itman that is not beautiful. And this must be frankly
conceded. But this will be found only when he has failed to separate the
husk from the kernel. Whitman's sincerity is never in question, but he
does not always appreciate the difference between accuracy and truth,
between the accidental and the essential. For instance, lines like
these--

"The six framing men, two in the middle, and two at each end,
carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam."

or physiological detail after this fashion:--

"Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws and the jaw
hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck sheer.
Strong shoulders, manly beard, hind shoulders, and the ample size
round of the chest,
Upper arm, armpit, elbow socket, lower arms, arm sinews, arm bones.
Wrist and wrist joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
finger joints, finger nails, etc., etc."

The vital idea lying beneath these accumulated facts is lost sight of by
the reader who has to wade through so many accurate non-essentials.

It is well, I think, to seize upon the weakness of Whitman's literary
style at the outset, for it explains so much that is irritating and
disconcerting.

_Leaves of Grass_ he called his book, and the name is more significant
than one at first realizes. For there is about it not only the
sweetness, the freshness, the luxuriance of the grass; but its prolific
rankness--the wheat and the tares grow together.

It has, I know, been urged by some of Whitman's admirers that his power
as a writer does not depend upon his artistic methods or non-artistic
methods, and he himself protested against his _Leaves_ being judged
merely as literature. And so there has been a tendency to glorify his
very inadequacies, to hold him up as a poet who has defied successfully
the unwritten laws of Art.

This is to do him an ill service. If Whitman's work be devoid of Art,
then it possesses no durability. Literature is an art just as much as
music, painting, or sculpture. And if a man, however fine, however
inspiring his ideas may be, has no power to shape them--to express them
in colour, in sound, in form, in words--to seize upon the essentials and
use no details save as suffice to illustrate these essentials, then his
work will not last. For it has no vitality.

In other words, Whitman mu