Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

Ill
WALT WHITMAN
Of late years the name of Walt Whitman has been
a good deal bandied about in books and magazines.
It has become familiar both in good and ill repute.
His works have been largely bespattered with praise
by his admirers, and cruelly mauled and mangled by
irreverent enemies. Now, whether his poetry is
good or bad as poetry, is a matter that may admit
of a difference of opinion without alienating those
who differ. We could not keep the peace with a
man who should put forward claims to taste and yet
depreciate the choruses in Samson Agonistes; but,
I think, we may shake hands with one who sees no
more in Walt AVhitman's volume, from a hterary
point of view, than a farrago of incompetent essays
in a wrong dii'ection. That may not be at all our
own opinion. We may think that, when a work
contains many unforgettable phrases, it cannot be
altogether devoid of literary merit. We may even
see passages of a high poetry here and there among
its eccentric contents. But when all is said, Walt
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