A most incontrovertible sentiment surely, and one
which nobody would think of controverting, where - and here
is the point - where any beauty has been shown. But how,
where that is not the case? where the hatter is simply
introduced, as God made him and as his fellow-men have
miscalled him, at the crisis of a high-flown rhapsody? And
what are we to say, where a man of Whitman's notable capacity
for putting things in a bright, picturesque, and novel way,
simply gives up the attempt, and indulges, with apparent
exultation, in an inventory of trades or implements, with no
more colour or coherence than so many index-words out of a
dictionary? I do not know that we can say anything, but that
it is a prodigiously amusing exhibition for a line or so.
The worst of it is, that Whitman must have known better. The
man is a great critic, and, so far as I can make out, a good
one; and how much criticism does it require to know that
capitulation is not description, or that fingering on a dumb
keyboard, with whatever show of sentiment and execution, is
not at all the same thing as discoursing music? I wish I
could believe he was quite honest with us; but, indeed, who
was ever quite honest who wrote a book for a purpose? It is
a flight beyond the reach of human magnanimity.
One other point, where his means failed him, must be touched
upon, however shortly.
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