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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cc73a18 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #51043 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51043) diff --git a/old/51043-0.txt b/old/51043-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 5a2733d..0000000 --- a/old/51043-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1997 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Good Gray Poet, A Vindication, by -William Douglas O'Connor - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Good Gray Poet, A Vindication - -Author: William Douglas O'Connor - -Release Date: January 26, 2016 [EBook #51043] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOOD GRAY POET, A VINDICATION *** - - - - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed -Proofreaders Canada team (http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from -page images generously made available by the Internet -Archive American Libraries -(https://archive.org/details/goodgraypoetvind00ocon) - - - - - - THE - - GOOD GRAY POET. - - A VINDICATION. - - * * * * * - - NEW YORK: - BUNCE & HUNTINGTON, 459, BROOME STREET. - 1866. - - - - - THE GOOD GRAY POET. - - A VINDICATION. - - * * * * * - - WASHINGTON, D. C., _September 2, 1865_. - -Nine weeks have elapsed since the commission of an outrage, to which I -have not till now been able to give my attention, but which, in the -interest of the sacred cause of free letters, and in that alone, I never -meant should pass without its proper and enduring brand. - -For years past, thousands of people in New York, in Brooklyn, in Boston, -in New Orleans, and latterly in Washington, have seen, even as I saw two -hours ago, tallying, one might say, the streets of our American cities, -and fit to have for his background and accessories, their streaming -populations and ample and rich façades, a man of striking masculine -beauty—a poet—powerful and venerable in appearance; large, calm, -superbly formed; oftenest clad in the careless, rough, and always -picturesque costume of the common people; resembling, and generally -taken by strangers for, some great mechanic, or stevedore, or seaman, or -grand laborer of one kind or another; and passing slowly in this guise, -with nonchalant and haughty step along the pavement, with the sunlight -and shadows falling around him. The dark sombrero he usually wears was, -when I saw him just now, the day being warm, held for the moment in his -hand; rich light an artist would have chosen, lay upon his uncovered -head, majestic, large, Homeric, and set upon his strong shoulders with -the grandeur of ancient sculpture; I marked the countenance, serene, -proud, cheerful, florid, grave; the brow seamed with noble wrinkles; the -features, massive and handsome, with firm blue eyes; the eyebrows and -eyelids especially showing that fullness of arch seldom seen save in the -antique busts; the flowing hair and fleecy beard, both very gray, and -tempering with a look of age the youthful aspect of one who is but -forty-five; the simplicity and purity of his dress, cheap and plain, but -spotless, from snowy falling collar to burnished boot, and exhaling -faint fragrance; the whole form surrounded with manliness, as with a -nimbus, and breathing, in its perfect health and vigor, the august charm -of the strong. We who have looked upon this figure, or listened to that -clear, cheerful, vibrating voice, might thrill to think, could we but -transcend our age, that we had been thus near to one of the greatest of -the sons of men. But Dante stirs no deep pulse, unless it be of hate, as -he walks the streets of Florence; that shabby, one-armed soldier, just -out of jail and hardly noticed, though he has amused Europe, is Michael -Cervantes; that son of a vine-dresser, whom Athens laughs at as an -eccentric genius, before it is thought worth while to roar him into -exile, is the century-shaking Æschylus; that phantom whom the wits of -the seventeenth century think not worth extraordinary notice, and the -wits of the eighteenth century, spluttering with laughter, call a -barbarian, is Shakespeare; that earth-soiled, vice-stained ploughman, -with the noble heart and sweet, bright eyes, whom the good abominate and -the gentry patronize—subject now of anniversary banquets by gentlemen -who, could they wander backward from those annual hiccups into Time, -would never help his life or keep his company—is Robert Burns; and this -man, whose grave, perhaps, the next century will cover with passionate -and splendid honors, goes regarded with careless curiosity or phlegmatic -composure by his own age. Yet, perhaps, in a few hearts he has waked -that deep thrill due to the passage of the sublime. I heard lately, with -sad pleasure, of the letter introducing a friend, filled with noble -courtesy, and dictated by the reverence for genius, which a -distinguished English nobleman, a stranger, sent to this American bard. -Nothing deepens my respect for the beautiful intellect of the scholar -Alcott, like the bold sentence, “Greater than Plato,” which he once -uttered upon him. I hold it the surest proof of Thoreau’s insight, that -after a conversation, seeing how he incarnated the immense and new -spirit of the age, and was the compend of America, he came away to speak -the electric sentence, “He is Democracy!” I treasure to my latest hour, -with swelling heart and springing tears, the remembrance that Abraham -Lincoln, seeing him for the first time from the window of the East Room -of the White House as he passed slowly by, and gazing at him long with -that deep eye which read men, said, in the quaint, sweet tone which -those who have spoken with him will remember, and with a significant -emphasis which the type can hardly convey—“Well, _he_ looks like A -MAN!” Sublime tributes, great words; but none too high for their object, -the author of _Leaves of Grass_, Walt Whitman, of Brooklyn. - -On the 30th of June last, this true American man and author was -dismissed, under circumstances of peculiar wrong, from a clerkship he -had held for six months in the Department of the Interior. His dismissal -was the act of the Hon. James Harlan, the Secretary of the Department, -formerly a Methodist clergyman, and President of a Western college. - -Upon the interrogation of an eminent officer of the Government, at whose -instance the appointment had, under a former Secretary, been made, Mr. -Harlan averred that Walt Whitman had been in no way remiss in the -discharge of his duties, but that, on the contrary, so far as he could -learn, his conduct had been most exemplary. Indeed, during the few -months of his tenure of office, he had been promoted. The sole and only -cause of his dismissal, Mr. Harlan said, was that he had written the -book of poetry entitled _Leaves of Grass_. This book Mr. Harlan -characterized as “full of indecent passages.” The author, he said, was -“a very bad man,” a “Free-Lover.” Argument being had upon these -propositions, Mr. Harlan was, as regards the book, utterly unable to -maintain his assertions; and, as regards the author, was forced to own -that his opinion of him had been changed. Nevertheless, after this -substantial admission of his injustice, he absolutely refused to revoke -his action. Of course, under no circumstances would Walt Whitman, the -proudest man that lives, have consented to again enter into office under -Mr. Harlan: but the demand for his reinstatement was as honorable to the -gentleman who made it, as the refusal to accede to it was discreditable -to the Secretary. - -The closing feature of this transaction, and one which was a direct -consequence of Mr. Harlan’s course, was its remission to the scurrilous, -and in some instances libellous, comment of a portion of the press. To -sum up, an author, solely and only for the publication, ten years ago, -of an honest book, which no intelligent and candid person can regard as -hurtful to morality, was expelled from office by the Secretary, and held -up to public contumely by the newspapers. It remains only to be added -here, that the Hon. James Harlan is the gentleman who, upon assuming the -control of the Department, published a manifesto, announcing that it was -thenceforth to be governed upon the principles of Christian -civilization. - -This act of expulsion, and all that it encloses, is the outrage to which -I referred in the opening sentence of this letter. - -I have had the honor, which I esteem a very high one, to know Walt -Whitman intimately for several years, and am perfectly conversant with -the details of his life and history. Scores and scores of persons, who -know him well, can confirm my own report of him, and I have therefore no -hesitation in saying that the scandalous assertions of Mr. Harlan, -derived from whom I know not, as to his being a bad man, a Free-Lover, -&c., belong to the category of those calumnies at which, as Napoleon -said, innocence itself is confounded. A better man in all respects, or -one more irreproachable in his relations to the other sex, lives not -upon this earth. His is the great goodness, the great chastity of -spiritual strength and sanity. I do not believe that from the hour of -his infancy, when Lafayette held him in his arms, to the present hour, -in which he bends over the last wounded and dying of the war, that any -one can say aught of him that does not consort with the largest and -truest manliness. I am perfectly aware of the miserable lies which have -been put into circulation respecting him, of which the story of his -dishonoring an invitation to dine with Emerson, by appearing at the -table of the Astor House in a red shirt, and with the manners of a -rowdy, is a mild specimen. I know, too, the inferences drawn by wretched -fools, who, because they have seen him riding upon the top of an -omnibus; or at Pfaff’s restaurant; or dressed in rough clothes suitable -for his purposes, and only remarkable because the wearer was a man of -genius; or mixing freely and lovingly, like Lucretius, like Rabelais, -like Francis Bacon, like Rembrandt, like all great students of the -world, with low and equivocal and dissolute persons, as well as with -those of a different character, must needs set him down as a brute, a -scallawag, and a criminal. Mr. Harlan’s allegations are of a piece with -these. If I could associate the title with a really great person, or if -the name of man were not radically superior, I should say that for solid -nobleness of character, for native elegance and delicacy of soul, for a -courtesy which is the very passion of thoughtful kindness and -forbearance, for his tender and paternal respect and manly honor for -woman, for love and heroism carried into the pettiest details of life, -and for a large and homely beauty of manners, which makes the civilities -of parlors fantastic and puerile in comparison, Walt Whitman deserves to -be considered the grandest gentleman that treads this continent. I know -well the habits and tendencies of his life. They are all simple, sane, -domestic; worthy of him as one of an estimable family and a member of -society. He is a tender and faithful son, a good brother, a loyal -friend, an ardent and devoted citizen. He has been a laborer, working -successively as a farmer, a carpenter, a printer. He has been a stalwart -editor of the Republican party, and often, in that powerful and nervous -prose of which he is master, done yeoman’s service for the great cause -of human liberty and the imperial conception of the indivisible Union. -He has been a visitor of prisons; a protector of fugitive slaves; a -constant voluntary nurse, night and day, at the hospitals, from the -beginning of the war to the present time; a brother and friend through -life to the neglected and the forgotten, the poor, the degraded, the -criminal, the outcast; turning away from no man for his guilt, nor woman -for her vileness. His is the strongest and truest compassion I have ever -known. I remember here the anecdote told me by a witness, of his meeting -in a by-street in Boston a poor ruffian, one whom he had known well as -an innocent child, now a full-grown youth, vicious far beyond his years, -flying to Canada from the pursuit of the police, his sin-trampled -features bearing marks of the recent bloody brawl in New York in which, -as he supposed, he had killed some one; and having heard his hurried -story, freely confided to him, Walt Whitman, separated not from the bad -even by his own goodness, with well I know what tender and tranquil -feeling for this ruined being, and with a love which makes me think of -that love of God which deserts not any creature, quietly at parting, -after assisting him from his means, held him for a moment, with his arm -around his neck, and, bending to the face, horrible and battered and -prematurely old, kissed him on the cheek; and the poor hunted wretch, -perhaps for the first time in his low life, receiving a token of love -and compassion like a touch from beyond the sun, hastened away in deep -dejection, sobbing and in tears. It reminds me of the anecdotes Victor -Hugo, in his portraiture of Bishop Myriel, tells, under a thin veil of -fiction, of Charles Miolles, the good Bishop of Rennes.—I know not what -talisman Walt Whitman carries, unless it be an unexcluding friendliness -and goodness which is felt upon his approach like magnetism; but I know -that in the subterranean life of cities, among the worst roughs, he goes -safely; and I could recite instances where hands that, in mere -wantonness of ferocity, assault anybody, raised against him, have of -their own accord been lowered almost as quickly, or, in some cases, been -dragged promptly down by others; this, too, I mean, when he and the -assaulting gang were mutual strangers. I have seen singular evidence of -the mysterious quality which not only guards him, but draws to him with -intuition, rapid as light, simple and rude people, as to their natural -mate and friend. I remember, as I passed the White House with him one -evening, the startled feeling with which I saw the soldier on guard -there—a stranger to us both, and with something in his action that -curiously proved that he was a stranger—suddenly bring his musket to -the “present,” in military salute to him, quickly mingling with this -respect due to his colonel, a gesture of greeting with the right hand as -to a comrade; grinning, meanwhile, good fellow, with shy, spontaneous -affection and deference; his ruddy, broad face glowing in the flare of -the lampions. I remember, on another occasion, as I crossed the street -with him, the driver of a street car, a stranger, stopping the -conveyance, and inviting him to get on and ride with him. Adventures of -this kind are frequent, and, “I took a fancy to you,” or, “You look like -one of my style,” is the common explanation he gets upon their -occurrence. It would be impossible to exaggerate the personal adhesion -and strong, simple affection given him, in numerous instances on sight, -by multitudes of plain persons—sailors, mechanics, drivers, soldiers, -farmers, sempstresses, old people of the past generation, mothers of -families—those powerful, unlettered persons, among whom, as he says in -his book, he has gone freely, and who never in most cases even suspect -as an author him whom they love as a man, and who loves them in -return.—His intellectual influence upon many young men and -women—spirits of the morning sort, not willing to belong to that -intellectual colony of Great Britain which our literary classes compose, -nor helplessly tied like them to the old forms—I note as kindred to -that of Socrates upon the youth of ancient Attica, or Raleigh upon the -gallant young England of his day. It is a power at once liberating, -instructing, and inspiring.—His conversation is a university. Those who -have heard him in some roused hour, when the full afflatus of his spirit -moved him, will agree with me that the grandeur of talk was -accomplished. He is known as a passionate lover and powerful critic of -the great music and of art. He is deeply cultured by some of the best -books, especially the Bible, which he prefers above all other great -literature; but principally by contact and communion with things -themselves, which literature can only mirror and celebrate. He has -travelled through most of the United States, intent on comprehending and -absorbing the genius and meaning of his country, that he might do his -best to start a literature worthy of her, sprung from her own polity, -and tallying her own unexampled magnificence among the nations. To the -same end, he has been a long, patient, and laborious student of life, -mixing intimately with all varieties of experience and men, with -curiosity and with love. He has given his thought, his life, to this -beautiful ambition, and, still young, he has grown gray in its service. -He has never married; like Giordano Bruno, he has made Thought in the -service of his fellow-creatures his _bella donna_, his best beloved, his -bride. His patriotism is boundless. It is no intellectual sentiment; it -is a personal passion. He performs with scrupulous fidelity and zeal, -the duties of a citizen. For eighteen years, not missing once, his -ballot has dropped on every national and local election day, and his -influence has been ardently given, for the good cause. Of all men I -know, his life is most in the life of the nation. I remember, when the -first draft was ordered, at a time when he was already performing an -arduous and perilous duty as a volunteer attendant upon the wounded in -the field—a duty which cost him the only illness he ever had in his -life, and a very severe and dangerous illness it was, the result of -poison absorbed in his devotion to the worst cases of the hospital -gangrene; and when it would have been the easiest thing in the world to -evade duty, for though then only forty-two or three years old, and -subject to the draft, he looked a hale sixty, and no enrolling officer -would have paused for an instant before his gray hair—I remember, I -say, how anxious and careful he was to get his name put on the -enrollment lists, that he might stand his chance for martial service. -This, too, at a time when so many gentlemen were skulking, dodging, -agonizing for substitutes, and practising every conceivable device to -escape military duty. What music of speech, though Cicero’s own—what -scarlet and gold superlatives could adorn or dignify this simple antique -trait of private heroism?—I recall his love for little children, for -the young, and for very old persons, as if the dawn and the evening -twilight of life awakened his deepest tenderness. I recall the affection -for him of numbers of young men, and invariably of all good women. Who, -knowing him, does not regard him as a man of the highest spiritual -culture? I have never known one of greater and deeper religious feeling. -To call one like him good, seems an impertinence. In our sweet country -phrase, he is one of God’s men. And as I write these hurried and broken -memoranda—as his strength and sweetness of nature, his moral health, -his rich humor, his gentleness, his serenity, his charity, his -simple-heartedness, his courage, his deep and varied knowledge of life -and men, his calm wisdom, his singular and beautiful boy-innocence, his -personal majesty, his rough scorn of mean actions, his magnetic and -exterminating anger on due occasions—all that I have seen and heard of -him, the testimony of associates, the anecdotes of friends, the -remembrance of hours with him that should be immortal, the traits, -lineaments, incidents of his life and being—as they come crowding into -memory—his seems to me a character which only the heroic pen of -Plutarch could record, and which Socrates himself might emulate or envy. - -This is the man whom Mr. Harlan charges with having written a bad book. -I might ask, How long is it since bad books have been the flower of good -lives? How long is it since grape-vines produced thorns or fig-trees -thistles? But Mr. Harlan says the book is bad because it is “full of -indecent passages.” This allegation has been brought against _Leaves of -Grass_ before. It has been sounded loud and strong by many of the -literary journals of both continents. As criticism it is legitimate. I -may contemn the mind or deplore the moral life in which such a criticism -has its source; still, as criticism it has a right to existence. But Mr. -Harlan, passing the limits of opinion, inaugurates punishment. He joins -the band of the hostile verdict; he incarnates their judgment; then, -detaching himself, he proceeds to a solitary and signal vengeance. As -far as he can have it so, this author, for having written his book shall -starve. He shall starve, and his name shall receive a brand. This is the -essence of Mr. Harlan’s action. It is a dark and serious step to take. -Upon what grounds is it taken? - -I have carefully counted out from Walt Whitman’s poetry the lines, -perfectly moral to me, whether viewed in themselves or in the light of -their sublime intentions and purport, but upon which ignorant and -indecent persons of respectability base their sweeping condemnation of -the whole work. Taking _Leaves of Grass_, and the recent small volume, -_Drum-Taps_ (which was in Mr. Harlan’s possession), there are in the -whole about nine thousand lines or verses. From these, including matter -which I can hardly imagine objectionable to any one, but counting every -thing which the most malignant virtue could shrink from, I have culled -eighty lines. Eighty lines out of nine thousand! It is a less proportion -than one finds in Shakespeare. Upon this so slender basis, rests the -whole crazy fabric of American and European slander, and the brutal -lever of the Secretary. - -Now, what by competent authority is the admitted character of the book -in which these lines occur? For, though it is more than probable that -Mr. Harlan never heard of the work till the hour of his explorations in -the Department, the intellectual hemispheres of Great Britain and -America have rung with it from side to side. It has received as -extensive a critical notice, I suppose, as has ever been given to a -volume. Had it been received only with indifference or derision, I -should not have been surprised. In an age in which few breathe the -atmosphere of the grand literature—which forgets the superb books and -thinks Bulwer moral, and Dickens great, and Thackeray a real -satirist—which gives to Macaulay the laurel due to Herodotus, and to -Tennyson the crown reserved for Homer, and in which the chairs of -criticism seem abandoned to squirts and pedagogues and monks—a mighty -poet has little to expect from the literary press save unconcern and -mockery. But even under these hard conditions, the tremendous force of -this poet has achieved a relative conquest, and the tone of the press -denotes his book as not merely great, but illustrious. Even the copious -torrents of abuse which have been lavished upon it, have in numerous -instances taken the form of tribute to its august and mysterious power, -being in fact identical with that still vomited upon Montaigne and -Juvenal. On the other hand, eulogy, very lofty and from the highest -sources, has spanned it with sunbows. Emerson, our noblest scholar, a -name to which Christendom does reverence, a critic of piercing insight -and full comprehension, has pronounced it “the most extraordinary piece -of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” How that austere -and rare spirit, Thoreau, regarded it, may be partly seen by his last -posthumous volume. He thought of it, I have heard, with measureless -esteem, ranking it with the vast and gorgeous conceptions of the -Oriental bards. It has been reported to me, that unpublished letters, -received in this country from some of Europe’s greatest, announce a -similar verdict. The _North American Quarterly Review_, unquestionably -the highest organ of American letters, in the course of a eulogistic -notice of the work, remarking upon the passages which Mr. Harlan has -treated as if they were novel in literature, observes: “There is not -anything, perhaps (in the book), which modern usage would stamp as more -indelicate than are some passages in Homer. There is not a word in it -meant to attract readers by its grossness, as there is in half the -literature of the last century, which holds its place unchallenged on -the tables of our drawing-rooms.” The London _Dispatch_, in a review -written by the Rev. W. J. Fox, one of the most distinguished clergymen -in England, after commending the poems for “their strength of -expression, their fervor, their hearty wholesomeness, their originality -and freshness, their singular harmony,” &c., says that, “in the -unhesitating frankness of a man who dares to call simplest things by -their plain names, conveying also a large sense of the beautiful,” there -is involved “a clearer conception of what manly modesty really is, than -in any thing we have in all conventional forms of word, deed, or act, so -far known of;” and concludes by declaring that “the author will soon -make his way into the confidence of his readers, and his poems in time -will become a pregnant text-book, from which quotations as sterling as -the minted gold will be taken and applied to every form of the inner and -the outer life.” The London _Leader_, one of the foremost of the British -literary journals, in a review which more nearly approaches perception -of the true character and purport of the book, than any I have seen, has -the following sentences: “Mr. Emerson recognized the first issue of the -_Leaves_, and hastened to welcome the author, then totally unknown. -Among other things, said Emerson to the new avatar, ‘I greet you at the -beginning of a great career, which yet _must have had a long foreground -somewhere for such a start_.’ The last clause was, however, overlooked -entirely by the critics, who treated the new author as one -self-educated, yet in the rough, unpolished, and owing nothing to -instruction. The authority for so treating the author was derived from -himself, who thus described, in one of his poems, his person, character, -and name, having omitted the last from the title-page:— - - ‘Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, - Disorderly, fleshly, and sensual,’— - -and in various other passages, confessed to all the vices, as well as -the virtues of man. All this, with intentional wrong-headedness, was -attributed by the sapient reviewers to the individual writer, and not to -the subjective-hero supposed to be writing. Notwithstanding the word -‘kosmos,’ the writer was taken to be an ignorant man. Emerson perceived -at once that there had been a long foreground somewhere or somehow;—not -so they. Every page teems with knowledge, with information; but they saw -it not, because it did not answer their purpose to see it. . . . . . The -poem in which the word ‘kosmos’ appears explains in fact the whole -mystery—nay, the word itself explains it. The poem is nominally upon -himself, but really includes everybody. It begins:— - - ‘I celebrate myself; - And what I assume, you shall assume; - For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.’ - -In a word, WALT WHITMAN _represents the Kosmical man—he is the_ ADAMUS -_of the nineteenth century—not an individual, but_ MANKIND. As such, in -celebrating himself, he proceeds to celebrate universal humanity in its -attributes, and accordingly commences his dithyramb with the five -senses, beginning with that of smell. Afterwards, he deals with the -intellectual, rational, and moral powers, showing throughout his -treatment an intimate acquaintance with Kant’s transcendental method, -and perhaps including in his development the whole of the German school, -down to Hegel—at any rate, as interpreted by Cousin and others in -France, and Emerson in the United States. He certainly includes Fichte, -for he mentions the Egotist as the only true philosopher, and -consistently identifies himself not only with every man, but with the -universe and its Maker; and it is in doing so that the strength of his -description consists. It is from such an ideal elevation that he looks -down on Good and Evil, regards them as equal, and extends to them the -like measure of equity. . . . . Instead, therefore, of regarding these -_Leaves of Grass_ as a marvel, they seem to us as the most natural -product of the American soil. They are certainly filled with an American -spirit, breathe the American air, and assert the fullest American -freedom.” The passages characterized by the Secretary as “indecent” are, -adds the _Leader_, “only so many instances adduced in support of a -philosophical principle; not meant for obscenity, but for scientific -examples, introduced as they might be in any legal, medical, or -philosophical book, for the purpose of instruction.” - -I could multiply these excerpts; but here are sufficient specimens of -the competent judgments of eminent scholars and divines, testifying to -the intellectual and moral grandeur of this work. Let it be remembered -that there is nothing in the book that in one form or another is not -contained in all great poetic or universal literature. It has nothing -either in quantity or quality so offensive as everybody knows is in -Shakespeare. All that this poet has done is to mention, without levity, -without low language, very seriously, often devoutly, always simply, -certain facts in the natural history of man and of life; and sometimes, -assuming their sanctity, to use them in illustration or imagery. Far -more questionable mention and use of these facts are common to the -greatest literature. Shall the presence in a book of eighty lines, -similar in character to what every great and noble poetic book contains, -be sufficient to shove it below even the lewd writings of Petronius -Arbiter, the dirty dramas of Shirley, or the scrofulous fiction of -Louvet de Couvray—to lump it in with the anonymous lascivious trash -spawned in holes and sold in corners, too witless and disgusting for any -notice but that of the police—and to entitle its author to treatment -such as only the nameless wretches of the very sewers of authorship -ought to receive? - -If, rising to the utmost cruelty of conception, I can dare add to the -calamities of genius a misery so degrading and extreme as to imagine the -great authors of the world condemned to clerkships under Mr. Harlan, I -can at least mitigate that dream of wretchedness and insult by adding -the fancy of their fate under the action of his principles. Let me -suppose them there, and he still magnifying the calling of the Secretary -into that of the literary headsman. He opens the great book of -_Genesis_. Everywhere “indecent passages.” The mother hushes the child, -and bids him skip as he reads aloud that first great history. It cannot -be read aloud in “drawing-rooms” by “gentlemen” and “ladies.” The freest -use of language, the plainest terms, frank mention of forbidden -subjects; the story of Onan; of Hagar and Sarai; of Lot and his -daughters; of Isaac, Rebekah, and Abimelech; of Jacob and Leah; of -Reuben and Bilhah; of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph; tabooed allusion and -statement everywhere; no veils, no euphemism, no delicacy, no meal in -the mouth anywhere. Out with Moses! The cloven splendor on that awful -brow shall not save him.—Mr. Harlan takes up the _Iliad_ and the -_Odyssey_. The loves of Jupiter and Juno; the dalliance of Achilles and -Patroclus with their women; the perfectly frank, undraped reality of -Greek life and manners naïvely shown without regard to the feelings of -Christian civilizees—horrible! Out with Homer!—Here is Lucretius: Mr. -Harlan opens the _De Rerum Natura_, and reads the vast, benign, majestic -lines, sad with the shadow of the unintelligible universe upon them; -sublime with the tragic problems of the Infinite; august with their -noble love and compassion for mankind. But what is this? “_Ut quasi -transactis sœpe omnibus rebus_,” &c. And this: “_Morè ferarum, -quadrupedumque magis ritu_,” &c. And this: “_Nam mulier prohibet se -concipere atque repugnat_,” &c. And this: “_Quod petiere, premunt arcte, -faciuntque dolorem_,” &c. Enough. Fine language, fine illustrations, -fine precepts, pretty decency! Out with Lucretius! Out with the chief -poet of the Tiber side!—Here is Æschylus: a dark magnificence of cloud, -all rough with burning gold, which thunders and drips blood! The Greek -Shakespeare. The gorgeous and terrible Æschylus! What is this in the -_Prometheus_ about Jove and Iö? What sort of detail is that which, at -the distance of ten years, I remember amazed Mr. Buckley as he -translated the _Agamemnon_? What kind of talk is this in the _Chœphori_, -in _The Suppliants_, and in the fragments of the comic drama of _The -Argians_? Out with Æschylus!—Here is the sublime book of Ezekiel. All -the Hebrew grandeur at its fullest is there. But look at this blurt of -coarse words, hurled direct as the prophet-mouth can hurl them—this -familiar reference to functions and organs voted out of language—this -bread for human lips baked with ordure—these details of the scortatory -loves of Aholah and Aholibamah. Enough. Dismiss this dreadful majesty of -Hebrew poetry. He has no “taste.” He is “indecent.” Out with -Ezekiel!—Here is Dante. Open the tremendous pages of the _Inferno_. -What is this about the she-wolf Can Grande will kill? What picture is -this of strumpet Thais?—ending with the lines— - - “Taida è, la puttana che rispose - Al drudo suo, quando disse: Ho io grazie - Grandi appo te? Anzi meravigliose.” - -What is this, also, in the eighteenth canto?— - - “Quivi venimmo, e quindi giù nel fosso - Vidi gente attuffata in uno sterco, - Che dagli uman privati parea mosso: - E mentre ch’ ìo là giù con l’occhio cerco, - Vìdi un col capo sì di merda lordo, - Che non parea s’era laico o cherco.” - -What is this line at the end of the twenty-first canto, which even John -Carlyle flinches from translating, but which Dante did not flinch from -writing?— - - “Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.” - -And look at these lines in the twenty-eighth canto:— - - “Già reggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla - Com’ io vidi un, cosi non si pertugia, - Rotto dal mento insin dove si trulla.” - -That will do. Dante, too, has “indecent passages.” Out with Dante!—Here -is the book of Job: the vast Arabian landscape, the picturesque pastoral -details of Arabian life, the last tragic immensity of Oriental sorrow, -the whole overarching sky of Oriental piety, are here. But here also the -inevitable “indecency.” Instead of the virtuous fiction of the -tansy-bed, Job actually has the indelicacy to state how man is -born—even mentions the belly; talks about the gendering of bulls and -the miscarriage of cows; uses rank idioms; and in the thirty-first -chapter especially, indulges in a strain of thought and expression which -it is amazing does not bring down upon him, even at this late date, the -avalanches of our lofty and pure Reviews. Here is certainly “an immoral -poet.” Out with Job!—Here is Plutarch, prince of biographers, and -Herodotus, flower of historians. What have we now? Traits of character -not to be mentioned, incidents of conduct, accounts of manners, minute -details of customs, which our modern historical dandies would never -venture upon recording. Out with Plutarch and Herodotus!—Here is -Tacitus. What statement of crimes that ought not to be hinted! Does the -man gloat over such things? What dreadful kisses are these of Agrippina -to Nero—the mother to the son! Out with Tacitus!—and since there are -books that ought to be publicly burned, by all means let the stern -grandeur of that rhetoric be lost in flame.—Here is Shakespeare: -“indecent passages” everywhere—every drama, every poem thickly inlaid -with them; all that men do displayed; sexual acts treated lightly, -jested about, mentioned obscenely; the language never bolted; slang, -gross puns, lewd words, in profusion. Out with Shakespeare!—Here is the -_Canticle of Canticles_: beautiful, voluptuous poem of love literally, -whatever be its mystic significance; glowing with the color, odorous -with the spices, melodious with the voices of the East; sacred and -exquisite and pure with the burning chastity of passion which completes -and exceeds the snowy chastity of virgins. This to me, but what to the -Secretary? Can he endure that the female form should stand thus in a -poem, disrobed, unveiled, bathed in erotic splendor? Look at these -voluptuous details, this expression of desire, this amorous tone and -glow, this consecration and perfume lavished upon the sensual. No! Out -with Solomon!—Here is Isaiah. The grand thunder-roll of that -righteousness, like the eternal roar of God above the guilty world, -utters coarse words. Amidst the bolted lightnings of that sublime -denunciation, coarse thoughts, indelicate figures, indecent allusion, -flash upon the sight, like gross imagery in a midnight landscape. Out -with Isaiah!—Here is Montaigne. Open those great, those virtuous pages -of the unflinching reporter of Man; the soul all truth and daylight, all -candor, probity, sincerity, reality, eyesight. A few glances will -suffice. Cant and vice and sniffle have groaned over these pages before. -Out with Montaigne!—Here is Hafiz, the Anacreon of Persia, but more: a -banquet of wine in a garden of roses, the nightingales singing, the -laughing revellers high with festal joy; but a heavenly flame burns on -every brow; a tone not of this sphere is in all the music, all the -laughter, all the songs; a light of the Infinite trembles over every -chalice and rests on every flower; and all the garden is divine. Still, -when Hafiz cries out, “Bring me wine, and bring the famed veiled beauty, -the Princess of the brothel,” &c., or issues similar orders, Mr. Harlan, -whose virtue does not understand or endure such metaphors, must deal -sternly with this kosmic man of Persia. Out with Hafiz!—Here is Virgil, -ornate and splendid poet of old Rome; a master with a greater pupil, -Alighieri! a bard above whose ashes Boccaccio kneels a trader, and -arises a soldier of mankind; but he must lose those fadeless chaplets, -the undying green of a noble fame; for here in the _Æneid_ is “_Dixerat; -et niveis hinc atque hinc Diva lacertis_,” &c., and here in the -_Georgics_ is “_Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat_,” &c., -and there are other verses like these. Out with Virgil!—Here is -Swedenborg. Open this poem in prose, the _Conjugial Love_—to me, a -temple, though in ruins; the sacred fane, clothed in mist, filled with -moonlight, of a great though broken mind. What spittle of critic -epithets stains all here? “Lewd,” “sensual,” “lecherous,” “coarse,” -“licentious,” &c. Of course these judgments are final. There is no -appeal from the tobacco-juice of an expectorating and disdainful virtue. -Out with Swedenborg!—Here is Goethe: the horrified squealing of prudes -is not yet silent over pages of _Wilhelm Meister_; that high and chaste -hook, the _Elective Affinities_, still pumps up oaths from clergymen; -Walpurgis has hardly ceased its uproar over _Faust_. Out with -Goethe!—Here is Byron: grand, dark poet; a great spirit—a soul like -the ocean; generous lover of America; fiery trumpet of liberty; a sword -for the human cause in Greece; a torch for the human mind in _Cain_; a -life that redeemed its every fault by taking a side, which was the human -side; tempest of scorn in his first poem, tempest of scorn and laughter -in his last poem, only against the things that wrong man; vast bud of -the Infinite that Death alone prevented from its vaster flower; immense, -seminal, electrical, dazzling Byron.—But _Beppo_—O! But _Don Juan_—O -fie! Not to mention the Countess Guiccioli—ah, me! Prepare quickly the -yellow envelope, and out with Byron!—Here is Cervantes: open _Don -Quixote_, paragon of romances, highest result of Spain, best and -sufficient reason for her life among the nations, a laughing novel which -is a weeping poem. But talk such as this of Sancho Panza and Tummas -Cecial under the cork-trees, and these coarse stories and bawdy words -and this free and gross comedy—is it to be endured? Out with -Cervantes!—Here is another, a sun of literature, moving in a vast orbit -with dazzling plenitudes of power and beauty; the one only modern -European poet and novelist worthy to rank with the first; permanent -among the fleeting; a demigod of letters among the pigmies; a soul of -the antique strength and sadness, worthy to stand as the representative -of the high thought and hopes of the nineteenth century—Victor Hugo! -Now open _Les Misérables_. See the great passages which the American -translator softens and the English translator tears away. Open this -other book of his, _William Shakespeare_, a book with only one grave -fault, the omission of the words “A Poem” from the title-page; a book -which is the courageous arch, the comprehending sky of criticism, but -which no American publisher will dare to issue, or, if he does, will -expurgate. Out with Hugo, of course!—Here is Juvenal, terrible and -splendid fountain of all satire; inspiration of all just censure; -exemplar of all noble rage at baseness; satirist and moralist sublimed -into the poet; the scowl of the unclouded noon above the low streets of -folly and of sin. But what he withers, he also shows. The sun-stroke of -his poetry reveals what it kills. Juvenal tells all. His fidelity of -exposure is frightful. Mr. Harlan would make short work of him. Out with -Juvenal!—Open the divine _Apocalypse_. What words are these among the -thunderings and lightnings and voices? Is this a poem to be read aloud -in parlors (for such appears to be the test of propriety and purity)? At -least, John might have been a little more choice in language. Some of -these texts are “indecent.” Yes, indeed! John must go.—Here is Spenser. -Encyclopædic poet of the visioned chivalry. It is all there. Amadis, -Esplandian, Tirante the White, Palmerin of England, all those Paladin -romances were but the leaves: this is the flower. A lost dream of valor, -chastity, courtesy, glory—a dream that marks an age of human -history—glimmers here, far in these depths, and makes this unexplored -obscurity divine. “But is the _Faëry Queen_ such a book as you would -wish to put into the hands of a lady?” What a question! Has it not been -expurgated? Out with Spenser!—Here is another, a true soldier of the -human emancipation; one who smites amidst uproars of laughter; the -master of Titanic farce; a whirlwind and earthquake of -derision—Rabelais. A nice one for Mr. Harlan! One glimpse at the -chapter which explains why the miles lengthen as you leave Paris, or at -the details of the birth and nurture of Gargantua, will suffice. Out -with Rabelais—out with the great jester of France, as Lord Bacon calls -him!—And here is Lord Bacon himself, in one of whose pages you may -read, done from the Latin by Spedding into a magnificent golden thunder -of English, the absolute defence of the free spirit of the great -authors, coupled with stern rebuke to the spirit that would pick and -choose, as dastard and effeminate. Out with Lord Bacon! Not him only, -not these only, not only the writers are under the ban. Here is Phidias, -gorgeous sculptor in gold and ivory, giant dreamer of the Infinite in -marble; but he will not use the fig-leaf. Here is Rembrandt, who paints -the Holland landscape, the Jew, the beggar, the burgher, in lights and -glooms of Eternity; and his pictures have been called “indecent.” Here -is Mozart, his music rich with the sumptuous color of all sunsets; and -it has been called “sensual.” Here is Michael Angelo, who makes art -tremble with a new and strange afflatus, and gives Europe novel and -sublime forms that tower above the centuries, and accost the Greek; and -his works have been called “bestial.” Out with them all!—Now, except -Virgil for vassalage to literary models, and for grave and sad falsehood -to liberty; except Goethe for his lack of the final ecstasy of -self-surrender which completes a poet, and for coldness to the great -mother—one’s country; except Spenser for his remoteness, and Byron for -his immaturity, and there is not one of those I have named that does not -belong to the first order of human intellect. But no need to make -discriminations here; they are all great; they have all striven; they -have all served. Moses, Homer, Lucretius, Æschylus, Ezekiel, Dante, Job, -Plutarch, Herodotus, Tacitus, Shakespeare, Solomon, Isaiah, Montaigne, -Hafiz, Virgil, Swedenborg, Goethe, Byron, Cervantes, Hugo, Juvenal, -John, Spenser, Rabelais, Bacon, Phidias, Rembrandt, Mozart, -Angelo:—these are among the demi-gods of human thought; the souls that -have loved and suffered for the race; the light-bringers, the teachers, -the lawgivers, the consolers, the liberators, the inspired inspirers of -mankind; the noble and gracious beings who, in the service of humanity, -have borne every cross and earned every crown. There is not one of them -that is not sacred in the eyes of thoughtful men. But not one of them -does the rotten taste and morals of the nineteenth century spare! Not -one of them is qualified to render work for bread under this Secretary! -Do I err? Do I exaggerate? I write without access to the books I -mention—(it is fitting that this piece of insolent barbarism should -have been committed in almost the only important American city which is -without a public library!)—with the exception of three or four volumes -which I happen to have by me, I am obliged to rely for my statements on -the memory of youthful readings, eight or ten years ago; but name me one -book of the first order in which such passages as I refer to do not -occur! Tell me who can—what poet of the first grade escapes this brand, -“immoral,” or this spittle, “indecent”! If the great books are not, in -the point under consideration, in the same moral category as _Leaves of -Grass_, then why, either in translation or in the originals, either by a -bold softening which dissolves the author’s meaning, or by absolute -excision, are they nearly all expurgated? Answer me that. By one process -or the other, Brizeux, Cary, Wright, Cayley, Carlyle, everybody, -expurgates Dante; Langhorne and others expurgate Plutarch; Potter and -others expurgate Æschylus; Gifford, Anthon, and others expurgate -Juvenal; Creech, Watson, and others expurgate Lucretius; Bowdler and -others expurgate Shakespeare; Nott (I believe it is) expurgates Hafiz; -Wraxall and Wilbour expurgate Hugo; Kirkland, Hart, and others expurgate -Spenser; somebody expurgates Virgil; somebody expurgates Byron; the -Oxford scholars dilute Tacitus; Lord Derby expurgates Homer, besides -making him as ridiculous as the plucked cock of Diogenes in translation; -several hands expurgate Goethe; and Archbishop Tillotson in design -expurgates Moses, Ezekiel, Solomon, Isaiah, St. John, and all the -others—a job which Dr. Noah Webster executes, but, thank God, cannot -popularize. What book is spared? Nothing but a chain of circumstance, -which seems divinely ordained, saves us the unmutilated Bible. Nearly -every other great book bleeds. When one is not expurgated, the balance -is restored by its being cordially abused. Thanks to the splendid -conscience and courage of Mr. Wight, we can read Montaigne in English -without the omission of a single word! Thanks also to Motteux and -others, Cervantes has gone untouched, and we have not as yet a family -Rabelais. Neither have we as yet a family Mankind nor a family Universe; -but this is an oversight which will, doubtless, be repaired in time. God -will also, doubtless, be expurgated whenever it is possible. Why not? -One step to this end is taken in the expurgation of genius, which is His -second manifestation, as Nature is His first! Go on, gentlemen! You will -yet have things as “moral” as you desire! - -I am aware that so far as his opinion, not his act, is concerned, Mr. -Harlan, however unintelligently, represents to some extent the shallow -conclusions of his age; and I know it will be said, that if the great -books contain these passages, they ought to be expurgated. It is not my -design to endeavor to put a quart into people who only hold a gill, nor -would I waste time in endeavoring to convert a large class of persons -whom I once heard Walt Whitman describe, with his usual Titanic richness -and strength of phrase, as “the immutable granitic pudding-heads of the -world.” But there is a better class than these; and I am filled with -measureless amazement, that persons of high intelligence, living to the -age of maturity, do not perceive, at least, the immense and priceless -scientific and human _uses_ of such passages, and the consequent -necessity, transcending and quashing all minor considerations, of having -them where they are. But look at these sad sentences—a complete and -felicitous statement of the whole modern doctrine—in the pages of a man -I love and revere: “The literature of three centuries ago is not decent -to be read; we expurgate it. Within a hundred years, woman has become a -reader, and for that reason, as much or more than any thing else, -literature has sprung to a higher level. No need now to expurgate all -you read.” He goes on to argue that literature in the next century will -be richer than in the classic epochs, because woman will contribute to -it as an author—her contribution, I infer, to be of the kind that will -not need expurgating. These, I repeat, are sad sentences. If they are -true, Bowdler is right to expurgate Shakespeare, and Noah Webster the -Bible. But no, they are not true! I welcome woman into art; but when she -comes there grandly, she will not come either as expurgator or creator -of emasculate or partial forms. Woman, grand in art, is Rosa Bonheur, -painting with fearless pencil the surly, sublime Jovian bull, equipped -for masculine use; painting the powerful, ramping stallion in his -amorous pride; not weakly or meanly flinching from the full celebration -of what God has made. Woman, grand in art, will come creating in forms, -however novel, the absolute, the permanent, the real, the evil and the -good, as Æschylus, as Cervantes, as Shakespeare before her; with sex, -with truth, with universality, without omissions or concealments. And -woman, as the ideal reader of literature, is not the indelicate prude, -flushing and squealing over some frank page; it is that high and -beautiful soul, Marie de Gournay, devoutly absorbing the work of her -master, Montaigne; finding it all great; greatly comprehending, greatly -accepting it all; fronting its license and grossness without any of the -livid shuddering of Puritans; and looking on the book in the same -universal and kindly spirit as its author looked upon the world. Woman -reading otherwise than thus—shrinking from Apuleius, from Rabelais, -from Aristophanes, from Shakespeare, from even Wycherley, or Petronius, -or Aretin, or Shirley—is less than man, is not ideal, not strong, not -nobly good, but petty, and effeminate, and mean. And not for her, nor by -her, nor by man, do I assent to the expurgation of the great books. -Literature cannot spring to a higher level than theirs. Alas! it has -sprung to a lower. The level of the great books is the Infinite, the -Absolute. To contain all, by containing the premise, the truth, the idea -and feeling of all; to tally the universe by profusion, variety, -reality, mystery, enclosure, power, terror, beauty, service; to be great -to the utmost conceivability of greatness—what higher level than this -can literature spring to? Up, on the highest summit, stand such works, -never to be surpassed, never to be supplanted. Their indecency is not -that of the vulgar; their vulgarity is not that of the low. Their evil, -if it be evil, is not there for nothing—it serves; at the base of it is -Love.