their hands. It was Whitman's aim; these
were the effects he sought. I think beyond doubt that he gives us the
impression of something dynamic, something akin to the vital forces of the
organic world, much more distinctly and fully than any other poet who has
lived.

Whitman always aimed to make his reader an active partner with him in his
poetic enterprise. "I seek less," he says, "to state or display any theme
or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the
theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." This trait is brought
out by Mr. Gosse in a little allegory. "Every reader who comes to
Whitman," he says, "starts upon an expedition to the virgin forest. He
must take his conveniences with him. He will make of the excursion what
his own spirit dictates. [We generally do, in such cases, Mr. Gosse.]
There are solitudes, fresh air, rough landscape, and a well of water, but
if he wishes to enjoy the latter he must bring his own cup with him." This
phase of Whitman's work has never been more clearly defined. Mr. Gosse
utters it as an adverse criticism. It is true exposition, however we take
it, what we get out of Whitman depends so largely upon what we bring to
him. Readers will not all get the same. We do not all get the same out of
a walk or a mountain climb. We get out of him in proportion to the
sympathetic and interpretative power of our own spirits. Have you the
brooding, warming, vivifying mother-mind? That vague, elusive,
incommensurable something in the "Leaves" that led Symonds to say that
talking about Whitman was like talking about the universe,--that seems to
challenge our pursuit and definition, that takes on so many different
aspects to so many different minds,--it seems to be this that has led Mr.
Gosse to persuade himself that there is no real Walt Whitman, no man whom
we can take, as we take any other figure in literature, as an "entity of
positive value and definite characteristics," but a mere mass of literary
protoplasm that takes the instant impression of whatever mood approaches
it. Stevenson finds a Stevenson in it, Mr. Symonds finds a Symonds,
Emerson finds an Emerson, etc. Truly may our poet say, "I contain
multitudes." In what other poet do these men, or others like them, find
themselves?

Whitman was a powerful solvent undoubtedly. He never hardens into anything
like a system, or into mere intellectual propositions. One of his own
phrases, "the fluid and swallowing s