any unforgettable phrases, it cannot be altogether
devoid of literary merit. We may even see passages of a high poetry here
and there among its eccentric contents. But when all is said, Walt
Whitman is neither a Milton nor a Shakespeare; to appreciate his works
is not a condition necessary to salvation; and I would not disinherit a
son upon the question, nor even think much the worse of a critic, for I
should always have an idea what he meant.

What Whitman has to say is another affair from how he says it. It is not
possible to acquit any one of defective intelligence, or else stiff
prejudice, who is not interested by Whitman's matter and the spirit it
represents. Not as a poet, but as what we must call (for lack of a more
exact expression) a prophet, he occupies a curious and prominent
position. Whether he may greatly influence the future or not, he is a
notable symptom of the present. As a sign of the times, it would be hard
to find his parallel. I should hazard a large wager, for instance, that
he was not unacquainted with the works of Herbert Spencer; and yet
where, in all the history books, shall we lay our hands on two more
incongruous contemporaries? Mr. Spencer so decorous--I had almost said,
so dandy--in dissent; and Whitman, like a large shaggy dog, just
unchained, scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon. And
when was an echo more curiously like a satire, than when Mr. Spencer
found his Synthetic Philosophy reverberated from the other shores of the
Atlantic in the "barbaric yawp" of Whitman?

I

Whitman, it cannot be too soon explained, writes up to a system. He was
a theoriser about society before he was a poet. He first perceived
something wanting, and then sat down squarely to supply the want. The
reader, running over his works, will find that he takes nearly as much
pleasure in critically expounding his theory of poetry as in making
poems. This is as far as it can be from the case of the spontaneous
village minstrel dear to elegy, who has no theory whatever, although
sometimes he may have fully as much poetry as Whitman. The whole of
Whitman's work is deliberate and preconceived. A man born into a society
comparatively new, full of conflicting elements and interests, could not
fail, if he had any thoughts at all, to reflect upon the tendencies
around him. He saw much good and evil on all sides, not yet settled down
into some more or less unjust compromise as in older nations, but sti