But when I think of the type of character planted and developed by my poet, I think of a man or a woman rich above all things in the genial human attributes, one “nine times folded” in an atmosphere of tenderest, most considerate humanity,—­an atmosphere warm with the breath of a tropic heart, that makes your buds of affection and of genius start and unfold like a south wind in May.  Your intercourse with such a character is not merely intellectual; it is deeper and better than that.  Walter Scott carried such a fund of sympathy and goodwill that even the animals found fellowship with him, and the pigs understood his great heart.

It was the large endowment of Whitman, in his own character in this respect, that made his services in the army hospitals during the war so ministering and effective, and that renders his “Drum-Taps” the tenderest and most deeply yearning and sorrowful expression of the human heart in poetry that ever war called forth.  Indeed, from my own point of view, there is no false or dangerous tendency among us, in life or in letters, that this poet does not offset and correct.  Fret and chafe as much as we will, we are bound to gravitate, more or less, toward this mountain, and feel its bracing, rugged air.

Without a certain self-surrender there is no greatness possible in literature, any more than in religion, or in anything else.  It is always a trait of the master that he is not afraid of being compromised by the company he keeps.  He is the central and main fact in any company.  Nothing so lowly but he will do it reverence; nothing so high but he can stand in its presence.  His theme is the river, and he the ample and willing channel.  Little natures love to disparage and take down; they do it in self-defense; but the master gives you all, and more than your due.  Whitman does not stand aloof, superior, a priest or a critic:  he abandons himself to all the strong human currents; he enters into and affiliates with every phase of life; he bestows himself royally upon whoever and whatever will receive him.  There is no competition between himself and his subject; he is not afraid of over-praising, or making too much of the commonest individual.  What exalts others exalts him.

We have had great help in Emerson in certain ways,—­first-class service.  He probes the conscience and the moral purpose as few men have done, and gives much needed stimulus there.  But, after him, the need is all the more pressing for a broad, powerful, opulent, human personality to absorb these ideals, and to make something more of them than fine sayings.  With Emerson alone we are rich in sunlight, but poor in rain and dew,—­poor, too, in soil, and in the moist, gestating earth principle.  Emerson’s tendency is not to broaden and enrich, but to concentrate and refine.