e world's greatest
moral teachers, beside Jesus and Socrates, seems to me the language of
hysterical extravagant. Nay, more, it misses surely the special
significant of his genius.

In his religious thought, his artistic feelings, his affections, there is
breadth of sympathy, sanity of outlook, but an entire absence of
intensity, of depth.

We shall scan his pages vainly for the profound aspiration, the subtle
spiritual insight of our greatest religious teachers. In his
indifference to form, his insensibility to the noblest music, we shall
realize his artistic limitations.

Despite his genial comradeship, the more intimate, the more delicate
experiences of friendship are not to be found in his company. Delicacy,
light and shade, subtlety, intensity, for these qualities you must not
seek Whitman. But that is no reason for neglecting him. The Modern and
Ancient world are rich in these other qualities, and the special need of
the present day is not intensity so much as sanity, not subtlety so much
as breadth.

In one of his clever phrases Mr. Havelock Ellis has described Whitman "as
a kind of Titanic Undine." {204} Perhaps it is a good thing for us that
he never "found his soul." In an age of morbid self-introspection there
is something refreshing in an utterance like this, where he praises the
animals because--

"They do not screech and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to GOD."

In a feverish, restless age it is well to feel the presence of that
large, passive, tolerant figure. There is healing in the cool, firm
touch of his hand; healing in the careless, easy self-confidence of his
utterance. He has spoken to us of "the amplitude of the earth, and the
coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the
earth." And he has done this with the rough outspokenness of the
elements, with the splendid audacity of Nature herself. Brawn, sun-tan,
air-sweetness are things well worth the having, for they mean good
health. That is why we welcome the big, genial sanity of Walt Whitman,
for he has about him the rankness and sweetness of the Earth.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

(Some of the most noteworthy books and articles dealing with the authors
discussed in this volume are indicated below.)

WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830).

_Memoirs_, by William Carew Hazlitt. _Four Generations o