opyright, 1896,
BY JOHN BURROUGHS.

_All rights reserved._

CONTENTS

PAGE

PRELIMINARY 1

BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL 23

HIS RULING IDEAS AND AIMS 73

HIS SELF-RELIANCE 85

HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE 101

HIS RELATION TO LIFE AND MORALS 169

HIS RELATION TO CULTURE 205

HIS RELATION TO HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIMES 229

HIS RELATION TO SCIENCE 249

HIS RELATION TO RELIGION 257

A FINAL WORD 263

"_All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated
from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it
from elsewhere._"--TAINE.

"_If you want to tell good Gothic, see if it has the sort of roughness and
largeness and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness
which seems always to be the sign manual of the broad vision and massy
power of men who can see_ past _the work they are doing, and betray here
and there something like disdain for it._"--RUSKIN.

"_Formerly, during the period termed classic, when literature was governed
by recognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed the
most perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the
most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect,--the AEneid,
the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day something else is wanted. For us
the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates the reader's
imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
The greatest poet is not he who has done the best, it is he who suggests
the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious, and who leaves
you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your
turn._"--SAINTE-BEUVE.

WHITMAN

PRELIMINARY

I

The writing of this preliminary chapter, and the final survey and revision
of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild
place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place
Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,--an
amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth
of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site