—Every poet of the highest quality is, in the masterly coinage of -the author of _Leaves of Grass_, a kosmos. His work, like himself, is a -second world, full of contrarieties, strangely harmonized, and moral -indeed, but only as the world is moral. Shakespeare is all good, -Rabelais is all good, Montaigne is all good; not because all the -thoughts, the words, the manifestations are so, but because at the core, -and permeating all, is an ethic intention—a love which, through -mysterious, indirect, subtle, seemingly absurd, often terrible and -repulsive means, seeks to uplift, and never to degrade. It is the spirit -in which authorship is pursued, as Augustus Schlegel has said, that -makes it either an infamy or a virtue; and the spirit of the great -authors, no matter what their letter, is one with that which pervades -the creation. In mighty love, with implements of pain and pleasure, of -good and evil, Nature develops man; genius also, in mighty love, with -implements of pain and pleasure, of good and evil, develops man; no -matter what the means, that is the end. Tell me not, then, of the -indecent passages of the great poets! The world, which is the poem of -God, is full of indecent passages! “Shall there be evil in a city and -the Lord hath not done it?” shouts Amos. “I form the light, and create -darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these -things,” thunders Isaiah. “This,” says Coleridge, “is the deep abyss of -the mystery of God.” Yes, and it is the profound of the mystery of -genius also! Evil is part of the economy of genius, as it is part of the -economy of God.—Gentle reviewers endeavor to find excuses for the -freedoms of geniuses. “It is to prove that they were above -conventionalities.” “It is referable to the age.” “The age permitted a -degree of coarseness,” &c. “Shakespeare’s indecencies are the result of -his age.” O Ossa on Pelion, mount piled on mount, of error and folly! -What has genius, spirit of the absolute and the eternal, to do with -definitions of position, or conventionalities, or the age? Genius puts -indecencies into its works, because God puts them into His world. -Whatever the special reason in each case, this is the general reason in -all cases. They are here, because they are there. That is the eternal -why.—No; Alphonso of Castile thought, that if he had been consulted at -the Creation, he could have given a few hints to the Almighty. Not I. I -play Alphonso neither to genius nor to God. - - * * * * * - -——What is this poem, for the giving of which to America and the world, -and for that alone, its author has been dismissed with ignominy from a -Government office? It is a poem which Schiller might have hailed as the -noblest specimen of naïve literature, worthy of a place beside Homer. It -is, in the first place, a work purely and entirely American, -autochthonic, sprung from our own soil; no savor of Europe nor of the -past, nor of any other literature in it; a vast carol of our own land, -and of its Present and Future; the strong and haughty psalm of the -Republic. There is not one other book, I care not whose, of which this -can be said. I weigh my words, and have considered well. Every other -book by an American author implies, both in form and substance, I cannot -even say the European, but the British mind. The shadow of Temple Bar -and Arthur’s Seat lies dark on all our letters. Intellectually, we are -still a dependency of Great Britain, and one word—colonial—comprehends -and stamps our literature. In no literary form, except our newspapers, -has there been any thing distinctively American. I note our best -books—the works of Jefferson, the romances of Brockden Brown, the -speeches of Webster, Everett’s rhetoric, the divinity of Channing, some -of Cooper’s novels, the writings of Theodore Parker, the poetry of -Bryant, the masterly law arguments of Lysander Spooner, the miscellanies -of Margaret Fuller, the histories of Hildreth, Bancroft and Motley, -Ticknor’s _History of Spanish Literature_, Judd’s _Margaret_, the -political treatises of Calhoun, the rich, benignant poems of Longfellow, -the ballads of Whittier, the delicate songs of Philip Pendleton Cooke, -the weird poetry of Edgar Poe, the wizard tales of Hawthorne, Irving’s -_Knickerbocker_, Delia Bacon’s splendid sibyllic book on Shakespeare, -the political economy of Carey, the prison letters and immortal speech -of John Brown, the lofty patrician eloquence of Wendell Phillips, and -those diamonds of the first water, the great clear essays and greater -poems of Emerson. This literature has often commanding merits, and much -of it is very precious to me; but in respect to its national character, -all that can be said is that it is tinged, more or less deeply, with -America; and the foreign model, the foreign standards, the foreign -culture, the foreign ideas, dominate over it all. At most, our best -books were but struggling beams; behold in _Leaves of Grass_ the immense -and absolute sunrise! It is all our own! The nation is in it! In form a -series of chants, in substance it is an epic of America. It is -distinctively and utterly American. Without model, without imitation, -without reminiscence, it is evolved entirely from our own polity and -popular life. Look at what it celebrates and contains!—hardly to be -enumerated without sometimes using the powerful, wondrous phrases of its -author, so indissoluble are they with the things described. The -essences, the events, the objects of America; the myriad varied -landscapes; the teeming and giant cities; the generous and turbulent -populations; the prairie solitudes; the vast pastoral plateaus; the -Mississippi; the land dense with villages and farms; the habits, -manners, customs; the enormous diversity of temperatures; the immense -geography; the red aborigines passing away, “charging the water and the -land with names;” the early settlements; the sudden uprising and -defiance of the Revolution; the august figure of Washington; the -formation and sacredness of the Constitution; the pouring in of the -emigrants; the million-masted harbors; the general opulence and comfort; -the fisheries, and whaling, and gold-digging, and manufactures, and -agriculture; the dazzling movement of new States, rushing to be great; -Nevada rising, Dakota rising, Colorado rising; the tumultuous -civilization around and beyond the Rocky Mountains thundering and -spreading; the Union impregnable; feudalism in all its forms forever -tracked and assaulted; liberty deathless on these shores; the noble and -free character of the people; the equality of male and female; the -ardor, the fierceness, the friendship, the dignity, the enterprise, the -affection, the courage, the love of music, the passion for personal -freedom; the mercy and justice and compassion of the people; the popular -faults and vices and crimes; the deference of the President to the -private citizen; the image of Christ forever deepening in the public -mind as the brother of despised and rejected persons; the promise and -wild song of the future; the vision of the Federal mother, seated with -more than antique majesty in the midst of her many children; the pouring -glories of the hereafter; the vistas of splendor, incessant and -branching; the tremendous elements, breeds, adjustments of America—with -all these, with more, with every thing transcendent, amazing, and new, -undimmed by the pale cast of thought, and with the very color and brawn -of actual life, the whole gigantic epic of our continental being unwinds -in all its magnificent reality in these pages. To understand Greece, -study the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; study _Leaves of Grass_ to understand -America. Her Democracy is there. Would you have a text-book of -Democracy? The writings of Jefferson are good; De Tocqueville is better; -but the great poet always contains historian and philosopher—and to -know the comprehending spirit of this country, you shall question these -insulted pages. Yet this vast and patriotic celebration and presentation -of all that is our own, is but a part of this tremendous volume. Here in -addition is thrown in poetic form, a philosophy of life, rich, subtle, -composite, ample, adequate to these great shores. Here are presented -superb types of models of manly and womanly character for the future of -this country, athletic, large, naïve, free, dauntless, haughty, loving, -nobly carnal, nobly spiritual, equal in body and soul, acceptive and -tolerant as Nature, generous, cosmopolitan, above all, religious. Here -are erected standards, drawn from the circumstances of our case, by -which not merely our literature, but all our performance, our politics, -art, behavior, love, conversation, dress, society, every thing belonging -to our lives and their conduct, will be shaped and recreated. A powerful -afflatus from the Infinite has given this book life. A voice which is -the manliest of human voices sounds through it all. In it is the strong -spirit which will surely mould our future. Mark my words: its sentences -will yet clinch the arguments of statesmen; its precepts will be the -laws of the people! From the beams of this seminal sun will be -generated, with tropical luxuriance, the myriad new forms of thought and -life in America. And in view of the national character and national -purpose of this work—in view of its vigorous re-enforcement and service -to all that we hold most precious—I make the claim here, that so far -from defaming and persecuting its author, the attitude of an American -statesman or public officer toward him should be to the highest degree -friendly and sustaining. - -Beyond his country, too, this poet serves the world. He refutes by his -example the saying of Goethe, one of those which stain that noble fame -with baseness, that a great poet cannot be patriotic; and he dilates to -a universal use which redoubles the splendors of his volume, and makes -it dear to all that is human. I am not its authorized interpreter, and -can only state, at the risk of imperfect expression, and perhaps error, -what its meanings and purpose seem to me. But I see that, in his general -intention, the author has aimed to express that most common but wondrous -thing—that strange assemblage of soul, body, intellect—beautiful, -mystical, terrible, limited, boundless, ill-assorted, contradictory, yet -singularly harmonized—a Human Being, a single separate Identity, a -Man,—himself; but himself typically, and in his universal being. This -he has done with perfect candor, including the bodily attributes and -organs, as necessary component parts of the creation. Every thinking -person should see the value and use of such a presentation of human -nature as this. I also see—and it is from these parts of the book that -much of the misunderstanding and offence arises—that this poet seeks in -subtle ways to rescue from the keeping of blackguards and debauchees, to -which it has been abandoned, and to redeem to noble thought and use, the -great element of amativeness or sexuality, with all its acts and organs. -Sometimes by direct assertion, sometimes by implication, he rejects the -prevailing admission that this element is vile; declares its natural or -normal manifestation to be sacred and unworthy shame; awards it an equal -but not superior sanctity with the other elements that compose man; and -illustrates his doctrine and sets his example, by applying this element, -with all that appertains to it, to use as part of the imagery of poetry. -Then, besides, diffused like an atmosphere throughout the poem, -tincturing all its quality, and giving it that sacerdotal and prophetic -character which makes it a sort of American Bible, is the pronounced and -ever-recurring assertion of the divinity of all things. In a spirit like -that of the Egyptian priesthood, who wore the dung-beetle in gold on -their crests, perhaps as a symbol of the sacredness of even the lowest -forms of life, the poet celebrates all the creation as noble and -holy—the meanest and lowest parts of it, as well as the most lofty; all -equally projections of the Infinite; all emanations of the creative life -of God. Perpetual hymns break from him in praise of the divineness of -the universe: he sees a halo around every shape, however low; and life -in all its forms inspires a rapture of worship. - -How some persons can think a book of this sort bad, is clearer to me -than it used to be. Swedenborg says that to the devils, perfumes are -stinks. I happen to know that some of the vilest abuse that it has -received, has come from men of the lowest possible moral life. It is not -so easy to understand how some persons of culture and judgment can fail -to perceive its literary greatness. Making fair allowance for faults, -which no great work, from _Hamlet_ to the world itself, is perhaps -without, the book, in form as in substance, seems to me a masterpiece. -Never in literature has there been more absolute conceptive or -presentative power. The forms and shows of things are bodied forth so -that one may say they become visible, and are alive. Here, in its -grandest, freest use, is the English language, from its lowest compass -to the top of the key; from the powerful, rank idiom of the streets and -fields, to the last subtlety of academic speech—ample, various, -telling, luxuriant, pictorial, final, conquering; absorbing from other -languages to its own purposes their choicest terms; its rich and daring -composite defying grammar; its most incontestable and splendid triumphs -achieved, as Jefferson notes of the superb Latin of Tacitus, in haughty -scorn of the rules of grammarians. Another singular excellence is the -metre—entirely novel, free, flexible, melodious, corresponsive to the -thought; its noble proportions and cadences reminding of winds and -waves, and the vast elemental sounds and motions of Nature, and having -an equal variety and liberty. I have heard this brought into disparaging -comparison with the metres of Tennyson; the poetry also disparaged in -the same connection. I hardly know what to think of people who can talk -in this way. To say nothing of the preference, the mere parallel is only -less ludicrous and arbitrary than would be one between Moore and Isaiah. -Tennyson is an exquisite and sumptuous poet of the third, perhaps the -fourth order; as certainly below Milton and Virgil as Milton and Virgil -are certainly below Æschylus and Homer. His full-fluted verbal music, -which is one of his chief merits, is of an extraordinary beauty. But in -this respect the comparison between him and Walt Whitman is that between -melody and harmony—between a song by Franz Abt or Schubert and a -symphony by Beethoven. Speaking generally, and not with exact justice to -either, the words of Tennyson, irrespective of their sense, make music -to the ear; while the sense of Walt Whitman’s words makes a loftier -music in the mind. For a music, perfect and vast, subtle and more than -auricular—woven not alone from the verbal sounds and rhythmic cadences, -but educed by the thought and feeling of the verse from the reader’s -soul, by the power of a spell few hold—I know of nothing superior to -“By the bivouac’s fitful flame,” the “Hymn of Dead Soldiers,” the -“Spirit whose work is done,” the “Arming of Mannahatta,” or that most -mournful and noble of all love songs, “Out of the rolling ocean, the -crowd,” in _Drum-Taps_; or the “Word out of the Sea,” the “Elemental -Drifts,” the entire section entitled “Walt Whitman,” the hymn commencing -“Splendor of falling day,” or the great salute to the French Revolution -of ’93, entitled “France,” in _Leaves of Grass_. If these are not -examples of great structural harmony as well as of the highest poetry, -there are none in literature. And if all these were wanting, there is a -single poem in the late volume, _Drum-Taps_, which, if the author had -never written another line, would be sufficient to place him among the -chief poets of the world. I do not refer to “Chanting the Square -Deific”—though that also would be sufficient, in its incomparable -breadth and grandeur of conception and execution, to establish the -highest poetic reputation—but to the strain commemorating the death of -the beloved President, commencing, “When lilacs last in the door-yard -bloomed”—a poem whose rich and sacred beauty and rapture of tender -religious passion, spreading aloft into the sublime, leave it unique and -solitary in literature, and will make it the chosen and immortal hymn of -Death forever. Emperors might well elect to die, could their memories be -surrounded with such a requiem, which, next to the grief and love of the -people, is the grandest and the only grand funeral music poured around -Lincoln’s bier. In the face of works like these, testimony of the -presence on earth of a mighty soul, I am thunderstruck at the low tone -of the current criticism. Even from eminent persons, who ought to know -how to measure literature, and who are friendly to this author, I hear, -mingled with inadequate praise, the self-same censures—the very -epithets, even, which Voltaire, not more ridiculously, passed upon -Shakespeare. Take care, gentlemen! What you, like Voltaire, take for -rudeness, chaos, barbarism, lack of form, may be the sacred and -magnificent wildness of a virgin world of poetry, all unlike these fine -and ordered Tennysonian rose-gardens which are your ideal, but excelling -these as the globe excels the parterre. I, at any rate, am not deceived. -I see how swiftly the smart, bright, conventional standards of modern -criticism would assign Isaiah or Ezekiel to the limbo of abortions. I -see of how limited worth are the wit and scholarship of these _Saturday -Reviews_ and _London Examiners_, with their _doppelgangers_ on this side -of the Atlantic, by the treatment some poetic masterpiece of China or -Hindustan receives when it falls into their hands for judgment. Any -thing not cast in modern conventional forms, any novel or amazing -beauty, strikes them as comic. Read Mr. Buckley’s notes, even at this -late day, on a poet so incredibly great as Æschylus. Read an Æschylus -illustrated by reference to Nicholas Nickleby, Mrs. Bombazine, and -Mantalini, and censured in contemptuous, jocular, or flippant -annotations—this, too, by an Oxford scholar of rank and merit! No -wonder _Leaves of Grass_ goes underrated or unperceived. Modern -criticism is Voltaire estimating the _Apocalypse_ as “dirt” and roaring -with laughter over the leaves of Ezekiel. Why? Because this poetry has -not the court tread, the perfume, the royal purple of Racine—only its -own wild and formless incomparable sublimity. Voltaire was an immense -and noble person; only it was not part of his greatness to be able to -see that other greatness which transcends common-sense as the Infinite -transcends the Finite. These children of Voltaire, also, who make the -choirs of modern criticism, have great merits. But to justly estimate -poetry of the first order, is not one of them. “Shakespeare’s _Tempest_, -or the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, or any such damned nonsense as that,” -said one of this school to me a month ago. “Look at that perpendicular -grocery sign-board: the letters all fantastic and reading from top to -bottom: a mere oddity; that is _Leaves of Grass_,” said another, a -person of eminence. No, gentlemen! you and I differ. I see, very -clearly, the nature of a work like this, the warmest praise of which, -not to mention your blame, has been meagre and insufficient to the last -degree, and which centuries must ponder before they can sufficiently -honor. You have had your say; let me have at least the beginning of -mine: Nothing that America had before in literature, rose above -construction: this is a creation. Idle, and worse than idle, is any -attempt to place this author either among or below the poets of the day. -They are but singers; he is a bard. In him you have one of that mighty -brotherhood who, more than statesmen, mould the future: who, as Fletcher -of Saltoun said, when they make the songs of a nation, it matters not -who make the laws. I class him boldly, and the future will confirm my -judgment, among the great creative minds of the world. By a quality -almost incommunicable, which makes its possessor, no matter what his -diversity or imperfections, equal with the Supremes of art, and by the -very structure of his mind, he belongs there. His place is beside -Shakespeare, Æschylus, Cervantes, Dante, Homer, Isaiah—the bards of the -last ascent, the brothers of the radiant summit. And if any man think -this estimate extravagant, I leave him, as Lord Bacon says, to the -gravity of that judgment and pass on. Enough for me to pronounce this -book grandly good and supremely great. Clamor, on the score of its -morality, is nothing but a form of turpitude; denial of its greatness is -nothing but an insanity; and the roar of Sodom and the laughter of -Bedlam shall not, by a hair’s breadth, swerve my verdict. - -As for those passages which have been so strangely interpreted, I have -to say that nothing but the horrible inanity of prudery, to which -civilization has become subject, and which affects even many good -persons, could cloud and distort their palpable innocence and nobleness. -What chance has an author to a reasonable interpretation of such -utterances in an age when squeamishness, the Siamese twin-brother of -indelicacy, is throned as the censor of all life? Look at the nearest, -the commonest and homeliest evidences of the abysm into which we have -fallen! Here in my knowledge is an estimable family which, when the baby -playing on the floor kicked up its skirts, I have repeatedly seen rush -_en masse_ to pull down the immodest petticoat. Here is a lady whose -shame of her body is such, that she will not disrobe in the presence of -one of her own sex, and thinks it horrible to sleep at night without -being swaddled in half her garments. Everywhere you see women -perpetually glancing to be sure their skirts are quite down; twisting -their heads over their shoulders, like some of the damned in Dante, to -get a rear view; drawing in their feet if so much as the toe happens to -protrude beyond the hem of the gown, and in various ways betraying a -morbid consciousness which is more offensive than positive immodesty. -When I went to the hospital, I saw one of those pretty and good girls, -who in muslin and ribbons ornament the wards, and are called nurses, -pick up her skirts and skurry away, flushing hectic, with averted face, -because as she passed a cot the poor fellow who lay there happened, in -his uneasy turnings, to thrust part of a manly leg from beneath the -coverlid. I once heard Emerson severely censured in a private company, -five or six persons present, and I the only dissenting voice, because in -one of his essays he had used the word “spermatic.” When Tennyson -published the _Idyls of the King_, some of the journals in both America -and England, and several persons in my own hearing, censured the weird -and magnificent _Vivien_, one of his finest poems, as “immoral” and -“vulgar.” When Charles Sumner, in the debate on Louisiana, characterized -the new-formed State as “a seven months’ child begotten by the bayonet, -in criminal conjunction with the spirit of caste”—a stroke of absolute -genius—he was censured by the public prints, and reminded that there -were ladies in the gallery! Lately the London _Observer_, one of the -most eminent of the British journals, in a long and labored editorial on -the bathing at Margate, denounced the British wives and matrons in the -severest terms