He is neither afraid of being slangy
nor of being dull; nor, let me add, of being ridiculous. The
result is a most surprising compound of plain grandeur,
sentimental affectation, and downright nonsense. It would be
useless to follow his detractors and give instances of how
bad he can be at his worst; and perhaps it would be not much
wiser to give extracted specimens of how happily he can write
when he is at his best. These come in to most advantage in
their own place; owing something, it may be, to the offset of
their curious surroundings. And one thing is certain, that
no one can appreciate Whitman's excellences until he has
grown accustomed to his faults. Until you are content to
pick poetry out of his pages almost as you must pick it out
of a Greek play in Bohn's translation, your gravity will be
continually upset, your ears perpetually disappointed, and
the whole book will be no more to you than a particularly
flagrant production by the Poet Close.
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.
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