When Whitman was 69 years old he began to read Boswell; he refers to him a dozen times in the course of the year, thereby showing that Boswell interested him, for when Whitman was not interested in a book he simply forgot it. He thought that Johnson "talked for effect--seemed rather inclined to bark men down, like the biggest dog--indeed, a spice of dishonesty palpably possessed him. Johnson tried rather to impress than to be true." "He was on stilts always--he belongs to the self-conscious literary class, who live in a house of rules and never get into the open air." However, note this significant confession: "I read it through, looked it through, rather--persisted in spite of fifty temptations to throw it down. I don't know who tried me most--Johnson or Boswell. The book lasts--it seems to have elements of life--but I will do nothing to pass it on." There is the comment of the lion on the bear. No, these zoological metaphors are quite false. Benevolent and burly male persons are not, even by Whitmanian identifications, to be named with the brutes. Some day a biographer with the right talent and in possession of all Traubel's material, cognizant of social ideals and facts and sensitive to poetry, will write a good life of Whitman. So far as I know, there is no satisfactory biography of our one magnificent American poet. Traubel was not able to do it. He was properly employed in gathering and publishing the fundamental record. Moreover, his style, perfectly fitted to short hand notes, is, in continuous composition, abominable. I loved him with all my Whitmanian heart and read him, because of every four of his sentences one says something worth while. But ten sentences of his in a row hurt like a corduroy road. I have to get out and walk and rub myself. Several literary men have tried to write Whitman's life and they have failed. Professor Bliss Perry's book is fatuous. He had no excuse to write about Whitman at all, except in so far forth as a publisher's request to an alleged literary man to do a book for an established series furnishes a practical excuse.