for sitting on the beach when men were bathing in “slight -bathing-dresses” (it was not even pretended that the men were nude)—and -even went the length of demanding of the civil authorities that they -should invoke the interference of Parliament to stop this scandal! These -are fair minor specimens of the prudery, worse than vice, but also the -concomitant of the most shocking vice, which prevails everywhere. Its -travesty is the dressing in pantalettes the “limbs” of the piano; its -insolent tragi-comedy is the expulsion of Shakespeare from office -because he writes “indecent passages;” its tragedy is the myriad results -of wrong and crime and ruin, carried into all the details of every -relation of life. - -A civilization in which such things as I have mentioned can be thought -or done, is guilty to the core. It is not purity, it is impurity, and of -the shallowest kind, which calls clothes more decent than the naked -body—thus inanely conferring upon the work of the tailor or milliner a -modesty denied to the work of God. It is not innocent but guilty thought -which attaches shame, secrecy, baseness, and horror to great and august -parts and functions of humanity. The tacit admission everywhere -prevalent that portions of the human physiology are base; that the -amative feelings and acts of the sexes, even when hallowed by marriage, -are connected with a low sensuality; and that these, with such subjects -or occurrences as the conception and birth of children, are to be -absconded from, blushed at, concealed, ignored, withheld from education, -and in every way treated as if they belonged to the category of sins -against Nature, is not only in itself a contemptible insanity, but a -main source of unspeakable personal and social evil. From the morbid -state of mind which such a theory and practice must induce, are spawned -a thousand guilty actions of every description and degree. There is no -occurrence in the whole vast and diversified range of sexual evil, from -the first lewd thought in the mind of the budding child, the very -suspicion of which makes the parent tremble, down to the last ghastly -and bloody spasm of lust which rends its hapless victim in some rusurban -woodland, that is not fed mainly from this mystery and mother of -abominations to whose care civilization has remitted the entire subject. -The poet who, in the spirit of that divine utility which marked the -first great bards and will mark the last, seeks to make literature -remediate to an estate like this, works in the best interests of his -country and his fellow-beings, and deserves their gratitude. This is -what Walt Whitman has done. Directly and indirectly, in forms as various -as the minds he seeks to influence; in frank opposition to the great -sexual falsehood by which we are ruled and ruined, he has thrown into -civilization a conception intended to be slowly and insensibly absorbed, -and to ultimately appear in results of good—the conception of the -individual as a divine democracy of essences, powers, attributes, -functions, organs—all equal, all sacred, all consecrate to noble use; -the sexual part, the same as the rest; no more a subject for mystery or -shame or secrecy than the intellectual or the manual or the alimentary -or the locomotive part—divinely common-place as head, or hand, or -stomach, or foot; and, though sacred, to be regarded as so ordinary that -it shall be employed, the same as any other part, for the purposes of -literature—an idea which he exemplifies in his poetry by a metaphorical -use which it is a deep disgrace to any intellect to misunderstand. This -is his lesson. This is one of the central ideas which rule the myriad -teeming play of his volume, and interpret it as a law of Nature -interprets the complex play of facts which proceeds from it. This, then, -is not license, but thought. It may be erroneous, it may be chimerical, -it may be ineffectual; but it is thought, serious and solemn thought, on -a most difficult and deeply immersed question—thought emanating from -the deep source of a great love and care for men, and seeking nothing -but a pure human welfare. When, therefore, any persons undertake to -outrage and injure its author for having given it to the world, it is -not merely as the pigmy incarnations of the depraved modesty, the -surface morality, the filthy and libidinous decency of the age, but it -is as the persecutors of thought that they stand before us. It is no -excuse for them to say, that such treatment of Walt Whitman is -justifiable, because his book appears to them bad. Waiving every other -consideration, I have to inform them that on this subject they should -not permit themselves the immodesty of a judgment. It is not for such as -they to attempt to prison in the poor cell of their opinion the vast -journey and illumination of the human mind. No matter what the book -seems to them, they should remember that an author deserves to be tried -by his peers, and that a book may easily seem to some persons quite -another thing from what it really is to others. Here is Rabelais, a -writer who wears all the crowns; but even Mr. Harlan would consider Walt -Whitman white as purity beside him. “Filth,” “zanyism,” “grossness,” -“profligacy,” “licentiousness,” “sensuality,” “beastliness”—these are -samples of the epithets which have fallen, like a rain of excrement, on -Rabelais for three hundred years. And yet it is of him that the -holy-hearted Coleridge—an authority of the first order on all purely -literary or ethical questions—it is of him that Coleridge says, and -says justly: “I could write a treatise in praise of _the moral -elevation_ of Rabelais’ work which would make the Church stare, and the -Conventicle groan, and yet would be the truth, and nothing but the -truth.” The moral elevation of Rabelais! A great criticism, a needed -word. It is just. No matter for seeming—Rabelais is good to the very -core. Rabelais’ book, viewed with reference to ensemble, viewed in -relation, viewed in its own proper quality by other than cockney -standards, is righteous to the uttermost extreme. So is the work of Walt -Whitman, far other in character, and far less obnoxious to criticism -than that of Rabelais, but which demands at least as liberal a judgment, -and which it is not for any deputy, however high in office, to assign to -shame. I know not what further vicissitude of insult and outrage is in -store for this great man. It may be that the devotees of a castrated -literature, the earthworms that call themselves authors, the -confectioners that pass for poets, the flies that are recognized as -critics, the bigots, the dilettanti, the prudes and the fools, are more -potent than I dream to mar the fortunes of his earthly hours; but above -and beyond them uprises a more majestic civilization in the immense and -sane serenities of futurity; and the man who has achieved that sublime -thing, a genuine book; who has written to make his land greater, her -citizens better, his race nobler; who has striven to serve men by -communicating to them that which they least know—their own experience; -who has thrown into living verse a philosophy designed to exalt life to -a higher level of sincerity, reality, religion; who has torn away -disguises and illusions, and restored to commonest things, and the -simplest and roughest people, their divine significance and natural, -antique dignity; and who has wrapped his country and all created things -as with splendors of sunrise, in the beams of a powerful and gorgeous -poetry—that man, whatever be the clouds that close around his fame, is -assured illustrious; and when every face lowers, when every hand is -raised against him, turning his back upon his day and generation, he may -write upon his book, with all the pride and grief of the calumniated -Æschylus, the haughty dedication that poet graved upon his hundred -dramas: TO TIME! - -And Time will remember him. He holds upon the future this supreme claim -of all high poets—behind the book, a life loyal to humanity! Never, if -I can help it, shall be forgotten those immense and divine labors in the -hospitals of Washington, among the wounded of the war, to which he -voluntarily devoted himself, as the best service he could render to his -struggling country, and which illustrate that boundless love which is at -once the dominant element of his character, and the central source of -his genius. How can I tell the nature and extent of that sublime -ministration! During those years, Washington was a city in whose unbuilt -places and around whose borders were thickly planted dense white -clusters of barracks. These were the hospitals—neat, orderly, -rectangular, strange towns, whose every citizen lay drained with -sickness or wrung with pain. There, in those long wards, in rows of cots -on either side, were stretched, in all attitudes and aspects of -mutilation, of pale repose, of contorted anguish, of death, the martyrs -of the war; and among them, with a soul that tenderly remembered the -little children in many a dwelling mournful for those fathers, the worn -and anxious wives, haggard with thinking of those husbands, the girls -weeping their spirits from their eyes for those lovers, the mothers who -from afar yearned to the bedsides of those sons, walked Walt Whitman in -the spirit of Christ, soothing, healing, consoling, restoring, night and -day, for years; never failing, never tiring, constant, vigilant, -faithful; performing, without fee or reward, his self-imposed duty; -giving to the task all his time and means, and doing every thing that it -is possible for one unaided human being to do. Others fail, others flag; -good souls that came often and did their best, yield and drop away; he -remains. Winter and summer, night and day, every day in the week, every -day in the year, all the time, till the winter of ’65, when for a few -hours daily, during six months, his duties to the Government detain him; -after that, all the time he can spare, he visits the hospitals. What -does he do? See! At the red aceldama of Fredericksburg, in ’62, he is in -a hospital on the banks of the Rappahannock; it is a large brick house, -full of wounded and dying; in the yard, at the foot of a tree, is a -cart-load of amputated legs, arms, hands, feet, fingers; dead bodies -shrouded in brown woollen blankets are near; there are fresh graves in -the yard: he is at work in the house among the officers and men, lying, -unclean and bloody, in their old clothes; he is up stairs and down; he -is poor, he has nothing to give this time, but he writes letters for the -wounded; he cheers up the desponding; he gives love. Some of the men, -war-sad, passionately cling to him; they weep; he will sit for hours -with them if it will give them comfort. Here he is in Washington, after -Chancellorsville, at night, on the wharf: two boat-loads of wounded (and -oh, such wounded!) have been landed; they lie scattered about on the -landing, in the rain, drenched, livid, lying on the ground, on old -quilts, on blankets; their heads, their limbs bound in bloody rags; a -few torches light the scene; the ambulances, the callous drivers are -here; groans, sometimes a scream, resound through the flickering light -and the darkness. He is there, moving around; he soothes, he comforts, -he consoles; he assists to lift the wounded into the ambulances; he -helps to place the worst cases on the stretchers; his kiss is warm upon -the pallid lips of those who yearn to him, often mere children; his -tears drop upon the faces of the dying. Here he is in the hospitals of -Washington—the Campbell, the Patent Office, the Eighth street, the -Judiciary, the Carver, the Douglas, the Armory Square. He writes -letters; he writes to fathers, mothers, brothers, wives, sweethearts; -some of the soldiers are poor penmen; some cannot get paper and -envelopes; some fear to write lest they should worry the folks at home: -he writes for them all; he uses that genius which shall endure to the -latest generation, to say the felicitous, the consoling, the cheering, -the prudent, the best word. He goes through the wards; he talks -cheerfully, he distributes amusing reading-matter; at night or by day, -when the horrible monotony of the hospital weighs like lead on every -soul, he reads to the men; he is careful to sit away from the cot of any -poor fellow so sick or wounded as to be easily disturbed, but he gathers -into a large group as many as he can, and amuses them with some story or -enlivening game, like that of Twenty Questions, or starts some -discussion, or with some device dispels the gloom. For his daily -occupation, he goes from ward to ward, doing all he can to hearten and -revive the spirits of the sufferers, and keep the balance in favor of -their recovery. Usually, his plan is to pass, with haversack strapped -across his shoulder, from cot to cot, distributing small gifts; his -theory is that these men, far from home, lonely, sick at heart, need -more than any thing some practical token that they are not forsaken, -that some one feels a fatherly or brotherly interest in them; hence, he -gives them what he can; to particular cases, entirely penniless, he -distributes small sums of money, fifteen cents, twenty cents, thirty -cents, fifty cents, not much to each, for there are many, but under the -circumstances these little sums are and mean a great deal. He also -distributes and directs envelopes, gives letter-paper, postage-stamps, -tobacco, apples, figs, sweet biscuit, preserves, blackberries; gets -delicate food for special cases; sometimes a dish of oysters or a dainty -piece of meat, or some savory morsel for some poor creature who loathes -the hospital fare, but whose appetite may be tempted. In the hot weather -he buys boxes of oranges and distributes them, grateful to lips baked -with fever; he buys boxes of lemons, he buys sugar, to make lemonade for -those parched throats of sick soldiers; he buys canned peaches, -strawberries, pears; he buys in the market fresh fruit; he buys -ice-cream and treats the whole hospital; he buys whatever delicacies and -luxuries his limited resources will allow, and he makes them go as far -as he can. Where does he get the means for this expenditure? For Walt -Whitman is poor;—he is poor, and has a right to be proud of his -poverty, for it is the sacred, the ancient, the immemorial poverty of -goodness and genius. He gets the means by writing for newspapers; he -expends all he gets upon his boys, his darlings, the sick and maimed -soldiers—the young heroes of the land who saved their country, the -laborers of America who fought for the hopes of the world. He adds to -his own earnings the contributions of noble souls, often strangers, who, -in Boston, in New York, in Providence, in Brooklyn, in Salem, in -Washington and elsewhere, have heard that such a man walks the wards, -and who volunteer to send him this assistance; when at last, he gets a -place under Government, and till Mr. Harlan turns him out, he has a -salary which he spends in the same way; sometimes his wrung heart gets -the better of his prudence, and he spends till he himself is in -difficulties. He gives all his money, he gives all his time, he gives -all his love. To every inmate of the hospital something, if only a vital -word, a cheering touch, a caress, a trifling gift; but always in his -rounds he selects the special cases, the sorely wounded, the deeply -despondent, the homesick, the dying: to these he devotes himself; he -buoys them up with fond words, with caresses, with personal affection; -he bends over them, strong, clean, cheerful, perfumed, loving, and his -magnetic touch and love sustain them. He does not shrink from the smell -of their sickening gangrene; he does not flinch from their bloody and -rotten mutilations; he draws nigher for all that; he sticks closer; he -dresses those wounds; he fans those burning temples; he moistens those -parched lips; he washes those wasted bodies; he watches often and often -in the dim ward by the sufferer’s cot all night long; he reads, from the -New Testament, the words sweeter than music to the sinking soul; he -soothes with prayer the bedside of the dying; he sits, mournful and -loving, by the wasted dead. How can I tell the story of his labors! How -can I describe the scenes among which he moved with such endurance and -devotion, watched by me, for years! Few know the spectacle presented by -those grim wards. It was hideous. I have been there at night when it -seemed that I should die with sympathy if I stayed;—when the horrible -attitudes of anguish, the horizontal shapes of cadaver on the white -cots, the quiet sleepers, the excruciated emaciations of men, the bloody -bandages, the smell of plastered sores, the dim lamp-light, the long -white ward, the shallow girl-nurse flirting with the wardmaster or -surgeon, the tinkle of the ward piano mixed with the groans of some -grisly wretch, half hidden behind a screen, naked, shorn of both arms, -held by the assistant upon a stool, made up a scene whose -well-compounded horror is unspeakable. Now realize a man without worldly -inducement, without reward, without the mandate of official duty, -voluntarily, from love and compassion only, giving up his life to scenes -like these; foregoing pleasure and rest for vigils, as in chambers of -torture, among the despairing, the mangled, the dying, the forms upon -which shell and rifle and sabre had wrought every bizarre atrocity of -mutilation; immuring himself in the air of their sighs, their moans, the -mutter and scream of their delirium; breathing the stench of their -putrid wounds; taking up his part and lot with them, living a life of -privation and denial, and hoarding his scanty means for the relief and -mitigation of their anguish. That man is Walt Whitman! I said his labors -have been immense. The word is well chosen. I speak within bounds when I -say that, during those years, he has been in contact with, and, in one -form or another, either in hospital or on the field, personally -ministered to, upward of one hundred thousand sick and wounded men. You -mothers of America, these were your sons! Faithfully and with a mother’s -love, he tended them for you! Many and many a life has he saved—many a -time has he felt his heart grow great with that delicious triumph—many -a home owes its best beloved to him. Sick and wounded, officers and -privates, the black soldiers the same as the white, the teamsters, the -poor creatures in the contraband camps, the rebel the same as the -loyal—he did his best for them all; they were all sufferers, they were -all men.—Let him pass. I note Thoreau’s saying, that he suggests -something more than human. It is true. I see it in his book and in his -life. To that something more than human which is also in all men—to the -hour of judgment, to the hour of sanity—let me resign him. Not for such -as I to vindicate such as he. Not for him, perhaps, the recognition of -his day and generation. But a life and deeds like his, lightly esteemed -by men, sink deep into the memory of Man. Great is the stormy fight of -Zutphen; it is the young lion of English Protestantism springing in -haughty fury for the defence of the Netherlands from the bloody ravin of -Spain; but Philip Sidney passing the flask of water from his own lips to -the dying soldier looms gigantic, and makes all the foreground of its -noble purpose and martial rage; and whatever be the verdict of the -present, sure am I that hereafter and to the latest ages, when Bull Run -and Shiloh and Port Hudson, when Vicksburg and Stone River and Fort -Donelson, when Pea Ridge and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and the -Wilderness, and the great march from Atlanta to Savannah, and Richmond -rolled in flame, and all the battles for the life of the Republic -against her last internal foe, are gathered up in accumulated terraces -of struggle upon the mountain of history, well relieved against those -bright and bloody tumultuous giant tableaux, and all the dust and -thunder of a noble war, the men and women of America will love to gaze -upon the stalwart form of the good gray poet, bending to heal the hurts -of their wounded and soothe the souls of their dying, and the deep and -simple words of the last great martyr will be theirs—“Well, he looks -like A MAN!” - -So let me leave him. And if there be any who think this tribute in bad -taste, even to a poet so great, a person so unusual, a man so heroic and -loving, I answer, that when on grounds of taste foes withhold -detraction, friends may withhold eulogy; and that at any rate I -recognize no reason for keeping back just words of love and reverence -when, as in this case, they must glow upon the sullen foil of the -printed hatreds of ten years. To that long record of hostility, I am -only glad and proud to be able to oppose this record of affection.—And, -with respect to the crowning enmity of the Secretary of the Interior, -let no person misjudge the motives upon which I denounce it. Personally, -apart from this act, I have nothing against Mr. Harlan. He is of my own -party; and my politics have been from my youth essentially the same as -his own. I do not know him; I have never even seen him; I criticise no -attitude nor action of his life but this; and I criticise this with as -little personality as I can give to an action so personal. I withhold, -too, as far as I can, every expression of resentment; and no one who -knew all I know of this matter could fail to credit me with singular and -great moderation. For, behind what I have related, there is another -history, every incident of which I have recovered from the obscurity to -which it was confided; and, as I think of it, it is with difficulty that -I restrain my just indignation. Instead of my comparatively cold and -sober treatment, this transaction deserves rather the pitiless exposure -and the measureless, stern anger and red-hot steel scourge of Juvenal. -But I leave untold its darkest details; and, waiving every other -consideration, I rest solely and squarely on the general indignity and -injury this action offers to intellectual liberty. I claim that to expel -an author from a public office and subject him to public contumely, -solely because he has published a book which no one can declare immoral -without declaring all the grand books immoral, is to affix a penalty to -thought, and to obstruct the freedom of letters. I declare this act the -audacious captain of a series of acts and a style of opinions whose -tendency and effect throughout Christendom is to dwarf and degrade -literature, and to make great books impossible, except under pains of -martyrdom. As such, I arraign it before every liberal and thoughtful -mind. I denounce it as a sinister precedent; as a ban upon the free -action of genius; as a logical insult to all commanding literature; and -as in every way a most serious and heinous wrong. Difference of opinion -there may and must be upon the topics which in this letter I have -grouped around it, but upon the act itself there can be none. As I drag -it up here into the sight of the world, I call upon every scholar, every -man of letters, every editor, every good fellow everywhere who wields -the pen, to make common cause with me in rousing upon it the full -tempest of reprobation it deserves. I remember Tennyson, a spirit of -vengeance over the desecrated grave of Moore; I think of Scott rolling -back the tide of obloquy from Byron; I see Addison gilding the -blackening fame of Swift; I mark Southampton befriending Shakespeare; I -recall Du Bellay enshielding Rabelais; I behold Hutten fortressing -Luther; here is Boccaccio lifting the darkness from Dante, and -scattering flame on his foes in Florence; this is Bembo protecting -Pomponatius; that is Grostête enfolding Roger Bacon from the monkish -fury; there, covered with light, is Aristophanes defending Æschylus: and -if there lives aught of that old chivalry of letters, which in all ages -has sprung to the succor and defence of genius, I summon it to act the -part of honor and duty upon a wrong which, done to a single member of -the great confraternity of literature, is done to all, and which flings -insult and menace upon every immortal page that dares transcend the -wicked heart or the constricted brain. I send this letter to Victor -Hugo, for its passport through Europe; I send it to John Stuart Mill, to -Newman, and Matthew Arnold, for England; I send it to Emerson and -Wendell Phillips; to Charles Sumner; to every Senator and Representative -in Congress; to all our journalists; to the whole American people; to -every one who guards the freedom of letters and the liberty of thought -throughout the civilized world. God grant that not in vain upon this -outrage do I invoke the judgment of the mighty spirit of literature, and -the fires of every honest heart! - - WILLIAM DOUGLAS O’CONNOR, - - Of Massachusetts. - - - - - LIST OF BOOKS - - PUBLISHED BY - - BUNCE AND HUNTINGTON, - - No. 459, BROOME ST., - - (WEST OF BROADWAY,) NEW YORK. - -GOLDEN LEAVES FROM THE AMERICAN POETS. Collected by JOHN W. S. HOWS. -16mo, 550 pp., tinted paper, - - vellum cloth, gilt tops, bevelled boards $2 50 - Extra cloth, full gilt sides and edges 3 00 - Half morocco, or half calf 3 50 - Morocco antique, or extra gilt 5 00 - -GOLDEN LEAVES FROM THE BRITISH POETS. Collected by JOHN W. S. HOWS. -Uniform with “Golden Leaves from the American Poets.” - - Vellum cloth, gilt top $2 50 - Extra cloth, full gilt sides and edges 3 00 - Half morocco, or half calf 3 50 - Morocco antique, or extra gilt 5 00 - -GOLDEN LEAVES FROM THE DRAMATIC POETS. Collected and arranged by JOHN -W. S. HOWS. Uniform with “Golden Leaves” from the British and American -Poets. 