190 BIEDS AND POETS 



Before tlie man's complete acceptance and assimi- 

 lation by America, he may have to be first passed 

 down through the minds of critics and commenta- 

 tors, and given to the people with some of his rank 

 new quality taken off, — a quality like that which 

 adheres to objects in the open air, and makes them 

 either forbidding or attractive, as one's mood is 

 healthful and robust or feeble and languid. The 

 processes are silently at work. Abeady seen from 

 a distance, and from other atmospheres and surround- 

 ings, he assumes magnitude and orbic coherence ; for 

 in curious contrast to the general denial of Whit- 

 man in this country (though he has more lovers and 

 admirers here than is generally believed) stands the 

 reception accorded him in Europe. The poets there, 

 almost without exception, recognize his transcendent 

 quality, the men of science his thorough scientific 

 basis, the republicans his inborn democracy, and all 

 his towering picturesque personality and modern- 

 ness. Professor Clifford says he is more thoroughly 

 in harmony with the spirit and letter of advanced 

 scientism than any other living poet. Professor 

 Tyrrell and Mr. Symonds find him eminently Greek, 

 in the sense in which to be natural and "self-regu- 

 lated by the law of perfect health " is to be Greek. 

 The French " Eevue des Deux Mondes " pronounces 

 his war poems the most vivid, the most humanly 

 passionate, and the most modern, of all the verse of 

 the nineteenth century. Freiligrath translated him 

 into German, and hailed him as the founder of a 

 new democratic and modern order of poetry, greater 



