There is probiiWy no analogous case in the history of literature where the result of a profound urtiMic |)l;ui or conception—first laiiiichccl forth, and liricfly, yet snfficicnlly cxenipli-li<-d, .IS in Ihc sin:ill voliniie of the l.td-nes of 1855, taking for foini<l:ilion M.cri in lii'. fcihiess of Mood, power, iiniativcness, health, pliysiqiie, and as standing in the midst ofllie olijectivc worlil—a plan so steadily a<llicred lo, yel so audaciously ,ind freely huilt out of and upon, and wiili such ejjic consistency, after that start of iSss, devclop(-d in '57, '60, and W;, in sncccn-sive moral, esthetic, ;iiid religious sl.iges, each at)si*irl)ing the i)revious ones, but stridinjj on fir ahead of theiri— gra<liially made more and more emotional, me'lilativc, and patriotic— vilali/ed, heated to almost unbearahle fervency hy the author's personal oarl in the war, composing his songs of it in actual contact with its subjects, on Ihe very field, or surroiuidej by ihe wounded " after the hallb: brouglit in"—chanting undisinayerl the slrong chani of llic I iiseparable Union, amid Ihe vehement crises and stormy ilangers of the period ; and so grad-n.illy arriving at the cmnpleted book of 1H71-,!, anil crowning all it) it with the electric and solemn iioems of death and immortality—has so justified, and beyond measure ju.lificd, itH first amljilious plan and promise.— John liurrout;lis's NoTHS.

'I'lic bottk is ific song of Idealism. Underneath every pajje lurks the conviction that all we fancy we see, may be hut apparitions—and that

" 'J'hc real Something haH yet to be known."

Its scope and purpose are, therefore, hy no means merely intellectual, or iii)a;.^inative or esthetic. Using the term in its late t and larj^est, and wA at .'ill in its doomntic and scholastic sense, Wait Whitman's jxietry is, in its in-Xiuihin, p/ii/(i.s(i/>/iir. It is beyond the moral law, anrl will jirobably therefore always apjjal m.iny. The moral law, it is true, is presetit, penetrating every verse, like shafts (jf li^^ht. Hut the- whole 'relentless kosnjos <jul lA which come monsters and crime and the inexhaustilile (.jerms of all the heat of sex, and all the lawless rut and arrogant greed of the universe, and especially of the htimnn race, are also there. Strange antl paradoxical are these pages. They accejit and celebrate Nature in absolute failh. Then, as over and out of some unbftunded sea of ttirmoil, and whirl and hi.ss of stormy waves, hurrying and ttimijling anrl chaotic—whicli they largely are—still, by attempts, indications at least, rise voices, sounds of the mightiest strengih and gladdest hope yet given to man, with undismayed, unfaltering faith in destiny and life.

The history of the book, thus considered, not only resembles and tallies, in certain respects, the development of the great System of Idealistic Philosophy in (^ermanyj by the "illustrious four"—except that the development uf Lea7ies 0/ Crass has been carried on within the regif>n of a single minfl,—but it is to be demonstrated, by study and comp.irison, that the itainc theory uK the essential identity of the spiritual and the material wi;rlds, the shows of Nature, the progress of civilization, the play of passions, the human intellect, and the relations between it and the concrete universe, which Kant prepared the way for, and Kichic, Schelling, and Hegel have given expression and statement in their system of tr.inscendentai Metaphysics.—this author has, with etpial entirety, expressed and stated in Leaijex 0/ (rrast, from a poet's point of view—singing afresh, out of it, the song of the visible and invisible worlds—renewing, reconstructinj^, consistently with the modern genius, and deeper and wider than ever, the promises of immortality—endowing the elements of faith and pri<le with a vigor anil ensrmhle before unknown—and furnishing to the measureless audience of humanity the only great Imaginative Work it yet possesses, in which the objective universe and Man, his soul, are observed and outlined, and the theory of Human Personality and Character projectefl, from the interior and hidden, but absolute background, of that magnificent System.— yohn liurroughs;'s Notes.

It will always remain, however, impossible to clearly and fully state eilhcr tlie theory of Walt Whitman's composition, or describe his poeiTis, its results. They may be absorbed out of themselves, but only after many perusals, 'i'hey are elusive anrl puzzling, like their model. Nature, and form, in fact, a.prrson, perhaps a spiri/, more titan a book. They read clearest tCte-Mete, and in the o|)i-n air, or by the sea, or f)n the mountains, or in one's own room, alone, at night. They are to be inhaled like perfumes, and felt like the magnetism of a presence. They re(|uire affinity in the tastes and fpialities of the render. There is, mainly, tlint in them akin to concrete objects, the earth, the animals, storms, the actual sunrise or sunset, and not to the usual fine writing or imagery of poems. Yet their subject is not abstract or irrational Nature, but

livinj:;, heart-beating humanity, witli nil its interests and aspirations, its sadness anil its joy.

It is to be added that tlic whole work, as it now stands, the result of the several accretions, singularly hinges on the late Secession war.

In the " Contemporary Review," for December, 1S75, there was a long and elaborate article l)y I'eter Bayne on " Walt Whitman's poems," written, evidently, after some study of Leaves of Grass. I know nothing myself about this Peter Kayne, and I am w-iliing to believe that he is an able and conscientious man. According to him Walt Whitman has almost every ipiality that a writer ought not to have, and not a single one that a man must have to be a poet. He says: " If I ever saw anything in print that deserved to be characterized as atrociously bad, it is the poetry of Walt Whitman." He says that those who praise this poetry " appear to me to be playing off on the public a well-intentioned, probably good-humored, but really cruel hoax."

Mr. Bayne finds Leaves of Grass " inflated," " wordy," " foolish," its originality is a " knack," a "trick." The poems are "extravagant," "paradoxical," " hyperbolical," " nonsensical," " indecent," " insane," " dull," " irremedica-bly vile," " nauseous drivel," full of " extravagant conceit" and " idiocy." In them Walt Whitman "mumbles truisms," talks "pretentious twaddle." Leaves of Grass abounds with " the thoughts of other men spoiled by oljtuse-ness," it is " inhumanly insolent," "self-contradictory," " venomously malignant," " mawkish." About the middle of his article he announces that Walt Whitman " is a demonstrated quack." He might one would think have been content to stop there, but he goes on to say that Leaves of Grass is " void of significance," "brainless," " a poor piece of mannerism," " wTCtchedly worked," "rant and rubbish," a "jingle," "linguistic silliness," "verbiage," " hopelessly bad writing." In a somewhat long article these com]3limenlary terms are used over and over and over again, so that, by the time we finish reading it, Mr. Bayne does not leave us in any doubt as to //is opinion of Leaves of Grass and of its author. But in case such doubt should remain in the reader's mind, he closes his review as follows;

" This is the political philosophy of bedlam, unchained in these ages chiefly through tiic influence of Rousseau, which has blasted the hopes of freedom wherever it has had the chance, and which must be chained up again, with ineffable contemjit, if the self-government of nations is to mean anytiung else than the death and putrescence of civilization. Incajiable of true j)oetical originality, Whitman had the cleverness to invent a literary trick, and the shrewdness to stick to it. As a Yankee phenomenon, to be good-humorcdiy laughed at, and to receive that moderate pecuniary remuneration which nature allows to vivacious quacks, he would have been in his place ; but when influential critics introduce him to the English public as a great poet, the thing becomes too serious for a joke. While reading Whitman in the recollection of what has been said of him by those gentlemen, I realized with bitter painfulness how deadly is the peril that our literature may pass into conditions of horrible disease, the raging flame of fever taking the place of natural heat, the raving

of delirium superseding the enthusiasm of poetical imagination, the distortions of titanic spasms caricaturing the movements, dance-like and music-measured, of harmonious strength."

From Joaquin Miller''s Washington Lecture, 1876. Here in this high capital, there was once a colossal mind ; an old, and an honorable old man, with a soul as grand as ilomer's—the Mdton of Ani'jrica. Jle walked these streets for years, a plain, brave old man, who was kind even to your dogs. He had done great service, in an humljle way, in the army; he had written great books, which had been translated in all tongues and read in every land save his own. In consideration thereof he was given a little place under the Government, where he could barely earn bread enough for himself and his old mother. He went up and down, at work here for years. You mocked at him when you saw him. At last, stricken with palsy, he left the place, leaning upon his staff, to go away and die. I saw him but the other day, dying, destitute. Grand old Walt Whitman ! Even now he looks like a 'iitan god! iJon't tell me that a man gives all his youth and all his years in the pursuit of art, enduring poverty in the face of scorn, for nothing. That man shall live! He shall live when yon mighty dome of your Capitol no longer lifts its rounded shoulders against the circles of time. No, no! We laugh too much. We laugh at each other; we laugh at art; we laugh at men whom we have placed in exalted positions. We caricature great and good men, and disgrace only ourselves. We laugh at old men and old women. If ever I grow old I shall go to Europe, that I may be respected in my age. We laugh at religion and we laugh at love. There is no reverence in us; we are a race of clowns.

LEONARD WHEELER TO WALT WHITMAN. O pure heart singer of the human frame

Divine, whose poesy disdains control

Of slavish bonds! each poem is a soul, Incarnate tjorn of thee, and given thy name. Thy genius is unshackled as a flame

That sunward soars, the central light its goal;

Thy thoughts are lightnings, and thy numbers roll In Nature's thunders that put art to shame.

Exalter of the land that gave thee birth. Though she insult thy grand gray years with wrong

Of infamy, foul-branding thee with scars

Of felon-hate, still shaft thou be on earth Revered, and in Fame's firmament of song

Thy name shall blaze among the eternal stars!