16mo, 576 pp., - - vellum cloth, gilt top $2 50 - Extra cloth, full gilt sides and edges 3 00 - Half morocco, or half calf 3 50 - Morocco antique, or extra gilt 5 00 - - ⁂ _The “Golden Leaves” series are now put up in sets in boxes, - but the volumes are also sold separately. Combined they afford, - it is believed, the most complete and desirable selection of - British and American poetry that has yet been made; while the - elegant appearance of the volumes commends them to persons of - taste and culture._ - -THE MECHANICS’, MACHINISTS’, AND ENGINEERS’ PRACTICAL BOOK OF -REFERENCE. By CHARLES HASLETT, Civil Engineer. Edited by Professor -CHARLES W. HACKLEY, late Professor of Mathematics in Columbia College, -New York. A new edition. 18mo, 518 pp., - - pocket form, morocco tucks $2 50 - -PARSON AND PEOPLE; or, Incidents in the Every-Day Life of a -Clergyman. By the Rev. EDWARD SPOONER, M. A., Vicar of Heston, -Middlesex. From the Second London Edition. With a Preface by an American -Clergyman. - - 16mo, cloth, bevelled, with an Illustration $1 25 - -WHAT TO DO WITH THE COLD MUTTON. A Book of Réchauffés. 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By ELIZABETH STODDARD. 12mo, - - 291 pp., cloth $1 50 - - * * * * * - -Transcriber’s Notes: - -Punctuation and type-setting errors have been corrected without note. -Hyphenation and archaic spellings have been retained as in the original. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Good Gray Poet, A Vindication, by -William Douglas O'Connor - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOOD GRAY POET, A VINDICATION *** - -***** This file should be named 51043-0.txt or 51043-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/0/4/51043/ - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed -Proofreaders Canada team (http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from -page images generously made available by the Internet -Archive American Libraries -(https://archive.org/details/goodgraypoetvind00ocon) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Good Gray Poet, A Vindication - -Author: William Douglas O'Connor - -Release Date: January 26, 2016 [EBook #51043] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOOD GRAY POET, A VINDICATION *** - - - - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed -Proofreaders Canada team (http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from -page images generously made available by the Internet -Archive American Libraries -(https://archive.org/details/goodgraypoetvind00ocon) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:375px;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.3em;font-weight:bold;'>THE</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:2.3em;font-weight:bold;'><span class='sc'>Good Gray Poet</span>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.7em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;'>A VINDICATION.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<hr class='tbk100'/> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>NEW YORK:</p> -<p class='line'>BUNCE & HUNTINGTON, 459, BROOME STREET.</p> -<p class='line'>1866.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.3em;font-weight:bold;'>THE GOOD GRAY POET.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.3em;font-weight:bold;'>A VINDICATION.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk101'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:0em;margin-bottom:1em;'><span class='sc'>Washington, D. C.</span>, <span class='it'>September 2, 1865</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nine weeks have elapsed since the commission of an outrage, -to which I have not till now been able to give my -attention, but which, in the interest of the sacred cause of free -letters, and in that alone, I never meant should pass without -its proper and enduring brand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For years past, thousands of people in New York, in -Brooklyn, in Boston, in New Orleans, and latterly in Washington, -have seen, even as I saw two hours ago, tallying, one -might say, the streets of our American cities, and fit to have -for his background and accessories, their streaming populations -and ample and rich façades, a man of striking masculine -beauty—a poet—powerful and venerable in appearance; -large, calm, superbly formed; oftenest clad in the careless, -rough, and always picturesque costume of the common people; -resembling, and generally taken by strangers for, some great -mechanic, or stevedore, or seaman, or grand laborer of one -kind or another; and passing slowly in this guise, with nonchalant -and haughty step along the pavement, with the sunlight -and shadows falling around him. The dark sombrero -he usually wears was, when I saw him just now, the day -being warm, held for the moment in his hand; rich light an -artist would have chosen, lay upon his uncovered head, majestic, -large, Homeric, and set upon his strong shoulders with the -grandeur of ancient sculpture; I marked the countenance, -serene, proud, cheerful, florid, grave; the brow seamed with -noble wrinkles; the features, massive and handsome, with firm -blue eyes; the eyebrows and eyelids especially showing that -fullness of arch seldom seen save in the antique busts; the -flowing hair and fleecy beard, both very gray, and tempering -with a look of age the youthful aspect of one who is but forty-five; -the simplicity and purity of his dress, cheap and plain, but -spotless, from snowy falling collar to burnished boot, and exhaling -faint fragrance; the whole form surrounded with manliness, -as with a nimbus, and breathing, in its perfect health and -vigor, the august charm of the strong. We who have looked -upon this figure, or listened to that clear, cheerful, vibrating -voice, might thrill to think, could we but transcend our age, -that we had been thus near to one of the greatest of the sons -of men. But Dante stirs no deep pulse, unless it be of hate, as -he walks the streets of Florence; that shabby, one-armed -soldier, just out of jail and hardly noticed, though he has -amused Europe, is Michael Cervantes; that son of a vine-dresser, -whom Athens laughs at as an eccentric genius, before it is -thought worth while to roar him into exile, is the century-shaking -Æschylus; that phantom whom the wits of the seventeenth -century think not worth extraordinary notice, and the -wits of the eighteenth century, spluttering with laughter, call -a barbarian, is Shakespeare; that earth-soiled, vice-stained -ploughman, with the noble heart and sweet, bright eyes, whom -the good abominate and the gentry patronize—subject now of -anniversary banquets by gentlemen who, could they wander -backward from those annual hiccups into Time, would never -help his life or keep his company—is Robert Burns; and this -man, whose grave, perhaps, the next century will cover with -passionate and splendid honors, goes regarded with careless -curiosity or phlegmatic composure by his own age. Yet, perhaps, -in a few hearts he has waked that deep thrill due to the -passage of the sublime. I heard lately, with sad pleasure, of -the letter introducing a friend, filled with noble courtesy, and -dictated by the reverence for genius, which a distinguished -English nobleman, a stranger, sent to this American bard. -Nothing deepens my respect for the beautiful intellect of the -scholar Alcott, like the bold sentence, “Greater than Plato,” -which he once uttered upon him. I hold it the surest proof of -Thoreau’s insight, that after a conversation, seeing how he incarnated -the immense and new spirit of the age, and was the -compend of America, he came away to speak the electric sentence, -“He is Democracy!” I treasure to my latest hour, with -swelling heart and springing tears, the remembrance that -Abraham Lincoln, seeing him for the first time from the window -of the East Room of the White House as he passed slowly -by, and gazing at him long with that deep eye which read men, -said, in the quaint, sweet tone which those who have spoken -with him will remember, and with a significant emphasis which -the type can hardly convey—“Well, <span class='it'>he</span> looks like <span class='sc'>a Man</span>!” -Sublime tributes, great words; but none too high for their -object, the author of <span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span>, Walt Whitman, of -Brooklyn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On the 30th of June last, this true American man and -author was dismissed, under circumstances of peculiar wrong, -from a clerkship he had held for six months in the Department -of the Interior. His dismissal was the act of the Hon. James -Harlan, the Secretary of the Department, formerly a Methodist -clergyman, and President of a Western college.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Upon the interrogation of an eminent officer of the Government, -at whose instance the appointment had, under a -former Secretary, been made, Mr. Harlan averred that Walt -Whitman had been in no way remiss in the discharge of his -duties, but that, on the contrary, so far as he could learn, his -conduct had been most exemplary. Indeed, during the few -months of his tenure of office, he had been promoted. The sole -and only cause of his dismissal, Mr. Harlan said, was that he had -written the book of poetry entitled <span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span>. This book -Mr. Harlan characterized as “full of indecent passages.” The -author, he said, was “a very bad man,” a “Free-Lover.” Argument -being had upon these propositions, Mr. Harlan was, as -regards the book, utterly unable to maintain his assertions; and, -as regards the author, was forced to own that his opinion of him -had been changed. Nevertheless, after this substantial admission -of his injustice, he absolutely refused to revoke his action. -Of course, under no circumstances would Walt Whitman, the -proudest man that lives, have consented to again enter into -office under Mr. Harlan: but the demand for his reinstatement -was as honorable to the gentleman who made it, as the -refusal to accede to it was discreditable to the Secretary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The closing feature of this transaction, and one which was a -direct consequence of Mr. Harlan’s course, was its remission to -the scurrilous, and in some instances libellous, comment of a portion -of the press. To sum up, an author, solely and only for the -publication, ten years ago, of an honest book, which no intelligent -and candid person can regard as hurtful to morality, -was expelled from office by the Secretary, and held up to public -contumely by the newspapers. It remains only to be added -here, that the Hon. James Harlan is the gentleman who, upon -assuming the control of the Department, published a manifesto, -announcing that it was thenceforth to be governed upon the -principles of Christian civilization.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This act of expulsion, and all that it encloses, is the outrage -to which I referred in the opening sentence of this letter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>I have had the honor, which I esteem a very high one, -to know Walt Whitman intimately for several years, and -am perfectly conversant with the details of his life and history. -Scores and scores of persons, who know him well, can confirm -my own report of him, and I have therefore no hesitation in -saying that the scandalous assertions of Mr. Harlan, derived -from whom I know not, as to his being a bad man, a Free-Lover, -&c., belong to the category of those calumnies at which, -as Napoleon said, innocence itself is confounded. A better man -in all respects, or one more irreproachable in his relations to the -other sex, lives not upon this earth. His is the great goodness, -the great chastity of spiritual strength and sanity. I do not -believe that from the hour of his infancy, when Lafayette held -him in his arms, to the present hour, in which he bends over the -last wounded and dying of the war, that any one can say aught -of him that does not consort with the largest and truest manliness. -I am perfectly aware of the miserable lies which have -been put into circulation respecting him, of which the story of -his dishonoring an invitation to dine with Emerson, by appearing -at the table of the Astor House in a red shirt, and with the -manners of a rowdy, is a mild specimen. I know, too, the inferences -drawn by wretched fools, who, because they have seen -him riding upon the top of an omnibus; or at Pfaff’s restaurant; -or dressed in rough clothes suitable for his purposes, and only -remarkable because the wearer was a man of genius; or mixing -freely and lovingly, like Lucretius, like Rabelais, like Francis -Bacon, like Rembrandt, like all great students of the world, -with low and equivocal and dissolute persons, as well as with -those of a different character, must needs set him down as a -brute, a scallawag, and a criminal. Mr. Harlan’s allegations -are of a piece with these. If I could associate the title with a -really great person, or if the name of man were not radically -superior, I should say that for solid nobleness of character, for -native elegance and delicacy of soul, for a courtesy which is the -very passion of thoughtful kindness and forbearance, for his -tender and paternal respect and manly honor for woman, for -love and heroism carried into the pettiest details of life, and for -a large and homely beauty of manners, which makes the civilities -of parlors fantastic and puerile in comparison, Walt Whitman -deserves to be considered the grandest gentleman that -treads this continent. I know well the habits and tendencies -of his life. They are all simple, sane, domestic; worthy of him -as one of an estimable family and a member of society. He is -a tender and faithful son, a good brother, a loyal friend, an -ardent and devoted citizen. He has been a laborer, working -successively as a farmer, a carpenter, a printer. He has -been a stalwart editor of the Republican party, and often, -in that powerful and nervous prose of which he is master, -done yeoman’s service for the great cause of human liberty -and the imperial conception of the indivisible Union. He -has been a visitor of prisons; a protector of fugitive slaves; -a constant voluntary nurse, night and day, at the hospitals, -from the beginning of the war to the present time; a brother -and friend through life to the neglected and the forgotten, -the poor, the degraded, the criminal, the outcast; turning away -from no man for his guilt, nor woman for her vileness. His is -the strongest and truest compassion I have ever known. I remember -here the anecdote told me by a witness, of his meeting -in a by-street in Boston a poor ruffian, one whom he had known -well as an innocent child, now a full-grown youth, vicious far -beyond his years, flying to Canada from the pursuit of the police, -his sin-trampled features bearing marks of the recent -bloody brawl in New York in which, as he supposed, he had -killed some one; and having heard his hurried story, freely confided -to him, Walt Whitman, separated not from the bad even by -his own goodness, with well I know what tender and tranquil feeling -for this ruined being, and with a love which makes me think -of that love of God which deserts not any creature, quietly at -parting, after assisting him from his means, held him for a moment, -with his arm around his neck, and, bending to the face, -horrible and battered and prematurely old, kissed him on the -cheek; and the poor hunted wretch, perhaps for the first time -in his low life, receiving a token of love and compassion like a -touch from beyond the sun, hastened away in deep dejection, -sobbing and in tears. It reminds me of the anecdotes Victor -Hugo, in his portraiture of Bishop Myriel, tells, under a thin -veil of fiction, of Charles Miolles, the good Bishop of Rennes.—I -know not what talisman Walt Whitman carries, unless it be -an unexcluding friendliness and goodness which is felt upon -his approach like magnetism; but I know that in the subterranean -life of cities, among the worst roughs, he goes safely; and -I could recite instances where hands that, in mere wantonness -of ferocity, assault anybody, raised against him, have of their own -accord been lowered almost as quickly, or, in some cases, been -dragged promptly down by others; this, too, I mean, when he -and the assaulting gang were mutual strangers. I have seen -singular evidence of the mysterious quality which not only -guards him, but draws to him with intuition, rapid as light, -simple and rude people, as to their natural mate and friend. I -remember, as I passed the White House with him one evening, -the startled feeling with which I saw the soldier on guard there—a -stranger to us both, and with something in his action that -curiously proved that he was a stranger—suddenly bring his -musket to the “present,” in military salute to him, quickly mingling -with this respect due to his colonel, a gesture of greeting -with the right hand as to a comrade; grinning, meanwhile, good -fellow, with shy, spontaneous affection and deference; his ruddy, -broad face glowing in the flare of the lampions. I remember, -on another occasion, as I crossed the street with him, the driver -of a street car, a stranger, stopping the conveyance, and inviting -him to get on and ride with him. Adventures of this kind -are frequent, and, “I took a fancy to you,” or, “You look like -one of my style,” is the common explanation he gets upon their -occurrence. It would be impossible to exaggerate the personal -adhesion and strong, simple affection given him, in numerous -instances on sight, by multitudes of plain persons—sailors, mechanics, -drivers, soldiers, farmers, sempstresses, old people of -the past generation, mothers of families—those powerful, unlettered -persons, among whom, as he says in his book, he has -gone freely, and who never in most cases even suspect as an -author him whom they love as a man, and who loves them in -return.—His intellectual influence upon many young men and -women—spirits of the morning sort, not willing to belong to -that intellectual colony of Great Britain which our literary -classes compose, nor helplessly tied like them to the old forms—I -note as kindred to that of Socrates upon the youth of ancient -Attica, or Raleigh upon the gallant young England of his day. -It is a power at once liberating, instructing, and inspiring.—His -conversation is a university. Those who have heard him in -some roused hour, when the full afflatus of his spirit moved -him, will agree with me that the grandeur of talk was accomplished. -He is known as a passionate lover and powerful critic -of the great music and of art. He is deeply cultured by some -of the best books, especially the Bible, which he prefers above -all other great literature; but principally by contact and communion -with things themselves, which literature can only mirror -and celebrate. He has travelled through most of the United -States, intent on comprehending and absorbing the genius and -meaning of his country, that he might do his best to start a -literature worthy of her, sprung from her own polity, and tallying -her own unexampled magnificence among the nations. -To the same end, he has been a long, patient, and laborious -student of life, mixing intimately with all varieties of experience -and men, with curiosity and with love. He has given his -thought, his life, to this beautiful ambition, and, still young, he -has grown gray in its service. He has never married; like -Giordano Bruno, he has made Thought in the service of his -fellow-creatures his <span class='it'>bella donna</span>, his best beloved, his bride. His -patriotism is boundless. It is no intellectual sentiment; it is a -personal passion. He performs with scrupulous fidelity and -zeal, the duties of a citizen. For eighteen years, not missing -once, his ballot has dropped on every national and local election -day, and his influence has been ardently given, for the good -cause. Of all men I know, his life is most in the life of the -nation. I remember, when the first draft was ordered, at a -time when he was already performing an arduous and perilous -duty as a volunteer attendant upon the wounded in the field—a -duty which cost him the only illness he ever had in his -life, and a very severe and dangerous illness it was, the result -of poison absorbed in his devotion to the worst cases of the -hospital gangrene; and when it would have been the easiest -thing in the world to evade duty, for though then only forty-two -or three years old, and subject to the draft, he looked a -hale sixty, and no enrolling officer would have paused for an -instant before his gray hair—I remember, I say, how anxious -and careful he was to get his name put on the enrollment lists, -that he might stand his chance for martial service. This, too, -at a time when so many gentlemen were skulking, dodging, -agonizing for substitutes, and practising every conceivable device -to escape military duty. What music of speech, though -Cicero’s own—what scarlet and gold superlatives could adorn -or dignify this simple antique trait of private heroism?—I recall -his love for little children, for the young, and for very -old persons, as if the dawn and the evening twilight of life -awakened his deepest tenderness. I recall the affection for -him of numbers of young men, and invariably of all good -women. Who, knowing him, does not regard him as a man -of the highest spiritual culture? I have never known one of -greater and deeper religious feeling. To call one like him -good, seems an impertinence. In our sweet country phrase, -he is one of God’s men. And as I write these hurried and -broken memoranda—as his strength and sweetness of nature, -his moral health, his rich humor, his gentleness, his serenity, -his charity, his simple-heartedness, his courage, his deep and -varied knowledge of life and men, his calm wisdom, his singular -and beautiful boy-innocence, his personal majesty, his rough -scorn of mean actions, his magnetic and exterminating anger -on due occasions—all that I have seen and heard of him, the -testimony of associates, the anecdotes of friends, the remembrance -of hours with him that should be immortal, the traits, -lineaments, incidents of his life and being—as they come crowding -into memory—his seems to me a character which only the -heroic pen of Plutarch could record, and which Socrates himself -might emulate or envy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This is the man whom Mr. Harlan charges with having -written a bad book. I might ask, How long is it since bad -books have been the flower of good lives? How long is it since -grape-vines produced thorns or fig-trees thistles? But Mr. -Harlan says the book is bad because it is “full of indecent -passages.” This allegation has been brought against <span class='it'>Leaves -of Grass</span> before. It has been sounded loud and strong by -many of the literary journals of both continents. As criticism -it is legitimate. I may contemn the mind or deplore the moral -life in which such a criticism has its source; still, as criticism -it has a right to existence. But Mr. Harlan, passing the limits -of opinion, inaugurates punishment. He joins the band of the -hostile verdict; he incarnates their judgment; then, detaching -himself, he proceeds to a solitary and signal vengeance. As far -as he can have it so, this author, for having written his book -shall starve. He shall starve, and his name shall receive a brand. -This is the essence of Mr. Harlan’s action. It is a dark and -serious step to take. Upon what grounds is it taken?