wide experience with men and affairs which peculiarly fitted him for the honor and the grave responsibilities that came to him in 1913, when he was appointed Ambassador to Great Britain.

From 1913 until just before his death in 1918, Page performed his regular duties as Ambassador, and carried a multitude of special burdens due to the exigencies of the World War, with a combination of kindness, tact, and efficiency which cannot-and fortunately need not-be recorded here. His renunciation of literature in 1913 brought him, paradoxically, the international fame as a man of letters which, despite his creditable editorial career, he had not succeeded in winning, and which only came posthumously with the publication of his Life and Letters. Always a keen observer and brilliant letter writer, gifted with an unusual insight into the fundamentals of international relationships, Page came to occupy a position where his official and personal letters together constitute one of the most illuminating group of documents yet available on the most interesting period of world history. He died in 1918, soon after he had resigned his Ambassadorship on account of ill-health.

The three volumes which constitute The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page (Garden City, 1922 and 1925) owe their continuity to the skillful editorial hand of Burton J. Hendrick, whose contribution virtually entitles him to be considered Page's biographer.

If anyone were to ask by what right Mr. Mencken is represented in a volume of American literature, the answer would be simple. He is here for the very good reason that he writes readable prose of a sort so unique that it cannot be overlooked. Whatever else one may say of him, one can not call him spiritless or dull. He may be unsound in his logic, careless of his facts, destitute of the loyalties that simple, unenlightened folk find worth cherishing. He may ultimately grow tiresome, through constant iteration of two or three prejudices with which the public is already well enough acquainted. But to read a single essay, yes, even half a dozen at a stretch, is to be convinced that he is an extremely vigorous writer. His pages are irritating, stimulating, sparkling, and unconvincing; they are are never flat. To adopt for the moment the language of the college professor whom Mr. Mencken never tires of ridiculing, a few people would grade his work "A"; more would probably grade it "F." No one, however, would stigmatise it with a "C-," the symbol of correct and docile mediocrity.

One further consideration prompted the editors to ask Mr. Mencken's permission to represent his work in this volume. By com

mon assent, he has come to be considered the arch-protestor of all the restless spirits who find themselves ill at ease in this world of American traditions and American establishments. One can apply to him the words once used to picture an even more formidable rebel than he,

"High on a throne of royal state.. [Mencken] exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence."

Throughout Mr. Mencken's career he has been intimately connected with journalism. Born and educated in Baltimore, he was writing for the Morning Herald when he was nineteen years old, and by 1905 was editor of the Evening Herald. He first found a thoroughly congenial medium for the expression of his views in the pages of literary criticism which for many years were the most entertaining feature of The Smart Set. Ultimately becoming co-editor of this journal, with George Jean Nathan, he won such popularity with certain elements in American life that when he recently (1923) launched his latest venture, The American Mercury, its immediate success was as well assured as were its readable quality and general character as a vehicle of indiscriminate protest. Thus by 1926 Mr. Meucken has "made a go of it" in journalistic writing. More than that, he has won for himself a definite "position" in American thinking a statement that can be made concerning but few of his contemporaries.

That this position is what it is, and not one of greater distinction, is due, fundamentally, to his inability to measure up to his own standards. "A man must have acquired discipline over his feelings before he can write sound prose; he must have learned how to subordinate his transient ideas to more general and permanent ideas," he writes in the essay here reprinted. Precisely. Is it too much to hope that Mr. Mencken will some day take his own advice?

b. 28. He needs none of these things. The fallaciousness of the statement is patent, despite the grain of truth that is discernible.

929. b. 19. God's in His heaven. Slightly misquoted from the well-known song in Pippa Passes.

b. 23. I am the master of my fate, etc. From Henley's Invictus.

930. a. 15. Will deliberately seek a rendezvous with death, etc. A reference to the poem inevitably suggested by these lines, Alan Seeger's I Have a Rendezvous with Death, p. 1084, above, will show that the poet's idea is quite different from what is here suggested.

