and vital. It is the soil under his feet. He comes into a
world from which all childish fear and illusion has been expelled. He
exhibits the religious and poetic faculties perfectly adjusted to a
scientific, industrial, democratic age, and exhibits them more fervent
and buoyant than ever before. We have gained more than we have lost.
The world is anew created by science and democracy, and he pronounces it
good with the joy and fervour of the old faith."

In this respect Mr. Burroughs thinks that Whitman shared with Tennyson
the glory of being one of the two poets in our time who have drawn
inspiration from this source. Certainly no poet of our time has made
finer use as an artist of scientific facts than the late Laureate.

But Tennyson seems scarcely to have drawn inspiration from science as did
Browning, if we look at the thought underlying the verse. On the whole
scientific discoveries depressed rather than cheered him, whereas from
_Paracelsus_ onwards Browning accepts courageously all the results of
modern science, and, as in the case of Whitman, it enlarged his moral and
spiritual horizon.

But he was not a philosopher as Browning was; indeed, there is less of
the philosopher about Whitman than about any poet of our age. His method
is quite opposed to the philosophic. It is instinctive, suggestive, and
as full of contradictions as Nature herself. You can no more extract a
philosophy from his sweeping utterances than you can from a tramp over
the hills.

But, like a tramp over the hills, Whitman fits every reader who
accompanies him for a stronger and more courageous outlook. It is not
easy to say with Whitman as in the case of many writers: "This line
quickened my imagination, that passage unravelled my perplexities." It
is the general effect of his writings that exercises such a remarkable
tonic influence. Perhaps he has never indicated this cumulative power
more happily than in the lines that conclude his "Song of Myself."

"You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged.
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

Yes; that is Whitman's secret--"Good health." To speak of him as did his
biographer, Dr. Bucke, as "perhaps the most advanced nature the world has
yet produced," to rank him, as some have done, with th