The London "Daily News," March 13, 1876, had published a long and eloquent letter from Robert Buchanan, about W. W., who was then lying very ill and very poor, at Camden. Mr. B.'s letter aroused a general and exciting volley of journalistic and editorial comments, both in Great Britain and America. There were several Atlantic cable telegrams or "messages" exchanged by newspapers on the subject. Certain New York writers resented R. B.'s accusations—attacking Leaves of Grass and its author in a furious style. The following is a sample :

Frovi " Apph-toit's Journal,'' April ist, 1S76. {Extract.)

The conclusion here arrived at, that Whitman, in his literary life and

methods, is a mere trickster, is verified by his history. There was nothing peculiar about his early career. Belonging to a respectable family of farmers on Long Island, he went to school like other boys. When he grew to be a young man, lie taught school like many other young men. When the celebrated hard-cider and coon-skin political campaign stirred up the community in 1S48, Whitman was drawn into it, and spouteil democracy from the stump, as it is very common for young men to do in the country. Waxing ambitious, and wishing to escape democratic labor in the country, he came to New York to get a living by his wits. Well introduced by political acquaintance, he took to the business of writing for newspapers and magazines. He wrote stories, essays, and articles of all sorts that he could sell. He got access to the " Democratic Review," then the leading literary periodical of New York, edited by Hon. J. L. O'Sullivan. His contributions to this magazine from 1840 to 1850, signed " Walter Whitman," appear among those of Whit-tier, Poe, Brownson, Hawthorne, Tuckcrman, Curtis, Godwin, and Taylor. They are decorous, jejune, and commonplace, contrasting strongly with the general quality of the magazine, and deserving no attention, tiiey attracted none. Whitman also wrote for the Sunday papers and the tlaily press— turning his hand to anything he could get, and, if we are not mistaken, when the Washingtonian movement rose he availed himself of the excitement, and wrote a temperance novel. He was, moreover, a pleasant gentleman, of agreeable address, and went into society as well attired as his precarious resources would allow. In short he was an entirely respectable person, with nothing marked about him, and meeting with a dubious success due to moderate ability, ipialified by excessive indolence.

Such was Whitman's " foreground." He had a dozen or fifteen years' experience of practical literature and miscellaneous journalism in the metropolis, with every opportunity to win a jiosition and make himself known if he had been capable of it. But Whitman had an ambition, born of egregious vanity, and he was not content with the obscurity from which he had been unable to escape in the open competitions of literature. Correctly concluding that it was of no use to pursue that tack longer, and determined to became a marked man somehow, he resolved to change his tactics. If he could not win fame, he would have notoriety; if the critics would not recognize him, he must find people that would. But, whatever may have been his ratiocination in the case, he changed his manner of life, and took to consorting with loafers. Donning a tarpaulin, blouse, and red fiannel shirt, conspicuously open, he snubbed conventionalities, clambered on the outside of the omnibuses, cultivated the drivers, and soon became a hero among the roughs. Sauntering leisurely along the thoroughfares and lingering at show-windows in his jaunty, uncouth costume, with a quiet air of defying the world, he soon attracted attention, and began to be talked of and inquired about. He thus got recognition as " Walt Whitman," patron and pride of the ruder elements of society.

Coincident with this external transformation there was an internal change equally marked. He made a strike in literature from his new standpoint. He had been scribbling away for years to no purpose, and at last he charged his old carbine with smut to the very muzzle, let drive, and brought down the first of American thinkers at the first shot. More literally, he issued a " pome," so called in his new vernacular, entitled Leaves of Grass. Mr. Whitman had

never been celebrated; he had found nobody to celebrate him, and so the first words of his new book were, " I celebrate myself." It was a performance of unparalleled audacity. In total contrast with all that he had ever done before, it was an outrage upon decency, and not fit to be seen in any respectable house. Impudent and ridiculous as tlie book was, it would not have been easy to get it ijcfore the public, but accident and the author's cunning favored him. lie sent a copy to Mr. Emerson, who returned a very Haltering, but probably hasty private note, not dreaming ihat any public use would be made of it. Walt printed it at once, and the weight of Emerson's name sent ihe book straightway into circulation. Then peojjle made pilgrimages to see the extraordinary man with the curious aspect that had made such an astonishing book, and of whom nobody had ever heard before; and the notion was spread that he was the original genius of Nature itself, unwarped by culture, unspoiled by society, careless of conventions, because dwelling far above them in the realm of his own sublime individuality. The external evidence thus coincides with Mr. Bayne's analysis of Whitman's writings in showing tiiat they are but an affectation and a pretence. Those may believe who will that when he entered upon the role of loafer, dressed up accordingly, vulgarized his name, and wrote a book filled with drivel and indecency, Mr. Whitman suddenly became tlie inspired poet of democracy, and, as Swin-Vjurne says, " the greatest of American voices;" but against sucii a view common-sense protests. If his English devotees wish to testify their ap];reciation of Whitman's life and labors in a substantial way, let them quietly remit their sovereigns and do so. But let us be spared their insulting telegrams. The less publicity they give to their proceedings the better.

ARRAN LEIGH (ENGLAND) TO WALT WHITMAN.

" /, thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin, Hoping to cease nut till death." — Chants Jjemockatic.

They say that thou art sick, art growing old,

Thou Poet of unconquerable health.

With youth far-stretching, through the golden wealth Of autumn, to Death's frostful, friendly cold; The never-blenching eyes, that did behold

Life's fair and foul, with measureless content,

And gaze ne'er sated, saddened as they bent Over the dying soldier in the fold

Of thy large comrade love:—then fjroke the tear! War-dream, field-vigil, the bequeathed kiss.

Have brought old age to thee; yet. Master, now. Cease not thy song to us; lest we should miss

A death-chant of indomitable cheer.

Blown as a gale from God;—Oh, sing it thou !

From the Camden, N. y., "New Republic" April jst, 1876.

Some idiot, or worse (undoubtedly worse), has an editorial piece in the New York " Tribune," 30th inst., telling how, years since, a family of four children lived on the salary of a clerkship in the U. .S. Attorney General's office—which clerkship, at the instance of the "authors of Washington," with Mr. E. C. Stedman at "the head" of them, was taken away from the sustenance of the four children, and bestowed on (of all themen in the world !) Walt Whitman! If this story is intended as a joke, the fun of it is too deep

to he fathomable. Fortunately for tlio " autliors of Wasbini^ton " ninl llic gentleman at "the head" of them, it is so entire ami absolute a fiilsehoinl that it transeends the standard even of that niagnitieent Distriel. We hope, for the sanity of "the head " aforesaid, that he had nothing- to do with starting so small and dirty a fietion.

LaUr. —Since the above, appears a special card from Mr. Slednian (see "Tribune," 3l^t), fully exonerating that gentleman himself, ami placing liim in a perfectly candid and honorable attituile in the matter, as, indeed, was to be expecteil, to be consistent with his whole life.

But who, or rather ti-//,?/, has been writing the big and little editorials* that have appeared in the " Tribune" during the past week ? Whitman's works, now linished—and his life now near its close—are beginning to claim serious judgment. The points involved are the deepest in nationality, art, literature, lias the " Tribune " nothing to offer but these frivolous slurs, hardly up to the level of the Hash papers? or to invent shameless and petty personal items? or to reprint the foppish venom and aristocratic sputter of the " Saturday Review " ?

From the ''Camctcn Post;' March 2gth, 1S77.

Walt Whitman. — Hk visits New York after five years' absence — High-tone SOCIETY now takes him to its hosom — Vet he rides again atop of the Broaowav Omniuuses and fraternizes with drivers and BOATMEN.—After an absence and sickness of nearly five years, says a New York paper of March 2Sth, 1877, the " old gray poet" has returned temporarily to his

Mast-henim'd Manh.-ittan,

and, in moderation, has been all the past month visiting, riding, receiving, and jaunting in and about the city, and, in good-natured response to jiressuie, has even apjiearcd two or three times in brief, ofi-hantl public speeches.

Mr. Whitman, at present near his lifty-ninth birth-day, is better in health and appearance than at any time since his paralytic attack at Washington in 1873. Passing through many grave experiences since that period, he still remains tall and stout, with the same florid face, with his great masses of hair and beard whiter than ever. Costumed in his usual entire suit of English gray, • with loose sack-coat and trousers, broad shirt-collar open at the neck and guiltless of tie, he has, through the month, been the recipient and centre of social gatherings, parlors, club meetings, lunches, dinners, and even dress receptions—all of which he has taken w ith steady good nature, coolness, and moderation.

As he sat on the platform of the Liberal Club on Friday night last he looked like an old Quaker, especially as, in response to the suggestion of the President, and sitting near a window-draught, he unhesitatingly jnit on his old white broadbrim, and wore it the whole evening. In answer to pressing requests, however, toward the close, he rose to let the audience see him more fully, and, doffing his hat, smilingly said, in response to calls for a sjieech, that he " must decline to take any other part than listener, as he knew nothing of the subject under debate (blue glass), and would not add to the general stock of misinformation."

At the full-dress reception of the Portfolio .ind Palette Clubs on the Fifth Avenue, a few nights previous, as he slowly crossed the room to withdraw, he was saluted by a markedly peculiar murmur of applause, from a crowded au-

* They were written by the late Bayard Taylor.

flience of the most cultured and elegant society of New York, including most of tlie artists of the city. It was a singularly spontaneous and caressin;;\.^'r,\l\-riionial, joined in heartily by the ladies, and the old man's checks, a-, he hobbled along through the kindly applause and smiles, showed a deep flush of gratified feeling.

Mr. Whitman has been the guest, most of the month, of Mr. and Mrs. Johnston, of 113 Kast Tenth .Street, whose parlors have been thrown open orj two special occasions for informal public receptions in compliment to him, which were crowded, happy, and brilliant to the highest degree.

