LITERATURE- 



§ 



Mr. Perry, in his "Life of Whitman," does not 

 bring out Whitman's main characteristics very 

 clearly — the fact that he stood so entirely upon 

 ground of his own, was, in fact, a new type of man 

 appearing in literature, and that he proved and 

 justified himself upon those new grounds. 



Mr. Perry has to chip away a good deal of Whit- 

 man to make him conform to the accepted academic 

 models, and the process is like shearing Samson of 

 his locks — his strength and significance are gone. 

 If one fails to see that here is the democratic spirit 

 assuming almost colossal proportions, taking pos- 

 session of the world in its own right, gay, proud, 

 nonchalant, but loving and all-inclusive, reverent 

 toward the past, receptive toward the present, con- 

 fident toward the future, taking Science at its word 

 that the celestial laws are operative here underfoot 

 as well as up there in the sky, taking religion at its 

 word that the greatest thing in the world is love 

 and that man is divine inside and out, writing 

 his poems from the inspiration of these ideas, and 

 bringing the democratic standard, the standard of 

 the fundamental equality of all men, to bear upon 

 all things, and thereby making in a sense a new 

 scale of human values — unless, I say, one sees this 

 in Whitman, one misses the main thing. It seems to 

 me almost an impertinence to compare him to 

 Rousseau, or Wordsworth, or our own Whittier, 

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