[Strancford, Viscount.] "Walt Whitman." Pall Mall Gazette (16 February 1866), 10. Reprinted: 1869. Abridged: 1866. [While it is foolish to fire Whitman for poems written years ago, he is indeed outrageously and defiantly obscene and opposed to conformity. His ideas resemble Eastern thought, following the pantheistic strain in American transcendentalism. Although he could hardly have known Persian poetry, he comes close to its accent and might benefit from careful study and translation of it to save himself from dreary platitudes, occasional bathos, and "epicurean autolatry."]