future.  Literature, to him, has a distinctly social aim.  He seeks to build up the masses by ‘building up grand individuals.’  And yet literature itself must be preceded by noble forms of life.  ’The best literature is always the result of something far greater than itself—­not the hero but the portrait of the hero.  Before there can be recorded history or poem there must be the transaction.’  Certainly, in Walt Whitman’s views there is a largeness of vision, a healthy sanity and a fine ethical purpose.  He is not to be placed with the professional litterateurs of his country, Boston novelists, New York poets and the like.  He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance.  He has begun a prelude to larger themes.  He is the herald to a new era.  As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type.  He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being.  If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.

November Boughs.  By Walt Whitman. (Alexander Gardner.)

THE NEW PRESIDENT

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 26, 1889.)

In a little book that he calls The Enchanted Island Mr. Wyke Bayliss, the new President of the Royal Society of British Artists, has given his gospel of art to the world.  His predecessor in office had also a gospel of art but it usually took the form of an autobiography.  Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital ‘I.’  However, he was never dull.  His brilliant wit, his caustic satire, and his amusing epigrams, or, perhaps, we should say epitaphs, on his contemporaries, made his views on art as delightful as they were misleading and as fascinating as they were unsound.  Besides, he introduced American humour into art criticism, and for this, if for no other reason, he deserves to be affectionately remembered.  Mr. Wyke Bayliss, upon the other hand, is rather tedious.  The last President never said much that was true, but the present President never says anything that is new; and, if art be a fairy-haunted wood or an enchanted island, we must say that we prefer the old Puck to the fresh Prospero.  Water is an admirable thing—­at least, the Greeks said it was—­and Mr. Ruskin is an admirable writer; but a combination of both is a little depressing.

Still, it is only right to add that Mr. Wyke Bayliss, at his best, writes very good English.  Mr. Whistler, for some reason or other, always adopted the phraseology of the minor prophets.  Possibly it was in order to emphasise his well-known claims to verbal inspiration, or perhaps he thought with Voltaire that Habakkuk etait capable de tout, and wished to shelter himself under the shield of a definitely irresponsible writer none of whose prophecies, according to the French philosopher, has ever been fulfilled.  The idea was clever enough at the beginning, but ultimately the manner