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.
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