disappeared, and we sat through the sale more from force of habit than anything else.

The time was, in Philadelphia, when anyone of any literary taste whatever affected to know Walt Whitman personally. He was an easy man to know, and commonplace people and others buzzed about him like flies and called him "Walt." Much has been written about him; Dr. Platt himself had perpetrated the word is his own a short and excellent life of him; and among other such Whitman material, Horace Traubel brought out three volumes of notes,

"Timber," it might well be called,-"With Walt Whitman in Camden," which will be invaluable when the final life of Whitman comes to be written; for we are yet too near him in time, and we in Philadelphia are too near him geographically, to view him in proper perspective. His followers are going rapidly now; Traubel, one of the last and most loyal of them, died only a few weeks ago; and a new generation, which knew not Whitman in the flesh, has hardly yet come into being. For many years he was a picturesque figure in our streets; everyone knew him by sight and regarded him with respectful, if somewhat amused, curiosity.

But he would be a rash prophet who should declare that Whitman is "outmoded," to use a word coined by Max Beerbohm. Rather, he has not yet come into his own. He may yet be regarded in this country as he is in England, as our one great seer. My own guess is that he will be. The voice of a foreigner is the voice of posterity. Listen to what such a one, Holbrook

Jackson,- if an Englishman may be called a foreigner, says of him:

"The great poet of the future will neither be classic nor romantic, materialist nor spiritualist. He will have nothing to do with rhymes and metres, or with pretty allusions to mythological gods and goddesses, which have for so long been so great a part of the media of the poets of Europe. All these have the taint of caste and convention, social distinctions, monasticism, and ecclesiasticism, of which Whitman is the direct antithesis. Therefore, he makes his songs akin to the rugged life of America, nearer to earth, nearer to the quickness of things than that of Europe ever can be." And again he says: "If I were asked to name the most national product of American thought, something more national than the Declaration of Independence, more characteristic than Abraham Lincoln, more individual than Emerson, and more Western than Mark Twain, I should name Walt Whitman. Of all American writings, his are the most native."

For myself, so far as I am aware, I have only one prejudice, and that is a lifelong aversion to the nation that attempted the destruction of England, and by so doing committed suicide; to other things I bring an open mind — a small mind if you will, but open. Charles Lamb expressed the same idea in four words: "I have no repugnances. "It was, therefore, the lack of repugnance rather than admiration for Walt Whitman which led me to acquiesce when it was suggested that I should assist in an undertaking

to commemorate the centenary of his birth. Poetry is, with me, a thing of choice, a luxury rather than a necessity, and I own to a preference for the poetry of Herrick, say, over that of Walt Whitman "sounding his barbaric yawp over the roof of the world," and in America's name "raising high the perpendicular hand" in a salut au monde. But I agreed to go along when, after a conference, it was decided that a bronze medal should be cast under the ægis of the Franklin Inn Club of Philadelphia, and that Dr. R. Tait McKenzie should make the design. The medal, a round plaque five inches in diameter, was greatly admired, and the number of subscribers was very gratifying and testified to what: an increasing interest in Whitman or an appreciation of the work of the medalist? Who shall say ?

I received one letter, however, from an old friend, who should have known better than to send me such a communication. His name, which I now withhold, will be sent to the curious upon the payment of a small fee. The letter reads:

"I have been assaulted with a proposal to subscribe for a medal of that old vulgarian Walt Whitman. It seems to have your name upon it. I shall gladly subscribe to anything that you recommend, but when I think of this old four-flusher and his inconsequential companions, who used to hold forth in the rear of Dooner's saloon, where he always drank and never paid, my heart goes out to you as a generous and Christian gentleman. Personally, I would not give the best line that he wrote house-room in a

stable. The medal itself looks like a very genial representation of Boreas, and the artist deserves great credit for making such an attractive affair of such a miserable subject. Yours affectionately."

So it would appear that there are still differences of opinion in regard to Whitman, and it seemed wise for me, as in some measure the sponsor of the Franklin Inn Medal, to brush the dust from my dozen volumes or so of the Good Gray Poet, and reacquaint myself with his work. My opinion of him can be summed up in a sentence. Whitman was a poet only in the sense that he was a prophet. He was a man without taste, and he had no power of selection. He celebrated himself in the first line he ever published, and he continued to do so throughout his life. He has some noble thoughts, but they are thoughts which do not bear transportation; that is to say, they do not pass current. One does not quote Whitman. His admirers speak of him as "spacious." I should rather say, diffuse.

I am reminded of the story of the man who, being asked the name of his favorite poet, replied, "Wordsworth. Wordsworth without a doubt. I keep a volume of him by my bedside and when I am restless and cannot sleep, I take up the 'Excursion' and am soon in a profound slumber." If Whitman's poetry lacks the fine soporific qualities of Wordsworth, it is equally deficient in that exquisite aptness of word and phrase which we so greatly admire in those poets who have so permanently enriched our language. Nor of humor has he a single trace. One could have