188 BIRDS AND POETS 



ward in his literary expression; in fact, how the 

 one was a living commentary upon the other. After 

 the test of time, nothing goes home like the test of 

 actual intimacy ; and to tell me that Whitman is not 

 a large, fine, fresh, magnetic personality, making 

 you love him, and want always to be with him, 

 were to tell me that my whole past life is a decep- 

 tion, and all the impression of my perceptives a 

 fraud. I have studied him as I have studied the 

 birds, and have found that the nearer I got to him 

 the more I saw. Nothing about a first- class man 

 can be overlooked; he is to be studied in every fea- 

 ture, — in his physiology and phrenology, in the 

 shape of his head, in his brow, his eye, his glance, 

 his nose, his ear (the ear is as indicative in a man 

 as in a horse), his voice. In Whitman all these 

 things are remarkably striking and suggestive. His 

 face exhibits a rare combination of harmony and 

 sweetness with strength, — strength like the vaults 

 and piers of the Roman architecture. Sculptor 

 never carved a finer ear or a more imaginative brow. 

 Then his heavy-lidded, absorbing eye, his sympa- 

 thetic voice, and the impression which he makes of 

 starting from the broad bases of the universal human 

 traits. (If Whitman was grand in his physical and 

 perfect health, I think him far more so now (1877), 

 cheerfully mastering paralysis, penury, and old age. ) 

 You know, on seeing the man and becoming familiar 

 with his presence, that, if he achieve the height at 

 all, it will be from where every man stands, and not 

 from some special genius, or exceptional and adven- 



