Part 4 (2/2)

It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow

And the influence of his poeical cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes morbid and mean He says the ”expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face: it is in his limbs and joints also; it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide hih the cotton and flannel; to see him pass conveys as er to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side”

He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: ”To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,--I do not ask anyin staying close toon them, and in the contact and odor of thes please the soul, but these please the soul well” Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he found in the society of the common people that satisfied hi The subordination by Whitman of the purely intellectual to the huh his poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, as deficient in the sensuous, probably could not appreciate

XI

The ate, tolerant, tender, sympathetic, restful man, easy of approach, indifferent to any special social or other distinctions and acco you from the start for yourself alone

Children were very fond of hiainst hinetis He was rich in teeneration,--rich in all the purely human and emotional endowments and basic qualities Then there was a look about him hard to describe, and which I have seen in no other face,--a gray, brooding, ele pried to the first ray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was born, and that had surely set its seal upon him? I know not, but I feel the man with that look is not of the day , but absorbing,--”draining” is the word happily used by Willias to hih syh mere intellectual force

XII

Walt Whitave out their quality and ats you have always known,--the day, the sky, the soil, your own parents,--were in no way veiled, or kept in abeyance, by his culture or poetic gifts He was redolent of the hureat pride and hauteur, yet his habitual e, healthful humanity,--the virtue and flavor of sailors, soldiers, laborers, travelers, or people who live with real things in the open air His commonness rose into the uncommon, the extraordinary, but without any hint of the exclusive or specially favored He was indeed ”no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart froe of his book, and that it always effuses, is the spirit of common, universal humanity,--humanity apart froes and refinements, as it is in and of itself in its relations to the whole systes, in contradistinction to the literature of culture which effuses the spirit of the select and exclusive

His life was the same Walt Whit The comen, the poor, the illiterate, the outcast--saw themselves in him, and he saw himself in them: the attraction was mutual He was always content with common, unadorned humanity

Specially intellectual people rather repelled him; the wit, the scholar, the poet, must have a rich endowment of the common, universal, human attributes and qualities to pass current with hiht the society of boatmen, railroad men, farmers, mechanics, printers, teamsters, mothers of families, etc, rather than the society of professional s in the open air--the virtue of rocks, trees, hills--drew him most; and it is these qualities and virtues that he has aimed above all others to put into his poetry, and to put them there in such a way that he who reads nized poets put into their pages the virtue and quality of the fine gentleman, or of the sensitive, artistic nature: this poet of de Adamic man,--man acted upon at first hand by the shows and forces of universal nature

If our poet ever sounds the note of the crude, the loud, the exaggerated, he is false to hied with having done so a few times, in his earlier work, but not in his later In the 1860 edition of his poems stands this portraiture, which may stand for himself, with one or two features rather overdrawn:--

”His shape arises Arrogant, her, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman, Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea, Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever froood feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and back, Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calentleman on equal terray and open, of slow ht arm round the shoulders of his friends, coive him their sweetest touches, and never their meanest

A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the life of the wharves and the great ferries, Enterer everywhere, welco others, always offering hiy, Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive, of copious friendshi+p, sublimity, firmness, self-esteem, co by life, manners, words to contribute illustrations of results of These States, Teacher of the unquenchable creed naotism, Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against his”

XIII

Whitman was determined, at whatever risk to his own reputation, to make the character which he has exploited in his poems a faithful compend of American humanity, and to do this the rowdy elely imputes it to himself, as, for that uilty of

Whitman developed slowly and late upon the side that related hie,--to the es of the world of parlors and drawing-rooood form;” the natural man that he was shows crude in certain relations His publication of Eium of ”Leaves of Grass” has been much commented upon

There may be two opinions as to the propriety of his course in this respect: a letter froer upon a matter of public interest is not usually looked upon as a private letter Emerson never spoke with more felicity and penetration than he does in this letter; but it is for Whitman's own sake that ould have had hireatly pluuilty of the very bad taste of printing a sentence from the letter upon the cover of the next edition of his book Grant that it showed a certain crudeness, unripeness, in one side of the man; later in life, he could not have erred in this way Ruskin is reported saying that he never in his life wrote a letter to any hu should be posted up in the h the town But E man than Ruskin, and was much more likely to be shocked by such a circumstance

It has been said that the publication of this letter ave Whitman the offense That he was disturbed by it and by the storm that arose there can be little doubt; but there is no evidence that he allowed the fact to interfere with his friendshi+p for the poet Charles W Eldridge, who personally knew of the relations of the two men, says:--

”There was not a year from 1855 (the date of the Emerson letter and its publication) down to 1860 (the year Walt cae edition of 'Leaves of Grass'), that Emerson did not personally seek out Walt at his Brooklyn hoether at the Astor House in New York

Besides that, during these years E Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of introduction to him This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who has committed an unpardonable offense

”I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently came down from Concord to see hiether, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel On several occasions they -room Their relations were as cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Eh, of course, Walt appreciated and enjoyed Emerson's coht the company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary society I know that at this tio, probably through his fear that he would see too much of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around Eave hiave hi people on literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was rounds What you had seen or felt or suffered or done was of ht; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the last person you had met, or the last chore you had done