Nearly every fair day Mr. Whitman has exj^lored the city and neighborhood, often as near as jjossible after the fashion of old times. Again he has taken rides up and down iiroadway on to[> of the J'ifth Avenue and Twenty-third Street omnibuses, and talked with his old chums, the drivers, receiving incessant salutes of raised hands as he passed and was recognize'l. Ife has been over to Brooklyn and taken the unsurj^assed views again from the hilLs of Kort (jreene, and ocean vistas from i'rospect Park. Again, too, he has lingered for several trips up in the pilot-house, crossing Fulton ferry, conferring with his old comrades the pilots and deck hands. Again he has dwelt long on the picturesqueness, beauty, and unequalled show of our waters and bay.

Walt Whitman will finish his fifty-eighlh year on the coming 31st May, that being his birth-day. Physically, his jjaralysis is still uncured, and he has serious stomachic trouble, and bad lameness, but he gets around quite a good deal, keeps always excellent sjjirits, believes thoroughly not only in the future world, but the present, and especially in our American part of it.

A foreign tourist and interviewer, under date of March 30th, 1877, writes: I have to-day, with two companions, just visited Walt Whitman, at Camden, New Jersey, and had a good talk with him. He takes the late linglish whirlwind about him and his writings very quietly. I am convinced he really cares nothing for popular or literary incense—views things mainly, I shf>uld say, from his own stand|><>int, and is, as the world goes, a queer, proud man. That he is poor fwhich he really is), that the American publishers won't publish him, that the magazines reject his MSS., that the bards of fame here ignore him, and that all the big poetic collection-books leave him out in the cold, are facts which I believe in my soul he is far more proud of than put out by. He has a clear gray eye, and his manners, though a little haughty ^nA pent, combine, with entire self-possession, a wonderful warmth and magnetism. The only bitterness that escaped him was alxjut the persistent embezzlement and theft, during his illness and helplessness of the last three years, by his agents (they sold for him on commission 1 of the deeply-needed income due from his New York book-sales, " which, Ifjrtunately," he added in a dry tone, " were not so large, either." He is permanently paralyzed, walks only a little, sometimes hardly at all, and suffers from a chronic affection of the stomach ; but keeps up, and often gets on the river here, the Delaware, and over to Philarlelphia. On my speaking of the .Secession war, and at the request of one of our party, a lady, he read his poem of " The Wound-Dresser." (I have felt disposed since to fasten that name upon him.) Whitman is tall, middling heavy in build of body, with a large head and red face, very plentiful hair and beard (white as snow), talks neither much nor little, and with a strong and musical voice. Finally, I think the old fellow the most human being I have ever met.

19

Letter from Greenock, Scotland, iSyg.

I first became acquainted with Leaves of Grass four years ago (when I was twenty two years of age) through Rossetti's book of selections. Previously I had been famdiar with Carlyle, and then with Goethe, and then with the prose and verse of Emerson. But it was more than all these my own deep experience that prepared me for receiving Walt Whitman's writings with instant and passionate acceptance. I shall never forget my sensations on reading certain parts of the prose preface to the [first] Leai'es of Grass. I said again and again, " Here the universal mother herself is speaking,"—for example, in regard to pride and sympathy, " Neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the other." Then I found it said of the " greatest poet," " He is indiflerent which chance happens, and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune." It was as if 1 had heard speaking the very inmost spirit of Christ, and for the next few weeks I remember I was quite feverish w ith joy, and no wonder, for I then for the first time saw clearly. By degrees I saw what is called evil to be but immaturity, and I saw the immortal beauty of the laws of pain. I did not, at that time, dwell much upon the thought of immortality, and had not yet penetrated to Walt Whitman's conception of it, but my faith was without cloud ; I knew I had " Come well, and should go well." I saw that one cannot possibly lose anything, for I saw that every condition is profitable and blessed. I saw how great it is to be subject to the eternal laws even when they maim or break us. I saw that heroism is reached when one is able to see and say triumphantly at any possible worst, " Yes, I may be broken, but the law that breaks me is righteous and immortal." Walt Whitman seemed to have bidden the cosmos lie close upon me that it might enter into me at every pore. It seemed that he had taken me by wild and rejoicing seas and hills, and transformed me from a doubter and despairer into a piece of nature capable of strength and joy. Since I have known Leaves of Grass, books, mere reading, is less important to me than formerly. I like best to be out in the open air, and among men and women (old and young) and children, and animals, and when I ask myself whether others can possibly feel the same delight in living that I do, I am constantly reminded-that life and death might have seemed less great to me (and to how many, many more throughout the world) but for Walt Whitman.

JOAQUIN MILLER TO WALT WHITMAN.

O Titan soul, ascend your starry steep,

On golden stair, to gods and storied men!

Ascend! nor care where thy traducers creep.

For what may well be said of prophets, when

A world that's wicked comes to call them good ?

Ascend and sing! As kings of thought who stood On stormy heights, and held far lights to men,

Stand thou, and shout above the tumbled roar,

Lest brave ships drive and break against the shore.

W'hat though thy sounding song be roughly set?

Parnassus' self is rough ! Give thou the thought, The golden ore, the gems that few forget;

In time the tinsel jewel will be wrought. Stand thou alone, and fixed as destiny,

An imaged god that lifts above all hate;

Stand thou serene and satisfied with fate; Stand thou as stands the lightning-riven tree, That lords the cloven clouds of gray Yosemite.

Yea, lone, sad soul, thy heights must be thy home;

Thou sweetest lover! love shall climb to thee Like incense curling some cathedral dome,

Fr[)m many di.'5tant vales. Yet thou shall be, O grand, sweet singer, to the end alone.

But murmur not. The moon, the mighty spheres,

Spin on alone through all the soundless years; Alone man comes on earth; he lives alone; Alone he turns to front the dark unknown.

From "Papers for the Times'''' — by Frank W. Walters— January, 1880, London, England.

At last, he for whom we looked is come. America has found voice. The teeming life of that wonderful New World has risen into song; the infant civilization can now boast a true-born poet of its own. If Greece had its Homer, if England had its Chaucer, so, now, America has brought forth the first-born of, we believe, a long line of glorious bards such as the world has never seen before. To some, who have only heard Walt Whitman's name, or only seen him laughed to scorn by reviewers who fail to understand him, our words will seem extravagant. To us who have read and re-read his poems with ever-increased delight, it seems impossible to express our sense of their power and beauty. Their power is sometimes overwhelming, and to read some of them produces an effect similar to that of gazing upon a tempest, listening to a hurricane, or watching the lightning. Their beauty and pathos now fill the soul with rapturous joy in the perfection of the world, and now plunge one into tears over the mysteries and sufferings of human life. These poems are .called Leaves of Grass ; and the title is excellent. They are one with Nature; they are not made, they^row/ they have all the characteristics of natural productions. This man wrote because the spirit moved him ; necessity was laid upon him; his utterances pour forth from volcanic depths of soul. To read them is to come near to him. His personality electrifies you in every living sentence. He speaks to you, and speaks the very things you hsi\Qfe!t, but could not put into words. He interprets your soul to you. He takes you by the hand ;*you feel the beating of his pulse. He calls you his comrade ; he puts his arms around you, takes you to his breast, and you feel the beating of his heart. He invites you forth with him to sound the depths and scale the heic^hts; and, with your hand in his, you go forth without fear, as under the protection of a strong elder brother. These poems are not part of the man, they are the man himself. They are the Incarnate Word in which he manifests the fulness of his manhood. Here is not merely the poet—here is the Man, through and through, from top to toe. He gives to you the unspeakable gift of himself—not merely his thoughts, but himself. You not only hear him, you see him; you not only see him, but you see through him; you not only see through him, but live in him ; he possesses you.

And because this man has bursi the ornamental chains of rhyme and metre,, because his Leaves of Grass do not present a well-clipped lawn, because his wild flowers are not arranged into garden beds, because his intellectual growth is wild and rude as a primeval forest of his own America—there are some v.'ho would question his right to the title of poet. If V/alt Whitman is not a poet,

all the worse for poetry. If your ilefmitiou of the poet will not admit tliis man into the sacred circle, then your definition needs revising. If these poems do not belong to what you call <;//. then your art is only <;/'//>".7"<;/, it has lost its root in those ilepths of Nature out of wliich true art mu>t grow—its life is gone; and in its place a nobler art shall ri>e. and of this new kingdou\ of the beautiful, Whitman shall be the earliest proi^het, though he comes as a rude voice from the trackless wilderness, though he is clothoil in cantcl's hair and leathern girdle, and feeds his mighty vigor on locusts and wild honey. If Whitman be not a poet, yet he has done something more than write poen\s; he has shown us that the world is Goil's poem. He says he has listened to the Eternal \"oices, and they speak but one harmonious Truth. He has heard the tramp of the generations across the stage of time, and all the sounds rise into music. The clang of labor, tiie clash of battle, the shouts of joy, the groans of agony, the wailings of grief— o.\l these are varying passages in the Music of Humanity.

We cannot wonder that Whitman lays tremendous emphasis on the body. Despised and counted unclean so long, it is time that we should proclaim, with unfaltering lips, the divinity of the tlesh. Men have been too reaily to take at its word the teaching of an emasculated pietism. They have said: "If this Body is utterly and hopelessly corrupt, then there is no use attempting to purify it. W'e will take it at the value you put on it. Its natural functions shall be regarded as shameful; its appetites and passions shall seek tlieir fuhil-ment in dark places of the earth." N.ow, with all our heart, do we thank Wall Whitman for some of the poems which have been described as shameless glorifications of the Flesh. Stttstioiis, indecil, they are, and that with a vengeance; but however they may appear to others, to us they are never stnsual. No lustful mind need come to these severe pages thinking to gratify its morbid taste. We could mention books counted sacred, and novels reckoned polite, which will answer the vile purpose admirably—but not these Leaves of Grass. W'hitman's otTcnce (for so it is counted) is that he will sing the tc'/to/e Man—not only Soul, hut P^'dy too.

