted before a walking tour, or a
period of camping out, so is it necessary to prepare yourself for a
course of Whitman. And this, not because there is any exotic mystery
about Whitman, not because there are any intellectual subtleties about
his work, as there are in Browning, but because he is the pioneer of a
new order, and the pioneer always challenges the old order; our tastes
require adjusting before they can value it properly.
There is no question about a "Return to Nature" with Whitman. He never
left it. Thoreau quitted the Emersonian study to get fresh inspiration
from the woods. Even Jefferies, bred up in the country, carried about
with him the delicate susceptibilities of the neurotic modern. Borrow
retained a firm grip-hold of many conventions of the city. But Whitman?
It was no case with him of a sojourn in the woods, or a ramble on the
heath. He was a spiritual native of the woods and heath; not, as some
seem to think, because he was a kind of wild barbarian who loved the
rough and uncouth, and could be found only in unfrequented parts, but
because he was in touch with the elemental everywhere. The wildness of
Whitman, the barbarian aspects of the man, have been overrated. He is
wild only in so far as he is cosmic, and the greater contains the less.
He loves the rough and the smooth, not merely the rough. His songs are
no mere paeans of rustic solitudes; they are songs of the crowded
streets, as well of the country roads; of men and women--of every
type--no less than of the fields and the streams. In fact, he seeks the
elemental everywhere. Thoreau found it in the Indian, Borrow in the
gypsies, Whitman, with a finer comprehensiveness, finds it in the
multitude. His business is to bring it to the surface, to make men and
women rejoice in--not shrink from--the great primal forces of life. But
he is not for moralizing--
"I give nothing as duties,
What others give as duties I give as loving impulses.
(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)"
He has no quarrel with civilization as such. The teeming life of the
town is as wonderful to him as the big solitude of the Earth. Carlyle's
pleasantry about the communistic experiments of the American
Transcendentalists would have no application for him. "A return to
Acorns and expecting the Golden Age to arrive."