A stronger claim might be urged for Mr. Whitman. He takes into his hospitable vocabulary words which no English dictionary recognizes as belonging to the language,--words which will be looked for in vain outside of his own pages. He accepts as poetical subjects all things alike, common and unclean, without discrimination, miscellaneous as the contents of the great sheet which Peter saw let down from heaven. He carries the principle of republicanism through the whole world of created objects. He will “thread a thread through [his] poems,” he tells us, “that no one thing in the universe is inferior to another thing.” No man has ever asserted the surpassing dignity and importance of the American citizen so boldly and freely as Mr. Whitman. He calls himself “teacher of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism.” He begins one of his chants, “I celebrate myself,” but he takes us all in as partners in his self-glorification. He believes in America as the new Eden. “A world primal again,--vistas of glory incessant and branching, A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, New politics--new literature and religions--new inventions and arts.” Of the new literature be himself has furnished specimens which certainly have all the originality he can claim for them. So far as egotism is concerned, he was clearly anticipated by the titled personage to whom I have referred, who says of himself, “I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world.” But while Mr. Whitman divests himself of a part of his baptismal name, the distinguished New Englander thus announces his proud position: “Ime the first Lord in the younited States of A mercary Now of Newburyport. it is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it.” This extract is from his famous little book called “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones.” As an inventor of a new American style he goes far beyond Mr. Whitman, who, to be sure, cares little for the dictionary, and makes his own rules of rhythm, so far as there is any rhythm in his sentences. But Lord Timothy spells to suit himself, and in place of employing punctuation as it is commonly used, prints a separate page of periods, colons, semicolons, commas, notes of interrogation and of admiration, with which the reader is requested to “peper and soolt” the book as he pleases. I am afraid that Mr. Emerson and Mr. Whitman must yield the claim of declaring American literary independence to Lord Timothy Dexter, who not only taught his countrymen that they need not go to the Heralds' College to authenticate their titles of nobility, but also that they were at perfect liberty to spell just as they liked, and to write without troubling themselves about stops of any kind. In writing what I suppose he intended for poetry, he did not even take the pains to break up his lines into lengths to make them look like verse, as may be seen by the following specimen: WONDER OF WONDERS!