"Art Has Therefore Its Law": Thomas Wentworth Higginson on Walt Whitman's "Disfigurement".

The article examines writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson's critical stance toward poet Walt Whitman and the evolving values in poetry during the nineteenth century. Topics include Higginson's dismissal of Whitman's poem "Leaves of Grass," the changing literary tastes that impact the reception of poetry, and the contrasting support for Whitman among later Harvard scholars, including George Santayana and William James.