The Vagabond in Literature Part 17

In this respect Whitman and Tolstoy, differing in so many ways, join hands. In the "powerful uneducated person" they see the salvation of society, the renovation of its anaemic life.

IV

Whitman is no moralist, and has no formal philosophy to offer. But the modern spirit which always seeks after some "criticism of life" does not forsake even the Vagabond. He is certainly the only Vagabond, with the exception of Th.o.r.eau, who has felt himself charged with a message for his fellows. The popular tendency is to look for a "message" in all literary artists, and the result is that the art in question is knocked sometimes out of all shape in order to wrest from it some creed or ethical teaching. And as the particular message usually happens to be something that especially appeals to the seeker, the number of conflicting messages wrung from the unfortunate literary artist are somewhat disconcerting.

But in Whitman's case the task of the message hunter is quite simple.

Whitman never leaves us in doubt what he believes in, and what ideas he wishes to propagate. It is of course easy-perhaps inevitable-that with a writer whose method it is to hint, suggest, indicate, rather than formulate, elaborate, codify, the student should read in more than was intended. And, after all, as George Eliot said, "The words of Genius bear a wider meaning than the thought which prompted them." But at any rate there is no mistaking the general outline of his thought, for his outlook upon life is as distinctive as Browning's, and indeed possesses many points of similarity. But in speaking of Whitman's message one thing must be borne in mind. Whitman's work must not be adjudged merely as a special blend of Altruism and Individualism. No man ever works, it has been well said {199}-not even if philanthropy be his trade-from the primary impulse to help or console other people, any more than his body performs its functions for the sake of other people. And what Professor Nettles.h.i.+p says of Browning might be applied with equal truth to Whitman.

His work consists "not in his being a teacher, or even wanting to be one, but in his doing exactly the work he liked best and could not help doing." And Whitman's stimulating thought is not the less true for that, for it is the spontaneous expression of his personality, just as fully as a melody or picture is an expression of an artist's personality. He could no more help being a teacher than he could help breathing. And his teaching must be valued not in accordance with the philosophy of the schools, not by comparison with the ethics of the professional moralist, but as the natural and inevitable outcome of his personality and temperament.

As a panacea for social evils Whitman believes in the remedial power of comrades.h.i.+p in a large-hearted charity.

"You felons on trial in courts, You convicts in prison cells, you sentenced a.s.sa.s.sins chained and handcuffed with iron, Who am I, too, that I am not on trial or in prison?

Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chained With iron, or my ankles with iron?"

Mark the watchful impa.s.siveness with which he gazes at the ugly side of life.

"I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and prisoners- I observe a famine at sea-I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon labourers, the poor, and upon negroes and the like; All these-all the meanness and agony without end, I sit and look out upon, See, hear, and am silent."

No one is too base, too degraded for Whitman's affection. This is no mere book sentiment with him; and many stories are told of his tenderness and charity towards the "dregs of humanity." That a man is a human being is enough for Whitman. However he may have fallen there is something in him to appeal to. He would have agreed with Browning that-

"Beneath the veriest ash there hides a spark of soul, Which, quickened by Love's breath, may yet pervade the whole O' the grey, and free again be fire; of worth the same Howe'er produced, for great or little flame is flame."

Like Browning, also, Whitman fears la.s.situde and indifference more than the turmoil of pa.s.sion. He glories in the elemental. At present he thinks we are too fearful of coa.r.s.eness and rankness, lay too much stress on refinement. And so he delights in "unrefinement," glories in the woods, air-sweetness, sun-tan, brawn.

"_So long_!

I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual bold, And I announce an did age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation."

Cultured conventions, of which we make so much, distress him. They tend, he argues, to enervation, to a poor imitative, self-conscious art, to an artificial, morbid life.

His curative methods were heroic; but who can say that they were not needed, or that they were mischievous?

Certainly in aiming first of all at sincerity he has attained that n.o.ble beauty which is born of strength. Nature, as he saw, was full of vital loveliness by reason of her very power. The average literary artist is always seeking for the loveliness, aiming after beauty of form, without a care whether what he is saying has the ring of sincerity and truth, whether it is in touch with the realities of Nature. And in his super-refinements he misses the beauty that flashes forth from the rough, savage songs of Whitman.

Whitman does not decry culture. But he places first the educative influence of Nature. "The best Culture," he says, "will always be that of the manly and courageous instincts and loving perception, and of self-respect."

No advocate of lawlessness he; the influence of modern sciences informs every line that he has written.

As Mr. Burroughs very justly says: "Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained more than we have lost.

The world is anew created by science and democracy, and he p.r.o.nounces it good with the joy and fervour of the old faith."

