. 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 had
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.

VI

Lastly, as most important, after all, to human beings in our disputable
state, what is that higher prudence which was to be the aim and issue of
these deliberate productions?

Whitman is too clever to slip into a succinct formula. If he could have
adequately said his say in a single proverb, it is to be presumed he
would not have put himself to the trouble of writing several volumes. It
was his programme to state as much as he could of the world with all its
contradictions, and leave the upshot with God who planned it. What he
has made of the world and the world's meanings is to be found at large
in his poems. These altogether give his answers to the problems of
belief and conduct; in many ways righteous and high-spirited, in some
ways loose and contradictory. And yet there are two passages from the
preface to the "Leaves of Grass" which do pretty well condense his
teaching on all essential points, and yet preserve a measure of his
spirit.

"This is what you shall do," he says in the one, "love the earth, and
sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to
others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and
indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or
unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with powerful
uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers of families, read
these leaves (his own w