erlying an
indifferent form. Those whose objections rested on their incapacity of
penetrating further than the surface of the headline are rapidly
beginning to discern in Walt Whitman's writings a force, a sentiment, a
moral passion, and a natural grandeur that is amply compensating for the
occasional roughness or looseness of the expressions he mirrors them in.
Before his death the good old poet had not only the satisfaction of
knowing that his writings have been widely read and universally
commented on, but he had the pleasure of seeing his "Leaves of Grass"
translated into German by T. W. Rolleston, of Dublin, and Professor
Schwartz, of Dresden, of having parts of it translated into French, and
a few years ago Mr. Lee consulted me as to the advisability of rendering
them into Russian, parts of the book having already been published in
the periodicals of the Russian emigres in Switzerland. Not only this,
but his innovations, his genius, have even founded a school, and has a
following. The little volume published some time ago in England, under
the title "Toward Democracy," by Ed. Carpenter, written in the same
style as "The Leaves of Grass," is also gradually finding its way to the
surface of the highest consideration. And such passages as this, when
Nature is calling to man:--

"I, Nature, stand and call to you, though you heed not:

"Have courage, come forth, O child of mine, that you may see me."

"As a nymph of the invisible air before her mortal beloved, so I glance
before you. I dart and stand in your path, and turn away from your
heedless eyes like one in pain. I am the ground; I listen to the sound
of your feet. They come nearer. I shut my eyes and feel their tread over
my face," etc. etc.; or such an outburst as this: "Ireland--liberty's
deathless flame leaping on her Atlantic shore,"--are enough to convince
the human mind that men who write them can be actuated only by impulses
of which genius alone is capable!

It is this impulse--this sober, solemn love pervading the writings of
Walt Whitman which has invested his compositions with a property far
transcending in genuine beauty the effusions of those poets whose object
in writing is more the display of a capacity for finished manipulation
of delicate form, than the manifestation of a free conception of a grand
spirit. Walt Whitman is spontaneous without being careless. His style is
unhesitating, his diction is flowing, smooth, without being searching or