So far as good taste means “good form,” and so far as good form is
established by social and conventional usages of the fashionable
world, the poet of democracy has little to do with it. But so far as
it is based upon the inherent fitness of things and the health and
development of the best there is in a man, so far is he bound to enlist
himself in its service. In a world where everybody is educated and
reads books, much poor literature will circulate; but will not the
good, the best, circulate also? Will there not be the few good judges,
the saving remnant? Is there not as much good taste and right reason
now in England or France as during more rigidly monarchical times?
The ideal democracy is not the triumph of barbarism or the riot of
vulgarity, but it is the triumph of right reason and natural equality
and inequality. Some things are better than others, better from the
point of view of the whole of life. These better things we must cling
to and make much of in a democracy, as in an aristocracy. We must
aspire to the best that is known and thought in the world. This best
a privileged class seeks to appropriate to itself; a democracy seeks
to share it with all. All are not capable of receiving it, but all may
try. They will be better able to-morrow if they have the chance to-day.
We must not ignore the vulgarity, the bad taste incident to democratic
conditions. If we do, we never get rid of them. Political equality
brings to the foreground many unhandsome human traits, the loud,
the mediocre, the insolent, etc. All the more must we fix attention
upon the true, the noble, the heroic, the disinterested. The rule of
temperance, of good taste, of right reason, antedates any and every
social condition. Democracy cannot abrogate fundamental principles. The
essential conditions of life are not changed, but arbitrary, accidental
conditions are modified. One still needs food and raiment and shelter
and transportation; he is still subject to the old hindrances and
discouragements within himself.
We must give the terms good taste, right reason a broader scope;
that is all. The principles of good taste when applied to art are
not fixed and absolute, like those of mathematics or the exact
sciences. They are vital and elastic. They imply a certain fitness
and consistency. Shakespeare shocked the classic taste of the French
critics. He violated the unities and mixed prose and poetry. But what
was good taste in Shakespeare--that is, in keeping with his spirit and
aim--might be bad taste in Racine. What is permissible to an elemental
poet like Whitman would jar in a refined poet like Longfellow. But bad
taste in Whitman, that is, things not in keeping with the ideal he has
before him, jar the same as in any other poet. He has many lines and
passages and whole poems that set the teeth of many readers on edge,
that are yet in perfect keeping with his plan and spirit. They go with
the poet of the Cosmos, but not with the poet of the drawing-room or
library. My taste is not shocked, but my courage is challenged.
In Whitman’s case the appeal is not so directly and exclusively to our
æsthetic perceptions as it is in most other poets; he is elemental
where they are cultured and artificial; at the same time he can no more
escape æsthetic principles than they can. Because a flower, a gem,
a well-kept lawn, etc., are beautiful, we are not compelled to deny
beauty to rocks, trees, and mountains. If Whitman does not, in his
total effects, attain to something like this kind of beauty, he is not
a poet.