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>I have carefully counted out from Walt Whitman’s poetry -the lines, perfectly moral to me, whether viewed in themselves -or in the light of their sublime intentions and purport, but upon -which ignorant and indecent persons of respectability base their -sweeping condemnation of the whole work. Taking <span class='it'>Leaves of -Grass</span>, and the recent small volume, <span class='it'>Drum-Taps</span> (which was in -Mr. Harlan’s possession), there are in the whole about nine -thousand lines or verses. From these, including matter which -I can hardly imagine objectionable to any one, but counting -every thing which the most malignant virtue could shrink from, -I have culled eighty lines. Eighty lines out of nine thousand! -It is a less proportion than one finds in Shakespeare. Upon this -so slender basis, rests the whole crazy fabric of American and -European slander, and the brutal lever of the Secretary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now, what by competent authority is the admitted character -of the book in which these lines occur? For, though it is more -than probable that Mr. Harlan never heard of the work till the -hour of his explorations in the Department, the intellectual -hemispheres of Great Britain and America have rung with it -from side to side. It has received as extensive a critical -notice, I suppose, as has ever been given to a volume. Had -it been received only with indifference or derision, I should -not have been surprised. In an age in which few breathe the -atmosphere of the grand literature—which forgets the superb -books and thinks Bulwer moral, and Dickens great, and Thackeray -a real satirist—which gives to Macaulay the laurel due to -Herodotus, and to Tennyson the crown reserved for Homer, -and in which the chairs of criticism seem abandoned to squirts -and pedagogues and monks—a mighty poet has little to expect -from the literary press save unconcern and mockery. But even -under these hard conditions, the tremendous force of this poet -has achieved a relative conquest, and the tone of the press -denotes his book as not merely great, but illustrious. Even -the copious torrents of abuse which have been lavished upon it, -have in numerous instances taken the form of tribute to its -august and mysterious power, being in fact identical with that -still vomited upon Montaigne and Juvenal. On the other -hand, eulogy, very lofty and from the highest sources, has -spanned it with sunbows. Emerson, our noblest scholar, a -name to which Christendom does reverence, a critic of piercing -insight and full comprehension, has pronounced it “the most -extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet -contributed.” How that austere and rare spirit, Thoreau, regarded -it, may be partly seen by his last posthumous volume. -He thought of it, I have heard, with measureless esteem, ranking -it with the vast and gorgeous conceptions of the Oriental -bards. It has been reported to me, that unpublished letters, -received in this country from some of Europe’s greatest, announce -a similar verdict. The <span class='it'>North American Quarterly -Review</span>, unquestionably the highest organ of American letters, -in the course of a eulogistic notice of the work, remarking upon -the passages which Mr. Harlan has treated as if they were novel -in literature, observes: “There is not anything, perhaps (in the -book), which modern usage would stamp as more indelicate -than are some passages in Homer. There is not a word in it -meant to attract readers by its grossness, as there is in half the -literature of the last century, which holds its place unchallenged -on the tables of our drawing-rooms.” The London <span class='it'>Dispatch</span>, -in a review written by the Rev. W. J. Fox, one of the most distinguished -clergymen in England, after commending the poems -for “their strength of expression, their fervor, their hearty -wholesomeness, their originality and freshness, their singular -harmony,” &c., says that, “in the unhesitating frankness of a -man who dares to call simplest things by their plain names, -conveying also a large sense of the beautiful,” there is involved -“a clearer conception of what manly modesty really is, than in -any thing we have in all conventional forms of word, deed, or -act, so far known of;” and concludes by declaring that “the -author will soon make his way into the confidence of his readers, -and his poems in time will become a pregnant text-book, -from which quotations as sterling as the minted gold will be -taken and applied to every form of the inner and the outer -life.” The London <span class='it'>Leader</span>, one of the foremost of the British -literary journals, in a review which more nearly approaches -perception of the true character and purport of the book, than -any I have seen, has the following sentences: “Mr. Emerson recognized -the first issue of the <span class='it'>Leaves</span>, and hastened to welcome -the author, then totally unknown. Among other things, said -Emerson to the new avatar, ‘I greet you at the beginning of -a great career, which yet <span class='it'>must have had a long foreground -somewhere for such a start</span>.’ The last clause was, however, -overlooked entirely by the critics, who treated the new author -as one self-educated, yet in the rough, unpolished, and owing -nothing to instruction. The authority for so treating the -author was derived from himself, who thus described, in one -of his poems, his person, character, and name, having omitted -the last from the title-page:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote0r9'> - -<div class='poetry-container' style=''><div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'>‘Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,</p> -<p class='line0'> Disorderly, fleshly, and sensual,’—</p> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -</div> - -<p class='noindent'>and in various other passages, confessed to all the vices, as well -as the virtues of man. All this, with intentional wrong-headedness, -was attributed by the sapient reviewers to the individual -writer, and not to the subjective-hero supposed to be writing. -Notwithstanding the word ‘kosmos,’ the writer was taken -to be an ignorant man. Emerson perceived at once that -there had been a long foreground somewhere or somehow;—not -so they. Every page teems with knowledge, with information; -but they saw it not, because it did not answer their -purpose to see it. . . . . . The poem in which the word ‘kosmos’ -appears explains in fact the whole mystery—nay, the -word itself explains it. The poem is nominally upon himself, -but really includes everybody. It begins:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote0r9'> - -<div class='poetry-container' style=''><div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'>‘I celebrate myself;</p> -<p class='line0'>And what I assume, you shall assume;</p> -<p class='line0'>For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.’</p> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -</div> - -<p class='noindent'>In a word, <span class='sc'>Walt Whitman</span> <span class='it'>represents the Kosmical man—he -is the</span> <span class='sc'>Adamus</span> <span class='it'>of the nineteenth century—not an individual, -but</span> <span class='sc'>Mankind</span>. As such, in celebrating himself, he proceeds to -celebrate universal humanity in its attributes, and accordingly -commences his dithyramb with the five senses, beginning with -that of smell. Afterwards, he deals with the intellectual, -rational, and moral powers, showing throughout his treatment -an intimate acquaintance with Kant’s transcendental method, -and perhaps including in his development the whole of the -German school, down to Hegel—at any rate, as interpreted by -Cousin and others in France, and Emerson in the United -States. He certainly includes Fichte, for he mentions the Egotist -as the only true philosopher, and consistently identifies -himself not only with every man, but with the universe and its -Maker; and it is in doing so that the strength of his description -consists. It is from such an ideal elevation that he looks -down on Good and Evil, regards them as equal, and extends to -them the like measure of equity. . . . . Instead, therefore, of -regarding these <span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span> as a marvel, they seem to us -as the most natural product of the American soil. They are -certainly filled with an American spirit, breathe the American -air, and assert the fullest American freedom.” The passages -characterized by the Secretary as “indecent” are, adds the -<span class='it'>Leader</span>, “only so many instances adduced in support of a -philosophical principle; not meant for obscenity, but for scientific -examples, introduced as they might be in any legal, medical, -or philosophical book, for the purpose of instruction.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>I could multiply these excerpts; but here are sufficient -specimens of the competent judgments of eminent scholars and -divines, testifying to the intellectual and moral grandeur of this -work. Let it be remembered that there is nothing in the -book that in one form or another is not contained in all great -poetic or universal literature. It has nothing either in quantity -or quality so offensive as everybody knows is in Shakespeare. -All that this poet has done is to mention, without -levity, without low language, very seriously, often devoutly, -always simply, certain facts in the natural history of man and -of life; and sometimes, assuming their sanctity, to use them in -illustration or imagery. Far more questionable mention and -use of these facts are common to the greatest literature. Shall -the presence in a book of eighty lines, similar in character to -what every great and noble poetic book contains, be sufficient -to shove it below even the lewd writings of Petronius Arbiter, -the dirty dramas of Shirley, or the scrofulous fiction of Louvet -de Couvray—to lump it in with the anonymous lascivious trash -spawned in holes and sold in corners, too witless and disgusting -for any notice but that of the police—and to entitle its author -to treatment such as only the nameless wretches of the very -sewers of authorship ought to receive?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If, rising to the utmost cruelty of conception, I can dare add -to the calamities of genius a misery so degrading and extreme -as to imagine the great authors of the world condemned to -clerkships under Mr. Harlan, I can at least mitigate that -dream of wretchedness and insult by adding the fancy of their -fate under the action of his principles. Let me suppose them -there, and he still magnifying the calling of the Secretary into -that of the literary headsman. He opens the great book of -<span class='it'>Genesis</span>. Everywhere “indecent passages.” The mother -hushes the child, and bids him skip as he reads aloud that first -great history. It cannot be read aloud in “drawing-rooms” -by “gentlemen” and “ladies.” The freest use of language, -the plainest terms, frank mention of forbidden subjects; the -story of Onan; of Hagar and Sarai; of Lot and his daughters; -of Isaac, Rebekah, and Abimelech; of Jacob and Leah; of -Reuben and Bilhah; of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph; tabooed -allusion and statement everywhere; no veils, no euphemism, no -delicacy, no meal in the mouth anywhere. Out with Moses! -The cloven splendor on that awful brow shall not save him.—Mr. -Harlan takes up the <span class='it'>Iliad</span> and the <span class='it'>Odyssey</span>. The loves of -Jupiter and Juno; the dalliance of Achilles and Patroclus -with their women; the perfectly frank, undraped reality of -Greek life and manners naïvely shown without regard to the feelings -of Christian civilizees—horrible! Out with Homer!—Here -is Lucretius: Mr. Harlan opens the <span class='it'>De Rerum Natura</span>, and reads -the vast, benign, majestic lines, sad with the shadow of the unintelligible -universe upon them; sublime with the tragic problems -of the Infinite; august with their noble love and compassion -for mankind. But what is this? “<span class='it'>Ut quasi transactis -sœpe omnibus rebus</span>,” &c. And this: “<span class='it'>Morè ferarum, quadrupedumque -magis ritu</span>,” &c. And this: “<span class='it'>Nam mulier prohibet -se concipere atque repugnat</span>,” &c. And this: “<span class='it'>Quod -petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem</span>,” &c. Enough. -Fine language, fine illustrations, fine precepts, pretty decency! -Out with Lucretius! Out with the chief poet of the Tiber side!—Here -is Æschylus: a dark magnificence of cloud, all rough -with burning gold, which thunders and drips blood! The -Greek Shakespeare. The gorgeous and terrible Æschylus! -What is this in the <span class='it'>Prometheus</span> about Jove and Iö? What -sort of detail is that which, at the distance of ten years, I remember -amazed Mr. Buckley as he translated the <span class='it'>Agamemnon</span>? -What kind of talk is this in the <span class='it'>Chœphori</span>, in <span class='it'>The -Suppliants</span>, and in the fragments of the comic drama of <span class='it'>The -Argians</span>? Out with Æschylus!—Here is the sublime book of -Ezekiel. All the Hebrew grandeur at its fullest is there. But -look at this blurt of coarse words, hurled direct as the prophet-mouth -can hurl them—this familiar reference to functions and -organs voted out of language—this bread for human lips baked -with ordure—these details of the scortatory loves of Aholah -and Aholibamah. Enough. Dismiss this dreadful majesty of -Hebrew poetry. He has no “taste.” He is “indecent.” Out -with Ezekiel!—Here is Dante. Open the tremendous pages -of the <span class='it'>Inferno</span>. What is this about the she-wolf Can Grande -will kill? What picture is this of strumpet Thais?—ending -with the lines—</p> - -<div class='blockquote0r9'> - -<div class='poetry-container' style=''><div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'>“Taida è, la puttana che rispose</p> -<p class='line0'>    Al drudo suo, quando disse: Ho io grazie</p> -<p class='line0'>    Grandi appo te? Anzi meravigliose.”</p> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -</div> - -<p class='noindent'>What is this, also, in the eighteenth canto?—</p> - -<div class='blockquote0r9'> - -<div class='poetry-container' style=''><div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'>“Quivi venimmo, e quindi giù nel fosso</p> -<p class='line0'>   Vidi gente attuffata in uno sterco,</p> -<p class='line0'>   Che dagli uman privati parea mosso:</p> -<p class='line0'> E mentre ch’ ìo là giù con l’occhio cerco,</p> -<p class='line0'>   Vìdi un col capo sì di merda lordo,</p> -<p class='line0'>   Che non parea s’era laico o cherco.”</p> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -</div> - -<p class='noindent'>What is this line at the end of the twenty-first canto, which -even John Carlyle flinches from translating, but which Dante -did not flinch from writing?—</p> - -<div class='blockquote0r9'> - -<div class='poetry-container' style=''><div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'>“Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.”</p> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -</div> - -<p class='noindent'>And look at these lines in the twenty-eighth canto:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote0r9'> - -<div class='poetry-container' style=''><div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'>“Già reggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla</p> -<p class='line0'> Com’ io vidi un, cosi non si pertugia,</p> -<p class='line0'> Rotto dal mento insin dove si trulla.”</p> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -</div> - -<p class='noindent'>That will do. Dante, too, has “indecent passages.” Out with -Dante!—Here is the book of Job: the vast Arabian landscape, -the picturesque pastoral details of Arabian life, the last -tragic immensity of Oriental sorrow, the whole overarching -sky of Oriental piety, are here. But here also the inevitable -“indecency.” Instead of the virtuous fiction of the tansy-bed, -Job actually has the indelicacy to state how man is born—even -mentions the belly; talks about the gendering of bulls -and the miscarriage of cows; uses rank idioms; and in the -thirty-first chapter especially, indulges in a strain of thought -and expression which it is amazing does not bring down upon -him, even at this late date, the avalanches of our lofty and pure -Reviews. Here is certainly “an immoral poet.” Out with -Job!—Here is Plutarch, prince of biographers, and Herodotus, -flower of historians. What have we now? Traits of character -not to be mentioned, incidents of conduct, accounts of manners, -minute details of customs, which our modern historical -dandies would never venture upon recording. Out with Plutarch -and Herodotus!—Here is Tacitus. What statement of -crimes that ought not to be hinted! Does the man gloat over -such things? What dreadful kisses are these of Agrippina to -Nero—the mother to the son! Out with Tacitus!—and since -there are books that ought to be publicly burned, by all means -let the stern grandeur of that rhetoric be lost in flame.—Here -is Shakespeare: “indecent passages” everywhere—every -drama, every poem thickly inlaid with them; all that men -do displayed; sexual acts treated lightly, jested about, mentioned -obscenely; the language never bolted; slang, gross -puns, lewd words, in profusion. Out with Shakespeare!—Here -is the <span class='it'>Canticle of Canticles</span>: beautiful, voluptuous poem -of love literally, whatever be its mystic significance; glowing -with the color, odorous with the spices, melodious with the -voices of the East; sacred and exquisite and pure with the -burning chastity of passion which completes and exceeds the -snowy chastity of virgins. This to me, but what to the Secretary? -Can he endure that the female form should stand thus -in a poem, disrobed, unveiled, bathed in erotic splendor? Look -at these voluptuous details, this expression of desire, this amorous -tone and glow, this consecration and perfume lavished -upon the sensual. No! Out with Solomon!—Here is Isaiah. -The grand thunder-roll of that righteousness, like the eternal -roar of God above the guilty world, utters coarse words. -Amidst the bolted lightnings of that sublime denunciation, -coarse thoughts, indelicate figures, indecent allusion, flash upon -the sight, like gross imagery in a midnight landscape. Out -with Isaiah!—Here is Montaigne. Open those great, those -virtuous pages of the unflinching reporter of Man; the soul -all truth and daylight, all candor, probity, sincerity, reality, -eyesight. A few glances will suffice. Cant and vice and -sniffle have groaned over these pages before. Out with Montaigne!—Here -is Hafiz, the Anacreon of Persia, but more: a -banquet of wine in a garden of roses, the nightingales singing, -the laughing revellers high with festal joy; but a heavenly -flame burns on every brow; a tone not of this sphere is in all -the music, all the laughter, all the songs; a light of the Infinite -trembles over every chalice and rests on every flower; -and all the garden is divine. Still, when Hafiz cries out, “Bring -me wine, and bring the famed veiled beauty, the Princess of -the brothel,” &c., or issues similar orders, Mr. Harlan, whose -virtue does not understand or endure such metaphors, must -deal sternly with this kosmic man of Persia. Out with Hafiz!—Here -is Virgil, ornate and splendid poet of old Rome; a -master with a greater pupil, Alighieri! a bard above whose -ashes Boccaccio kneels a trader, and arises a soldier of mankind; -but he must lose those fadeless chaplets, the undying -green of a noble fame; for here in the <span class='it'>Æneid</span> is “<span class='it'>Dixerat; -et niveis hinc atque hinc Diva lacertis</span>,” &c., and here in the -<span class='it'>Georgics</span> is “<span class='it'>Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat</span>,” -&c., and there are other verses like these. Out with -Virgil!—Here is Swedenborg. Open this poem in prose, the -<span class='it'>Conjugial Love</span>—to me, a temple, though in ruins; the sacred -fane, clothed in mist, filled with moonlight, of a great though -broken mind. What spittle of critic epithets stains all here? -“Lewd,” “sensual,” “lecherous,” “coarse,” “licentious,” &c. -Of course these judgments are final. There is no appeal from -the tobacco-juice of an expectorating and disdainful virtue. -Out with Swedenborg!—Here is Goethe: the horrified squealing -of prudes is not yet silent over pages of <span class='it'>Wilhelm Meister</span>; -that high and chaste hook, the <span class='it'>Elective Affinities</span>, still pumps up -oaths from clergymen; Walpurgis has hardly ceased its uproar -over <span class='it'>Faust</span>. Out with Goethe!—Here is Byron: grand, dark -poet; a great spirit—a soul like the ocean; generous lover of -America; fiery trumpet of liberty; a sword for the human -cause in Greece; a torch for the human mind in <span class='it'>Cain</span>; a life -that redeemed its every fault by taking a side, which was the -human side; tempest of scorn in his first poem, tempest of scorn -and laughter in his last poem, only against the things that wrong -man; vast bud of the Infinite that Death alone prevented from -its vaster flower; immense, seminal, electrical, dazzling Byron.—But -<span class='it'>Beppo</span>—O! But <span class='it'>Don Juan</span>—O fie! Not to mention -the Countess Guiccioli—ah, me! Prepare quickly the yellow -envelope, and out with Byron!—Here is Cervantes: open <span class='it'>Don -Quixote</span>, paragon of romances, highest result of Spain, best and -sufficient reason for her life among the nations, a laughing novel -which is a weeping poem. But talk such as this of Sancho -Panza and Tummas Cecial under the cork-trees, and these coarse -stories and bawdy words and this free and gross comedy—is it -to be endured? Out with Cervantes!—Here is another, a sun -of literature, moving in a vast orbit with dazzling plenitudes -of power and beauty; the one only modern European poet and -novelist worthy to rank with the first; permanent among the -fleeting; a demigod of letters among the pigmies; a soul of the -antique strength and sadness, worthy to stand as the representative -of the high thought and hopes of the nineteenth century—Victor -Hugo! Now open <span class='it'>Les Misérables</span>. See the great -passages which the American translator softens and the English -translator tears away. Open this other book of his, <span class='it'>William -Shakespeare</span>, a book with only one grave fault, the omission of -the words “A Poem” from the title-page; a book which is the -courageous arch, the comprehending sky of criticism, but which -no American publisher will dare to issue, or, if he does, will expurgate. -Out with Hugo, of course!—Here is Juvenal, terrible -and splendid fountain of all satire; inspiration of all just -censure; exemplar of all noble rage at baseness; satirist and -moralist sublimed into the poet; the scowl of the unclouded -noon above the low streets of folly and of sin. But what he -withers, he also shows. The sun-stroke of his poetry reveals -what it kills. Juvenal tells all. His fidelity of exposure is -frightful. Mr. Harlan would make short work of him. Out -with Juvenal!—Open the divine <span class='it'>Apocalypse</span>. What words are -these among the thunderings and lightnings and voices? -Is this a poem to be read aloud in parlors (for such appears to -be the test of propriety and purity)? At least, John might -have been a little more choice in language. Some of these -texts are “indecent.” Yes, indeed! John must go.—Here -is Spenser. Encyclopædic poet of the visioned chivalry. It -is all there. Amadis, Esplandian, Tirante the White, Palmerin -of England, all those Paladin romances were but the -leaves: this is the flower. A lost dream of valor, chastity, -courtesy, glory—a dream that marks an age of human history—glimmers -here, far in these depths, and makes this unexplored -obscurity divine. “But is the <span class='it'>Faëry Queen</span> such -a book as you would wish to put into the hands of a lady?” -What a question! Has it not been expurgated? Out with -Spenser!—Here is another, a true soldier of the human emancipation; -one who smites amidst uproars of laughter; the -master of Titanic farce; a whirlwind and earthquake of -derision—Rabelais. A nice one for Mr. Harlan! One -glimpse at the chapter which explains why the miles -lengthen as you leave Paris, or at the details of the birth and -nurture of Gargantua, will suffice. Out with Rabelais—out -with the great jester of France, as Lord Bacon calls -him!—And here is Lord Bacon himself, in one of whose -pages you may read, done from the Latin by Spedding -into a magnificent golden thunder of English, the absolute -defence of the free spirit of the great authors, coupled with -stern rebuke to the spirit that would pick and choose, as -dastard and effeminate. Out with Lord Bacon! Not him -only, not these only, not only the writers are under the ban. -Here is Phidias, gorgeous sculptor in gold and ivory, giant -dreamer of the Infinite in marble; but he will not use the fig-leaf. -Here is Rembrandt, who paints the Holland landscape, -the Jew, the beggar, the burgher, in lights and glooms of Eternity; -and his pictures have been called “indecent.” Here is -Mozart, his music rich with the sumptuous color of all sunsets; -and it has been called “sensual.” Here is Michael Angelo, -who makes art tremble with a new and strange afflatus, and -gives Europe novel and sublime forms that tower above the -centuries, and accost the Greek; and his works have been called -“bestial.” Out with them all!