In many ways, Whitman corresponds to the ideal presented in the “natural man” of Rousseau; if space allowed, a profitable comparison might be made between “the good grey poet” and the French forerunner of American democracy. At the outset, the excessive sentimentalism of Rousseau would constitute a patent difference. But Whitman’s assumption of equality among individuals, in so far as they are not spoiled by what he deems a false and artificial education, is nothing new to the reader of Rousseau; and his preference of the “powerful, uneducated,” raw material of humanity has its counterpart in the sympathetic attitude of Rousseau toward the burgher and peasant classes which formed the part of society that he really understood. Moreover, both of these authors demand an individual standard--which is no standard--of judgment. Both desire to be appreciated, yet refuse to be appraised according to standards which the cumulative wisdom of mankind in the past, of the greatest democracy, has attained to and approved. Both try to regard organisation and the subordination of one person or thing to another as unnatural. In the case of Whitman at least, it is for want of philosophical standards, and for want of a consistent effort to determine what is meant by _nature_ and _natural_, that the so-called literature of democracy has been so hard to measure. In the first place, then, if we are to measure Whitman at all, we must make certain postulates. For example, we must postulate that restraint in literature, as in life, is a law of nature. This, Whitman is not disposed to admit. In private life, it is true, he was more temperate and continent than certain passages in “Leaves of Grass” led casual readers to surmise. But he saw fit to beget children, out of wedlock, without assuming the responsibility of their nurture and education. Are the duties which modern society lays upon parents less natural than the alleged practice of Rousseau, or are they more? Again, Whitman decides to address the public in the guise of a poet. Now in practice, be it observed, he is much truer to the demands of a poetic ear than are many of our conventional versifiers; and though he has a predilection for colloquial diction and syntax, he is in his own way not unscrupulous in the matter of technique. The changes that he made in successive editions of his main work, “Leaves of Grass,” are of deep interest to the student of poetic art. At the same time, he repudiates literary convention, and recognizes no law as binding upon one who contracts to write for his fellow men, save the law of his individual being. There is, however, no law, or science, or art, of the individual as such. Poetry, according to the deepest thinkers on this subject, is the rhythmical utterance of the individual in harmony with universal law; and criticism has for its province the recognition of that universal law in the particular poet. In so far, then, as Whitman’s irregularly