It does seem to ns that this i-i teaching which we sadly need. It is similar to the teaching of Novalis—" When 1 lay my hand upon human flesh, I touch t'lod." It is the same as that tine doctrine of Paul—" Know ye not that yc are the Temple of God,and that the Spirit of Goil dwelleth in you ? If any man defile the Tenijile of God, him shall God destroy; tor the Temple of God is holy, whose temple ye are.'' Whitman emphasizes that Pauline <loc-trine. He says that the Hody is more than the Temple of indwelling; Spirit; to him the Body is the Livinh; GarmI'.NT of the Soul—Mind and Matter are inextricably bound up together—yea they arc but aspects of the one Manluxul. If we could impress this doctrine of the divinity of the Body upon the young men of the present day. in the next generation our civilization would be regenerated, and a moral retormation would pass over our plague-stricken society with grander results than all the theological reformations of the past.

He teaches the democracy of the soul; he-can discover the divinity of every human being. Democracy, "the purport and ann of all the past," is the right of every man to become all that he is capable of becoming. He will not deny that Christ is ilivine, but his allirmation embraces every member of the race to which Christ belongs.

In regard to his religion in the depest sense it may be called the Religion of Humanity. He denies none of the faiths of the world, for all these grow out of the soul; he accepts all Bibles, for these contain the great thcnights to which the Soul has given birth. On the questions of Ciod and Immortality he has some sphinx-like utterances. He refuses to argue about God, ami he

•ayu he needs no )o(mc to [.rove \\\, hnmortalily. 'Ilx; Uioiis^ht of llic Infinite, the Kcnsc of an Klir(i;i) I'rcscncc (.ovin^^ {iro^/cz-i aixl ocrfctlion to l)i<; worhl, this to hirn is <;o'l. lie never cornplairw. 'I houfjfi he ha* fathomcl the depths of sin, and home a vicarious load of suffering.;, he yet declares th.il the world is perfect, that everythi/ig is in its place, that all events haj.pen in due order. In passionate optimism he affirms that /!// is Truth ; that if we could see far enouj.di and deep enough, all would appear very good, i'or the future he is at [jeace.

We think we have «aid enough to prove that this American h'mi/i;r brinj;s u» a veritaMe (gospel—a f^ospel which transh^^ures Flesh into Spirit, change* mechanical duty into livinj^ impulse, and makes life rhythmic as the tides, j)ul ,:ili/ij; as tlie heart, movinj.^ in its orh like a star—a fjospel which reveaU 'I ime's full atonement for all the sin and sufferinj/ of the world, which takes the darkness from mortality, and shows iJeath as a heauteoiis while rohed ari^el—a fiospel which haj/tizes our chan^jeful existence in»o one perfect anri ahidiii}.^ Life, and points for every soul to the vast heritage of immortal progress.

/•ram the " Camden /'o;l" yunuary yth, jH8o.

Wai.t Whitman Homk Aoain. —After an alwcnce since last August Walt Whitman returned yesterday to his home in Camden, from a long and varied journey throu;.;h the Central States of the Union. His travel has f^een mainly <levoted to Colorado, Kansas and Missouri, hut he has made visits to f'<ur or five other States. His ohjects of c-pecial attention have been the Kocky Mountains, the Creat I'lains, and the Mississij^j.i I<iver, with their life, scenery and idiosyncrasies. Of the West ^^enerally he says not the half has been told. He is in love with Denver City, and spcakS admiringly of Miss^juri and Indiana.

f^oing and coming, largely by different routes and with side excursions, Mr. Whitman has travelled over 5000 miles. After some prc-tty rugged experiences, and a tedious fit of sickness, he returns to Camden in his average health, and with strength and spirits "good enough to be rnighty thankful for," as he expresses it.

Trom the " Philadidphia f're::,'^ May 2fjlh, /880.

To the Editor : —Your rejjort in to-day's paper of Colonel IngcrsoU's Tuesday evening's lecture, on " What .Shall I iJo to be Saved ? " is intersj^ersed every second or third |/aragraph with " Arnen from Walt Whitman," the jx>et's name aj^pearing in this manner in the lonj^ report and introduction some eight or ten times. It was at my invitation that Mr. Whitman went to the lecture, and I sat at his side throughout its delivery. He neither uttered the " Arnen " which the reporter puts so often in his mouth, nor once made any sign whatever, either by voice or hand, of approval or disapproval, but maintained his usual undemonstrative manner throughout. fThe " Arnens" were uttered by a person immediately to the left of Mr. Whitman; the mistake was therefore a n;itural one.)

While I am about it, would you give me room to correct " The Genesis of Walt Whitman " in " Apple-ton's Journal "—not the malignance and falv,-hood of the wlioie article, but a small specimen brick. The "Journal " speaks of Walt Whitman as habitually wearing, while living in New York, a red flannel shirt, a blou.se and a tarpaulin [lat. It doesn't seem to me to matter if he did;

but the fact is, he never in his life donned either of these articles. Whitman always dressed about the same as he does now.

One might say that such mistakes are not important, and at all events get rectified in time. But they don"t; they often make so-called history. Walt Whitman himself laughs at them as merely amusing, but they are painful to his friends, who are more in number than perhaps is generally suspected, and as one of these I write you this letter, which I hope you will have the kindness to insert. R. M. B.

From " The Truthseeker^^ September, 1880.

There are positively awful passages in praise of even the fiercest bodily passions—terrific shouts and cries for absolute abandonment to these. In some passages, this fierce outcry is changed for deliberate descriptions of equally appalling coolness; and both are alike utterly amazing and unquotable—absolutely unlike anything anywhere else in the English language. Few will be able to picture a world and a state of society in which all this could be anything but wild and brutal excess, to be forcibly repressed or vigorously struck at and killed. Alas ! it is this that makes it impossible to put his complete writings into every one's hands. Taking the world as it is, it is all wrong; but it is not impossible to imagine a world, and a better world too, where it would be all right. The world as it is, is, and has to be, a world of restraints, delicacies, and reticences, as to the body and the body's functions; but in a purer world there might be absolute openness, innocent unconsciousness of uncleanness and wrong, and beautiful natural abandonment: and, though only the minority will see this, we believe that Walt Whitman belongs far more to that world than to this, where many of his utterances will be denounced as dangerous or even detestable : and dangerous perhaps they are. In a tremendous sense he realizes and carries out the divine word,—" What God hath cleansed, that call not thou unclean :" only he would say,—" What God hath created, that call not thou unclean." His glorification and minute praise of the human body, and of every fibre and use of it, is simply overwhelming.

He knows all the significance of his work, He says of the way to himself, " the way is suspicious,—the result uncertain, perhaps destructive." He does not beseech you to go with him ; rather he dissuades you : " Therefore release me now," he says. " Let go your hand from my shoulders. Put me down, and depart on your way." "Nor will my poems do good only," he says; " they will do just as much evil, perhaps more." Why, then, does he give forth these poems? He would say,—I cannot help it. The free birds sing: and I must speak—or die. His poems are the outbursting of his strong, free, boundlessly sensitive self.

Mark well again, then,—he is the poet of a fresh, free, unbound, natural, ne\v-inade world,—the poet of the earth newly-turned-up, of the primeval woods newly explored, of wharves and docks and busy towns, and the strong flood of life all new and strange—nothing stale, flat, commonplace, familiar; in a word, the poet who is most like a child-man, opening his wide wondering eyes, brimming over with joy, and feeling the mystery and beauty and delight of bodily sensations in a world of boundless animation, vigor, and ever fresh surprise.

Motto suggested by a lady for this Volume, from Tennyson's " Idyls."

" Now I know thee, what thou art;

Thou art the highest, and most human too."

From "The Long Islander,^^ August^^th, i8Si.

Walt Whitman in Huntington. —After more than forty years' absence, the author of Leaves of Grass, and founder of this paper, has been visiting our town the past week in company with Dr. R. M. Bucke, of London, Canada, who is engaged in writing a life of "the good gray Poet." They \ ut up at the Huntington House, and spent several days in calls and explorations at West Hills, on and around the old Whitman homestead and farm (now owned and occupied by Philo R. Place), and also down to the house where, in 1819, Walt was born (the farm now of Henry Jarvis), and the adjacent parts of the country for several miles. They were especially interested in the old Whitman burial hill and cemetery, contaming the poet's ancestors for many generations, dating more than two hundred years back, with its rows of ancient moss covered graves. The poet and Dr. Bucke also went over to the Van Velsor homestead, adjacent to Cold Spring, the birthplace of Mr. Whitman's mother, Louisa, daughter of Major Cornelius Van Velsor. The house, barn, and other buildings were all gone, and the ground ploughed over. But about a hundred rods off was the old Van Velsor burial ground, on a hill in the woods, and one of the most significant and picturesque spots of the kind it is possible to conceive.

Mr. Whitman was called upon during his brief stay in Huntington by many old and some new friends, among others, the following: Charles Velsor, of Cold Spring; Benjamin Doty, of same place; in West Hills, Lemuel Carl], John Chichester, Miss Jane Rome, William May, and Samuel Scudder; in Huntington, Henry Lloyd, Lawyer Street, Albert Hopper, Smith Sammis, Thomas Rogers, John Fleet, Ezra Prime, Henry Sammis, Thomas Aitkins, Charles E. Shepard, Messrs. Wood and Rusco, and Fred Galow.

LINN PORTER TO WALT WHITMAN.

Hawthorne Rooms, Boston, April i^th, 1881. I knew there was an old, white-bearded seer

Who dwelt amid the streets of Camden town;

I had the volumes which his hand wrote down— The living evidence we love to hear Of one who walks reproachless, without fear.

But when I saw that face, capped with its crown

Of snow-white almond-buds, his high renown Faded to naught, and only did appear

The calm old man, to whom his verses tell, All sounds were music, even as a child ;

And then the sudden knowledge on me fell, For all the hours his fancies had beguiled.

