of his work. Thence, in spite of an uneven and emphatic key
of expression, something trenchant and straightforward,
something simple and surprising, distinguishes his poems. He
has sayings that come home to one like the Bible. We fall
upon Whitman, after the works of so many men who write
better, with a sense of relief from strain, with a sense of
touching nature, as when one passes out of the flaring, noisy
thoroughfares of a great city into what he himself has
called, with unexcelled imaginative justice of language, "the
huge and thoughtful night." And his book in consequence,
whatever may be the final judgment of its merit, whatever may
be its influence on the future, should be in the hands of all
parents and guardians as a specific for the distressing
malady of being seventeen years old. Green-sickness yields
to his treatment as to a charm of magic; and the youth, after
a short course of reading, ceases to carry the universe upon
his shoulders.


III.


Whitman is not one of those who can be deceived by
familiarity. He considers it just as wonderful that there
are myriads of stars, as that one man should rise from the
dead. He declares "a hair on the back of his hand just as
curious as any special revelation." His whole life is to him
what it was to Sir Thomas Browne, one perpetual miracle.
Everything is strange, everything unaccountable, everything
beautiful; from a bug to the moon, from the sight of the eyes