What Borrow achieved for the stirring life of the road, Jefferies has done for the brooding life of the fields. What Thoreau did for the woods at Maine and the waters of Merrimac, Jefferies did for the Wiltshire streams and the Sussex hedgerows. He has invested the familiar scenery of Southern England with a new glamour, a tenderer sanctity; has arrested our indifferent vision, our careless hearing, turned our languid appreciation into a comprehending affection. Ardent, shy, impressionable, proud, stout-hearted pagan and wistful idealist; one of the most pathetic and most interesting figures in modern literature. VII WALT WHITMAN “So will I sing on, fast as fancies come; Rudely the verse being as the mood it paints.” ROBERT BROWNING. “A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays And confident to-morrows.” WORDSWORTH. I The “good gray poet” is the supreme example of the Vagabond in literature. It is quite possible for one not drawn towards the Vagabond temperament to admire Stevenson, for Stevenson was a fine artist; to take delight in the vigorous “John Bullism” of _Lavengro_; to sympathize with the natural mysticism of Jefferies; the Puritan austerity of Thoreau. In short, there are aspects in the writings of the other “Vagabonds” in this volume which command attention quite apart from the characteristics specifically belonging to the literary Vagabond. But it is not possible to view Whitman apart from his Vagabondage. He is proud of it, glories in it, and flings it in your face. Others, whatever strain of wildness they may have had, whatever sympathies they may have felt for the rough sweetness of the earth, however unconventional their habits, accepted at any rate the recognized conventions of literature. As men, as thinkers, they were unconventional; as artists conventional. They retained at any rate the literary garments of civilized society. Not so Whitman. He is the Orson of literature. Unconventionality he carries out to its logical conclusion, and strides stark naked among our academies of learning. A strange, uncouth, surprising figure, it is impossible to ignore him however much he may shock our susceptibilities. Many years ago Mr. Swinburne greeted him as “a strong-winged soul with prophetic wings”; subsequently he referred to him as a “drunken apple-woman reeling in a gutter.” For this right-about-face he has been upbraided by Whitman’s admirers. Certainly it is unusual to find any reader starting out to bless and ending with a curse. Usually it is the precedent of Balaam that is followed. But Mr. Swinburne’s mingled feelings typify the attitude of every one who approaches the poet, though few of us can express ourselves so resourcefully as the author of _Poems and Ballads_.