In his desire to accept all facts
loyally and simply, it fell within his programme to speak at
some length and with some plainness on what is, for I really
do not know what reason, the most delicate of subjects.
Seeing in that one of the most serious and interesting parts
of life, he was aggrieved that it should be looked upon as
ridiculous or shameful. No one speaks of maternity with his
tongue in his cheek; and Whitman made a bold push to set the
sanctity of fatherhood beside the sanctity of motherhood, and
introduce this also among the things that can be spoken of
without either a blush or a wink. But the Philistines have
been too strong; and, to say truth, Whitman has rather played
the fool. We may be thoroughly conscious that his end is
improving; that it would be a good thing if a window were
opened on these close privacies of life; that on this
subject, as on all others, he now and then lets fall a
pregnant saying. But we are not satisfied. We feel that he
was not the man for so difficult an enterprise. He loses our
sympathy in the character of a poet by attracting too much of
our attention in that of a Bull in a China Shop. And where,
by a little more art, we might have been solemnised
ourselves, it is too often Whitman alone who is solemn in the
face of an audience somewhat indecorously amused.
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