he sometimes wrote them himself and gave
them to the reporters. And yet nothing is surer than that he shaped his
life and did his work absolutely indifferent to either praise or blame; in
fact, that he deliberately did that which he knew would bring him
dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him
to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be
frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men
also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature,
and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human
nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be
kept up to the heroic pitch.

III

It was difficult to appreciate his liking for the newspaper. But he had
been a newspaper man himself; the printer's ink had struck in; he had many
associations with the press-room and the composing-room; he loved the
common, democratic character of the newspaper; it was the average man's
library. The homely uses to which it was put, and the humble firesides to
which it found its way, endeared it to him, and made him love to see his
name in it.

Whitman's vanity was of the innocent, good-natured kind. He was as
tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy
sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life
there was none.

His egotism is of the large generous species that never irritates or
pricks into you like that of the merely conceited man. His love, his
candor, his sympathy are on an equal scale.

His egotism comes finally to affect one like the independence and
indifference of natural law. It takes little heed of our opinion, whether
it be for or against, and keeps to its own way whatever befall.

Whitman's absolute faith in himself was a part of his faith in creation.
He felt himself so keenly a part of the whole that he shared its soundness
and excellence; he must be good as it is good.

IV

Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
give rise to the charge that he was a _poseur_. He was a _poseur_ in the
sense, and to the extent, that any man is a _poseur_ who tries to live up
to a certain ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
apart and look