STUART PRATT SHERMAN (1881-1926)

It has seemed wise to include in the present collection at least one sample of the serious, one might almost say the academic, essays, in which American literature of the twentieth century has been rich. Such essays, while not associated with names as imposing as Emerson's, sometimes make quite as profitable reading as do the more oracular but less coherent utterances of the Concord philosopher. They are, of course, to be distinguished from the "familiar essays" in which Miss Repplier, Mr. Crothers, Mr. Morley, and a dozen others have been so whimsically entertaining. Among the writers of these academic essays Mr. Sherman has for some years occupied a prominent place. His discussion of The Point of View in American Criticism (p. 934) is representative of the class as a whole, and of his own work at its best: a serious consideration of a problem of national importance; the sort of essay which quite appropriately was delivered as a lecture at the University of Chicago, and found its first publication in the Atlantic Monthly.

Mr. Sherman was born in Anita, Iowa, in 1881, graduated from Williams in 1903, and received the degrees of A. M. and Ph. D. from Harvard. He began his academic career as an instructor in English at Northwestern University, but from 1907 to 1924 was on the faculty of the University of Illinois. Resigning his position there as Professor of English and Chairman of the Department in 1924, Mr. Sherman became literary editor of the New York Herald-Tribune, in which capacity he was serving at the time of his death in the late summer of 1926. His work as an essayist of distinction is well represented in three recent volumes: On Contemporary Literature, N. Y., 1917; Americans, N. Y., 1922; The Genius of America, N. Y., 1923.

NOTES

THE POINT OF VIEW IN AMERICAN CRITICISM

934. b. 35. Antigone in the drama. The play is The Antigone.

935. a. 20. The vulgar Jacobinism of Thomas Paine. Paine's point of view is briefly set forth in the selections from his writings, pages 158-165, and in the accompanying note, p. 1120.

b. 32. Coriolanus. See Shakespeare's play of the same name.

936. a. 6. Our most aggressive literary critic. Mr. Mencken.

b. 33. The fourth eminent generation of the Adams family. This astute comment on the Adams family amplifies what is said concerning Henry Adams on p. 1209.

937. a. 29. Chief statesman, etc. Lincoln, Grant, Whitman, Mark Twain.

b. 38. Savage criticism which Dickens had made. Dickens's unpleasant impressions of the United States are best set forth in the American sections of Martin Chuzzlewit, and in American Notes. 938. a. 47. "A certain condescension in foreigners." The title of one of Lowell's best-known essays.

b. 52. "The poet of the Sierras." Joaquin Miller, some of whose poems appear on pages 1027-1033.

939. b. 41. "Man with the hoe." Edwin Markham's best-known poem, The Man with the Hoe, may be found on page

1037.

940. a. 3. Thebes or Pelops' line. The phrase comes from Il Penseroso, line 99, and connotes all that is most significant in the tragedy of ancient Greece. 941. b. 37. As Pascal says. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a French mathematician and philosopher.

942. u. 37. A darkling plain, etc. From Arnold's Dover Beach, lines 35 and 37. b. 23. The Crocean philosophy. Benedetto Croce (1866), is an Italian philosopher whose Aesthetics as Science of Expression (1908) brought him into immediate prominence.

the

943. b. 36. Waiting for the hindmost. It is interesting to note John Adams's expression of almost the same idea, in the letter of June 17, 1775, p. 156, above.

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

Walter Whitman, dubbed "Walt" at an early age to distinguish him from his father, Walter Whitman, was born in West Hills, Long Island, in 1819. His ancestors were of English and Dutch extraction with leanings towards Quakerism, his father's family espe‐ cially coming under the influence of Elias Hicks (1748-1830), on whom Whitman wrote an appreciative essay. The poet's father, a carpenter and contractor, moved his family to Brooklyn about the year 1824, and there Walt passed his boyhood, going to school and working as a carpenter. Taking up type-setting in the office of the Long Island Patriot

and the Brooklyn Star, he occupied himself for some years as printer, school-teacher, and editor on Long Island. Various aspects of these early years are revealed in his poem There Was a Child Went Forth (above, p. 979).

