A writer of this uncertain quality was, perhaps, unfortunate
in taking for thesis the beauty of the world as it now is,
not only on the hill-tops but in the factory; not only by the
harbour full of stately ships, but in the magazine of the
hopelessly prosaic hatter. To show beauty in common things
is the work of the rarest tact. It is not to be done by the
wishing. It is easy to posit as a theory, but to bring it
home to men's minds is the problem of literature, and is only
accomplished by rare talent, and in comparatively rare
instances. To bid the whole world stand and deliver, with a
dogma in one's right hand by way of pistol; to cover reams of
paper in a galloping, headstrong vein; to cry louder and
louder over everything as it comes up, and make no
distinction in one's enthusiasm over the most incomparable
matters; to prove one's entire want of sympathy for the
jaded, literary palate, by calling, not a spade a spade, but
a hatter a hatter, in a lyrical apostrophe; - this, in spite
of all the airs of inspiration, is not the way to do it. It
may be very wrong, and very wounding to a respectable branch
of industry, 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