BOOKS.

THE UNCOLLF.CTED POETRY AND PROSE OF WALT WHITMAN.*

This is the kind of book which is sure to be sneered at, or, at any rate, greeted with the super-conventional remark that worshippers do harm, not service, to their saint by raking together all the immature and trivial things which he was careful to forget during his lifetime, and publishing them to the world. They had much better be allowed to sink into complete oblivion. There is, I admit, some appearance of reasonableness in this plea. Indeed, it is a good plea in so far as it is based upon the truisms that a man's bad work is not so good as his good, that it is better worth while to read a man's good work than his bad work; or, again, that a man's bad work had better be destroyed altogether. All these state- ments rest upon the fallacy that there is an absolute right or wrong in literature, and that somebody, name unknown, can tell perfectly whether a thing is bad or not. For myself, I do not trust the critics so highly, even if I know who they are. When they are unknown I doubt them exceedingly. Is not the -world full of good things which were condemned by the poets or prose-writers themselves, or at any rate condemned by their contemporaries ? Yet the judicious now regard these works as special gems in the poet's crown. There are several examples of Byron's lighter verse which were deemed in former generations quite insignificant, but which we now consider excellent.

Further, the real lover of literature, in the case of a true

man of letters, wants himself to be the judge of what is good or bad. He does not want somebody else to decide for him. Let the reader suppose Professor Jones sitting in front of a good coal fire and running through a large MS. book of new verses by Wordsworth, " written while a youth," or " on his first foreign tour." Let him further suppose that Professor Jones has come to think that the new verses can add nothing to the poet's fame, but, instead, would detract from it, and that therefore he proposes to fling the volume into the fire. Even if you knew Professor Jones to be a faultless critic you would surely seize the book from his audacious hands with a " Let me have a look before you do an irrevocable act like that. You are a capital judge, but you may be bilious this morning, or tired, or irritable. Anyway, I want to see for myself

whether you are right or wrong."

There is yet another argument for putting on record, as it were, all the works of a great man, and that is, that though they may be bad in themselves, they may be of great biographical interest..

All these preliminary observations apply, as it seems to me with great force, to the two new volumes of Walt Whitman's uncollected poetry and prose just given to the world by Mr.

Emory Holloway. If the publication of these books had been prevented as something between folly and sacrilege, we should have been distinctly poorer in regard to portions of the prose, and very much poorer in regard to certain biographical con- siderations of real interest. At first sight the poetry in ordinary metres seems utterly worthless—impossible to be read. Yet,

• The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman. Collected and edited by Emory Holloway. 2 vols. London: Heinemann. Pes. net.] as a matter of fact, a serious student of Whitman's power over language, rhetoric, and unmethodical measure may find in them some very curious suggestions. They show what a curious counter-instinct, unconscious, no doubt, Whitman had against metre. When he tried to use metre he wrote like a man in the " Poets' Corner " of a small country newspaper. Yet, directly be took to imrhymed, unmeasured verse, he showed that he had a masterly ear for the wider verbal harmonies.

Again, a great deal of Walt Whitman's prose can be shown to be of a distinctly high order, and I am surprised that so great and so sound and sympathetic a critic as Mr. Squire should recently have spoken as if Walt Whitman was no prose writer. If he will look at the preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass I cannot help thinking he would revise his verdict. Take, for example, the passage in which Whitman deals with the vocation of the poets :- "They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out of ages are worthy the grand idea—to them it is confided, and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or degrade it. The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. The turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the other. Come nigh them awhile, and, though they neither speak nor advise, you shall learn the faithful American lesson. Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp blow of the makes' of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and ]mows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat-- the enemy triumphs—the prison, the handcuffs, the iron neck- lace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote, and lead-balls do their work—the cause is asleep—the strong throats are choked with their own blood—the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other. . . . And is liberty gone out of place ? No, never. When liberty goes, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go : it waits for all the rest to go—it is the last."

That, of course, has plenty of faults, but surely it has also the mark of greatness. Take, again, the panegyric on the English language :- " The English language befriends the grand American expres- sion—it is brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough side of a race who, through all change of circumstance, was never without the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. It is the powerful language of resistance—it is the dialect of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy razes, and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith, self- esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude, prudence, decision and courage. It is the medium that shall well-nigh express the inexpressible."

Any man might be proud to have written that wonderful sentence : " It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of all who aspire." Magnificent, too, though I cannot quote it at length,is the peroration to the Preface, which begins : " The poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away."

But I must return to the volumes before me and to my second point—namely, the great biographical importance of what the cynical critic calls " literary sweepings." Mr. Holloway makes great play, as he has a right to do, with the MS. notebooks of Walt Whitman—books which the poet began to keep about the middle of the 'forties—that is, long before he had put on his singing robes and while he was just an ordinary working journalist, suffering, but more or less dumbly, from what I might call an optimistic and vociferous melancholy. Mr. Holloway tells us that the first of these MS. books begins " with a sense of suppressed, half-inarticulate power, in the language of a novel ecstasy."