His early reading (as listed in his essay A Backward Glance) included all of Scott's poetry, a thorough study of the Old and New Testaments, Shakespeare, Ossian, the best available translations of Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, the Nibelungenlied, the ancient Hindoo poems, and Dante. Whatever influence the unnamed "Hindoo poems" may have exerted on his philosophy, there can be little doubt about the influence of the Ossianic poems and the prophetic books of the Old Testament on his subsequent style.

From 1841 to 1848 Whitman served as reporter and editor on various papers in New York City. His interest in the theatres, to which he had free access, in politics, music, art, and in virtually every phase of metropolitan life-admirably set forth in Chapter II of the standard biography by Bliss Perry (1906)-must have played an important part in his development as a poet of democracy. What the metropolis came to mean to him is suggested by the lines he published in 1856 on Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (above, p. 958). It is significant that his mystical vision of "the simple, compact, well-join'd scheme" of life began with the city and spread to include the country, while Wordsworth's mysticism began in the country and proceeded, with difficulty, to include the city.

In 1848 Whitman accepted the editorship of the new Daily Crescent of New Orleans, and in company with his brother Jeff, made the trip south through Pennsylvania and Virginia. After only a few months in New Orleans, the brothers returned by way of Chicago and the Great Lakes. Except for this broadening experience of travel, we know little about Whitman's life from 1848 to 1855; for the most part he lived with his parents in Brooklyn, editing, lecturing a little, and working on Leaves of Grass.

Of the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), which contained a preface and twelve poems, Whitman printed less than a thousand copies; of this number only a few-probably not a dozen-were sold. Copies were sent free to the poet's friends and to famous authors whom he had never even met, but many of them were returned. Whittier is 'said to have thrown his into the fire. Emerson, however, wrote a personal letter of encourageagement, from which Whitman excerpted a phrase and printed it (without permission) on the outside of the new and enlarged edition of Leaves of Grass in 1856: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career, R. W. Emerson"! The thirty-two poems of this second edition had enough vitality to start the “Whitman controversy," which has raged ever since. Though this second edition was

not remunerative, it was widely reviewedsome of the fairest criticisms being written by Whitman himself and printed anonymously.

From 1856 to 1873 Whitman enjoyed perhaps the richest years of his life. After bringing out the large 1860 edition of the Leaves of Grass (456 pages), he devoted himself with ceaseless energy to relieving the sufferings of wounded soldiers, chiefly in the hospitals of Washington. Though he was forced out of a government clerkship because of the alleged indecency of some of his poems, he found his writings had won him many warm admirers who helped him when he was in straits, and cleared his reputation from any taint of immoral purpose. His poems on the Civil War, published as Drum Taps, showed at last his full stature as poet: he was able to handle without "verbal superfluity" both his own long irregular lines and the more conventional stanza form of O Captain! My Captain; he had acquired a fresh power to treat themes of universal interest with an irresistible appeal; and he 'made it clear that, although he approved his own course in having written freely of sex, he had now turned finally from that topic. The vigor with which his early poems were still attacked gave zest to the reviews of each new and enlarged edition of the Leaves of Grass; but in the main his vogue increased. Then came the flood of European appreciation, when Whitman found he was receiving unstinted homage from English critics and men of letters, and began the extensive correspondence which brought him merited encouragement, and proved the solace of his old age.

For the last nineteen years of his life Whitman lived chiefly in Camden, N. J. A paralytic attack in 1873 greatly impaired his health; and though he was sometimes able to travel-once as far as Colorado-and to write prose and verse, his creative work was largely done. Of these years, however, details of great interest are now available in the series of volumes by Horace Traubel, published under the general title of With Walt Whitman in Camden. By the time of his death, in 1892, he was generally recognized in Europe as the most original and vital force in American poetry. No other American poet has been so violently attacked, or so ably defended; and no other American poet, unless it be Poe, has been so widely imitated here and in Europe.

In studying the life of Whitman, one must bear in mind that the Good Gray Poet was a mystic, influenced by the teachings and example of Elias Hicks, and that the spiritual crises of his early life have never been satisfactorily recorded. His own attempts to record them, as in the Song of Myself, are hopelessly obscure. We cannot know when. or how often, the "inner light" may have revealed to him glimpses of the divine plan Between his poetry and the known facts of his life there is, naturally, a close relation

; but one must always suspect that the known factors in his personality were more ificant than the known.

