The address on ‘The Place of the Independent in Politics’ supplements the Birmingham address. As Lowell before an English audience had dwelt on ‘the good points and favorable aspect of democracy,’ so before a home audience he discussed its weak points and its dangers. He thought the system would bear investigation. At no time did he labor under the mistake of supposing that democracy was a contrivance which ran of its own accord. Parties there must be and politicians to look after them, but it is no less essential that there should be somebody to look after the politicians. The address is a plea for unselfishness in political action. * * * * * Admirers of Lowell find it easy to believe that of all American makers of verse he had the most of what is called inspiration. With less catholic tastes he might have become a greater poet and would undoubtedly have been a finer artist. But granting that it was a matter of choice, and that Lowell had elected to make mastery in verse (with all the sacrifices involved) the object of his life, how serious then would have been the loss to criticism and to politics. The Lowell we know, with his extraordinary mental vivacity, his grasp of a multitude of interests that make for culture, is surely a more engaging figure than the hypothetical Lowell of purely poetical achievement. FOOTNOTES: [63] Keith Spence was born at Kirkwall, Orkney. Mrs. Lowell had Orcadian ancestors on both sides of the house, her maternal grandfather, Robert Traill, having also come from Orkney. [64] January, February, and March, 1843. [65] Scudder. [66] H. R. Haweis: _American Humorists_. [67] The remarkable paper on Lincoln was afterwards transferred to the volume of _Political Essays_. [68] January, 1845, to November, 1850. XIX _WALT WHITMAN_ REFERENCES: =John Burroughs=: _Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person_, second edition, 1871. =R. M. Bucke=: _Walt Whitman_, 1883. =W. S. Kennedy=: _Reminiscences of Walt Whitman_, 1896. =I. H. Platt=: _Walt Whitman_, ‘Beacon Biographies,’ 1904. I HIS LIFE Walter Whitman (commonly known as Walt) was born at West Hills, a village in Huntington Township, Long Island, on May 31, 1819. He was a son of Walter Whitman, a carpenter and house-builder, who followed his trade chiefly in New York and Brooklyn. The Long Island Whitmans claim descent from the Reverend Zechariah Whitman, who came to America in 1635, and settled at Milford, Connecticut. Zechariah’s son Joseph crossed the Sound ‘sometime before 1660,’ and may have been the original purchaser of the farm where successive generations of his descendants lived, and where the poet was born.