Admirable, even wonderful, as these verses are, it may be after all that the little volume called _Drum-Taps_ (together with its _Sequel_) is Whitman’s best gift to the literature of his country. Vivid pictures of battle-field, camp, and hospital, they are not to be forgotten by him who has once looked on them. The ‘Prelude,’ ‘Cavalry Crossing a Ford,’ ‘By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame,’ ‘The Dresser,’ the impressive ‘Vigil strange I kept on the field one night,’ and the no less striking ‘A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,’ together with ‘As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods,’ the ‘Hymn of Dead Soldiers,’ and ‘Spirit whose Work is Done,’--these and many more have accomplished for Whitman’s reputation what the ‘Song of Myself’ and kindred poems could not. In _Drum-Taps_ appeared the tributes to Lincoln, ‘O Captain, my Captain,’ and the great lament beginning ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d.’ Here the poet rises to his supreme height. For pathos and tenderness, for beauty of phrase, nobility of thought, and a grand yet simple manner this threnody is indeed worthy of the praise bestowed on it by those critics whose praise is most to be desired.[72] V _SPECIMEN DAYS AND COLLECT_ Whitman’s prose in the definitive edition makes a stout volume of more than five hundred closely printed pages. The title, _Specimen Days and Collect_, gives an imperfect hint of the contents. Here are extracts from journals kept through twenty years. Many bear a resemblance to Hugo’s _Choses Vues_. Largely autobiographical and reminiscent, they are vivid, picturesque, and far better in their haphazard way than a good deal of formal ‘literature.’ Here are reprints of prefaces to the several editions of _Leaves of Grass_, together with papers on Burns, Tennyson, and Shakespeare, a lecture on Lincoln, a paper on American national literature, and yet more ‘diary-notes’ and ‘splinters.’ He who loves to browse in a book will find the volume of Whitman’s prose made to his hand. The prose is of high importance to an understanding of what, oddly enough, his poetry imperfectly reveals--Whitman’s character. To know the man as he really was we must read _Specimen Days and Collect_. VI WHITMAN’S CHARACTER There is a certain uncanny quality in parts of Whitman’s verse. The reiteration of particular phrases and words awakens an uncomfortable feeling, a suspicion of not-to-be-named queernesses, to use no plainer term. The constant translation of conceptions of ideal love into fleshly symbols moves the reader to irreverence if not to disgust. Whitman’s favorite image of bearded ‘comrades’ who kiss when they meet, and who take long walks with their arms around each other’s necks, may be ‘nonchalant’ but it is not agreeable. Somehow it does not seem as if the doctrine of the brotherhood of man gained many supporters by so singular a method of propagandism.