Page:Under the Microscope - Swinburne (1899).djvu/65

 the present writer (si quid id est) is, as far as he knows, entirely at one with Whitman on general matters not less than on political; if there be in Whitman's works any opinion expressed on outward and social or inward and spiritual subjects which would clash or contend with his own, or with which he would feel his own to be incapable of concord or sympathy, he has yet to find the passage in which that opinion is embodied. To him the views of life and of death set forth by Whitman appear thoroughly acceptable and noble, perfectly credible and sane. It is certainly therefore from no prejudice against the doctrines delivered that, he objects in any case to the delivery of them. What he objects—to take two small instances—is that it is one thing to sing the song of all trades, and quite another thing to tumble down together the names of all possible crafts and implements in one unsorted heap; to sing the song of all countries is not simply to fling out on the page at random in one howling mass the titles of all divisions of the earth, and so leave them. At this rate, to sing the song of the language it should suffice to bellow out backwards and forwards the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. And this folly is deliberately done by a great writer, and ingeniously defended by able writers, alike in good faith, and alike in blind bondage to mere dogmatic theory, to the mere formation of foregone opinion. They cannot see that formalism