Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect
from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional
cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might
expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or
grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a
little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional
obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is
commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy;
from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an
average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"
may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc. The price paid for his
strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination
to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision
with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"
with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious,"
will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"
will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his
healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk
to flight.