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