Wickedness is most likely the absence of freedom and health in the

soul.11

No two have exactly the same language, and the great translator and joiner of the whole is the poet. He has the divine grammar of all tongues, and says indifferently and alike, How are you friend? to the President in the midst of his cabinet, and Good day my brother, to Sambo, among the hoes of the sugar field, and both understand him and know that his speech is right.12

The universal and fluid soul impounds within itself not only all good characters and heros, but the distorted characters, murderers, thieves.13

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 politics shall come. . . . Not I-not God-can travel this road for you.14

14

We hear of miracles.-But what is there that is not a miracle? What may you conceive of or name to me in the future that shall be beyond the least thing around us?—I am looking in your eyes, tell me then, if you can, what is there more in the immortality of the soul more than this spiritual and beautiful miracle of sight? 15

Even the indignant and disillusioned accent of such of Emerson's addresses as "Man the Reformer" 16 and "New England Reformers" 17 is discovered in this Whitman, suddenly turning in the late forties and early fifties from the pusillanimities of Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate 18 toward the authentic notes of Leaves of Grass.

11 Ibid., p. 65. Cf. Emerson's Divinity School Address: "Evil is merely privative not absolute."

12 Ibid., p. 65. Cf. Emerson's "The Poet," in Essays, Second Series, 1844. He says among other similar things-" The poets are thus liberating gods. They are free and they make free."

...

13 Ibid., pp. 65-66. Cf. Emerson's "The Oversoul," in Essays, 1841: "And this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; . . . not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly, an endless circulation, through all men."

14 Ibid., pp. 66-67. Cf. many passages in Emerson's "Uses of Great Men," etc.

'Self-Reliance,"

15 Ibid., p. 80. Cf. Emerson's "Address. . . in Divinity College," 1838."But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain."

16 1841.

17 1844.

18 Published in 1842, but reissued in Whitman's "Daily Eagle" as late as 1846, obviously with his own sanction.

Our country seems to be threatened with a sort of ossification of the spirit. Amid all the advanced grandeurs 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.1o

This group of seven quotations from Whitman represents the sort of ideas with which he was occupied from 1847 on to the period of the composition of the earliest Leaves of Grass. In 1847, Whitman was already twenty-eight. Something, clearly, was giving him a mighty intellectual impulse. He was not simply maturing at that age, but strong new vision was somehow bestowed upon him. It is hardly open to question that Emerson was the source-the primary external source, that is 20-of the impulse and the vision. These representative excerpts are almost completely Emersonian except in style. And shortly was to come the presentation of Leaves of Grass to Emerson and the ensuing letter hailing Emerson as "dear Master."

In the years between the second edition of Leaves of Grass, 1856, and that time-following his exertions in the civil war-when Whitman virtually retired, much broken in body, about 1873; between those years, now and then, he seemed much inclined to minimize the importance of Emerson to both the world and Walt Whitman, himself. Emerson appears never again, so far as we can tell, to have felt such confident enthusiasm over Whitman's verse as he had on the occasion of his first letter. The two met, nevertheless, and had friendly talks, at intervals. Whitman felt, no doubt, that Emerson had cooled towards Leaves of Grass rather precipitately. Now Emerson had a right to change his mind. (although we cannot be certain how much he may have done so),

19 Uncollected Poetry and Prose, vol. II, p. 90. From Notebook, circa 1849.

2o It is, of course, necessary to bear in mind that Whitman always seems to have had more or less inner illumination from mystic experiences. Like both Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman realized his ultimate bliss of certitude mystically. For this reason, we should naturally look for similarities in the writing of these men, but not for such persistent and close similarities, probably, as those cited above.

but it is easy to imagine how irascible any sign of cooling might have made a man like Whitman who was being neglected or slandered by most of the literary world. Whitman did not get irascible only a little critical and exacting. One of the so-called "Notes Left Over" (now published at the conclusion of the Collect) is an excellent example of Whitman's second attitude toward Emerson, half praise, half condemnation. He entitles the little essay "Emerson's Books, (The Shadows of Them)." Whit

man warns us,

I will begin by scarifying him-thus proving that I am not insensible to his deepest lessons.

Emerson, in my opinion, is not most eminent as poet or artist or teacher, though valuable in all those. He is best as critic, or diagnoser. ... Cold and bloodless intellectuality dominates him. (I know the fires, emotions, love, egotisms, glow deep, perennial, as in all New Englanders— but the façade hides them well-they give no sign.) He does not see or take one side, one presentation only or mainly, (as all the poets, or most of the fine writers anyhow)-he sees all sides. His final influence is to make his students cease to worship anything—almost cease to believe in anything, outside of themselves. . . .21

The reminiscence that years ago I began like most youngsters to have a touch (though it came late, and was only on the surface) of Emerson-onthe-brain-that I read his writings reverently, and addressed him in print as "Master," and for a month or so thought of him as such-I retain not only with composure, but positive satisfaction. I have noticed that most young people of eager minds pass through this stage of exercise.

