E-text prepared by Emmanuel Ackerman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 56536-h.htm or 56536-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/56536/pg56536-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56536/56536-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/lifeofwaltwhitma00binnuoft Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). A LIFE OF WALT WHITMAN BY THE SAME WRITER MOODS AND OUTDOOR VERSES ("RICHARD ASKHAM") FOR THE FELLOWSHIP [Illustration: _Walt Whitman at thirty-five_] A LIFE OF WALT WHITMAN by HENRY BRYAN BINNS With Thirty-three Illustrations METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON First Published in 1905 TO MY MOTHER AND HER MOTHER THE REPUBLIC PREFACE To the reader, and especially to the critical reader, it would seem but courteous to give at the beginning of my book some indication of its purpose. It makes no attempt to fill the place either of a critical study or a definitive biography. Though Whitman died thirteen years ago, the time has not yet come for a final and complete life to be written; and when the hour shall arrive we must, I think, look to some American interpreter for the volume. For Whitman's life is of a strongly American flavour. Instead of such a book I offer a biographical study from the point of view of an Englishman, yet of an Englishman who loves the Republic. I have not attempted, except parenthetically here and there, to make literary decisions on the value of Whitman's work, partly because he still remains an innovator upon whose case the jury of the years must decide--a jury which is not yet complete; and partly because I am not myself a literary critic. It is as a man that I see and have sought to describe Whitman. But as a man of special and exceptional character, a new type of mystic or seer. And the conviction that he belongs to the order of initiates has dragged me on to confessedly difficult ground.