But let me give without further delay a fuller hint of the attitude these
pages assume and hold towards the subject they discuss.
There are always, or nearly always, a few men born to each generation who
embody the best thought and culture of that generation, and express it in
approved literary forms. From Petrarch down to Lowell, the lives and works
of these men fill the literary annals; they uphold the literary and
scholarly traditions; they are the true men of letters; they are justly
honored and beloved in their day and land. We in this country have
recently, in the death of Dr. Holmes, mourned the loss of the last of the
New England band of such men. We are all indebted to them for solace, and
for moral and intellectual stimulus.
Then, much more rarely, there is born to a race or people men who are like
an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who
bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are
not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times
for the most part decry and disown,--the primal, original, elemental men.
It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the
minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He
is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets,--nearer the
founders and discoverers, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic,
patriarchal men who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with
the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the
seer, the prophet. The specialization and differentiation of our latter
ages of science and culture is less marked in him than in other poets.
Poetry, philosophy, religion, are all inseparably blended in his pages. He
is in many ways a reversion to an earlier type. Dr. Brinton has remarked
that his attitude toward the principle of sex and his use of sexual
imagery in his poems, are the same as in the more primitive religions.
Whitman was not a poet by elaboration, but by suggestion; not an artist by
formal presentation, but by spirit and conception; not a philosopher by
system and afterthought, but by vision and temper.
In his "Leaves," we again hear the note of destiny,--again see the
universal laws and forces exemplified in the human personality, and turned
upon life with love and triumph.