In this respect Mr. Burroughs thinks that Whitman shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets in our time who have drawn inspiration from this source. Certainly no poet of our time has made finer use as an artist of scientific facts than the late Laureate.

But Tennyson seems scarcely to have drawn inspiration from science as did Browning, if we look at the thought underlying the verse. On the whole scientific discoveries depressed rather than cheered him, whereas from _Paracelsus_ onwards Browning accepts courageously all the results of modern science, and, as in the case of Whitman, it enlarged his moral and spiritual horizon.

But he was not a philosopher as Browning was; indeed, there is less of the philosopher about Whitman than about any poet of our age. His method is quite opposed to the philosophic. It is instinctive, suggestive, and as full of contradictions as Nature herself. You can no more extract a philosophy from his sweeping utterances than you can from a tramp over the hills.

But, like a tramp over the hills, Whitman fits every reader who accompanies him for a stronger and more courageous outlook. It is not easy to say with Whitman as in the case of many writers: "This line quickened my imagination, that pa.s.sage unravelled my perplexities." It is the general effect of his writings that exercises such a remarkable tonic influence. Perhaps he has never indicated this c.u.mulative power more happily than in the lines that conclude his "Song of Myself."

"You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.

"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged.

Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you."

Yes; that is Whitman's secret-"Good health." To speak of him as did his biographer, Dr. Bucke, as "perhaps the most advanced nature the world has yet produced," to rank him, as some have done, with the world's greatest moral teachers, beside Jesus and Socrates, seems to me the language of hysterical extravagant. Nay, more, it misses surely the special significant of his genius.

In his religious thought, his artistic feelings, his affections, there is breadth of sympathy, sanity of outlook, but an entire absence of intensity, of depth.

We shall scan his pages vainly for the profound aspiration, the subtle spiritual insight of our greatest religious teachers. In his indifference to form, his insensibility to the n.o.blest music, we shall realize his artistic limitations.

Despite his genial comrades.h.i.+p, the more intimate, the more delicate experiences of friends.h.i.+p are not to be found in his company. Delicacy, light and shade, subtlety, intensity, for these qualities you must not seek Whitman. But that is no reason for neglecting him. The Modern and Ancient world are rich in these other qualities, and the special need of the present day is not intensity so much as sanity, not subtlety so much as breadth.

In one of his clever phrases Mr. Havelock Ellis has described Whitman "as a kind of t.i.tanic Undine." {204} Perhaps it is a good thing for us that he never "found his soul." In an age of morbid self-introspection there is something refres.h.i.+ng in an utterance like this, where he praises the animals because-

"They do not screech and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to G.o.d."

In a feverish, restless age it is well to feel the presence of that large, pa.s.sive, tolerant figure. There is healing in the cool, firm touch of his hand; healing in the careless, easy self-confidence of his utterance. He has spoken to us of "the amplitude of the earth, and the coa.r.s.eness and s.e.xuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth." And he has done this with the rough outspokenness of the elements, with the splendid audacity of Nature herself. Brawn, sun-tan, air-sweetness are things well worth the having, for they mean good health. That is why we welcome the big, genial sanity of Walt Whitman, for he has about him the rankness and sweetness of the Earth.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

(Some of the most noteworthy books and articles dealing with the authors discussed in this volume are indicated below.)

WILLIAM HAZLITT (17781830).

_Memoirs_, by William Carew Hazlitt. _Four Generations of a Literary Family_, by W. C. Hazlitt (1897). _William Hazlitt_, by Augustine Birrell. _William Hazlitt_, by Alexander Ireland (Frederick Warne & Co., 1889).

THOMAS DE QUINCEY (17851859).

_De Quincey_, by David Ma.s.son (Macmillan & Co.). _De Quincey and his Friends_, by James Hogg (1895). _De Quincey_, by H. S. Salt ("Bell's Miniature Series of Great Writers").

GEORGE BORROW (180381).

_Life and Letters_ (2 vols.), by Dr. Knapp. Introductions to _Lavengro_ (Frederick Warne & Co.), _The Romany Rye_ (Frederick Warne & Co.), _Wild Wales_ (J. M. Dent & Co.), by Theodore Watts-Dunton. Article in Chambers's _Cyclopedia of English Literature_. "Reminiscences of George Borrow" (_Athenaeum_, Sept. 3, 10, 1881).

HENRY D. Th.o.r.eAU (181762).

_Th.o.r.eau_, _his Life and Aims_, by H. A. Page (Chatto & Windus).

_Th.o.r.eau_, by H. S. Salt ("Great Writers Series"). Essays by R. L.

Stevenson (_Familiar Studies of Men and Books_), and J. R. Lowell (_My Study Window_).