No verse had shown the Poet half so well As when he looked into my face and smiled.

From the [Boston) "Literary World" Decemberjd, 1881.

... I was very glad to read your notice of Whitman's stuff. The original Leaves of Grass is the dirtiest unsuppressed book ever published in this country. I should judge that the new edition has not been purified.— Cott-cord, Mass.

... I want to tell you also how much I liked that notice of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in your last. It was the right thing to say, strongly and rightly said.— Newport, R. /.

. . . You may be sure of the svnipatliy and thanks of most of your readers when you call a spade a spade, and give the right n.inu- to the indecency of Walt \Vlntnian. ... It is a comfort to t'lnd a newspaper, that has a reputation for intelligence and honesty, willing to sjieak the plain truth. You did the same thing some months since of a book of Ileine'j-. ... 1 hope you will coniinue to remind your readei-s that no brilliancy of intellect can atone for a want of common decency.— Philadilfhia.

From the " Boston Iltrah/;' Aj^ril iSth, iSSi.

\Valt Whitman is now on his second visit to Boston. He came quietly, but he finds himself the subject of an ovation given with such hearty cordialness as to prove with what a real aflection he has come to be regarded. At about the time when the St. Botolph Club was organized, a few of the young fellows hajipening to speak of Lincoln, it was suggested by one of them that they ought to have Walt Whitman here to read his commemoration essay on the great President, a service that he reverently perlorms every year on the anniversary of Lincoln's death. The idea took root at once, and tlie arrangements were made that have resulted in the present occasion. It was a pleasant sight at the Hawthorne Rooms on Friday evening; the fme autlience representing the best side of Boston literary activity, and the poet, with venerable hair and bearil,but sturdy presence, reading his hne essay with the native eloquence born of sincere feeling—just as if reading to a few personal friends— but with none of the tricks of the elocutionizing trade.

He has been welcomed to Boston with open arms. Old and young, old friends and new, have gathered arouml him. The young men have taken to him as one with themselves, as one of tliose fresh natures that are ever youtii-ful; the older ones, many of whom might once have been disposed to regard him with disfavor, now have grown to see the real core of the man in its soundness and sweetness, and are equally hearty in their welcome. " He is a grand old fellow " is everybody's verdict. Walt Whitman has in times past been, perhaps, more ignorantly than wilfully misunderstood, but time brings about its revenges, anil his present position goes to prove that, let a man be true to himself, however he defies the world, the world will come to respect him for his loyalty. Perhaps frankness may be said to be the keynote of Walt Whitman's nature. He glows with responsive cordiality. He is not afraid to be himself, and he asserts it with itleal American unconventionality,—that is, he is thoroughly individual in his personal ways and expressions, and all without offence to the individualism of others. He looks it in his strong features, full of the repose of force in reserve; his clear, friendly blue eyes, the open windows of a healthy brain ; the pleasant, sympathetic voice ; the easy suit of pleasant gray, and the open shirt with rolling collar; the broail, black felt hat contrasting with his white hair. All express the large-hearted, large-minded man. His rutldy face and powerful frame indicate gooil health, and it is only when he rises that one sees in his slow walk the invalid that he now is,—" a half-paralytic," he calls himself. He is hearty in speaking of his contemporaries, and he thinks America is to be esteemed fortunate in having felt the influence of four such clean, pure and hcaltliful natures as lunerson, Jhyant, Whittier, and Longfellow. As his frank comments on others are without reserve, so his free talk of himself is without egotism, as can well be the case with a man of such large personality.

^^'hen in Washington, he was astonished to receive a letter from Tennyson, wonderfully cordial and hearty, inviting him to come to see him in England, and full of friendly interest. It was not so much about his book as it was a

IKTSonal tribute, which seemed the more amazing coming from Tennyson, who never goes out of his way, even for kings. This was the beginning of a group of devotc-d admirers in England, and, until recently, the poet lias received the most of his sujjport (rom the Jiritish isles, where he has sold the greater number of his books.

One of the late->t articles on Walt Whitman was that of Stedman's in a recent number of " Scribner's." It is an appreciative and fine feeling paper, full of friendly recogniiion. In parts, however, it seems as if he failed to grasp the true significance of his subject. He makes, for instance, a most mistaken comparison between Whitman and William Blake. Whitman, in fact, had probably never heard of William IJlake until Stedman's article appeared. And it seems difficult, indeed, to find any similarity between the grand healthiness of Whitman and the morbid, diseased thoughts of the half-crazy Englishman. Regarding Stedman's characterization of certain passages in Whitman's poems as false to art, since Nature was not to be seen in her nakedness, for she always took care to cover up her naked places with vegetation, a great poet said to the writer that there were times when Nature was to be seen when she was in all her nakedness, and that it was proper that she should thus be seen ; a great artist could so present her, and thereby there would be no violation of the laws of art. Concerning these passages, Walt Whitman says that, after much thinking it over, he feels that he was right in writing them, and that he would not have them otherwise. There is something way back of logic, back of reason, that prompjts us, and this feeling tells him that he was right.

From the Philadelphia "Pro^ress,^^ Apriljoth, 1881.

Walt Whitman's latk Lkctukk in Boston. —There is a mixture of pensiveness, fitness, and of his own individuality—perhaps obstinacy—in Walt Whitman's determination to keep in his own way every recurrence of the anniversary of I'resident Lincoln's death. "Oft as the rollingyears bring back this hour," he said in his discourse last week in Boston, "let it again, however briefly, be dwelt upon; for my own part, I ho])e and intend, till my own dying day, whenever the 14th or 15th of April comes, to annually gather a few friends, and hold its tragic reminiscence."

Twice before has he read his notes on this theme; once, in 1879, in New York city, and in 1880 in I'hiladelphia. This time it was in Bo'-ton, where he had been invitcl by the young journalists, artists, and by the St. Botolph Club. The old " Evening Traveller" of next day, April i6th, 1881, in an editorial leader thus describes the speaker and the speech :

" There was a theme for poet or j)ainter in the scene at the Hawthorne Rooms last evening, when Walt Whitman read to a fascinated group of auditors his reflections upon the death of Abraham Lincoln. As he entered, unattended and unannounced, and made his way painfully along the narrow aisle, supported by his stout stick, to the desk behind which looked out the face of the martyr President, and sitting in the broad oaken armchair, his clear, resonant voice fillin-^ every part of the room, the venerable prophet of Democracy presented a pictures'^iue figure. He was clad in his customary suit of light gray, his fresh and striking countenance set off by waves of snow-white hair and beard, the ' copious blanchness ' of his linen adding yet another element to the cha-te simplicity of his attire; while in the audience before him were many eminent in art and letters, who had come to pay homage to one who is already fnst being regarded as the typical citizen of the republic. There was something of poetic justice, too, in thinking of the reception of this man who had

been scorned as a barbarian rhymester, whose burning lines, surcharged with the future, had long fallen unheeded upon the indifferent ears of his countrymen, and whose very presence was now felt almost as a benediction.

" The scenes in that mighty drama which those present were gathered to commemorate were painted by Whitman in a series of bold, masterly strokes. The great incidents leading up to the culminating tragedy were swiftly enumerated ; then the scenes of that wild and eventful April night, in clear-cut, well-chosen words, every epithet bearing its weight of meaning; and then the speaker went on in prophetic strains to foretell the significance of this great event, and its influence upon the art, history, and literature of the nation. The lecture closed with the recitation by the author of his grandly pathetic lament, ' O Captain, my Captain,' the lines gaining new grandeur and pathos as they came from his lips.

" It was a scene which those present will long remember as pregnant with meaning to their whole after lives."

From the "Boston Globe," August 24th, 188r.

In a small inner room connected with the printing establishment of Rand, Avery & Co., Walt Whitman, the poet, was reading by a table yesterday. Near by was a pile of corrected proof-sheets bearing the heading Leaves of Grass. His ruddy features were almost concealed by his white hair and beard. When he laid down his book on the intrusion of the writer, his eye, still bright and keen, glowed with a genuine good nature. No, he had no objections to entering into a conversation which should be given to the public, provided there was any interest in what he might say. He was here, he said, to look over the proofs of his new Leaves of Grass, which James R. Osgood & Co. are to issue.

" It is a long time," remarked the reporter, " since the book by that name was first given to the world." " Yes," replied the poet, leaning back comfortably in his chair, and looking reflectively across the table at the writer, who had seated himself opposite, " it is now, I believe, twenty-six years since I began to work upon the structure; and this edition will complete the design which I had in my mind when I began to write. The whole affair is like one of those old architectural edifices, some of which were hundreds of years building, and the designer of which has the whole idea in his mind from the first. His plans are pretty ambitious, and, as means or time permits, he adds part after part, perhaps at quite wide intervals. To a casual observer it looks in the course of its construction odd enough. Only after the whole is completed, one catches the idea which inspired the designer, in whose mind the relation of each part to the whole had existed al! along. That is the way it has been with my book. It has been twenty-six years building. There have been seven different hitches at it. Seven different times have parts of the edifice been constructed,—sometimes in Brooklyn, sometimes in Washington, sometimes in Boston, and at other places. The book has been built partially in every part of the United States; and this edition is the completed edifice.

" Then I do not know whether it will appear to the casual reader, but to myself my whole book turns on the Secession War. I desired to make it the poem of the War—not in a way in which the old war poems, such as the ' Iliad,' were war poems, but in entirely a new way. This came to me after the second part was composed, and has readily fused in with the other parts of my plan, and even dominated them."

