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.

XIV

The world always has trouble with its primary men, or with the men who
have any primary gifts, like Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Tolstoi,
Ibsen. The idols of an age are nearly always secondary men: they break no
new ground; they make no extraordinary demands; our tastes and wants are
already adjusted to their type; we understand and approve of them at once.
The primary men disturb us; they are a summons and a challenge; they break
up the old order; they open up new territory which we are to subdue and
occupy; the next age and the next make more of them. In my opinion, the
next age and the next will make more of Whitman, and the next still more,
because he is in the great world-current, in the line of the evolutionary
movement of our time. Is it at all probable that Tennyson can ever be to
any other age what he has been to this? Tennyson marks an expiring age,
the sunset of the feudal world. He did not share the spirit to which the
future belongs. There was not one drop of democratic blood in his veins.
To him, the people were an hundred-headed beast.

XV

If my essay seems like one continual strain to attain the unattainable, to
compass and define Whitman, who will not be compassed and defined, I can
only say that I regret it, but could not well help it. Talkin