" Some mystical experience, some great if not sudden access of intellectual power, some enlargement and clarifying of vision, some selfless throb of cosmic sympathy, has come to Walt Whitman. At first he, can only ejaculate his wonder, and pray for the advent of a perfect man who will be worthy to eoromtmi- rate to the world this new vision of humanity. Then, like the prophet Isaiah, whose great book he is wont to carry • in his pocket to Coney Island, he suddenly realizes that a vision is itself a commission, and from this moment he dedicatesiiimself to a life task as audacious as it seems divine. At last he has the courage and feels the mystic authority to assume the rule that he has, somewhat indefinitely, been calling upon- others to assume. The burden of his message, as in his dream of seven years before. is the future good of man, but aa yet he can only hint it inimperfect prose, the only language he has learned in the newspaper offices."

That is- a piece of real insight, and though it seems to have

escaped' Mi. Holloway's attention, it is curiously supported by a very remarkable passage which is to be found in Pemocratic Vistas

:-

"Even for the treatment of the universal, in politics, meta- physics, or anything, sooner or later we come down to one single, solitary soul. There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining eternal. This is the thought of identity— yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven and earth (significant only because of the Me in the centre), creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated and look'd upon, it expands over the whole earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven. The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its own central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto—not criticism by other standards, and adjustments thereto—is the lesson of Nature."

Although no one can say with certainty in what period this was written, or exactly to what it alludes, I think there can be little doubt that it is the description of an actual spiritual

experience occasioned by that condition of ecstasy which Berlioz called " isolement," Tennyson " vastness "—the con- dition referred to by Wordsworth, though he gave it no name,

in the famous passage in the " Ode to Immortality " which begins:—

"Failings from us, vanishings, • • High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised."

The passage may fitly recall us to Walt Whitman's prose works. Taken in the larger sense, the prose which is entirely new is not of very great moment, but every now and then you come upon memorable things. Especially is this true of the MS. books. Here are some examples from the MS. book of 1847—a little book we are told : " 31 by lik inches in size, locks with a pencil thrust through three improvised leather loops." The following is a curious piece of pantheism, almost Chinese in its form of expression :--

" The soul of spirit transmits itself into all matter—into rocks, and can live the life of a rock—into the sea, and can feel itself in the sea—into the oak, or other trees—into an animal, and feel itself a horse, a fish, or bird—into the earth—into the motions of the suns and stars.

A man only is interested in anything when ho identifies himself with it—he must himself be whirling and speeding through space like the planet Mercury—he must be driving like a cloud—he must shine like the sun—he must be orbic and balanced in the air, like this earth—he must crawl like the

pismire he must—

Ho would be growing fragrantly in the air, like the locust blossoms—he would rumble and crash like the thunder in the sky—he would spring like a cat on his prey—he would splash like a whale in the. . . .

The mean and bandaged spirit is perpetually dissatisfied with itself—it is too wicked, or too poor, or too feeble. Never speak of the soul as anything but intrinsically great. The adjective affixed to it must always testify greatness and immortality and purity."

Here is a piece of more personal psychology :- " I cannot understand the mystery, but I am always conscious of myself as two—as my soul and I : and I reckon it is the same with all men and women.

I know that my body will (decay).

I will not be a great philosopher, and found any school, and build it with iron pillars, and gather the young men around me, and make them my disciples, that new superior churches and politica shall come. But I will take each man and woman of you to the window and open the shutters and the sash, and my left arm• shall hook you round the waist, and my right shall point you to the endless and beginningless road along whose sides are crowded the rich cities of all living philosophy, and oval gates that pass you in to fields of clover and landscapes thumped with sassafras, and orchards of good apples, and every breath through your mouth shall be of a new perfumed and elastic air, which is love. Not I—not God—can travel this road- for you. It is not far, it is within the stretch of your thumb ; perhaps you shall find you are on it already and did, not know. Perhaps you shall find it everywhere over the ocean and over the land, when you once have the vision to behold it."

. Every now and then the immature Whitman bursts into epi- grammatic comments, some of them quite good : " The dismal and measureless fool called a rich man." Here is another : "

will not descend among prufessors and capitalists—I will turn the- ends of my trousers around my boots, and my cuffs back from my wrists, and go with drivers and boatmen and men that- catch first or work in the field. I know they are sublime."

To such remarks one can only add : " Spoken like a scholar and a gentleman." " Professors and capitalists "—what a delightful• coupling, and probably true if one could see all the inner threads

of connexion ! But I fear to grow tedious in expressing my interest in Whitman's " sweepings." I will end with a passage which will, at any rate, unite most readers in admiration for Whitman's power of vivid expression :— " Our country seems to be threatened with a sort of ossification of the spirit. Amid all the advanced grandmas of these times beyond any other of which we know—amid the never enough praised spread of common education and common newspapers and books—amid the universal accessibility of riches and personal comforts—the wonderful inventions—the cheap swift travel bringing far nations together—amid all the extreme reforms and benevolent societies—the current that bears us is one broadly and deeply materialistic and infidel. It is the very worst kind of infidelity because it suspects not itself but proceeds complacently onward and abounds in churches, and all the days of its life solves never the simple riddle why it has not a good time. For I do not believe the people of these days are happy ? The public countenance lacks its bloom of love and its freshness of faith. For want of these, it is cadaverous as a corpse."

But though my spirit is finely touched to Whitman's fine issues I do not agree. My sympathies, alike of comprehension and of approbation, are with the new generation. They are not any more materialistic or more infidel than we were, though

they may give " grosser names " to their hopes and their ideals.

They are neither pessimists nor fribbles. They love knowledge and they love truth, and they will endure to attain them. This is inscribed on their banner and in this sign they shall conquer.

J. ST. Lox STRACHEY.