LITERATURE 



Perry, like the other critics, makes much of, was a 

 vital part of Whitman's entire scheme. The question 

 is not, Does he transmute his common material into 

 the gold of poetry? but, Has he enough gold in his 

 vaults to redeem it? Is he master of it? What would 

 clog a brook is lost in a river. Had Whitman at- 

 tempted to prettify these things, to dress them up 

 in the habiliments of rhyme and poetic finery, that 

 would have put another face on his enterprise. 



The most precious thing any imaginative work 

 can give us is the impression of a large, loving, and 

 powerful personality. I care not what the medium is 

 if it gives us this impression. Is not greatness of 

 soul above all else? Plenty of poets give us the im- 

 pression of the refined, the pretty, the gentle, the 

 devout, but how many give us the impression of 

 the great, the powerful, the godlike? Of the cosmic 

 and the all-inclusive, Wliitman alone among poets 

 gives us the impression. 



Were the final impression which he makes that of 

 the uncouth, the coarse, the half-cultured, or the 

 merely big, how long, think you, could he hold the 

 attention of thoughtful minds? Not long, surely. 

 This was the first impression he made upon John 

 Addington Symonds. "But in course of a short 

 time," he says, *' Whitman delivered my soul of 

 these debilities"; that is, brought him a stimulus 

 and a message which are never the gift of the coarse 

 and the uncouth. 



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