y.

It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,--the
freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
mind.

A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold," he says, "the body
includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.

The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of hi