On the whole, Whitman, though he solves none of the problems of life and throws no light on American civilization, is a delightful appearance, and a strange creature to come out of our beehive. This man committed every unpardonable sin against our conventions, and his whole life was an outrage. He was neither chaste, nor industrious, nor religious. He patiently lived upon cold pie and tramped the earth in triumph. He did really live the life he liked to live, in defiance of all men, and this is a great desert, a most stirring merit. And he gave, in his writings, a true picture of himself and of that life,--a picture which the world had never seen before, and which it is probable the world will not soon cease to wonder at. * * * * * A STUDY OF ROMEO The plays of Shakespeare marshal themselves in the beyond. They stand in a place outside of our deduction. Their cosmos is greater than our philosophy. They are like the forces of nature and the operations of life in the vivid world about us. We may measure our intellectual growth by the new horizons we see opening within them. So long as they continue to live and change, to expand and deepen, to be filled with new harmony and new suggestion, we may rest content; we are still growing. At the moment we think we have comprehended them, at the moment we see them as stationary things, we may be sure something is wrong; we are beginning to petrify. Our fresh interest in life has been arrested. There is, therefore, danger in an attempt to "size up" Shakespeare. We cannot help setting down as a coxcomb any man who has done it to his own satisfaction. He has pigeon-holed himself. He will not get lost. If you want him, you can lay your hand on him. He has written an autobiography. He has "sized up" himself. In writing about Shakespeare, it is excusable to put off the armor of criticism, and speak in a fragmentary and inconclusive manner, lest by giving way to conviction, by encouraging ourselves into positive beliefs, we hasten the inevitable and grow old before our time. Perhaps some such apology is needed to introduce the observations on the character of Romeo which are here thrown together, and the remarks about the play itself, the acting, and the text.