A minor poet told me once that he could not read Whitman. He declared it was like chewing glass. When we criticize others, the instant penalty is that we unwittingly confess what we are ourselves. We know the reception of _Leaves of Grass_ was of the kind which not seldom greets the appearance of an exceptional book, though Emerson recognized its worth. So when occasionally we admit, shyly and apologetically, as is our habit (in the way we confess that once we enjoyed sugar candy), that long ago we used to read Emerson, it would do our superior culture no harm to remember that Emerson was at least the first of the world of letters to tell the new poet that his _Leaves_ was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet produced." Nothing in all his writing proves the quality of Emerson's mind so well as his instant and full knowledge of Whitman, when others felt that what Whitman was really inviting was laughter and abuse. I suppose what the young poet meant when he said reading Whitman was like a mouthful of glass was that Whitman has no music, and so cannot be read aloud. There is always a fair quantity of any poet's work which would do much to make this world a cold and unfriendly place if we persevered in reading it aloud. In some circumstances even Shakespeare might cause blasphemy. Perhaps he has. And Whitman, like summer-time, and all of us, is not always at his best. But I think it is possible that many people to-day will know the music and the solace of the great dirge beginning "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd." And again, if capturing with words those surmises which intermittently and faintly show in the darkness of our speculations and are at once gone, if the making of a fixed star of such wayward glints is the mark of a poet, then Whitman gave us "On the beach at night."