Book Notice.

Whitman-A Study; by John Burroughs. Mr. Burroughs's work, treating of the personality and of the works of Whitman, is in no sense an unprejudiced criticism of the poet and his achievements. On the contrary, as the author himself admits, or rather boasts, in his introductory remarks, his criticism is pervaded with his love for the poet's personality. The book is at once an out-pouring of devotion, almost amounting to worship, and a jealous defense of the idol against all outside disapproval.

Thus we are told that Whitman's apparent vanity is broad-minded candor; that his crudeness of form is a positive virtue; for thereby he expresses with greater freedom the great acts and underlying principles of daily life. Whitman, says Burroughs, is superior to Emerson, in that the latter's intellect starves out his sympathies and emotions. Again, Whitman rises above the sphere of literary culture and conventional form which confines Tennyson and Browning. He belongs rather with Homer, Job, and Isaiah, for his poetry is more than literature; it is humanity itself.