Now,
whether his poetry is good or bad as poetry, is a matter that may admit
of a difference of opinion without alienating those who differ. We could
not keep the peace with a man who should put forward claims to taste and
yet depreciate the choruses in "Samson Agonistes"; but, I think, we may
shake hands with one who sees no more in Walt Whitman's volume, from a
literary point of view, than a farrago of incompetent essays in a wrong
direction. That may not be at all our own opinion. We may think that,
when a work contains many unforgettable phrases, it cannot be altogether
devoid of literary merit. We may even see passages of a high poetry here
and there among its eccentric contents. But when all is said, Walt
Whitman is neither a Milton nor a Shakespeare; to appreciate his works
is not a condition necessary to salvation; and I would not disinherit a
son upon the question, nor even think much the worse of a critic, for I
should always have an idea what he meant. What Whitman has to say is another affair from how he says it. It is not
possible to acquit any one of defective intelligence, or else stiff
prejudice, who is not interested by Whitman's matter and the spirit it
represents. Not as a poet, but as what we must call (for lack of a more
exact expression) a prophet, he occupies a curious and prominent
position. Whether he may greatly influence the future or not, he is a
notable symptom of the present. As a sign of the times, it would be hard
to find his parallel. I should hazard a large wager, for instance, that
he was not unacquainted with the works of Herbert Spencer; and yet
where, in all the history books, shall we lay our hands on two more
incongruous contemporaries? Mr. Spencer so decorous--I had almost said,
so dandy--in dissent; and Whitman, like a large shaggy dog, just
unchained, scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon. And
when was an echo more curiously like a satire, than when Mr. Spencer
found his Synthetic Philosophy reverberated from the other shores of the
Atlantic in the "barbaric yawp" of Whitman? I

Whitman, it cannot be too soon explained, writes up to a system. He was
a theoriser about society before he was a poet. He first perceived
something wanting, and then sat down squarely to supply the want. The
reader, running over his works, will find that he takes nearly as much
pleasure in critically expounding his theory of poetry as in making
poems. This is as far as it can be from the case of the spontaneous
village minstrel dear to elegy, who has no theory whatever, although
sometimes he may have fully as much poetry as Whitman. The whole of
Whitman's work is deliberate and preconceived. A man born into a society
comparatively new, full of conflicting elements and interests, could not
fail, if he had any thoughts at all, to reflect upon the tendencies
around him. He saw much good and evil on all sides, not yet settled down
into some more or less unjust compromise as in older nations, but still
in the act of settlement. And he could not but wonder what it would turn
out; whether the compromise would be very just or very much the reverse,
and give great or little scope for healthy human energies. From idle
wonder to active speculation is but a step; and he seems to have been
early struck with the inefficacy of literature and its extreme
unsuitability to the conditions. What he calls "Feudal Literature" could
have little living action on the tumult of American democracy; what he
calls the "Literature of Woe," meaning the whole tribe of "Werther" and
Byron, could have no action for good in any time or place. Both
propositions, if art had none but a direct moral influence, would be
true enough; and as this seems to be Whitman's view, they were true
enough for him. He conceived the idea of a Literature which was to
inhere in the life of the present; which was to be, first, human, and
next, American; which was to be brave and cheerful as per contract; to
give culture in a popular and poetical presentment; and, in so doing,
catch and stereotype some democratic ideal of humanity which should be
equally natural to all grades of wealth and education, and suited, in
one of his favourite phrases, to "the average man." To the formation of
some such literature as this his poems are to be regarded as so many
contributions, one sometimes explaining, sometimes superseding, the
other: and the whole together not so much a finished work as a body of
suggestive hints. He does not profess to have built the castle, but he
pretends he has traced the lines of the foundation. He has not made the
poetry, but he flatters himself he has done something towards making the
poets. His notion of the poetic function is ambitious, and coincides roughly
with what Schopenhauer has laid down as the province of the
metaphysician. The poet is to gather together for men, and set in order,
the materials of their existence. He is "The Answerer"; he is to find
some way of speaking about life that shall satisfy, if only for the
moment, man's enduring astonishment at his own position. And besides
having an answer ready, it is he who shall provoke the question. He must
shake people out of their indifference, and force them to make some
election in this world, instead of sliding dully forward in a dream. Life is a business we are all apt to mismanage; either living recklessly
from day to day, or suffering ourselves to be gulled out of our moments
by the inanities of custom. We should despise a man who gave as little
activity and forethought to the conduct of any other business. But in
this, which is the one thing of all others, since it contains them all,
we cannot see the forest for the trees. One brief impression obliterates
another. There is something stupefying in the recurrence of unimportant
things. And it is only on rare provocations that we can rise to take an
outlook beyond daily concerns, and comprehend the narrow limits and
great possibilities of our existence. It is the duty of the poet to
induce such moments of clear sight. He is the declared enemy of all
living by reflex action, of all that is done betwixt sleep and waking,
of all the pleasureless pleasurings and imaginary duties in which we
coin away our hearts and fritter invaluable years. He has to electrify
his readers into an instant unflagging activity, founded on a wide and
eager observation of the world, and make them direct their ways by a
superior prudence, which has little or nothing in common with the maxims
of the copy-book. That many of us lead such lives as they would heartily
disown after two hours' serious reflection on the subject is, I am
afraid, a true, and, I am sure, a very galling thought. The Enchanted
Ground of dead-alive respectability is next, upon the map, to the Beulah
of considerate virtue.