ll
in the act of settlement. And he could not but wonder what it would turn
out; whether the compromise would be very just or very much the reverse,
and give great or little scope for healthy human energies. From idle
wonder to active speculation is but a step; and he seems to have been
early struck with the inefficacy of literature and its extreme
unsuitability to the conditions. What he calls "Feudal Literature" could
have little living action on the tumult of American democracy; what he
calls the "Literature of Woe," meaning the whole tribe of "Werther" and
Byron, could have no action for good in any time or place. Both
propositions, if art had none but a direct moral influence, would be
true enough; and as this seems to be Whitman's view, they were true
enough for him. He conceived the idea of a Literature which was to
inhere in the life of the present; which was to be, first, human, and
next, American; which was to be brave and cheerful as per contract; to
give culture in a popular and poetical presentment; and, in so doing,
catch and stereotype some democratic ideal of humanity which should be
equally natural to all grades of wealth and education, and suited, in
one of his favourite phrases, to "the average man." To the formation of
some such literature as this his poems are to be regarded as so many
contributions, one sometimes explaining, sometimes superseding, the
other: and the whole together not so much a finished work as a body of
suggestive hints. He does not profess to have built the castle, but he
pretends he has traced the lines of the foundation. He has not made the
poetry, but he flatters himself he has done something towards making the
poets.

His notion of the poetic function is ambitious, and coincides roughly
with what Schopenhauer has laid down as the province of the
metaphysician. The poet is to gather together for men, and set in order,
the materials of their existence. He is "The Answerer"; he is to find
some way of speaking about life that shall satisfy, if only for the
moment, man's enduring astonishment at his own position. And besides
having an answer ready, it is he who shall provoke the question. He must
shake people out of their indifference, and force them to make some
election in this world, instead of sliding dully forward in a dream.
Life is a business we are all apt to mismanage; either living recklessly
from day to day, or suffering ourselves to be gulled out of our moments
by the