Not to be upsides in this with any groom or gardener,
is to be very meanly organised. A man should be ashamed to
take his food if he has not alchemy enough in his stomach to
turn some of it into intense and enjoyable occupation.
Whitman tries to reinforce this cheerfulness by keeping up a
sort of outdoor atmosphere of sentiment. His book, he tells
us, should be read "among the cooling influences of external
nature;" and this recommendation, like that other famous one
which Hawthorne prefixed to his collected tales, is in itself
a character of the work. Every one who has been upon a
walking or a boating tour, living in the open air, with the
body in constant exercise and the mind in fallow, knows true
ease and quiet. The irritating action of the brain is set at
rest; we think in a plain, unfeverish temper; little things
seem big enough, and great things no longer portentous; and
the world is smilingly accepted as it is. This is the spirit
that Whitman inculcates and parades. He thinks very ill of
the atmosphere of parlours or libraries. Wisdom keeps school
outdoors. And he has the art to recommend this attitude of
mind by simply pluming himself upon it as a virtue; so that
the reader, to keep the advantage over his author which most
readers enjoy, is tricked into professing the same view. And
this spirit, as it is his chief lesson, is the greatest charm
of his work.
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