The best part of Emersonianism is, it breeds the giant that destroys itself. Who wants to be any man's mere follower? lurks behind every page. No teacher ever taught, that has so provided for his pupil's setting up independently-no truer evolutionist.

In these middle years of his career as a poet Whitman has distinctly reversed his attitude on the subject of Emerson. For a change of opinion he should not be blamed or charged absurdly with treachery to Emerson. It seems to have been impossible for students and investigators of Whitman to deal critically with him: they must needs adore or curse him. But what is required is just

21 At this point Whitman launches attacks upon Emerson's "singularly dandified theory of manners" and upon his taste in poetry." Of power he seems to have a gentleman's admiration-but in his inmost heart the grandest attribute of God and Poets is always subordinate to the octaves, conceits, polite kinks, and verbs."

the critical willingness to appreciate that Whitman was neither a god nor a traitor; neither a charlatan nor a model of consistent integrity.22 Beyond question, there is some disingenuousness in the statement that he viewed Emerson as his master "for a month or so," and there is unpleasant complacence in Whitman's "positive satisfaction" over what he would have us think his brief infatuation for Emerson. There is, further, something very like plain untruth in the assertion of Emerson's preference for style over content in literature. Making all allowances, Whitman's little essay is one of the most indispensable ever written upon Emerson. In spite of the general gesture of denial, nothing recorded from Whitman's lips or pen affords more conclusive proof of Whitman's profound comprehension of Emerson, and of Emerson's mastership over him in the Emersonian sense of mastership.

Who wants to be any man's mere follower? lurks behind every page. That is, in a dozen words, what Emerson had to say, and significantly, it is, above all, what he had to say about masters and disciples: Emerson, the father of rebels! 23 Just so Emerson is the master of Whitman. Emerson is the great man who infected Whitman with pregnant thought. A search through Whitman's prose and verse reveals that no other writer, past or present, had a remotely comparable influence upon him. Emerson and his writings are never long out of Whitman's mind-conscious or subconscious. He preoccupies Whitman even in the period of the disclaimer quoted above.

The possible objection to my account of the relationship of these two men arises from the circumstances of Whitman's later years particularly; for Whitman certainly denied in practice the Emersonian doctrine of the repudiation of discipleship. Whitman developed something of a passion for drawing to himself and absorb

22 It is always a pleasure to call the attention of students of Whitman to the critical magnanimity of Bliss Perry's Walt Whitman (Boston, 1906), though the book is censured alike by enthusiasts and calumniators of Whitman.

The most important statement of Emerson on this question (for present purposes) is in the introductory section of "Representative Men." The idea is central all through that book. Cf. quotation from Whitman above, p. 82.

ing a group of four or five young men. Effectively, they became his disciples and they (more than any other forces) are responsible for the not-infrequently-met adulation of Whitman as prophet.2* To Emerson, such a gathering and absorbing would have been inconceivable.

Other attitudes and ideas of Whitman seem almost equally the converse of Emerson's ideas. But that I repeat does not indicate that Emerson was not the one who stimulated Whitman intellectually and spiritually to the point where Whitman found it necessary to express his deepest original thought. For example, a typical lover of Emerson insists that Emersonian Self-Reliance is a very different thing from the self-assertion of Whitman's "Song of Myself." 25 To be sure, there is a difference (not so abysmal as is usually believed); yet is it not clear that no other writing of the day could so well have supplied Whitman with the seed that was to develop into the "Song of Myself" as Emerson's "SelfReliance." Again, Whitman's insistence upon the beauty of the physical seems and is un-Emersonian; yet the loveliness of the flesh comes ever more to Whitman only in conjuction with or attendant upon the spirit. Emerson, too, could rapsodize over physical nature, though, Puritan that he partly remained, Emerson could not rapsodize over his own physical body. The difference is more one of temperament than of thought.26 Then there is Whitman's idea of friendship or "comaraderie," utterly unlike the friendship of Emerson's famous essay; 27 and with the love of comrades (busdrivers, ferry-pilots, mechanics, soldiers) goes the un-Emersonian virtue of nonchalance-a cardinal virtue with Whitman. One can say only that Whitman has now become completely fledged-in other words, quite Emersonized. That is, he has learned to consult

24 Horace Traubel, one of those whom I call disciples of Whitman, has naïvely enough illustrated Whitman's prophetic "poses in the stout three volumes: With Walt Whitman in Camden, New York, 1914-15. 25 In this connection, how many are unfair to Whitman, forgetting that he says: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

26 Cf. " Song of Myself," section 3: Leaves of Grass (ed. Holloway, New York, 1925). Also cf. many other portions of the same poem and of the poems named "Children of Adam" (Ibid., pp. 77 ff.).

27 Ibid., p. 95 ff.: a series of poems named collectively-" Calamus.”