The student will make sure that he undernds not only two large subjects of controsy, but also the fact that he may accept itman's views, wholly or in part, on either , while rejecting them, wholly or in part, the other. The first, and simpler, topic is itman's theory of poetry: that rhythms uld be freer than in standard verse, length line being determined by the length of ase needed to express an idea or a pice; that a detailed list of component parts more effective than a selection of fundatals, a theory justifying long catalogues nouns, participles, or parallel phrases; that primary aim of poetry is to teach and pire, and that style should be secondary;

simplicity is better than ornatenesscifically that rime and elaborate figures of ech are dangerous; that however exquisy Poe carried out his theory of limiting try to "the rhythmical creation of beauty,' theory is fundamentally inadequate and ound; that the subject matter of poetry uld be as broad and inclusive as life itself. ese (and other) views on the technique of try which Whitman specifically stated or -lied by his practice, should be temporarily epted while studying Leaves of Grass. e should search for the rhythmic effects ich-as Whitman pointed out-are often regular as those of waves on a beach or nches waving in the wind) and should d the poems aloud with cadences and inations similar to those generally used in ding the Psalms. Having done so much ards getting Whitman's feeling for poetry, can form one's own opinion on the merits the much-disputed question of the tech

ie.

he second and larger topic of controsy deals with Whitman's whole concept of Only a few of his more striking views y be indicated here: that every created g is a manifestation of the Divine, and ce worthy to be celebrated in verse; that democratic spirit glorifies all men equally hence is or should become the great Eribution of the United States to the d; that fatherhood is as worthy to be brated in verse as motherhood; that the derives as much from the body, as does body from the soul; that the poet who ifies any individual-even himself—is ifying all humanity; that men and women equal; that death is but the beginning spiritual experience more satisfying than These are a few of the doctrines of ves of Grass; and even a rapid reading of a selections as are included in the presvolume shows that they are more closely ted than the foregoing synopsis would inte. Seeing these and similar ideas carvigorously to their logical extremes in complete Leaves of Grass, the student

can understand why some of Whitman's poetry has been condemned as indecent, and can also understand why such a critic as Edward Dowden wrote: "We none of us question that yours is the clearest, and sweetest, and fullest American voice."

It is not yet possible to come to any sure conclusion concerning Whitman's ultimate position among the poets. Hardly a generation has passed since his death; we are still unable to see him in a fair perspective. It already seems clear, however, that a considerable amount of his work will be forgotten; like Wordsworth, he wrote too much, and was blind to inequalities that every reader detects in his pages. It is also clear that his poetic instinct often outran his artistic skill; many a time, even when dealing with some essentially poetic theme or incident, he failed to express his ideas in language of significance or beauty. It may be that his "free verse" will in the long run prove less satisfying than the regular patterns which experience has approved, and which he consciously avoided. But even after these concessions have been made, there still remains much for which no admirer of Whitman need apologize. Judge Whitman by Out of the Cradle, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, many sections of the Song of Myself, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, O Captain! My Captain, and half a dozen of the Civil War poems, and there seems to be only one verdict possible. Here is poetry in which one finds that combination of emotional satisfaction and intellectual stimulus which only great poetry possesses. Here is poetry in which the facts of life, imaginatively interpreted, are set forth in language rich with sensuous imagery, and shaped into cadences that haunt one's memory like strains of music. Here, in other words, is the work of a great and original artist, of a man who has thought much about the perplexing experiences of life, has come to some conclusion concerning the significance of it all, and who has had the genius to express himself in such a fashion that other people may take both pleasure and profit from reading what he has written.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EDITIONS. The many editions of Leaves of Grass, or of Whitman's complete poetical works, that have been published from time to time, have now been superseded by Emory Holloway's recently issued Leaves of Grass, Inclusive Edition, N. Y., 1924. Whitman's prose is available in The Complete Prose Works of Walt Whitman, N. Y., 1898, which, though by no means complete, contains his most significant work. The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, edited by Emory Holloway, N. Y., 1921, 2 vols., contains a considerable amount of work done by Whitman during his early years, in

teresting chiefly in view of his subsequent development.

