ever emerging and challenging attention on his own
account, denying us when we too literally seek him, mocking us when we
demand his credentials, and revealing himself only when we have come to
him upon his own terms.

The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no
outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader. "This is
no book," he says: "who touches this touches a man." In one sense Whitman
is without art,--the impression which he always seeks to make is that of
reality itself. He aims to give us reality without the usual literary
veils and illusions,--the least possible amount of the artificial, the
extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader. He banishes from
his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,--all
atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and
decoration,--and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers.
The verse does not seem to have been shaped; it might have grown: it takes
no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular,
rhythmical, and always fluid and real. A cry will always be raised against
the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and
falls back upon simple Nature, or upon himself, as Millet did in painting,
and Wagner in music, and Whitman in poetry.

Whitman's working ideas, the principles that inspired him, are all
directly related to life and the problems of life; they are democracy,
nature, freedom, love, personality, religion: while the ideas from which
our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,--they are
literary ideas, such as lucidity, form, beauty.

VII

Much light is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark
which he once made in conversation with Dr. Bucke:--

"I have aimed to make the book simple,--tasteless, or with little
taste,--with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or
writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is
not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her
productions--her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, meats--with
faint and delicate flavor and fragrance, but these in the long run make
the deepest impression. Man, dealing with natural things, constantly aims
to increase their piquancy. By crossing and selection he deepens and
intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so