said about Whitman's affection being comprehensive rather than intense
applies equally to Morris. Why? Because it is the way of the Democrat
and the Social Reformer. To such the individual suggests a whole class,
a class suggests the race. Whitman is always speaking to man as man,
rarely does he touch on individual men. If he does so, it is only to
pass on to some cosmic thoughts suggested by the particular instance.

Perhaps the most inspiring thing about Whitman's attitude towards
humanity is his thorough understanding of the working classes, and his
quick discernment of the healthy naturalism that animates them. He
neither patronizes them nor idealizes them; he sees their faults, which
are obvious enough; but he also sees, what is not so obvious, their fine
independence of spirit, their eager thirst for improvement, for ampler
knowledge, for larger opportunities, and their latent idealism.

No doubt there is more independence, greater vigour, less servility, in
America than in England; but the men he especially delights in, the
artisan or mechanic, represent the best of the working classes in either
country.

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 Thoreau, 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, "