From the Springfield [Mass.] "Republican^'' November loth, 1881. It wc.s a great age, men will say hereafter, and a grand country, that could produce in one generation three figures for posterity to gaze on, like John

Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and Walt Whitman—men unlike each other and unlike all others, such as no other land produced or could produce ; embodied heroism, embodied sense and sensibility, embodied imagination. So I view the three men, in the mass of their character—not considering the loose and trivial details which to many eyes have seemed to be the whole character. If it were possible to see the genius of a great people throwing itself now into tills form, now into thatt—as the prairie wheatfield takes the quick shape of the passing wind—it would be just to say that we had seen this mystery in the " plain heroic magnitude of mind " with which Brown met death,—in the broad and patient wisdom of Lincoln,—and in the immense landscape of Whitman's teeming imagination. His Leaves of Grass, as he has now published them, complete the vast picture of his mind, and bring out not merely the confusion of details, which we could only see at first by the light of poetic flashes—but the broad unity of the piece. It is as if the ancient seamen had found their ocean-god slumbering along his shores, and upon near view could only see a hand here, an eyebrow there, a floating mass of beard elsewhere—but when they stood back from the strand, or best if they climbed a hill of prospect, the symmetry and articulation of the mighty frame plainly appeared, and they knew by sight their unconscious divinity, Neptune.

There is in Whitman's verse, more than in any other modern poet's, what Keats called "that large utterance of the early gods"—an indistinct grandeur of expression not yet moulded to the melody of Shakespeare, Lucretius, and /Eschylus, but like what Keats again calls " the overwhelming voice of huge Enceladus."

• It is when he speaks of Lincoln and the Civil War that Whitman is least indistinct. And no other of our poets—no, nor all of them together—has so well caught and rendered the spirit of that struggle as he has done it.

From the "New York Tribtme" November igth, 1881. After the dilettante indelicacies of William H. Mallock and Oscar Wilde, we are presented with the slop-bucket of Walt W^hitman. The celebrity of this phenomenal poet bears a curious disproportion to the circulation of his writings. Until now, it cannot be said that his verses have ever been published at all. They have been printed irregularly and read behind the door. They have been vaunted extravagantly by a band of extravagant disciples; and the possessors of the books have kept them locked up from the family. Some have valued them for the barbaric " yawp," which seems to them the note of a new, vigorous, democratic, American school of literature; some for the fragments of real poetry floating in the turbid mass; some for the nastiness and animal insensibility to shame which entitle a great many of the poems to a dubious reputation as curiosities. Now that they are thrust into our faces at the bookstalls there must be a re-examination of the myth of the Good Gray Poet. It seems to us that there is no need at this late day to consider Mr. Whitman's claims to the immortality of genius. That he is a poet most of us frankly admit. His merits have been set forth many times, and at great length, and if the world has erred materially in its judgment of them the error has been a lazy and unquestioning acquiescence in some of the extreme demands of his vociferous partisans. The chief question raised by this publication is whether anybody—even a poet—ought to take off his trousers in tlic market-place. Of late years we believe that Mr. Whitman has not chosen to be so shocking

as he \va<; when he had his notoriety to make, ami many of liis admirers—the rational ones—hoiK'd that the Lt-i}7'c-s of Grass would be wcedeil before he set them out ay;ain. lUit this has not been done : and indeeil Mr. Whitman could hardly do it without falsifying the first prineiple of his philosojihy, which is a belief in his own jierfection, ami the seciiml prineiple, which is a belief in the preciousness of tilth. " Divine am 1," he cries, "Divine am 1 inside and out, and I make holy whatever 1 touch or am touched from. The scent of these armpits aroma liner than prayer, 'This heail more than churches, Bibles, and all the creeds." He knows tliat he is "august." lie does not care for anybody's opinion. He is

W.iU Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

Tiiihulcnt, fleshy, sensual, eating, ttrinkinj;, and l)reciIinK,

No sentimontulist, no stamlcr above men anil women or apart from them,

No mjie ni.ilcst tlian immoilcst.

There is nothing in the universe better than Walt Whitman. That is the burilen of the '' Song of Myself," which tills fifty p;iges of the present volume:

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me, and all so Uiscions.

Nothing is obscene or indecent to him. It is his mission to shout the forbidden voices, to tear the veil ofT everything, to clarify and transfigure all that is dirty and vile, to proclaim that garbage is just as gooil as nectar if you are only lusty enough to think so. His immotlcsty is free from glamour of every sort. Neither amatory sentiment nor susceptibility to physical beauty appears to have anything to do with it. It is entirely bestial; and in this respect we know nothing in literature which can be compared with it. Walt Whitman, despising what lie calls conventionalism, ami vaunting the athletic democracy, asks to be accepted as the mister of a new poetical school, fresh, free, stalwart, " immense in passion, pulse, and power," the embodiment of the spirit of vigorous America. 15ut the gross materialism of his verses represents art in its last degradation rather than its rude infancy.

From the "Boston Transcript I''' Now when every legitimate leaf of grass is looking its freshest and greenest, the sun of adversity seems to have wilted—permanently, let us hope— those "leaves" which twenty-five years ago spri)uted from our literary soil under the auspices of Walt Whitman. The attorney-general of the Commonwealth notified the publishers of Lea'.'es of Grass that certain changes must be matle in the contents of the book, or its sale must cease. The publishers manifest perfect willingness to accede to the demand, but the author stubbornly refuses to omit a word or change a line. A great many people who know nothing about the book will wonder at Whitman's refusal to re-edit it, but to tell the honest, shameful truth, the very portions objected to are all that have made the book sell. It is now nearly thirty years since Whitman uttered his literary "yawp." It was at a peculiar period in American literature. None of our great i)oets had then developed their full strength. There was a lack of that brawny, unconventional vigor in American poetry which the jiopular mind yearned for, and which was felt by right to belong to it. The very audacity and lawlessness of Leaves of Grass did for the moment what no amount of merit could have done, and many enthusiastic critics saw in it promises of the coming man. In England the volume was received as a work of special insiiiralion by the jire-Raphaeliles, and an edition was brought out by Rossetti in lS68. An Irisli critic demanded for the author a ]ilace by the si4e of /Kschylus, Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, intimating that he would not sutler by comparison with any one of the four.

From the Sprin^ield {Mass.) "Republicans^ May 2jd, 1882. Leitkr f-'ROM R. M. UacKK.

I desire briefly to call your attention to the fact that in this country, which boasfr of its liherty, and especially of its free press, the publication of perhaps the best book which has so far been produced in it has jjeen stopjjed \)y lej^ai interference. I allude to the interdiction of the issue of Leaves of Grass by a notice serve'l upon James R. (Jsgood & Co., its jjublishers, by District Attorney Oliver Stevens in March last; which notice was to the effect that unless the issue of the book at once ceased the firm would be prosecuted "in pursuance of the public statutes respeciing obscene literature."

It is not easy for me, who for the last sixteen years have made this book a constant comjjanion, and have received (as have so many others) unspeakable benefit from it, to speak of this action in terms of moderation; but I shall, nevertheless, try to do so. It seems, then, that this is the outcome of the boasted freedom of America toward the end of the nineteenth century, that the publication of a book, the most honest, pure, religious and moral, of this or of almost any other age, can be stopped, and is stopped by the law. That this could happen would be bad enough if the book were, for instance, comparable to Byron's "Don Juan," Sterne's "Tristram Shandy," Fielding's "Tom Jones," or hundreds of other really great books of the same kind, which, though shunned by j^rudes, are the joy and delight of all the rest of the world. \i it were a book in which sensual jjleasures were pictured and praised for tlieir own sake, or in which some of the fundamental principles of morality were attacked, it would still be wrong, inexpedient, and contrary to the spirit of this age and country to suppress it by legal interference; for the Americans of this generation are, I take it, grown up men and women, and require no district attorney or other official to instruct them as to what books are, and what not, proi>er to be read, but are perfectly able to decide (each one of themj such matters for themselves.

But Leaves of Grass does not stand in the same category with either the books mentioned or those alluded to, nor does it advocate acts or practices which are considered by any sane person to be immoral or wrong; the whole crime of its author is that lie believes in the grandeur and goodness of humanity in all its parts and relations; that he, being himself pure, sees that man is so in his essential nature, in spite of any and all ajjpearances to the contrary; that all his parts and all his functions are well made and divinely appointed; that man, in fact, is the work of a wise and good God—not his head and hands, his eyesight and intellect merely, but also all the rest of his body and his instincts, including the sexual passion, and the organs and the acts by and through which this passion (forthe greatest of all ends) seeks and finds its gratification:

The very head and front of (his) offending Hath this extent, no more.

He simply, like Milton, "asserts (universal) providence, and y?/j/z/f^i the ■ways of God to man,'" his crime being that, as he has absolute, not partial faith, so he justifies ali God's ways, not a selected few of them.

If even, his intention being pure, he had so failed in the carrying of it out that while aiming to strengthen virtue the book unawares stimulated vice, it would then urdoul;tedly be a proper subject for hostile criticism, but not for the interference of the law, which in such a case could only be appealed to by persons who felt that the ends they sought could not be attained by reason. But it has not been and cannot be shown that the book is of the character supposed,

for it was not only intended to eontain, but it does contain, no page, line, or word calculated to arouse or eai>al)le ol arousing; anv improper or inuuoral emotion whatever, but, on the contrarv, its invariable tendency is toward puritv in thougiil. word, and deed. Walt \\ hitman says, and rij^htly, that, " It" anythinjj is sacred the human body is sacred " (not part of the body, mind, but all ol^ it), ami as a lo!;ical deduction Ironi that proposition (which even (.)liver Stevens will hardly deny) he continues:

0 my boily 1 I ilare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the

parts of yon.

1 believe the likes of you arc to stand and fall with the likes of the soul (and that they are

the soul).

He therefore j^oes on to praise in detail all the various jiarts, origans, and funciions of the body, and tiiis is done in an absolutely chaste manner. There is no make-believe about all this on the part of the poet; all parts of the body are praiseworthy and admirable to him (as they ought to be to us all, for they are so in reality), and l.tovt-s <>/" ihass, properly read, is to make us see the nni-verse in all its parts, including man, as he sees it, and feel toward it as he feels tow aril it, /. (•., to see and Ice! that the world and humanitv are not half Clod's work and half the devil's, but that the\- are all CJod's w ork. and all perfect; that " not an inch or a particle of an inch is vile."

