ot be
surpassed. And now, like many other noble and good men, after serving
his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life at the
very outset in her service. Such things are gloomy--yet there is a
text, 'God doeth all things well,' the meaning of which, after due
time, appears to the soul.

"I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, about your
son, from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while, for
I loved the young man, though I but saw him immediately to lose him."

It is easy enough to pick holes in the grammar of this letter, but what
are we to say of its profound goodness and tenderness? It is written as
though he had the mother's face before his eyes, and saw her wincing in
the flesh at every word. And what, again, are we to say of its sober
truthfulness, not exaggerating, not running to phrases, not seeking to
make a hero out of what was only an ordinary but good and brave young
man? Literary reticence is not Whitman's stronghold; and this reticence
is not literary, but humane; it is not that of a good artist but that of
a good man. He knew that what the mother wished to hear about was Frank;
and he told her about her Frank as he was.

V

Something should be said of Whitman's style, for style is of the essence
of thinking. And where a man is so critically deliberate as our author,
and goes solemnly about his poetry for an ulterior end, every indication
is worth notice. He has chosen a rough, unrhymed, lyrical verse;
sometimes instinct with a fine processional movement; often so rugged
and careless that it can only be described by saying that he has not
taken the trouble to write prose. I believe myself that it was selected
principally because it was easy to write, although not without
recollections of the marching measures of some of the prose in our
English Old Testament. According to Whitman, on the other hand, "the
time has arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form between
Prose and Poetry ... for the most cogent purposes of those great inland
states, and for Texas, and California, and Oregon";--a statement which
is among the happiest achievements of American humour. He calls his
verses "recitatives," in easily followed allusion to a musical form.
"Easily written, loose-fingered chords," he cries, "I feel the thrum of
your climax and close." Too often, I fear, he is the only one who can
perceive the rhythm; and in spite of Mr.