nce O'er
Travel'd Roads, as he calls it; but there are many other essays in this
fascinating volume, some on poets such as Burns and Lord Tennyson, for
whom Walt Whitman has a profound admiration; some on old actors and
singers, the elder Booth, Forrest, Alboni and Mario being his special
favourites; others on the native Indians, on the Spanish element in
American nationality, on Western slang, on the poetry of the Bible, and
on Abraham Lincoln. But Walt Whitman is at his best when he is analysing
his own work and making schemes for the poetry of the future. Literature,
to him, has a distinctly social aim. He seeks to build up the masses by
'building up grand individuals.' And yet literature itself must be
preceded by noble forms of life. 'The best literature is always the
result of something far greater than itself--not the hero but the
portrait of the hero. Before there can be recorded history or poem there
must be the transaction.' Certainly, in Walt Whitman's views there is a
largeness of vision, a healthy sanity and a fine ethical purpose. He is
not to be placed with the professional litterateurs of his country,
Boston novelists, New York poets and the like. He stands apart, and the
chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He
has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As
a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic
and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by,
Philosophy will take note of him.

November Boughs. By Walt Whitman. (Alexander Gardner.)

THE NEW PRESIDENT

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 26, 1889.)

In a little book that he calls The Enchanted Island Mr. Wyke Bayliss, the
new President of the Royal Society of British Artists, has given his
gospel of art to the world. His predecessor in office had also a gospel
of art but it usually took the form of an autobiography. Mr. Whistler
always spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital 'I.'
However, he was never dull. His brilliant wit, his caustic satire, and
his amusing epigrams, or, perhaps, we should say epitaphs, on his
contemporaries, made his views on art as delightful as they were
misleading and as fascinating as they were unsound. Besides, he
introduced American humour into art criticism, and for this, if for no
other reason, he deserves to be affectionately remembered. Mr. Wyke
Bayliss, upon the other h