WALT WHITMAN.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXVI, Issue 74, 31 March 1892, Page 2

WALT WHITMAN.

[COMMUNIOATED.] "Obituary -Walt Whitman." Suoh was tho brief telegraphic nnuouiioemeut that convoyed to us a fow days ago that one of tho mightiest intellcoUtal aud emotional forces of modern literature was quenched for evor. It would bo affectation to pretend that literature has lost to any serious exlout by Whitmau's death; for the *' good, gray poof had uttered his life-gospel, and waa waiting calmly for the coming of that Death, whioh he bad glorified and beautified iv ono of his poems, Tha grand physique, united to a mind, placid and simple iv its inasaiveness, had woathered some violent attaoks of illness ; but Whitman's oroativc power had probably run its course, and ho remained only a great personality, stimulating aud roviviug tho receptive minds whioh come in contact with him. How it bad fared with him physically of lato years we know not. Not many years ago the writer of these lines sought him out at that verj unlovely house of his, in a vory unlovely thoroughfare, on the banks of tho Delaware River, iv Camden Town, Phila-- j delphia, But the author of "Leaves of Grass" was away tramping in Canada, and tho visitor could only make acquaintance with the dull, formal 'pirlor"-furnitureand a very unpoetio, but kindhearted house, keeper. Tha surroundings were typioil of Whitman. For beauty aa suoh, whether in material things or in art, he oared nothing whatever. The majestio sweep of the Delaware or the Hudson, tho mighty nißh of humanity in Broadway or Market Street, tho stir aud bustle of wharves, the sun shining in hiß swength and and kindling life and fertility in the bosom of earth: these things were nioro to whom than brio-a-brao or soulpturea or pioture galleries or the mystic beauty of musical harmonies. But beauty in a deeper and fuller sense thrilled every fibre of Whitman's soul. Life to him was one loug draught of joy. Most thoroughly of modern poets he interprets to us tho old pagan spirit, whioh found the whole world beautiful, and the most beautiful thing of all, man himself. Whitman v idtemplatod himself, and found a soul

made up of mighty impulses, joined to a body of wondrous make and oapaoitits. He i rovels in setting forth the grandeur and beauty of tbis thing-Himself. It does not stnko him with awe, as the Psalmist, who i found himself " fearfully and wonderfully made," but with \ t-iumphant gladness. Thia is egoism ; but it js a broad and representative egoism, whioh contains in itself all altruisms. Selfishness or vanity in tho ordinary sense is absolutely inconceivable in Whitmiu. In himself ho included the whole universe, At times ho almost forgot his own individual existence. After the Amoiieau war he spent his days iv the hospitals of Washington, ministoring to the sufferiug and the dying. On his way thither eaoh day he walked through the flowery fields, and lay on his back in the sun, bo that he might bring something of the gladuess of nature iv his heart and on his face to the wards of the hospital. His ministrations may have been clumsy ; but the bright, tonder sympathy of thia burly man did the poor creatures more good than the deft fingers of nurse or surgeon could have done. They knew nothing of " Leaves of Grass " ; they only saw a big man in a woollen shirt, with a grand head, and a face and voice overflowing with love and kindness, Whitman's poetio productions are titanio in their strength, but are at the same time ohaotio in their formlessness. His poems are not rounded off according to any reoognised rules of art. They begin abruptly, roll on iv long, sonorous lines, whioh tike no account of rhythm or metre, and end as abruptly as they began. Sometimes we fiud long strings of names of places; sometimes an enumeration of parts of the body, or qualities of the mind; sometimes a piece of colloquial prose running on for several lines. But there is a melody in Whitman, whioh is as the melody of the elements j it is like the moaning of the sea or tho sighing of the winds. For a perfect speoimen of this melody, take the poem beginning: — " With husky, haughty lips, 0 sea," a poem which was published a few years ago jiu an American magaziue. There is a breath I of the elements, too, in the lines : — " Whosoever speaks to mo with the right voice, Him will I follow, as the waters follow the moon, Silently aud with fluid steps, anywhere round tho world." The object* of Whitman's love were the men and women around him, the creatures of flesh and blood, who brushed past him in tho streets, or sat by his side in railway " oars "or street omnibuses. Of an abstract Humanity, suoh as Positivists worship and sentimentalists simper over, he knew nothing whatever, Indeed with abstractions of any kind, whether religious or moral, he hid no point of contaot. He Baid that to himself there were no duties, there were only impulses. Blsewhore, too, in Betting forth the condition of animals in contrast with that of man ;— '■They do not make me siok disoussing their duty to God." Whitman felt no need of moral or spiritual exalsations. To him the mighty impulses of his soul and his body, the grand comradeship of human beings, and tho great life putsatiug through the univeree, formed spiritual food enough. These powerlul naturalistlo oanoeptions were set forth by nira with a force, vigour and courage, whioh have never been surpassed. It may be Baid, as ol course it has been many times said, that the strength of the setting forth does not redeem its occasional grossness. The same has been said of Shakspeare, and will no doubt be said many times again. And yet the most rigid moralists regard Shakspeare aa morally invigorating, simply beoauae the heart o! the man is healthy to its very oentre. Whitman will have a harder battle than Shakspeare, because it is not merely occasional expressions that offend iv him, but the spirit ot the man and ol his teaching, that is repulsive to many. But of prurienoy or vioiousness thore is not a trace in him, If approaohed with the same strenuous oourago whh whioh he lived and wrote ho will bo found a moral tonio, strengthening and invigorating, purging away the noxious vapours ot uffeotatiou aud self -deoep. ion, whioh befog the moral seuss of mankind. However this nny bo, hs remains for us a foroe, not of Amerioau only, but of worldwide, significance ; a foroe whioh must be taken account of by all who wish to estimate tbe developments of tho hunun Bpirit in its struggles towards a fuller life. It is ■ said that the first copy of the " Leives o£ ■ Grass" that found its way into England, came as wrappiug round some packages consigned to a t;a-merchant iv tbe North. Soattered fragmeuts getting oiroulated fell into the hands of persons of wider literary 1 discrimination than tho tea-morohunt, who i felt that here was a voice speaking with , rough, unoouth, aud, it might be, coarse, i utterance, but with a veritable meaning, Since then the chief propagators of Whitman's teaching in England have been Swinburne, the late Dnnto Roasetti, and Professor Dowden of Trinity College, Dublin. Numerically his following is eveu i now but small ; hub tho younger generation of ardent students iv tho Universities is being saturated with him, and his bitterest opponents are finding out that his sane and healthy animalism is not a bar but v key to the deeper well-springs of purity and lo ve. J.W.J.