The new virtue,
Unionism, of which he is the sole inventor, seemed to have fallen into
premature unpopularity. All that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the
balance. And the game of war was not only momentous to him in its
issues; it sublimated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tortured
him intimately by the spectacle of its horrors. It was a theatre, it was
a place of education it was like a season of religious revival. He
watched Lincoln going daily to his work; he studied and fraternised with
young soldiery passing to the front; above all, he walked the hospitals,
reading the Bible, distributing clean clothes, or apples, or tobacco; a
patient, helpful, reverend man, full of kind speeches. His memoranda of this period are almost bewildering to read. From one
point of view they seem those of a district visitor; from another, they
look like the formless jottings of an artist in the picturesque. More
than one woman, on whom I tried the experiment, immediately claimed the
writer for a fellow-woman. More than one literary purist might identify
him as a shoddy newspaper correspondent without the necessary faculty of
style. And yet the story touches home; and if you are of the weeping
order of mankind, you will certainly find your eyes filled with tears,
of which you have no reason to be ashamed. There is only one way to
characterise a work of this order, and that is to quote. Here is a
passage from a letter to a mother, unknown to Whitman, whose son died in
hospital:--

   "Frank, as far as I saw, had everything requisite in surgical
   treatment, nursing, etc. He had watches much of the time. He was so
   good and well-behaved, and affectionate, I myself liked him very
   much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by him,
   and he liked to have me--liked to put out his arm and lay his hand on
   my knee--would keep it so a long while. Toward the last he was more
   restless and flighty at night--often fancied himself with his
   regiment--by his talk sometimes seem'd as if his feelings were hurt
   by being blamed by his officers for something he was entirely
   innocent of--said 'I never in my life was thought capable of such a
   thing, and never was.' At other times he would fancy himself talking
   as it seem'd to children or such like, his relatives, I suppose, and
   giving them good advice; would talk to them a long while. All the
   time he was out of his head not one single bad word, or thought, or
   idea escaped him. It was remark'd that many a man's conversation in
   his senses was not half so good as Frank's delirium. "He was perfectly willing to die--he had become very weak, and had
   suffer'd a good deal, and was perfectly resign'd, poor boy. I do not
   know his past life, but I feel as if it must have been good. At any
   rate what I saw of him here, under the most trying circumstances,
   with a painful wound, and among strangers, I can say that he behaved
   so brave, so composed, and so sweet and affectionate, it could not be
   surpassed. And now, like many other noble and good men, after serving
   his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life at the
   very outset in her service. Such things are gloomy--yet there is a
   text, 'God doeth all things well,' the meaning of which, after due
   time, appears to the soul. "I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, about your
   son, from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while, for
   I loved the young man, though I but saw him immediately to lose him." It is easy enough to pick holes in the grammar of this letter, but what
are we to say of its profound goodness and tenderness? It is written as
though he had the mother's face before his eyes, and saw her wincing in
the flesh at every word. And what, again, are we to say of its sober
truthfulness, not exaggerating, not running to phrases, not seeking to
make a hero out of what was only an ordinary but good and brave young
man? Literary reticence is not Whitman's stronghold; and this reticence
is not literary, but humane; it is not that of a good artist but that of
a good man. He knew that what the mother wished to hear about was Frank;
and he told her about her Frank as he was. V

Something should be said of Whitman's style, for style is of the essence
of thinking. And where a man is so critically deliberate as our author,
and goes solemnly about his poetry for an ulterior end, every indication
is worth notice. He has chosen a rough, unrhymed, lyrical verse;
sometimes instinct with a fine processional movement; often so rugged
and careless that it can only be described by saying that he has not
taken the trouble to write prose. I believe myself that it was selected
principally because it was easy to write, although not without
recollections of the marching measures of some of the prose in our
English Old Testament. According to Whitman, on the other hand, "the
time has arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form between
Prose and Poetry ... for the most cogent purposes of those great inland
states, and for Texas, and California, and Oregon";--a statement which
is among the happiest achievements of American humour. He calls his
verses "recitatives," in easily followed allusion to a musical form. "Easily written, loose-fingered chords," he cries, "I feel the thrum of
your climax and close." Too often, I fear, he is the only one who can
perceive the rhythm; and in spite of Mr. Swinburne, a great part of his
work considered as verses is poor bald stuff. Considered, not as verse,
but as speech, a great part of it is full of strange and admirable
merits. The right detail is seized; the right word, bold and trenchant,
is thrust into its place. Whitman has small regard to literary
decencies, and is totally free from literary timidities. He is neither
afraid of being slangy nor of being dull; nor, let me add, of being
ridiculous. The result is a most surprising compound of plain grandeur,
sentimental affectation, and downright nonsense. It would be useless to
follow his detractors and give instances of how bad he can be at his
worst; and perhaps it would be not much wiser to give extracted
specimens of how happily he can write when he is at his best. These
come in to most advantage in their own place; owing something, it may
be, to the offset of their curious surroundings. And one thing is
certain, that no one can appreciate Whitman's excellences until he has
grown accustomed to his faults. Until you are content to pick poetry out
of his pages almost as you must pick it out of a Greek play in Bohn's
translation, your gravity will be continually upset, your ears
perpetually disappointed, and the whole book will be no more to you than
a particularly flagrant production by the Poet Close.