If so to feel towaril and so to treat the earth and its inhabitants is a crime deserving the interference of the law, then (I say it in all reverence) the teaching of Christ was immoral, and the Pharisees had the best of the argument, for this was the basis of all his teaching: *'These people and these things that you I'harisees think vile are not so in fact—these publicans, these prostitutes are the children of Ciod ; these acts that seem to you to need con-denuialiim and innuNhment, need instead jiity and forgiveness; these things that seem to you trivial anil worthless have an eternal and sublime significance, if you couKl only see it." Has the world learned the lesson ? (.Hight it no longer to be insisted upon? Are we all (now at last) good enough, wise enough ? Do we all fully realize the w hole granileur and beauty of the world and of man? Are our feelings towards these always and under all circumstances what they should be? Arc tiny ci'cr ivhat tlicy shotilii be ? If man is already perfect, of course he wants no more teachers, so let us snjipress all books (ami all men too) that are above our own level; or, it being .iilmitted that man is not quite perfect, shall we say that he is not cajxible of ever being nearer so than he is at present, and that therefore all leaching iutenileil to elevate him is useless? If this is the case then certainly books like Lttivfs of Grass have no value. How ever, the point to be kcjit in view at jiresent is not so much the value or no value of this desjiised and interdicted book, but the question whether any honestly written book may, sim]ily because of the mention in it of things not usuallv talked about, be suppressed by any man who, jierhaps not unilerstanding it, hajipens not to like it. It is no use to seek to justify the sup|iression by saying that it was tITected by means of and in accordance with law, for the worst crimes ever connnitted, the burning of w itches, the butcheries of Jetfries, the execution of early Christians by pagans, and of later Christians by one another for religious error, yes, even the Crucifixion itself, were all legal. The question is not whether Oliver Stevens's act is legal, but whether it is right. The suppression (even for the moment) of Leaves of Grass is a serious matter from several points of view, but the general question involved in the act is f^ir more serious. But upo^i this point Oliver Stevens has now expressed his opinion : it remains to be seen what the American people will think of it.

From the " Boston Herald,'^ May 28th, 1882.

Suppressinp; Walt Whitman's poems is like [)uttin(; tlic Venus of Milo in petticoats. A few years a}^o a dealer in New iJedford was proseciittfl for cx-posinij a copy of the statuette of Narcissus in his window. 'I'his is prurient prudery. We expect it in untravelle<J country jieoi^le, hut city lawyers ouj^ht to kn<)V/ better. We presume it is n<A I;ist.-Attorney Stevens, or Atly.-(Jen. Marston, to whom the credit of this small Iji^'otry helonj^s, hut Anthony (Jom-slock, the narrow apostle of drapery. If Walt Whitman's poems are obscene, what shall be said for .Shakespeare, Montaigne, Swedenborg, and the Jiiblc? On what principle can "the good gray poet" be condemned, and these exalted ? It is reprjrtcd that Anth'jny Comstock has jfromised not to prosecute the classics " unless they are specially advertised." Such a glimpse of bigotry is enough to make one shudder. We regret that such facile legal lo'Ws were found in Massachusetts, and that the publishers did not have the c<jurage to stand a prosecution for the sake of truth and art, and truth in art.

From the " Chiccif^o Herald,'' Octoher /6t/i, 1882.

Mr. George Chainey, of Boston, delivered a lecture last evening in Hcrshcy Hall upon Walt Whitman's suj>jjressed bo'jk, Leaves of Grass. The audience was small and very apj^reciative. Mr. Chainey is a tall, round-shouldered, smooth-faced gentleman, with flowing black hair, very large dark eyes, and a strong tendency toward ejjigrammalic and jjoetic expression. lie appears to be about forty years oM. lie said that Walt Whitman is [<re-eniinently the poet of to-day. I'erhaps he might more justly be called the poet of the future. No poet of our time has been so coldly received—and yet there is no heart that beats so responsive to the voice of humanity as that of Walt Whitman. The critics refused to acknowledge him a poet, because he failed to write according to any of their rules of rhyme. He read his lines in the book of Nature. To express one's thoughts musically is a most valuable gift, but it is necessary for the poet to have something to reveal. The heart of to-day seeks to express itself in its own way. Millions still wear the manacles u{ yesterday, but it is without enthusiasm. The devotees of the church are bound by a law which does not satisfy their desires. They preach a salvation from hell. What they preach is hell. Ijonrlage is hell; freedom is heaven. Shakespeare was the Pacific Ocean of poetry; Whitman is the Atlantic. The one carries the freight of kings anrl queens, and the romance of the past; across the other come the steamshijjs of to-day's commerce. Other poets have sung of the pomps and romances of high life, but Walt Whitman has taken up the commonest things of earth, and shown their relation to the highest human life. To hirn all the bibles, religions, [philosophies of the past are as the grass of yesterday. They have fed the worhl, but are not food for the jjresent. All the first part of Leaves of Grass is taken up with this thought. If men and women would listen to the teachings of this true poet they would save themselves much pain and error. It is oar right to enjoy ourselves in our own way, provided we interfere with the rights of no other person. Whitman is as original in matter as in manner. He is the first poet of true Democracy. All through his book he pleads the cause of the despised and down-troflden. He demolishes all distinctions drawn by church and state. Walt Whitman cannot come to his own to-day because the church has preempted the land which he could profital^ly occupy. He can afford to wait until, as he says, there shall be no more priests. His idea of Democracy is different from that of the politicians. It means that the wise and strong are to use their wisdom and strength for the benefit of all. De-

mocracy means equality of opportunity and iij;ht. Air, water ami land sIkhiKI he common to all under a w i.^e manaycmcni. Absolute po.sses.sii)n ol land will some day be looked at in the same liL;lit as absolute possession of men and women. Neither should to day be perniilted to put claims on to-morrow. It shi)uld be held a crime to bequeath fortunes to jierpetuate a political or reli-{;ious creed. Woman must become in law as sJie is in fact the equal of man bel\)re the true Democracy can be had.

The lecturer read Whitman's poem addressed to a Common I'rostitutc, and said that on account of his jiublishin!^ that poem in his p.qier he was greatly annoyed by rosimaster 'lobey of Boston. He claims that the lines are pure and chaste when read underslandingly in connection with the whole book. For this charity of Whitman's toward all Magdalens he has been persecuted in business and person, and classed with those who secretly corrupt the virtue of youth. He tinds it necessary to treat of sex. In wrilinjj; of this subject he uses some expressions which are objecteil to. He says that there have been two ways of treating these subjects, one the conventional method of absolute silence, the other in the vulgar words which come from masculine mouths. The speaker here intcrpolaleil a stmy of his first loss of faith in the purity of the Christian Church when he found himself in the company of three ministers who regalcil each other h)r an entire evening with snuitty stories. In camp-meeting while part of the preachers are tlunulering to better men than themselves to repent or be danuied, the others are regaling each other in this delicate fashion in the ])rivacy of their tents.

In closing, the speaker said that there were some passages in Leaves of Grass which he had not and could not read to the audience, not because the poetry was iminne, InU because the miiuls of his hearers were in such a condition that the poet's words would raise inqune thoughts.

From the rtiiladclf'hia " Progress^'' November rr, rSS2.

Wai.t Whitman's Lati'. Ii.i.nkss. —Dressed in a plain but handsome new suit of iron gray, all of a piece, loose ami old-fashioned, yet a certain ilasliy style of its own, " the poet of future Democracy," as Tlioreau once termed him—up again from his recent severe sickness—resumed, last week, his occasional mid-day saunters along v.'hestinit street. The whole rig, and the generous-crowned light hat of scift French beaver, that always surmounts its stalwart six-feet height, showed that free and large physique not unbecomingly.

It is not generally known that Walt Whitman's frequent spells of paralysis and sickness, the last hflcen years, are legacies from his overstrained labors in the Secession War. Never was there a grander and more perfect physicpie than he threw into that contest in 1862, with all the ardor of his nature, and continued till 1865, not as the destroyer of life, but its saviour, as voliuiteer army mu'se and missionary, night and day, through the whole of three unin-termitted years, always tending the Southern woundeil just the same as the Northern. Well has it been claimed for him that behind his books stand the unrivalled deeds of his ]iersonal career.

He told me last week that in the two Philadeljihia volumes just issued, the one comprising his entire poetic Leaz'es, and the other. Specimen Days, giving his autobiography and collected prose writings—both volumes printed solely under his own eye and direction—he has put himself on record for the future, "for good or bad, hit or miss," as he phrased it; and that he shall bother himself about the whole matter no further.

William Sloane Kennedy, Massachusetts. {Excerpts).

Walt Whitman is not a man who can be dcscribefi hy comparison or by antithesis. No genius can Ijc so flescribed. If you will j^ive nje an aflcfjuate account of a cubic mile of sea-water or blue ether, measure t)ie work of the sun, the beauty of the morninj^ star, or tiie influence of the starry mi(lni{.Mit ujjon the soul, then I will give you an adequate account of this man. lie is not immoral, but unmoral, as a faun or a satyr; a dynamic force, an aniniatc fragment of the universe, a destroyer of shams, a live fighter upon the stage (" im Ilintergrund wimmclt's v(jn gemaltcn Soldaten.").

