The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-06-01
THE GRAY PROPHET HoNoRED.


Institutions of the Higher Learning, whose benefits
WALT WHITMAN did without (this accounting for
the untrammeed expression of his Individuality or
else making him doubly wonderful take your
choice) hold centenary celebrations The poets sing
WALT in his own way At least they try, and it does
them credit and some Of the singing is good. Doubt
less few odd thousand eighth grade youngsters
said Captain, My Captain in few odd thousand
school rooms Friday afternoon, and the youngish
teachers with tired faces bravely held up to the sun
of Literature wrote Wars dates on the black
boards and the classes learned that he was Great
Man for his countrymen to be proud Of and started
in life the right way, as poor boy.
There was something of notable observance in
Brooklyn last month under Institute of Arts and
Sciences auspices. The best Whitmanian living old
JOHN BURROUGHS, who knew his idol fifty years ago
and appreciated him even earlier, and stoutly pro-
claimed him in day when to do it invited Who's
this WHITMAN" or a shudder or a sheer, was there
to saw II told you So without malice. Dr.. SAMUEL
MCCHoRD CRoTHERs spoke of the deeply religious
character of much of WHITMAN's work, in which
''the best spirit of the old Hebrew prophets is re-
vved''; what would WhilOmville church and lit
erary circles have said to that forty years or less
ago, when if you owned copy of Leaves Of Grass
you didn keep on the parlor table especially not
if the minister making his pastoral callsf Ed
WIN MARKHAM and Louis UNTERMEYER represented
the poets One of the literary executors, Mr..
HARMED, told the rights of the story of Waits
tomb. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle spoke of
his predecessor; and the genial Prof. WILLIAM
LYON PHELPS essayed to explain why it had taken
WHITMAN so long to come into his own. A true
pioneer an original as opposed to an adaptive
genius, must overcome the early impression Of the
strangeness of his work and create the demand
which adaptive genuses have only to supply. That
was the idea.
Is His Public His Own?
We agree that the "strangeness more than
any obscurity, for WHITMAN is not obscure and
more than the once much pothered-about indie
cency''-retarded the appreciation of the public.
But as to his coming into his own wonder. Has
he come into it What his owni The heart of the
common man he claimedf The genuine esteem Of
the democratic multitude he lovedi More Ameri-
cans probably read him now than did ten years ago.
Among them the proportion may be larger of those
who truly are his not born discoveries with Spe-
cial spark or conscientious cultivated seekers of
The Best, who have learned that to 60 in for WHIT
MAN is the thing.
Still the anomaly OF his place IN his country
seems to us to remain, though thousands of common
men, of and for whom he wrote, have come to know
his name, and that judges of authors set store by
him, and though hundreds of big-S and tens of
Titles superior persons his readers, and some
of them are unqualified Whtmanians. In fact, we
are not sure that WHITMAN s own were not reading
him more when his fame was chiefly for indie
cency"! But we are not sure of any of this; we
discuss it with open, not to say draughty
mind.
Certainly there are changes. One of them touches
the standing reproach to Americans that they need
the Old World to point out their great men of let
tiers, reproach which when heard from Americans
is part and parcel of the obsession, troubling a
numerous academic class among US, that everything
new signed by an Englishman whose name has be-
come known here must be better than anything new
signed by any American.
In WHITMAN's the reproach never did have
good, strong legs to stand Who abroad was
much ahead of EMERSON with recognition Of him,
and who abroad could have been more valuable to