A writer of this uncertain quality was, perhaps, unfortunate in taking
for thesis the beauty of the world as it now is, not only on the
hill-tops but in the factory; not only by the harbour full of stately
ships, but in the magazine of the hopelessly prosaic hatter. To show
beauty in common things is the work of the rarest tact. It is not to be
done by the wishing. It is easy to posit as a theory, but to bring it
home to men's minds is the problem of literature, and is only
accomplished by rare talent, and in comparatively rare instances. To bid
the whole world stand and deliver, with a dogma in one's right hand by
way of pistol; to cover reams of paper in a galloping, headstrong vein;
to cry louder and louder over everything as it comes up, and make no
distinction in one's enthusiasm over the most incomparable matters; to
prove one's entire want of sympathy for the jaded, literary palate, by
calling, not a spade a spade, but a hatter a hatter, in a lyrical
apostrophe;--this, in spite of all the airs of inspiration, is not the
way to do it. It may be very wrong, and very wounding to a respectable
branch of industry, but the word "hatter" cannot be used seriously in
emotional verse; not to understand this is to have no literary tact; and
I would, for his own sake, that this were the only inadmissible
expression with which Whitman had bedecked his pages. The book teems
with similar comicalities; and, to a reader who is determined to take it
from that side only, presents a perfect carnival of fun. A good deal of this is the result of theory playing its usual vile trick
upon the artist. It is because he is a Democrat that Whitman must have
in the hatter. If you may say Admiral, he reasons, why may you not say
Hatter? One man is as good as another, and it is the business of the
"great poet" to show poetry in the life of the one as well as the other. A most incontrovertible sentiment, surely, and one which nobody would
think of controverting, where--and here is the point--where any beauty
has been shown. But how, where that is not the case? where the hatter is
simply introduced, as God made him and as his fellow-men have miscalled
him, at the crisis of a high-flown rhapsody? And what are we to say,
where a man of Whitman's notable capacity for putting things in a
bright, picturesque, and novel way, simply gives up the attempt, and
indulges, with apparent exultation, in an inventory of trades or
implements, with no more colour or coherence than so many index-words
out of a dictionary? I do not know that we can say anything, but that it
is a prodigiously amusing exhibition for a line or so. The worst of it
is, that Whitman must have known better. The man is a great critic, and,
so far as I can make out, a good one; and how much criticism does it
require to know that capitulation is not description, or that fingering
on a dumb keyboard, with whatever show of sentiment and execution, is
not at all the same thing as discoursing music? I wish I could believe
he was quite honest with us; but, indeed, who was ever quite honest who
wrote a book for a purpose? It is a flight beyond the reach of human
magnanimity. One other point, where his means failed him, must be touched upon,
however shortly. In his desire to accept all facts loyally and simply,
it fell within his programme to speak at some length and with some
plainness on what is, for I really do not know what reason, the most
delicate of subjects. Seeing in that one of the most serious and
interesting parts of life, he was aggrieved that it should be looked
upon as ridiculous or shameful. No one speaks of maternity with his
tongue in his cheek; and Whitman made a bold push to set the sanctity of
fatherhood beside the sanctity of motherhood, and introduce this also
among the things that can be spoken of without either a blush or a wink. But the Philistines have been too strong; and, to say truth, Whitman had
rather played the fool. We may be thoroughly conscious that his end is
improving; that it would be a good thing if a window were opened on
these close privacies of life; that on this subject, as on all others,
he now and then lets fall a pregnant saying. But we are not satisfied. We feel that he was not the man for so difficult an enterprise. He loses
our sympathy in the character of a poet by attracting too much of our
attention in that of a Bull in a China Shop. And where, by a little more
art, we might have been solemnised ourselves, it is too often Whitman
alone who is solemn in the face of an audience somewhat indecorously
amused. VI

Lastly, as most important, after all, to human beings in our disputable
state, what is that higher prudence which was to be the aim and issue of
these deliberate productions? Whitman is too clever to slip into a succinct formula. If he could have
adequately said his say in a single proverb, it is to be presumed he
would not have put himself to the trouble of writing several volumes. It
was his programme to state as much as he could of the world with all its
contradictions, and leave the upshot with God who planned it. What he
has made of the world and the world's meanings is to be found at large
in his poems. These altogether give his answers to the problems of
belief and conduct; in many ways righteous and high-spirited, in some
ways loose and contradictory. And yet there are two passages from the
preface to the "Leaves of Grass" which do pretty well condense his
teaching on all essential points, and yet preserve a measure of his
spirit. "This is what you shall do," he says in the one, "love the earth, and
   sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,
   stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to
   others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and
   indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or
   unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with powerful
   uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers of families, read
   these leaves (his own works) in the open air every season of every
   year of your life; re-examine all you have been told at school or
   church, or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul." "The prudence of the greatest poet," he adds in the other--and the
   greatest poet is, of course, himself--"knows that the young man who
   composedly perilled his life and lost it, has done exceeding well for
   himself; while the man who has not perilled his life, and retains it
   to old age in riches and ease, has perhaps achieved nothing for
   himself worth mentioning; and that only that person has no great
   prudence to learn, who has learnt to prefer real long-lived things,
   and favours body and soul the same, and perceives the indirect surely
   following the direct, and what evil or good he does leaping onward
   and waiting to meet him again, and who in his spirit, in any
   emergency whatever, neither hurries nor avoids death."