BIOGRAPHIES. A few biographical studies stand out from among the many. John Burroughs' Whitman: a Study, Boston, 1896, has an especial interest because of Burroughs' friendship for Whitman. Bliss Perry's Walt Whitman: his Life and Works (A. M. L. series), Boston, 1906, contains perhaps the best critical estimate. George Rice Carpenter's Walt Whitman (E. M. L. series), N. Y., 1909, contains chapters of particular interest on Whitman's verse-form and his "catalogue method." Léon Bazalgette's Walt Whitman, L'Homme et son Oeuvre, Paris, 1908 (translated 1920) is more of an impressionistic study than a formal biography. John Bailey's Walt Whitman (E. M. L., New Series), London, 1926, has much valuable criticism from the British point of view. The most recent important biography is Emory Holloway's Whitman, an Interpretation in Narrative, N. Y. and London, 1926. Magnificent Idler, by Cameron Rogers, N. Y., 1926, is a pleasantly imaginative chronicle, based upon fact.

The

CRITICAL ARTICLES. From among the great mass of criticism listed in the C. H. Ă. L. the special student will select such titles as seem particularly pertinent. Horace Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden (N. Y., 1906-14, 3 vols.) is a mélange of fact, opinion and criticism, cast in the form of a diary, and should be consulted by whoever wishes an intimate picture of the poet's later years.

The whole story of the Whitman controversy is indicated in the trenchant, though prejudiced, comments in W. S. Kennedy's bibliographical volume, The Fight of a Book for the World, West Yarmouth, Mass., 1926.

NOTES

Emory Holloway's Leaves of Grass, Inclusive Edition, New York, 1924, has been followed as regards both text and order of arrangement of the poems. To supplement the following notes the student will consult the pertinent sections of Whitman's Complete Prose Works, especially Specimen Days and The Wound Dresser.

I HEAR AMERICA SINGING

946. First published 1860; final form 1867.

SONG OF MYSELF

First published 1855; final form 1881. The poem occupied the first forty-five pages of the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass, and, like the eleven other poems in that volume, was printed without title. In the second edition it was called Poem of Walt Whitman, an

American. The present title was first used in the seventh edition.

The poem may be considered as Whitman's triumphant announcement that at last he had come to understand himself, and that through understanding himself he had learned to understand other people, to see the meaning of life in the United States, and had even grasped the ultimate significance of existence. Much too long to be read with pleasure save by avowed disciples of Whitman, the poem gains rather than suffers by friendly cutting. The selections here printed indicate the nature of the poem as a whole, and show Whitman in his various rôles of speculative philosopher, sympathetic lover of mankind and of nature, imperturbable egotist ("he would patronize God himself," Lanier once said), mystic dreamer, almost overcome by the vision which his contemplation of the phenomena of life had evoked, and skillful handler of words and sentences.

To understand the poem, and, indeed, many others of the works here printed, one must keep in mind Whitman's mysticism, his power of identifying himself with other persons, of seeing the underlying unity behind the multiplicity of particular phenomena, and of coming into direct contact with that unity. One should think of him as belonging in the same class as Wordsworth and Emerson, so far as their fondness for "impassioned contemplation" is concerned. One should also remember the significant second clause in the sentence from Emerson : "I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start." The "long foreground" included Whitman's early days on Long Island, his experiences as carpenter, schoolteacher, type-setter, journalist, his years of reading and "loafing," his intimate friendships with men and women of all sorts, his vague speculations concerning the mysteries of birth and death. All these, and more, he summed up in the Song of Myself.

949. 898. An old time sea-fight. The reader recognizes Paul Jones's most famous victory, that of the Bon Homme Richard over the Serapis.

THE BASE OF ALL METAPHYSICS

951. First published 1871; final form the same year. Like the succeeding poem, this centers around one of Whitman's favorite themes, "the dear love of man for his comrade."

I HEAR IT WAS CHARGED AGAINST ME

First published 1860; final form 1867.