Don't go to hirii cxjjccling everylhing of him. lJ<m't expect to find an artist. Don't ask for music. JJe satisfied with the grand thought, llie manly faith in democracy, the occasional majestic rhythm and jjoetry, the subtle spirituality, the anti'jue strength and fresh savagery, the handling of vast masses of matter and spanning of gulfs of space and time with an ease and sureness never exhibited by any other poet. If you are inclined to laugh at Whitman's weaknesses and absurdities, do so by all means; it is right that you should. But if you arc inclined to underrate his real strength, just at-temjjt to draw his bow, and see how ridicidoiis will be your failure. '1 here is not a man living who can write anything that will come within a thousand miles of such compositions as Whitman's " Song of Myself," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," " Burial Hymn of Lincoln," " Calamus," " Kid6lons," his sea pieces, etc.; and no one but Carlyle could write such prose as the best of Whitman's. For my part, I desjjairof bemg able to completely analyze him, so revolutionary is he, so infinitely suggestive. A man, wlio, in his jjhiloso-phy, has oriented himself by the perihelion and aphelion of the earth's orbit; who has taken the parallax of stars sunken deej^ beyond the vision of others' eyes, and whose diameters of faith span all gulfs of despair,—this is one whom I can trust and respect, but can with difhculty fathom.

It is the few men of tremendf>us native force of character, appearing at long intervals in history, that redeem literature from its va])idity and chaffiness. The value of Whitman in literature is, that in among the idiotic dandies and dolls of book characters he has placed A I.IVK MAN, with all his sins and crudities, his brawn and blood, sexuality and burliness, as well as his noble and refined fjualilies. The effect and the shock of this upon the morbid mental condition of the pojjular mintl of the day, is like that which would be i)ro-duced by sufhlenly producing a nude figure of Angelo's, or an undrapcd Bacchus, in a ladies' sewing circle of a Methodist church.

As the author of Leaves of Grass himself says, in his article in the "North American Review," for June, 1X82, the cosmical completeness of his work would have been injured by his omission to present the matter of sex. There is architectural yjroportion in the plan of his writings. As in antique sculpture all parts of the body are faithfully reproduced, so in Whitman's writings is all Nature reflected, and in j^roper proportion. Sexuality, fatherhood, and motherhood are themes which he treats only in two or three of liis earlier poems; and, unf|uestionably, they should have been sung by so universal a poet—only in a more delicate way.

Let me close this topic by quoting the following passage from II. K. Ilaweis's excellent work on "Music and Morals:" " In some of the Gothic cathedrals we may have noticed strange figures hiding in nooks and comers, or obtrusively claiming attention as water-sjjouts. Some of them are revolting enough, but they are not to be severed from their connection with the whole building. That is the work of art; these are but the details, and only some of the details. How many statues are there in all those niches ?—let us say a thousand. You

20

shall find seventy pure vir)^ins prayiri}^ in long robes, and forty monks and apostles and l)isli<)|)s, and aiij^cls in clioirs, and arclianfjcls staiidinfj liif^li and alone uj^on lofty fi(;ade and piimaele and tower ; and around the eorner of the roof shall be two devils prowling,', or a hideous-lookin}; villain in ^reat pain, or (as in Chester cathedral), there may be a proportion—a very small |)ro])or-tion—of obscene (i{,'ures, hdrd and true and ])itiless. ' What scandalous subjects f(jr church decoration !' scnne may exclaim; yet the whole im])ression prcjduced is a |)rofoundly moral one. The sculptor has j^iven you the life he saw ; but he has ^iveii it from a really hi^h standpoint, and all is moral because all is in healthy proportion. There is dcj^radalion, but there is also divine beauty; there is passionate and des])airin|.; sin, but there is also calmness and victory; tliere are devils, but they are inlinitely outnumbered by angels; there lurks the blur of human depravity, but as we pass out beneath groups of long-robed saints in prayer the tlujught of sin lades out befoie a dream of divine I)urity and peace. We can see what the artist hjved and what he taught; that is the right test, and we may take any man's work as a whole, and apjdy that test fearlessly."

And what a diction he has! Ili.s monosyllabic .Saxon e])ithets somehow liave imparted to them the crisp and crude freshness of the natural objects themselves to which they are ap])lied. And his style is by no means spontaneous. I have pers(Hial knowledge that he has always kept in view the advice given by Heranger to a brother poet, namely, that he should kee|) clear of all hack writers, and study words, words, words. Whitman's wcjrds are alive. His pages snap and crackle with vitality. Like Homer, he gives us actions, and not descriptions of actions. .Something in the movement of his periods, like the blind resistless /r/cV^of growing wood libre, the erratic and ponderous push of writhen oak knots.

If there remains anything to be said it is this: Throw aside the present article, and all articles about this great man, and go read his books. One result will be inevitable—you will discover your own limitations.

From " 'J'lic I/enild" Boston, October i^th, 1SS2.

TiiF. Prosk Wkitincs or Tine " CJooi) (jray Pokt." A Twin Volume TO <' Lkavks ok tiuASH."—Walt Whitman's new book, with the odd, but thoroughly characteristic and descriptive title. Specimen Days and Collect, is a ])rose companion to Leaves of Grass, being a complete collection of the author's [jrose writings, as the former C(jmprises all his verse. It is a meaty, compact volume, and is more directly comprehensible to the understanding of the multitude than the greater and more famcnis work. And yet tliis is as much Whitm:in as his verse is, and the same characteristics pervade it: grand hrallhiness of tone, largeness of view, universal reach, an<l, at the same time, delicate |)erce])tion and sensitiveness, and identity with Nature, indissoluble and knit through and through with its fabric. Had Leases of Grass never been written, this btxjk alone would be enough to establish the author's fame as a great poet.

In a |)ersonal letter. Whitman writes: '«It is a great jumble (as man himself is)—an aulobiograjjliy after its sort—(sort o' synonymous with Montaigne, and Rousseau's ' Confessions,' etc.)—is the gathering up and formulation and |)Utting in identity of the wayside iteini/ings, memoranda, and personal notes (jf iifty years—a good deal helter-skelter, but, I am sure, with a certain sort of orbic coni])action and ontMK'ss as the final result. It dwells long on the Secession War, gives glimpses of that event's strange interiors.

especially the army hospitals; in fact, makes the resuscitation and puttinf^ on record of the emotional aspect of the War of 1861-65 one of its jjrincipal features."

IfKJeed, too much stress cannot he laid upon this latter phase of the hook. No history or descri)4ion of the war that has yet Ijeen written prohahly ^ives such vivid and };ra|)hic pictures of its events—its heroism, its horror, its sadness, the pathetic tenderness of countless of its incidents, and, ah(ive all, its grand significance. I'or this rc-ason it ou^ht to he dear to every soldier.

During the years from 1873 totlie |jresent date, Whitman has heeii a partial paralytic. Very much of his days (and nights, also, it apjjearsj he has s|)ent in the open air down in the country in the woods and helds, and hy a secluded little New Jersey river. His memoranda, on the spot, of these days and nights, fill a goodly j>ortion of the volume.

Then comes the " Collect," emljodying " Democratic Vistas," the nohle prose Preface to Leaver of Grass of the edition of 1855, and much other prose, together with a number (^f ycjuthful efforts in jjrose and poetry, which, in a note, the author ex|jlains he would have j^referred to have them rpiietly <]t<>\A in oblivion, hut, to avoid the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, he has, with some qualms, here tacked them on.

'i"hc whole volume, in its arrangement, is pregnant with Whitman's personality, and it seems more a part of its author than jjaper and printers' ink usually do. It also exhibits, as far as ])Ossihle for any jjublic record, that most wonderful ^nd intricate of processes, the workings of a poet's mind, and affords an insight into the mysterious interior dejjlhs and rambling galleries and diain-bersof the cosmic s|jhere whose large and rugged exterior is clothed with the fresh beauty of " leaves of grass."

Fro?n " The Press,'' Philadelphin, March 18th, /88j.

Ralf)h Waldo Emerson's corrlial letter to Walt Whitman "at the beginning of a great career," has become familiar in American literature. Of scarcely less interest is Emerson's frank personal estimate of the new jioct in a letter written to Carlyle in 1856, when the flat, thin f|uarto was unknown to the general, or for that matter, to any reader. " f Jne bfjok came out last summer in New York," lunerson writes, " a nr)ndescrifjt monster, which yet had terrible eyes and bulfalo strength, and was indisputably American. It is called Leaves of Grass. After you have hooked into it, if you think, as you may, that it is only an auctioneer's inventory of a warehouse, you can light your pipe with it."

It would not be easy to improve on this to-day as the transcription of a first impression. "Nondescript" and a "monster" Leaves of Grass unque.-^tion-ably was hy all literary canons with which either Carlyle or Emerson were familiar; but the keen critical spirit of the Concord philosojiher felt, rather than saw, the coming power looming great through the mist of forms strange and new in literature. I'"or the rest, the neat suggestion that Carlyle would be opaque to the new light is admirable.

/•'roni the Sydney, Aitstralia, '■'■ Evening Ncws^'' March 21st, f88j.

Amkkican I''REi;Tiiouf;HT AND Frkktiiinkkrs. —On Monday evening a crowfled audience assembled in the Masonic Hall to hear a lecture by Mr. Charles Brighton "American Frcethought and I'Veethinkers," Some fifteen months ago he took a trip to America for the benefit of his health, and he has

rolurned to Sydney with a coiisiilorably auRmontccl knowloiljjo of tbo pvoj^rcss ot tliv>ui;lit in tin- ("iio.it l\opiil>lii-. Ho spoke foriu-arly two luuiis, iviui j^ave a iloal ol iutcicslini; inloiniatioii conccruiii};; the advauccil (hinkcis of (lie country, and the inlliionco thoy cxtMciso on tlio pro^jicss of ti>oii_i;hl in tlic direction of mental libcity. Of the many iVeethinkevs lie had met he ranked Walt Whitiniin, the poet, highest. Whitman was the j^randest and hest man in every sense, morally, intellectually, and i>hysically, he had ever met in his lile—a prophet imet. who was as far in atlvance of other writers and thinkers in the prcbcnt day as Isaiah ami Jeremiah were in advance of their contcm-IHJiarics.

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