ing only to say that it "gave
the ethical view of Shakespeare," information which was received by the
company with silent but manifest approval.

Yet, after all, what does it matter whether Emerson was singly any one
of those things which Matthew Arnold says he was not--great poet, great
writer, great philosophical thinker? These are matters of classification
and definition. We know well enough the rare combination of qualities
which made him our Emerson. Let us leave it there. Even as a formal
verse-writer, when he does emerge from his cloud of encumbrances, it is
in some supernal phrase such as only the great poets have the secret of:

Music pours on mortals its beautiful disdain;

or:

Have I a lover who is noble and free?
I would he were nobler than to love me.

A WORDLET ABOUT WHITMAN

In this year many fames have come of age; among them, Lowell's and Walt
Whitman's. As we read their centenary tributes, we are reminded that
Lowell never accepted Whitman, who was piqued by the fact and referred
to it a number of times in the conversations reported by the Boswellian
Traubel. Whitmanites explain this want of appreciation as owing to
Lowell's conventional literary standards.

Now convention is one of the things that distinguish man from the
inferior animals. Language is a convention, law is a convention; and so
are the church and the state, morals, manners, clothing--_teste_ "Sartor
Resartus." Shame is a convention: it is human. The animals are without
shame, and so is Whitman. His "Children of Adam" are the children of our
common father before he had tasted the forbidden fruit and discovered
that he was naked.

Poetry, too, has its conventions, among them, metre, rhythm, and rhyme,
the choice of certain words, phrases, images, and topics, and the
rejection of certain others. Lowell was conservative by nature and
thoroughly steeped in the tradition of letters. Perhaps he was too
tightly bound by these fetters of convention to relish their sudden
loosening. I wonder what he would have thought of his kinswoman Amy's
free verses if he had lived to read them.

If a large, good-natured, clean, healthy animal could write poetry, it
would write much such poetry as the "Leaves of Grass." It would tell how
good it is to lie and bask in the warm sun; to stand in cool, flowing
water, to be naked in the fresh air; to troop with friendly companions
and embrace one's mate. "Leaves of Grass" is