e power and wisdom of his utterance.
If he cannot do this we shall soon tire of him.

That Whitman was a personality the like of which the world has not often
seen, and that his message to his country and to his race was of prime
importance, are conclusions at which more and more thinking persons are
surely arriving.

His want of art, of which we have heard so much, is, it seems to me, just
this want of the usual trappings and dress uniform of the poets. In the
essentials of art, the creative imagination, the plastic and quickening
spirit, the power of identification with the thing contemplated, and the
absolute use of words, he has few rivals.

XI

I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
violently for him or violently against, and it will require the
perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.

"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
vanity."

To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
follows, I shall be more than content.

XII

In the world of literature, as in the world of physical forces, things
adjust themselves after a while, and no impetus can be given to any man's
name or fame that will finally carry it beyond the limit of his real
worth. However "one-sided" my enthusiasm for Whitman may be, or that of
any of his friends may be, there is no danger but that in time he will
find exactly his proper place and level. My o