—Now, except Virgil for vassalage -to literary models, and for grave and sad falsehood to -liberty; except Goethe for his lack of the final ecstasy of self-surrender -which completes a poet, and for coldness to the great -mother—one’s country; except Spenser for his remoteness, and -Byron for his immaturity, and there is not one of those I have -named that does not belong to the first order of human intellect. -But no need to make discriminations here; they are all -great; they have all striven; they have all served. Moses, -Homer, Lucretius, Æschylus, Ezekiel, Dante, Job, Plutarch, -Herodotus, Tacitus, Shakespeare, Solomon, Isaiah, Montaigne, -Hafiz, Virgil, Swedenborg, Goethe, Byron, Cervantes, Hugo, -Juvenal, John, Spenser, Rabelais, Bacon, Phidias, Rembrandt, -Mozart, Angelo:—these are among the demi-gods of human -thought; the souls that have loved and suffered for the race; -the light-bringers, the teachers, the lawgivers, the consolers, -the liberators, the inspired inspirers of mankind; the noble -and gracious beings who, in the service of humanity, have -borne every cross and earned every crown. There is not one -of them that is not sacred in the eyes of thoughtful men. But -not one of them does the rotten taste and morals of the nineteenth -century spare! Not one of them is qualified to render -work for bread under this Secretary! Do I err? Do I exaggerate? -I write without access to the books I mention—(it is -fitting that this piece of insolent barbarism should have been -committed in almost the only important American city which -is without a public library!)—with the exception of three or -four volumes which I happen to have by me, I am obliged to -rely for my statements on the memory of youthful readings, -eight or ten years ago; but name me one book of the first -order in which such passages as I refer to do not occur! Tell -me who can—what poet of the first grade escapes this brand, -“immoral,” or this spittle, “indecent”! If the great books -are not, in the point under consideration, in the same moral -category as <span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span>, then why, either in translation or -in the originals, either by a bold softening which dissolves the -author’s meaning, or by absolute excision, are they nearly all -expurgated? Answer me that. By one process or the other, -Brizeux, Cary, Wright, Cayley, Carlyle, everybody, expurgates -Dante; Langhorne and others expurgate Plutarch; Potter and -others expurgate Æschylus; Gifford, Anthon, and others expurgate -Juvenal; Creech, Watson, and others expurgate Lucretius; -Bowdler and others expurgate Shakespeare; Nott (I -believe it is) expurgates Hafiz; Wraxall and Wilbour expurgate -Hugo; Kirkland, Hart, and others expurgate Spenser; -somebody expurgates Virgil; somebody expurgates Byron; -the Oxford scholars dilute Tacitus; Lord Derby expurgates -Homer, besides making him as ridiculous as the plucked -cock of Diogenes in translation; several hands expurgate -Goethe; and Archbishop Tillotson in design expurgates -Moses, Ezekiel, Solomon, Isaiah, St. John, and all the others—a -job which Dr. Noah Webster executes, but, thank God, -cannot popularize. What book is spared? Nothing but a -chain of circumstance, which seems divinely ordained, saves -us the unmutilated Bible. Nearly every other great book -bleeds. When one is not expurgated, the balance is restored -by its being cordially abused. Thanks to the splendid conscience -and courage of Mr. Wight, we can read Montaigne in -English without the omission of a single word! Thanks also -to Motteux and others, Cervantes has gone untouched, and we -have not as yet a family Rabelais. Neither have we as yet a -family Mankind nor a family Universe; but this is an oversight -which will, doubtless, be repaired in time. God will also, -doubtless, be expurgated whenever it is possible. Why not? -One step to this end is taken in the expurgation of genius, which -is His second manifestation, as Nature is His first! Go on, gentlemen! -You will yet have things as “moral” as you desire!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>I am aware that so far as his opinion, not his act, is concerned, -Mr. Harlan, however unintelligently, represents to some extent -the shallow conclusions of his age; and I know it will be said, -that if the great books contain these passages, they ought to be -expurgated. It is not my design to endeavor to put a quart -into people who only hold a gill, nor would I waste time in endeavoring -to convert a large class of persons whom I once heard -Walt Whitman describe, with his usual Titanic richness and -strength of phrase, as “the immutable granitic pudding-heads -of the world.” But there is a better class than these; and I -am filled with measureless amazement, that persons of high intelligence, -living to the age of maturity, do not perceive, at -least, the immense and priceless scientific and human <span class='it'>uses</span> of -such passages, and the consequent necessity, transcending and -quashing all minor considerations, of having them where they -are. But look at these sad sentences—a complete and felicitous -statement of the whole modern doctrine—in the pages of -a man I love and revere: “The literature of three centuries -ago is not decent to be read; we expurgate it. Within a hundred -years, woman has become a reader, and for that reason, as -much or more than any thing else, literature has sprung to a -higher level. No need now to expurgate all you read.” He -goes on to argue that literature in the next century will be -richer than in the classic epochs, because woman will contribute -to it as an author—her contribution, I infer, to be of the kind -that will not need expurgating. These, I repeat, are sad sentences. -If they are true, Bowdler is right to expurgate Shakespeare, -and Noah Webster the Bible. But no, they are not -true! I welcome woman into art; but when she comes there -grandly, she will not come either as expurgator or creator of -emasculate or partial forms. Woman, grand in art, is Rosa -Bonheur, painting with fearless pencil the surly, sublime Jovian -bull, equipped for masculine use; painting the powerful, -ramping stallion in his amorous pride; not weakly or meanly -flinching from the full celebration of what God has made. -Woman, grand in art, will come creating in forms, however -novel, the absolute, the permanent, the real, the evil and the -good, as Æschylus, as Cervantes, as Shakespeare before her; -with sex, with truth, with universality, without omissions or -concealments. And woman, as the ideal reader of literature, -is not the indelicate prude, flushing and squealing over some -frank page; it is that high and beautiful soul, Marie de Gournay, -devoutly absorbing the work of her master, Montaigne; -finding it all great; greatly comprehending, greatly accepting -it all; fronting its license and grossness without any of the livid -shuddering of Puritans; and looking on the book in the same -universal and kindly spirit as its author looked upon the world. -Woman reading otherwise than thus—shrinking from Apuleius, -from Rabelais, from Aristophanes, from Shakespeare, from -even Wycherley, or Petronius, or Aretin, or Shirley—is less -than man, is not ideal, not strong, not nobly good, but -petty, and effeminate, and mean. And not for her, nor by -her, nor by man, do I assent to the expurgation of the great -books. Literature cannot spring to a higher level than theirs. -Alas! it has sprung to a lower. The level of the great books -is the Infinite, the Absolute. To contain all, by containing the -premise, the truth, the idea and feeling of all; to tally the universe -by profusion, variety, reality, mystery, enclosure, power, -terror, beauty, service; to be great to the utmost conceivability -of greatness—what higher level than this can literature spring -to? Up, on the highest summit, stand such works, never -to be surpassed, never to be supplanted. Their indecency is -not that of the vulgar; their vulgarity is not that of the low. -Their evil, if it be evil, is not there for nothing—it serves; at -the base of it is Love.—Every poet of the highest quality is, in -the masterly coinage of the author of <span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span>, a kosmos. -His work, like himself, is a second world, full of contrarieties, -strangely harmonized, and moral indeed, but only as -the world is moral. Shakespeare is all good, Rabelais is all -good, Montaigne is all good; not because all the thoughts, -the words, the manifestations are so, but because at the core, -and permeating all, is an ethic intention—a love which, through -mysterious, indirect, subtle, seemingly absurd, often terrible and -repulsive means, seeks to uplift, and never to degrade. It is -the spirit in which authorship is pursued, as Augustus Schlegel -has said, that makes it either an infamy or a virtue; and the -spirit of the great authors, no matter what their letter, is one -with that which pervades the creation. In mighty love, with -implements of pain and pleasure, of good and evil, Nature develops -man; genius also, in mighty love, with implements of -pain and pleasure, of good and evil, develops man; no matter -what the means, that is the end. Tell me not, then, of the -indecent passages of the great poets! The world, which is the -poem of God, is full of indecent passages! “Shall there be -evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?” shouts Amos. -“I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and -create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things,” thunders Isaiah. -“This,” says Coleridge, “is the deep abyss of the mystery of -God.” Yes, and it is the profound of the mystery of genius -also! Evil is part of the economy of genius, as it is part of -the economy of God.—Gentle reviewers endeavor to find excuses -for the freedoms of geniuses. “It is to prove that they -were above conventionalities.” “It is referable to the age.” -“The age permitted a degree of coarseness,” &c. “Shakespeare’s -indecencies are the result of his age.” O Ossa on Pelion, -mount piled on mount, of error and folly! What has -genius, spirit of the absolute and the eternal, to do with definitions -of position, or conventionalities, or the age? Genius -puts indecencies into its works, because God puts them into -His world. Whatever the special reason in each case, this is -the general reason in all cases. They are here, because they -are there. That is the eternal why.—No; Alphonso of Castile -thought, that if he had been consulted at the Creation, he -could have given a few hints to the Almighty. Not I. I -play Alphonso neither to genius nor to God.</p> - -<hr class='tbk102'/> - -<p class='pindent'>——What is this poem, for the giving of which to America -and the world, and for that alone, its author has been dismissed -with ignominy from a Government office? It is a poem which -Schiller might have hailed as the noblest specimen of naïve -literature, worthy of a place beside Homer. It is, in the first -place, a work purely and entirely American, autochthonic, -sprung from our own soil; no savor of Europe nor of the past, -nor of any other literature in it; a vast carol of our own land, -and of its Present and Future; the strong and haughty psalm -of the Republic. There is not one other book, I care not -whose, of which this can be said. I weigh my words, and have -considered well. Every other book by an American author implies, -both in form and substance, I cannot even say the European, -but the British mind. The shadow of Temple Bar and -Arthur’s Seat lies dark on all our letters. Intellectually, we -are still a dependency of Great Britain, and one word—colonial—comprehends -and stamps our literature. In no literary -form, except our newspapers, has there been any thing distinctively -American. I note our best books—the works of Jefferson, -the romances of Brockden Brown, the speeches of Webster, -Everett’s rhetoric, the divinity of Channing, some of Cooper’s -novels, the writings of Theodore Parker, the poetry of Bryant, -the masterly law arguments of Lysander Spooner, the miscellanies -of Margaret Fuller, the histories of Hildreth, Bancroft -and Motley, Ticknor’s <span class='it'>History of Spanish Literature</span>, -Judd’s <span class='it'>Margaret</span>, the political treatises of Calhoun, the rich, -benignant poems of Longfellow, the ballads of Whittier, the -delicate songs of Philip Pendleton Cooke, the weird poetry of -Edgar Poe, the wizard tales of Hawthorne, Irving’s <span class='it'>Knickerbocker</span>, -Delia Bacon’s splendid sibyllic book on Shakespeare, -the political economy of Carey, the prison letters and immortal -speech of John Brown, the lofty patrician eloquence of Wendell -Phillips, and those diamonds of the first water, the -great clear essays and greater poems of Emerson. This -literature has often commanding merits, and much of it is -very precious to me; but in respect to its national character, -all that can be said is that it is tinged, more or less deeply, with -America; and the foreign model, the foreign standards, the -foreign culture, the foreign ideas, dominate over it all. At -most, our best books were but struggling beams; behold in -<span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span> the immense and absolute sunrise! It is all -our own! The nation is in it! In form a series of chants, in -substance it is an epic of America. It is distinctively and -utterly American. Without model, without imitation, without -reminiscence, it is evolved entirely from our own polity and -popular life. Look at what it celebrates and contains!—hardly -to be enumerated without sometimes using the powerful, -wondrous phrases of its author, so indissoluble are they with -the things described. The essences, the events, the objects of -America; the myriad varied landscapes; the teeming and -giant cities; the generous and turbulent populations; the -prairie solitudes; the vast pastoral plateaus; the Mississippi; -the land dense with villages and farms; the habits, manners, -customs; the enormous diversity of temperatures; the immense -geography; the red aborigines passing away, “charging -the water and the land with names;” the early settlements; -the sudden uprising and defiance of the Revolution; -the august figure of Washington; the formation and sacredness -of the Constitution; the pouring in of the emigrants; the -million-masted harbors; the general opulence and comfort; -the fisheries, and whaling, and gold-digging, and manufactures, -and agriculture; the dazzling movement of new States, rushing -to be great; Nevada rising, Dakota rising, Colorado -rising; the tumultuous civilization around and beyond the -Rocky Mountains thundering and spreading; the Union impregnable; -feudalism in all its forms forever tracked and -assaulted; liberty deathless on these shores; the noble and -free character of the people; the equality of male and female; -the ardor, the fierceness, the friendship, the dignity, the enterprise, -the affection, the courage, the love of music, the passion -for personal freedom; the mercy and justice and compassion -of the people; the popular faults and vices and crimes; the -deference of the President to the private citizen; the image -of Christ forever deepening in the public mind as the brother -of despised and rejected persons; the promise and wild song -of the future; the vision of the Federal mother, seated with -more than antique majesty in the midst of her many children; -the pouring glories of the hereafter; the vistas of splendor, incessant -and branching; the tremendous elements, breeds, -adjustments of America—with all these, with more, with -every thing transcendent, amazing, and new, undimmed by the -pale cast of thought, and with the very color and brawn of -actual life, the whole gigantic epic of our continental being -unwinds in all its magnificent reality in these pages. To -understand Greece, study the <span class='it'>Iliad</span> and <span class='it'>Odyssey</span>; study -<span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span> to understand America. Her Democracy is -there. Would you have a text-book of Democracy? The -writings of Jefferson are good; De Tocqueville is better; but -the great poet always contains historian and philosopher—and -to know the comprehending spirit of this country, you shall -question these insulted pages. Yet this vast and patriotic -celebration and presentation of all that is our own, is but a -part of this tremendous volume. Here in addition is thrown -in poetic form, a philosophy of life, rich, subtle, composite, -ample, adequate to these great shores. Here are presented -superb types of models of manly and womanly character for -the future of this country, athletic, large, naïve, free, dauntless, -haughty, loving, nobly carnal, nobly spiritual, equal in body -and soul, acceptive and tolerant as Nature, generous, cosmopolitan, -above all, religious. Here are erected standards, drawn -from the circumstances of our case, by which not merely our -literature, but all our performance, our politics, art, behavior, -love, conversation, dress, society, every thing belonging to our -lives and their conduct, will be shaped and recreated. A powerful -afflatus from the Infinite has given this book life. A voice -which is the manliest of human voices sounds through it all. -In it is the strong spirit which will surely mould our future. -Mark my words: its sentences will yet clinch the arguments -of statesmen; its precepts will be the laws of the people! -From the beams of this seminal sun will be generated, with -tropical luxuriance, the myriad new forms of thought and -life in America. And in view of the national character and -national purpose of this work—in view of its vigorous re-enforcement -and service to all that we hold most precious—I -make the claim here, that so far from defaming and persecuting -its author, the attitude of an American statesman or public -officer toward him should be to the highest degree friendly -and sustaining.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beyond his country, too, this poet serves the world. He -refutes by his example the saying of Goethe, one of those -which stain that noble fame with baseness, that a great poet -cannot be patriotic; and he dilates to a universal use which -redoubles the splendors of his volume, and makes it dear to all -that is human. I am not its authorized interpreter, and can -only state, at the risk of imperfect expression, and perhaps -error, what its meanings and purpose seem to me. But I see -that, in his general intention, the author has aimed to express -that most common but wondrous thing—that strange assemblage -of soul, body, intellect—beautiful, mystical, terrible, -limited, boundless, ill-assorted, contradictory, yet singularly harmonized—a -Human Being, a single separate Identity, a Man,—himself; -but himself typically, and in his universal being. -This he has done with perfect candor, including the bodily -attributes and organs, as necessary component parts of the -creation. Every thinking person should see the value and use -of such a presentation of human nature as this. I also see—and -it is from these parts of the book that much of the misunderstanding -and offence arises—that this poet seeks in subtle -ways to rescue from the keeping of blackguards and debauchees, -to which it has been abandoned, and to redeem to -noble thought and use, the great element of amativeness or -sexuality, with all its acts and organs. Sometimes by direct -assertion, sometimes by implication, he rejects the prevailing -admission that this element is vile; declares its natural or -normal manifestation to be sacred and unworthy shame; awards -it an equal but not superior sanctity with the other elements -that compose man; and illustrates his doctrine and sets his -example, by applying this element, with all that appertains to -it, to use as part of the imagery of poetry. Then, besides, -diffused like an atmosphere throughout the poem, tincturing -all its quality, and giving it that sacerdotal and prophetic -character which makes it a sort of American Bible, is the pronounced -and ever-recurring assertion of the divinity of all -things. In a spirit like that of the Egyptian priesthood, who -wore the dung-beetle in gold on their crests, perhaps as a symbol -of the sacredness of even the lowest forms of life, the poet -celebrates all the creation as noble and holy—the meanest and -lowest parts of it, as well as the most lofty; all equally projections -of the Infinite; all emanations of the creative life of -God. Perpetual hymns break from him in praise of the divineness -of the universe: he sees a halo around every shape, however -low; and life in all its forms inspires a rapture of worship.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How some persons can think a book of this sort bad, is -clearer to me than it used to be. Swedenborg says that to the -devils, perfumes are stinks. I happen to know that some of the -vilest abuse that it has received, has come from men of the -lowest possible moral life. It is not so easy to understand how -some persons of culture and judgment can fail to perceive its -literary greatness. Making fair allowance for faults, which no -great work, from <span class='it'>Hamlet</span> to the world itself, is perhaps without, -the book, in form as in substance, seems to me a masterpiece. -Never in literature has there been more absolute conceptive or -presentative power. The forms and shows of things are bodied -forth so that one may say they become visible, and are alive. -Here, in its grandest, freest use, is the English language, from -its lowest compass to the top of the key; from the powerful, -rank idiom of the streets and fields, to the last subtlety of academic -speech—ample, various, telling, luxuriant, pictorial, final, -conquering; absorbing from other languages to its own purposes -their choicest terms; its rich and daring composite defying -grammar; its most incontestable and splendid triumphs -achieved, as Jefferson notes of the superb Latin of Tacitus, in -haughty scorn of the rules of grammarians. Another singular -excellence is the metre—entirely novel, free, flexible, -melodious, corresponsive to the thought; its noble proportions -and cadences reminding of winds and waves, and the vast elemental -sounds and motions of Nature, and having an equal -variety and liberty. I have heard this brought into disparaging -comparison with the metres of Tennyson; the poetry -also disparaged in the same connection. I hardly know what -to think of people who can talk in this way. To say nothing -of the preference, the mere parallel is only less ludicrous and -arbitrary than would be one between Moore and Isaiah. Tennyson -is an exquisite and sumptuous poet of the third, perhaps -the fourth order; as certainly below Milton and Virgil as -Milton and Virgil are certainly below Æschylus and Homer. -His full-fluted verbal music, which is one of his chief merits, -is of an extraordinary beauty. But in this respect the comparison -between him and Walt Whitman is that between melody -and harmony—between a song by Franz Abt or Schubert and -a symphony by Beethoven. Speaking generally, and not with -exact justice to either, the words of Tennyson, irrespective of -their sense, make music to the ear; while the sense of Walt -Whitman’s words makes a loftier music in the mind. For a -music, perfect and vast, subtle and more than auricular—woven -not alone from the verbal sounds and rhythmic cadences, but -educed by the thought and feeling of the verse from the reader’s -soul, by the power of a spell few hold—I know of nothing superior -to “By the bivouac’s fitful flame,” the “Hymn of Dead -Soldiers,” the “Spirit whose work is done,” the “Arming of -Mannahatta,” or that most mournful and noble of all love -songs, “Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd,” in <span class='it'>Drum-Taps</span>; -or the “Word out of the Sea,” the “Elemental Drifts,” the -entire section entitled “Walt Whitman,” the hymn commencing -“Splendor of falling day,” or the great salute to the -French Revolution of ’93, entitled “France,” in <span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span>. -If these are not examples of great structural harmony as well -as of the highest poetry, there are none in literature. And if -all these were wanting, there is a single poem in the late -volume, <span class='it'>Drum-Taps</span>, which, if the author had never written -another line, would be sufficient to place him among the chief -poets of the world. I do not refer to “Chanting the Square -Deific”—though that also would be sufficient, in its incomparable -breadth and grandeur of conception and execution, to establish -the highest poetic reputation—but to the strain commemorating -the death of the beloved President, commencing, “When -lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed”—a poem whose rich and -sacred beauty and rapture of tender religious passion, spreading -aloft into the sublime, leave it unique and solitary in literature, -and will make it the chosen and immortal hymn of Death forever. -Emperors might well elect to die, could their memories -be surrounded with such a requiem, which, next to the grief -and love of the people, is the grandest and the