what other man in all the history of this planet would have said, “I am a habitant of Vienna”? (One has an immediate vision of him as a sort of French Canadian halfbreed to whom the Viennese are offering, with trepidation, through the bars of a zoological garden, little mounds of whipped cream.)

Only a man with the most extraordinary feel for language, or none whatsoever, could have cooked up Whitman’s worst messes. For instance: what other man in all the history of this planet would have said, “I am a habitant of Vienna”? (One has an immediate vision of him as a sort of French Canadian halfbreed to whom the Viennese are offering, with trepidation, through the bars of a zoological garden, little mounds of whipped cream.)