CARPENTER AND WHITMAN

Us life somewhat, in order that, wliatever urgent Thing in him might be, it mi^t hâve more chance for expression. He relinquished his Orders and became a University Extension Lecturer in provincial towns, lecturing chiefly on Music and Science. Dnring this period of incubation, if it may be so called, Carpenter read and re-read Leaves of Grass. For ten years he saturated himself with the poems of Walt Whitman ; they " Al* tered and fibred " into his very blood, as he says.

The relation of Carpenter to Whitman is a nice problem in higher criticism. Is he Whitman —massive, rugged, like a quarry— in miniature ? Has he simply given form to some fragments of the gigantic formlessness of the " good, gray poet " ? Is he Whitman set in a lower key ? Did he simply reissue Whitman through the médium of his own consciousness, much, for example, as the Hebrews rdssùed the Babylonian myths through their race-consdousness, communicating its peculiar quality and texture to them ? Can we accept Carpenter's own modest confession that he is the moon to Whitman's sun, the moon whose g^itler radiance permits sight of the stars behind and beyond it, but shining by reflected light only ?

Carp^ter's acknowledgment of indebtedness is unequivocal.

" I find it difficult to ûnagine what my life wonld hâve been without it/' he writes.^