“The art of Art, the glory of expression, and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity, nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse, and pierce intellectual depths, and give all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods, and grass by the woodside, is the flawless triumph of Art.”
A fitting attitude for a Poet of Democracy, one likely to bring him into direct contact with the broad, variegated stream of human life.
What perhaps he did not realize so clearly is that Nature, no less than Art, exercises the selective facility,
and corrects her own riotous extravagance. And thus on occasion he falls into the very indefiniteness, the very excess he deprecates.
The way in which his Art and democratic spirit correspond suggests another, though less unconventional poet of the Democracy—William Morris. The spaciousness the directness, the tolerance that characterise Whitman’s work are to be found to Morris. Morris had no eclectic preferences either in Art or Nature. A wall paper, a tapestry, an epic were equally agreeable tasks; and a blade of grass delighted him as fully as a sunset. So with men. He loved many, but no one especially. Catholicity rather than intensity characterised his friendships. And, like Whitman, he could get on cheerfully enough with surprisingly unpleasant people, provided they were working for the cause in which he was interested. [197] That is the secret. Whitman and Morris loved the Cause. They looked at things in the mass, at people in the mass. This is the true democratic spirit. They had no time, nor must it be confessed any special interest—in the individual as such. What I have 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 anæmic 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