An early study of Whitman and his poetry by the 19th century British poet. His study of Whitman is interesting in the light of his own haphazard existence and history of melancholia, and it deserves comparison with his studies of other great poets. This appreciation of Whitman is from an unexpected source: the saturnine poet of "The City of Dreadful Night!" These two essays on Whitman first appeared in magazines in 1874 and 1881-2. They were collected and first printed in book form, with an introduction by Bertram Dobell, in 1910.