"The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers,
cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, he says, the
love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons,
drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, -
all is an old unvaried sign of the unfailing perception of
beauty, and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people."
There seems to me something truly original in this choice of
trite examples. You will remark how adroitly Whitman begins,
hunters and woodmen being confessedly romantic. And one
thing more. If he had said "the love of healthy men for the
female form," he would have said almost a silliness; for the
thing has never been dissembled out of delicacy, and is so
obvious as to be a public nuisance. But by reversing it, he
tells us something not unlike news; something that sounds
quite freshly in words; and, if the reader be a man, gives
him a moment of great self-satisfaction and spiritual
aggrandisement. In many different authors you may find
passages more remarkable for grammar, but few of a more
ingenious turn, and none that could be more to the point in
our connection. The tenacity of many ordinary people in
ordinary pursuits is a sort of standing challenge to
everybody else. If one man can grow absorbed in delving his
garden, others may grow absorbed and happy over something
else.
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