Job has been written and read; the tower of Siloam
fell nineteen hundred years ago; yet we have still to desire a little
Christianity, or, failing that, a little even of that rude, old Norse
nobility of soul, which saw virtue and vice alike go unrewarded, and was
yet not shaken in its faith. WALT WHITMAN. This is a case of a second difficulty which lies
continually before the writer of critical studies: that he has to
meditate between the author whom he loves and the public who are
certainly indifferent and frequently averse. Many articles had been
written on this notable man. One after another had leaned, in my eyes,
either to praise or blame unduly. In the last case, they helped to
blindfold our fastidious public to an inspiring writer; in the other, by
an excess of unadulterated praise, they moved the more candid to revolt. I was here on the horns of a dilemma; and between these horns I squeezed
myself, with perhaps some loss to the substance of the paper. Seeing so
much in Whitman that was merely ridiculous, as well as so much more that
was unsurpassed in force and fitness,--seeing the true prophet doubled,
as I thought, in places with the Bull in a China Shop,--it appeared best
to steer a middle course, and to laugh with the scorners when I thought
they had any excuse, while I made haste to rejoice with the rejoicers
over what is imperishably good, lovely, human, or divine, in his
extraordinary poems. That was perhaps the right road; yet I cannot help
feeling that in this attempt to trim my sails between an author whom I
love and honour and a public too averse to recognise his merit, I have
been led into a tone unbecoming from one of my stature to one of
Whitman's. But the good and the great man will go on his way not vexed
with my little shafts of merriment. He, first of any one, will
understand how, in the attempt to explain him credibly to Mrs. Grundy, I
have been led into certain airs of the man of the world, which are
merely ridiculous in me, and were not intentionally discourteous to
himself. But there is a worse side to the question; for in my eagerness
to be all things to all men, I am afraid I may have sinned against
proportion. It will be enough to say here that Whitman's faults are few
and unimportant when they are set beside his surprising merits. I had
written another paper full of gratitude for the help that had been given
me in my life, full of enthusiasm for the intrinsic merit of the poems,
and conceived in the noisiest extreme of youthful eloquence. The present
study was a rifacimento. From it, with the design already mentioned, and
in a fit of horror at my old excess, the big words and emphatic passages
were ruthlessly excised. But this sort of prudence is frequently its
own punishment; along with the exaggeration, some of the truth is
sacrificed; and the result is cold, constrained, and grudging. In short,
I might almost everywhere have spoken more strongly than I did. THOREAU. Here is an admirable instance of the "point of view" forced
throughout, and of too earnest reflection on imperfect facts. Upon me
this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic Thoreau had exercised a great charm. I have scarce written ten sentences since I was introduced to him, but
his influence might be somewhere detected by a close observer. Still it
was as a writer that I had made his acquaintance; I took him on his own
explicit terms; and when I learned details of his life, they were, by
the nature of the case and my own _parti pris_, read even with a certain
violence in terms of his writings. There could scarce be a perversion
more justifiable than that; yet it was still a perversion. The study,
indeed, raised so much ire in the breast of Dr. Japp (H. A. Page),
Thoreau's sincere and learned disciple, that had either of us been men,
I please myself with thinking, of less temper and justice, the
difference might have made us enemies instead of making us friends. To
him, who knew the man from the inside, many of my statements sounded
like inversions made on purpose; and yet when we came to talk of them
together, and he had understood how I was looking at the man through the
books, while he had long since learned to read the books through the
man, I believe he understood the spirit in which I had been led astray. On two most important points, Dr. Japp added to my knowledge, and with
the same blow fairly demolished that part of my criticism. First, if
Thoreau were content to dwell by Walden Pond, it was not merely with
designs of self-improvement, but to serve mankind in the highest sense. Hither came the fleeing slave; thence was he despatched along the road
to freedom. That shanty in the woods was a station in the great
Underground Railroad; that adroit and philosophic solitary was an
ardent worker, soul and body, in that so much more than honourable
movement, which, if atonement were possible for nations, should have
gone far to wipe away the guilt of slavery. But in history sin always
meets with condign punishment; the generation passes, the offence
remains, and the innocent must suffer. No underground railroad could
atone for slavery, even as no bills in Parliament can redeem the ancient
wrongs of Ireland. But here at least is a new light shed on the Walden
episode. Second, it appears, and the point is capital, that Thoreau was once
fairly and manfully in love, and, with perhaps too much aping of the
angel, relinquished the woman to his brother. Even though the brother
were like to die of it, we have not yet heard the last opinion of the
woman. But be that as it may, we have here the explanation of the
"rarefied and freezing air" in which I complained that he had taught
himself to breathe. Reading the man through the books, I took his
professions in good faith. He made a dupe of me, even as he was seeking
to make a dupe of himself, wresting philosophy to the needs of his own
sorrow. But in the light of this new fact, those pages, seemingly so
cold, are seen to be alive with feeling. What appeared to be a lack of
interest in the philosopher turns out to have been a touching
insincerity of the man to his own heart; and that fine-spun airy theory
of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of any quality of flesh and
blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The most temperate of living
critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words,
"This seems nonsense." It not only seemed; it was so. It was a private
bravado of my own, which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits
that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by setting
it down as a contribution to the theory of life. So with the more icy
parts of this philosophy of Thoreau's. He was affecting the Spartanism
he had not; and the old sentimental wound still bled afresh, while he
deceived himself with reasons.