94 
Analyses of Books. 
[February, 
in the exaltation, the fervour with which he sings of love between 
comrades. . . . His faculty of brotherly love is one of his most 
potent inspirations.” Brotherly love is a very questionable 
feeling. One of the most objectionable types of the drunkard is 
he who, as he reels home, insists on shaking hands with every- 
one, and who is ready to quarrel with all who decline to touch 
his beer- and tobacco-scented paw. The first French Revolution 
was intensely brotherly when it exclaimed “La fraternite ou 
la mort 
Whitman is described as self-esteeming, vigorously egotistic, 
intolerant. Now it is noteworthy that at present there exist not 
a few minds of this stamp, who, whilst advocating the claims of 
the individual against the community, would proscribe every 
form of activity but their own. French democracy, when handing 
over Lavoisier to the headsman, declared that the Republic had 
no need of chemists ; the Corn-Law rhymer, Ebenezer Elliot, is 
unmeasured in his contempt for the working-class naturalist; 
and modern English organs of popular opinion “ were instant 
with loud voices ” that no part of the surplus from the Fisheries’ 
Exhibition should be applied to fitting up marine zoological 
stations. AnJ these voices, whether or not backed by those of 
the chief priests, prevailed. 
It is remarked by Mr. Robertson that Whitman “ is never 
heartily humorous in his writings,” and that he even “ sees in 
the American habit of jesting on all things one of the unhealthy 
aspects of things democratic.” We do not know whether this 
tendency is exclusively American or purely democratic. The 
kings and barons of the Middle Ages had their official “jokers 
of jokes.” We in England generally contrive to hive at least 
one circus-clown in our Parliament. But perhaps the democrat, 
as he is his own sovereign, thinks it necessary to be his own 
court-fool at the same time. Yet even if the tendency tc perpe- 
tual joking is world-wide it needs a rebuke, and that such should 
come from America is all the better. 
Of poetical merit we are certainly no fitting judge ; but we 
may at least ask whether a contempt for rhyme, for rhythm, and 
for grammatical accuracy is of itself sufficient to constitute 
poetry, especially in the absence of great thoughts ? 
The following passage, due, as the reader might well suspeCt, 
not to Whitman, but to Mr. J. Robertson, deserves serious con- 
sideration : — “ People profess to believe in Evolution, yet treat 
every new speculation as less an error than a crime.” At least 
let Whitman, his morals and other respeCts being granted irre- 
proachable, receive from cultured men the tolerance with which 
they view the domestic transactions of Sccrates and the social 
doCtrines of Plato. 
But what of the following ? — “ The disciplined thinker who 
believes in democracy and progress would fain that the poet had 
arrived at a fuller system of thought, — that Whitman had been 
