“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 of a Literary Family, by W. C. Hazlitt (1897). William Hazlitt, by Augustine Birrell. William Hazlitt, by Alexander Ireland (Frederick Warne & Co., 1889).
Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859).
De Quincey, by David Masson (Macmillan & Co.). De Quincey and his Friends, by James Hogg (1895). De Quincey, by H. S. Salt (“Bell’s Miniature Series of Great Writers”).
George Borrow (1803–81).
Life and Letters (2 vols.), by Dr. Knapp. Introductions to Lavengro (Frederick Warne & Co.), The Romany Rye (Frederick Warne & Co.), Wild Wales (J. M. Dent & Co.), by Theodore Watts-Dunton. Article in Chambers’s Cyclopedia of English Literature. “Reminiscences of George Borrow” (Athenæum, Sept. 3, 10, 1881).