NORTHRUP, M. H. Sidney Lanier, Recollections and Letters. _Lippincott's_, March, 1905. TOLMAN, A. H. Views about Hamlet and Other Essays. TRENT, W. P. Southern Writers. 1905. TOPICS AND PROBLEMS Read the poems or passages alluded to in the text on sentimentalism by Irving (p. 126), Cooper (p. 148), Bryant (p. 163), Longfellow (p. 269), and compare with the statement on Timrod. Compare Timrod's "Cotton Boll" with Bryant's "The Sower" or Lanier's "Corn" for the imaginative grasp of what had ordinarily been considered a prosaic subject. Read the war lyrics of Timrod or Hayne and compare in subject, treatment, and temper with the corresponding work of a Northern poet. Read several poems of Lanier taken at random for the allusions to music. Read Lanier for the evident influence of Shakespeare in supplying him with poetic material. Is there evidence that he was affected by Shakespeare's poetic form? Read the Taylor-Lanier correspondence with reference to the Centennial Cantata. Does the poem fulfill Lanier's intentions? Read Lanier's poems and passages on poetry and the poet and compare them with similar passages in the work of another poet. Read Lanier, Timrod, or Hayne for the presence of nature allusions which would be natural only for a poet of the South. CHAPTER XXIV WALT WHITMAN Walt Whitman (1819-1892) and Mark Twain are the two authors whom the rest of the world have chosen to regard as distinctively American. They are in fact more strikingly different from European writers than any other two in their outer and inner reaction against cultural tradition, though it is an error to regard Americanism as an utterly new thing instead of a compound of new and old elements. Whitman was born on Long Island in 1819: My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the same. They were simple, natural, country people,--the mother, mild-mannered and competent, and the father, "strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust,"--people with the kind of stalwart naïveté who would christen three of their sons Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Walt was the second of nine children. From boyhood he was quite able to take care of himself--amiable, slow-going, fond of chatting with the common folk of his own kind, and happy out of doors, whether on the beach or among the Long Island hills. At twelve he began to work for his living--in a lawyer's office and a doctor's, in printing shops and small newspaper offices, and in more than one school. Newspaper work included writing as well as typesetting and everything between, and writing resulted in his sending accepted contributions to such respected publications as the _Democratic Review_ and George P. Morris's popular _Mirror_.