but the word "hatter" cannot be used seriously in
emotional verse; not to understand this is to have no literary tact; and
I would, for his own sake, that this were the only inadmissible
expression with which Whitman had bedecked his pages. The book teems
with similar comicalities; and, to a reader who is determined to take it
from that side only, presents a perfect carnival of fun.

A good deal of this is the result of theory playing its usual vile trick
upon the artist. It is because he is a Democrat that Whitman must have
in the hatter. If you may say Admiral, he reasons, why may you not say
Hatter? One man is as good as another, and it is the business of the
"great poet" to show poetry in the life of the one as well as the other.
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. 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