It would be a poor service to spread culture, if this be its
result, among the comparatively innocent and cheerful ranks
of men. When our little poets have to be sent to look at the
ploughman and learn wisdom, we must be careful how we tamper
with our ploughmen. Where a man in not the best of
circumstances preserves composure of mind, and relishes ale
and tobacco, and his wife and children, in the intervals of
dull and unremunerative labour; where a man in this
predicament can afford a lesson by the way to what are called
his intellectual superiors, there is plainly something to be
lost, as well as something to be gained, by teaching him to
think differently. It is better to leave him as he is than
to teach him whining. It is better that he should go without
the cheerful lights of culture, if cheerless doubt and
paralysing sentimentalism are to be the consequence. Let us,
by all means, fight against that hide-bound stolidity of
sensation and sluggishness of mind which blurs and
decolorises for poor natures the wonderful pageant of
consciousness; let us teach people, as much as we can, to
enjoy, and they will learn for themselves to sympathise; but
let us see to it, above all, that we give these lessons in a
brave, vivacious note, and build the man up in courage while
we demolish its substitute, indifference.

Whitman is alive to all this. He sees that, if the poet is
to be of any help, he must testify to the livableness of
life. His poems, he tells us, are to be "hymns of the praise
of things." They are to make for a certain high joy in
living, or what he calls himself "a brave delight fit for