lant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive,
patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of
particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable,
unostentatious, inclined to exaggerate, generous, unrefined,--never
meddlesome, never hypercritical, never hoggish, never exclusive. Whitman
shared the hopeful optimistic temperament of his countrymen, the faith and
confidence begotten by a great, fertile, sunny land. He expresses the
independence of the people,--their pride, their jealousy of superiors,
their contempt of authority (not always beautiful). Our want of reverence
and veneration are supplemented in him with world-wide sympathies and
good-fellowship.

Emerson is our divine man, the precious quintessence of the New England
type, invaluable for his stimulating and ennobling strain; but his genius
is too astral, too select, too remote, to incarnate and give voice to the
national spirit. Clothe him with flesh and blood, make his daring
affirmations real and vital in a human personality and imbued with the
American spirit, and we are on the way to Whitman.

Moreover, the strong, undisguised man-flavor of "Leaves of Grass," the
throb and pressure in it of those things that make life rank and make it
masterful, and that make for the virility and perpetuity of the race, are,
if it must be confessed, more keenly relished abroad than in this country,
so thoroughly are we yet under the spell of the merely refined and
conventional. We fail to see that in letters, as in life, the great prizes
are not to the polished, but to the virile and the strong.

VIII

Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
those wh