WALT WHITMAN.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:']
SIR,—Allow me to inform Mr. Whitman's admirer that " a pang of despair" (the words he imputes to me), and "a pang as of despair" (the words I use), are different things ; and that do not make the absolutely incoherent statement that Whitman's admirers, in America or elsewhere, are struck with a pang as of despair by finding that some people in. England admire him also, but the very simple remark that persons who, like myself, believe in democracy and in the American Republic, but contemptuously disbelieve in Whitman, are visited, momentarily of course, with a pang as of despair, when told by influential critics that he is the poet of democracy. As for sexuality, bodies of men and braes, and so forth, being lifted into a sphere of sanctity and elevation, I need only observe that this is what filthy dreamers, and semi- lunatic screamers, have said for themselves in all ages.—I am,.
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