gland and the Continent now began to
recognize his genius. But his health had been permanently shattered
by his heroic service as a nurse, and in 1873 he suffered a paralytic
stroke which forced him to resign his position in Washington and remove
to his brother's home in Camden, New Jersey.

He was only fifty-four, but his best work was already done, and his
remaining years, until his death in 1892, were those of patient and
serene invalidism. He wrote some fascinating prose in this final period,
and his cluttered chamber in Camden became the shrine of many a literary
pilgrim, among them some of the foremost men of letters of this country
and of Europe. He was cared for by loyal friends. Occasionally he
appeared in public, a magnificent gray figure of a man. And then, at
seventy-three, the "Dark mother always gliding near" enfolded him.

There are puzzling things in the physical and moral constitution of Walt
Whitman, and the obstinate questions involved in his theory of poetry
and in his actual poetical performance are still far from solution. But
a few points concerning him are by this time fairly clear. They must be
swiftly summarized.

The first obstacle to the popular acceptance of Walt Whitman is the
formlessness or alleged formlessness of "Leaves of Grass." This is a
highly technical question, involving a more accurate notation than
has thus far been made of the patterns and tunes of free verse and of
emotional prose. Whitman's "new and national declamatory expression," as
he termed it, cannot receive a final technical valuation until we have
made more scientific progress in the analysis of rhythms. As regards
the contents of his verse, it is plain that he included much material
unfused and untransformed by emotion. These elements foreign to the
nature of poetry clog many of his lines. The enumerated objects in his
catalogue or inventory poems often remain inert objects only. Like many
mystics, he was hypnotized by external phenomena, and he often fails
to communicate to his reader the trancelike emotion which he himself
experienced. This imperfect transfusion of his material is a far more
significant defect in Whitman's poetry than the relatively few passages
of unashamed sexuality which shocked the American public in 1855.

The gospel or burden of "Leaves of Grass" is no more difficult of
comprehension than the general drift of Emerson's essays, which helped
to inspire it. The starting point of the book is a