only grand -funeral music poured around Lincoln’s bier. In the face of -works like these, testimony of the presence on earth of a mighty -soul, I am thunderstruck at the low tone of the current criticism. -Even from eminent persons, who ought to know how to -measure literature, and who are friendly to this author, I hear, -mingled with inadequate praise, the self-same censures—the -very epithets, even, which Voltaire, not more ridiculously, -passed upon Shakespeare. Take care, gentlemen! What you, -like Voltaire, take for rudeness, chaos, barbarism, lack of form, -may be the sacred and magnificent wildness of a virgin world -of poetry, all unlike these fine and ordered Tennysonian rose-gardens -which are your ideal, but excelling these as the globe -excels the parterre. I, at any rate, am not deceived. I see -how swiftly the smart, bright, conventional standards of modern -criticism would assign Isaiah or Ezekiel to the limbo of -abortions. I see of how limited worth are the wit and scholarship -of these <span class='it'>Saturday Reviews</span> and <span class='it'>London Examiners</span>, with -their <span class='it'>doppelgangers</span> on this side of the Atlantic, by the treatment -some poetic masterpiece of China or Hindustan receives -when it falls into their hands for judgment. Any thing not cast -in modern conventional forms, any novel or amazing beauty, -strikes them as comic. Read Mr. Buckley’s notes, even at this -late day, on a poet so incredibly great as Æschylus. Read an -Æschylus illustrated by reference to Nicholas Nickleby, Mrs. -Bombazine, and Mantalini, and censured in contemptuous, jocular, -or flippant annotations—this, too, by an Oxford scholar of -rank and merit! No wonder <span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span> goes underrated -or unperceived. Modern criticism is Voltaire estimating the -<span class='it'>Apocalypse</span> as “dirt” and roaring with laughter over the -leaves of Ezekiel. Why? Because this poetry has not the court -tread, the perfume, the royal purple of Racine—only its own -wild and formless incomparable sublimity. Voltaire was an immense -and noble person; only it was not part of his greatness to -be able to see that other greatness which transcends common-sense -as the Infinite transcends the Finite. These children of -Voltaire, also, who make the choirs of modern criticism, have -great merits. But to justly estimate poetry of the first order, -is not one of them. “Shakespeare’s <span class='it'>Tempest</span>, or the <span class='it'>Midsummer -Night’s Dream</span>, or any such damned nonsense as that,” said -one of this school to me a month ago. “Look at that perpendicular -grocery sign-board: the letters all fantastic and reading -from top to bottom: a mere oddity; that is <span class='it'>Leaves of Grass</span>,” -said another, a person of eminence. No, gentlemen! you and -I differ. I see, very clearly, the nature of a work like this, -the warmest praise of which, not to mention your blame, has -been meagre and insufficient to the last degree, and which centuries -must ponder before they can sufficiently honor. You -have had your say; let me have at least the beginning of mine: -Nothing that America had before in literature, rose above -construction: this is a creation. Idle, and worse than idle, is -any attempt to place this author either among or below the -poets of the day. They are but singers; he is a bard. In him -you have one of that mighty brotherhood who, more than -statesmen, mould the future: who, as Fletcher of Saltoun said, -when they make the songs of a nation, it matters not who -make the laws. I class him boldly, and the future will confirm -my judgment, among the great creative minds of the world. -By a quality almost incommunicable, which makes its possessor, -no matter what his diversity or imperfections, equal with the -Supremes of art, and by the very structure of his mind, he -belongs there. His place is beside Shakespeare, Æschylus, -Cervantes, Dante, Homer, Isaiah—the bards of the last ascent, -the brothers of the radiant summit. And if any man think -this estimate extravagant, I leave him, as Lord Bacon says, to -the gravity of that judgment and pass on. Enough for me to pronounce -this book grandly good and supremely great. Clamor, -on the score of its morality, is nothing but a form of turpitude; -denial of its greatness is nothing but an insanity; and the roar of -Sodom and the laughter of Bedlam shall not, by a hair’s breadth, -swerve my verdict.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As for those passages which have been so strangely interpreted, -I have to say that nothing but the horrible inanity of -prudery, to which civilization has become subject, and which -affects even many good persons, could cloud and distort their -palpable innocence and nobleness. What chance has an author -to a reasonable interpretation of such utterances in an age -when squeamishness, the Siamese twin-brother of indelicacy, is -throned as the censor of all life? Look at the nearest, the -commonest and homeliest evidences of the abysm into which -we have fallen! Here in my knowledge is an estimable family -which, when the baby playing on the floor kicked up its skirts, -I have repeatedly seen rush <span class='it'>en masse</span> to pull down the immodest -petticoat. Here is a lady whose shame of her body is -such, that she will not disrobe in the presence of one of her own -sex, and thinks it horrible to sleep at night without being -swaddled in half her garments. Everywhere you see women -perpetually glancing to be sure their skirts are quite down; -twisting their heads over their shoulders, like some of the -damned in Dante, to get a rear view; drawing in their feet if -so much as the toe happens to protrude beyond the hem of the -gown, and in various ways betraying a morbid consciousness -which is more offensive than positive immodesty. When I -went to the hospital, I saw one of those pretty and good girls, -who in muslin and ribbons ornament the wards, and are called -nurses, pick up her skirts and skurry away, flushing hectic, -with averted face, because as she passed a cot the poor fellow -who lay there happened, in his uneasy turnings, to thrust part -of a manly leg from beneath the coverlid. I once heard Emerson -severely censured in a private company, five or six persons -present, and I the only dissenting voice, because in one of his -essays he had used the word “spermatic.” When Tennyson -published the <span class='it'>Idyls of the King</span>, some of the journals in -both America and England, and several persons in my own -hearing, censured the weird and magnificent <span class='it'>Vivien</span>, one of his -finest poems, as “immoral” and “vulgar.” When Charles -Sumner, in the debate on Louisiana, characterized the new-formed -State as “a seven months’ child begotten by the bayonet, -in criminal conjunction with the spirit of caste”—a stroke of -absolute genius—he was censured by the public prints, and reminded -that there were ladies in the gallery! Lately the London -<span class='it'>Observer</span>, one of the most eminent of the British journals, -in a long and labored editorial on the bathing at Margate, -denounced the British wives and matrons in the severest terms -for sitting on the beach when men were bathing in “slight -bathing-dresses” (it was not even pretended that the men -were nude)—and even went the length of demanding of the civil -authorities that they should invoke the interference of Parliament -to stop this scandal! These are fair minor specimens of -the prudery, worse than vice, but also the concomitant of the -most shocking vice, which prevails everywhere. Its travesty is -the dressing in pantalettes the “limbs” of the piano; its -insolent tragi-comedy is the expulsion of Shakespeare from -office because he writes “indecent passages;” its tragedy is the -myriad results of wrong and crime and ruin, carried into all the -details of every relation of life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A civilization in which such things as I have mentioned can -be thought or done, is guilty to the core. It is not purity, it is -impurity, and of the shallowest kind, which calls clothes more -decent than the naked body—thus inanely conferring upon -the work of the tailor or milliner a modesty denied to the -work of God. It is not innocent but guilty thought which -attaches shame, secrecy, baseness, and horror to great and -august parts and functions of humanity. The tacit admission -everywhere prevalent that portions of the human physiology -are base; that the amative feelings and acts of the sexes, even -when hallowed by marriage, are connected with a low sensuality; -and that these, with such subjects or occurrences as -the conception and birth of children, are to be absconded -from, blushed at, concealed, ignored, withheld from education, -and in every way treated as if they belonged to the category -of sins against Nature, is not only in itself a contemptible -insanity, but a main source of unspeakable personal and social -evil. From the morbid state of mind which such a theory and -practice must induce, are spawned a thousand guilty actions of -every description and degree. There is no occurrence in the -whole vast and diversified range of sexual evil, from the first -lewd thought in the mind of the budding child, the very suspicion -of which makes the parent tremble, down to the last -ghastly and bloody spasm of lust which rends its hapless -victim in some rusurban woodland, that is not fed mainly from -this mystery and mother of abominations to whose care civilization -has remitted the entire subject. The poet who, in the -spirit of that divine utility which marked the first great -bards and will mark the last, seeks to make literature remediate -to an estate like this, works in the best interests of his -country and his fellow-beings, and deserves their gratitude. -This is what Walt Whitman has done. Directly and indirectly, -in forms as various as the minds he seeks to influence; in frank -opposition to the great sexual falsehood by which we are ruled -and ruined, he has thrown into civilization a conception -intended to be slowly and insensibly absorbed, and to ultimately -appear in results of good—the conception of the individual as -a divine democracy of essences, powers, attributes, functions, -organs—all equal, all sacred, all consecrate to noble use; the -sexual part, the same as the rest; no more a subject for mystery -or shame or secrecy than the intellectual or the manual or the -alimentary or the locomotive part—divinely common-place -as head, or hand, or stomach, or foot; and, though sacred, to be -regarded as so ordinary that it shall be employed, the same as -any other part, for the purposes of literature—an idea which he -exemplifies in his poetry by a metaphorical use which it is a -deep disgrace to any intellect to misunderstand. This is his -lesson. This is one of the central ideas which rule the myriad -teeming play of his volume, and interpret it as a law of Nature -interprets the complex play of facts which proceeds from it. -This, then, is not license, but thought. It may be erroneous, it -may be chimerical, it may be ineffectual; but it is thought, -serious and solemn thought, on a most difficult and deeply -immersed question—thought emanating from the deep source of -a great love and care for men, and seeking nothing but a pure -human welfare. When, therefore, any persons undertake to -outrage and injure its author for having given it to the world, -it is not merely as the pigmy incarnations of the depraved -modesty, the surface morality, the filthy and libidinous decency -of the age, but it is as the persecutors of thought that they -stand before us. It is no excuse for them to say, that such treatment -of Walt Whitman is justifiable, because his book appears -to them bad. Waiving every other consideration, I have to inform -them that on this subject they should not permit themselves -the immodesty of a judgment. It is not for such as they to -attempt to prison in the poor cell of their opinion the vast journey -and illumination of the human mind. No matter what the -book seems to them, they should remember that an author deserves -to be tried by his peers, and that a book may easily seem -to some persons quite another thing from what it really is to -others. Here is Rabelais, a writer who wears all the crowns; -but even Mr. Harlan would consider Walt Whitman white as -purity beside him. “Filth,” “zanyism,” “grossness,” “profligacy,” -“licentiousness,” “sensuality,” “beastliness”—these are -samples of the epithets which have fallen, like a rain of excrement, -on Rabelais for three hundred years. And yet it is of -him that the holy-hearted Coleridge—an authority of the first -order on all purely literary or ethical questions—it is of him that -Coleridge says, and says justly: “I could write a treatise in -praise of <span class='it'>the moral elevation</span> of Rabelais’ work which would -make the Church stare, and the Conventicle groan, and yet -would be the truth, and nothing but the truth.” The moral -elevation of Rabelais! A great criticism, a needed word. It -is just. No matter for seeming—Rabelais is good to the very -core. Rabelais’ book, viewed with reference to ensemble, -viewed in relation, viewed in its own proper quality by other -than cockney standards, is righteous to the uttermost extreme. -So is the work of Walt Whitman, far other in character, and -far less obnoxious to criticism than that of Rabelais, but which -demands at least as liberal a judgment, and which it is not for -any deputy, however high in office, to assign to shame. I know -not what further vicissitude of insult and outrage is in store for -this great man. It may be that the devotees of a castrated -literature, the earthworms that call themselves authors, the -confectioners that pass for poets, the flies that are recognized -as critics, the bigots, the dilettanti, the prudes and the fools, -are more potent than I dream to mar the fortunes of his earthly -hours; but above and beyond them uprises a more majestic -civilization in the immense and sane serenities of futurity; and -the man who has achieved that sublime thing, a genuine book; -who has written to make his land greater, her citizens better, -his race nobler; who has striven to serve men by communicating -to them that which they least know—their own experience; -who has thrown into living verse a philosophy designed -to exalt life to a higher level of sincerity, reality, religion; who -has torn away disguises and illusions, and restored to commonest -things, and the simplest and roughest people, their divine -significance and natural, antique dignity; and who has wrapped -his country and all created things as with splendors of sunrise, -in the beams of a powerful and gorgeous poetry—that man, -whatever be the clouds that close around his fame, is assured -illustrious; and when every face lowers, when every hand is -raised against him, turning his back upon his day and generation, -he may write upon his book, with all the pride and grief -of the calumniated Æschylus, the haughty dedication that poet -graved upon his hundred dramas: <span class='sc'>To Time</span>!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Time will remember him. He holds upon the future -this supreme claim of all high poets—behind the book, a life loyal -to humanity! Never, if I can help it, shall be forgotten those -immense and divine labors in the hospitals of Washington, -among the wounded of the war, to which he voluntarily devoted -himself, as the best service he could render to his struggling -country, and which illustrate that boundless love which -is at once the dominant element of his character, and the central -source of his genius. How can I tell the nature and extent -of that sublime ministration! During those years, Washington -was a city in whose unbuilt places and around whose -borders were thickly planted dense white clusters of barracks. -These were the hospitals—neat, orderly, rectangular, strange -towns, whose every citizen lay drained with sickness or wrung -with pain. There, in those long wards, in rows of cots on -either side, were stretched, in all attitudes and aspects of -mutilation, of pale repose, of contorted anguish, of death, the -martyrs of the war; and among them, with a soul that -tenderly remembered the little children in many a dwelling -mournful for those fathers, the worn and anxious wives, haggard -with thinking of those husbands, the girls weeping their -spirits from their eyes for those lovers, the mothers who from -afar yearned to the bedsides of those sons, walked Walt -Whitman in the spirit of Christ, soothing, healing, consoling, -restoring, night and day, for years; never failing, never tiring, -constant, vigilant, faithful; performing, without fee or reward, -his self-imposed duty; giving to the task all his time and means, -and doing every thing that it is possible for one unaided human -being to do. Others fail, others flag; good souls that came -often and did their best, yield and drop away; he remains. -Winter and summer, night and day, every day in the week, -every day in the year, all the time, till the winter of ’65, when -for a few hours daily, during six months, his duties to the -Government detain him; after that, all the time he can spare, -he visits the hospitals. What does he do? See! At the red -aceldama of Fredericksburg, in ’62, he is in a hospital on the -banks of the Rappahannock; it is a large brick house, full of -wounded and dying; in the yard, at the foot of a tree, is a -cart-load of amputated legs, arms, hands, feet, fingers; dead -bodies shrouded in brown woollen blankets are near; there are -fresh graves in the yard: he is at work in the house among the -officers and men, lying, unclean and bloody, in their old clothes; -he is up stairs and down; he is poor, he has nothing to give -this time, but he writes letters for the wounded; he cheers up -the desponding; he gives love. Some of the men, war-sad, -passionately cling to him; they weep; he will sit for hours -with them if it will give them comfort. Here he is in Washington, -after Chancellorsville, at night, on the wharf: two boat-loads -of wounded (and oh, such wounded!) have been landed; -they lie scattered about on the landing, in the rain, drenched, -livid, lying on the ground, on old quilts, on blankets; their -heads, their limbs bound in bloody rags; a few torches light the -scene; the ambulances, the callous drivers are here; groans, -sometimes a scream, resound through the flickering light and -the darkness. He is there, moving around; he soothes, he -comforts, he consoles; he assists to lift the wounded into the -ambulances; he helps to place the worst cases on the stretchers; -his kiss is warm upon the pallid lips of those who yearn to him, -often mere children; his tears drop upon the faces of the -dying. Here he is in the hospitals of Washington—the Campbell, -the Patent Office, the Eighth street, the Judiciary, the -Carver, the Douglas, the Armory Square. He writes letters; -he writes to fathers, mothers, brothers, wives, sweethearts; some -of the soldiers are poor penmen; some cannot get paper and -envelopes; some fear to write lest they should worry the folks -at home: he writes for them all; he uses that genius which -shall endure to the latest generation, to say the felicitous, the -consoling, the cheering, the prudent, the best word. He goes -through the wards; he talks cheerfully, he distributes amusing -reading-matter; at night or by day, when the horrible -monotony of the hospital weighs like lead on every soul, he -reads to the men; he is careful to sit away from the cot of any -poor fellow so sick or wounded as to be easily disturbed, but he -gathers into a large group as many as he can, and amuses them -with some story or enlivening game, like that of Twenty Questions, -or starts some discussion, or with some device dispels the -gloom. For his daily occupation, he goes from ward to ward, -doing all he can to hearten and revive the spirits of the -sufferers, and keep the balance in favor of their recovery. -Usually, his plan is to pass, with haversack strapped across his -shoulder, from cot to cot, distributing small gifts; his theory -is that these men, far from home, lonely, sick at heart, need -more than any thing some practical token that they are not -forsaken, that some one feels a fatherly or brotherly interest in -them; hence, he gives them what he can; to particular cases, -entirely penniless, he distributes small sums of money, fifteen -cents, twenty cents, thirty cents, fifty cents, not much to each, -for there are many, but under the circumstances these little -sums are and mean a great deal. He also distributes and -directs envelopes, gives letter-paper, postage-stamps, tobacco, -apples, figs, sweet biscuit, preserves, blackberries; gets delicate -food for special cases; sometimes a dish of oysters or -a dainty piece of meat, or some savory morsel for some -poor creature who loathes the hospital fare, but whose appetite -may be tempted. In the hot weather he buys boxes of -oranges and distributes them, grateful to lips baked with -fever; he buys boxes of lemons, he buys sugar, to make -lemonade for those parched throats of sick soldiers; he buys -canned peaches, strawberries, pears; he buys in the market -fresh fruit; he buys ice-cream and treats the whole hospital; he -buys whatever delicacies and luxuries his limited resources will -allow, and he makes them go as far as he can. Where does he -get the means for this expenditure? For Walt Whitman is -poor;—he is poor, and has a right to be proud of his poverty, -for it is the sacred, the ancient, the immemorial poverty of -goodness and genius. He gets the means by writing for newspapers; -he expends all he gets upon his boys, his darlings, the -sick and maimed soldiers—the young heroes of the land who -saved their country, the laborers of America who fought for -the hopes of the world. He adds to his own earnings the contributions -of noble souls, often strangers, who, in Boston, in New -York, in Providence, in Brooklyn, in Salem, in Washington -and elsewhere, have heard that such a man walks the wards, -and who volunteer to send him this assistance; when at last, -he gets a place under Government, and till Mr. Harlan turns -him out, he has a salary which he spends in the same way; -sometimes his wrung heart gets the better of his prudence, and he -spends till he himself is in difficulties. He gives all his money, -he gives all his time, he gives all his love. To every inmate -of the hospital something, if only a vital word, a cheering -touch, a caress, a trifling gift; but always in his rounds he selects -the special cases, the sorely wounded, the deeply despondent, -the homesick, the dying: to these he devotes himself; he -buoys them up with fond words, with caresses, with personal -affection; he bends over them, strong, clean, cheerful, perfumed, -loving, and his magnetic touch and love sustain them. -He does not shrink from the smell of their sickening gangrene; -he does not flinch from their bloody and rotten mutilations; he -draws nigher for all that; he sticks closer; he dresses those -wounds; he fans those burning temples; he moistens those -parched lips; he washes those wasted bodies; he watches -often and often in the dim ward by the sufferer’s cot all night -long; he reads, from the New Testament, the words sweeter -than music to the sinking soul; he soothes with prayer the -bedside of the dying; he sits, mournful and loving, by the -wasted dead. How can I tell the story of his labors! How -can I describe the scenes among which he moved with such endurance -and devotion, watched by me, for years! Few know -the spectacle presented by those grim wards. It was hideous. -I have been there at night when it seemed that I should die -with sympathy if I stayed;—when the horrible attitudes of -anguish, the horizontal shapes of cadaver on the white cots, -the quiet sleepers, the excruciated emaciations of men, the -bloody bandages, the smell of plastered sores, the dim lamp-light, -the long white ward, the shallow girl-nurse flirting with -the wardmaster or surgeon, the tinkle of the ward piano mixed -with the groans of some grisly wretch, half hidden behind a -screen, naked, shorn of both arms, held by the assistant upon -a stool, made up a scene whose well-compounded horror is unspeakable. -Now realize a man without worldly inducement, -without reward, without the mandate of official duty, voluntarily, -from love and compassion only, giving up his life to scenes -like these; foregoing pleasure and rest for vigils, as in chambers -of torture, among the despairing, the mangled, the dying, -the forms upon which shell and rifle and sabre had wrought -every bizarre atrocity of mutilation; immuring himself in the -air of their sighs, their moans, the mutter and scream of their -delirium; breathing the stench of their putrid wounds; taking -up his part and lot with them, living a life of privation and denial, -and hoarding his scanty means for the relief and mitigation -of their anguish. That man is Walt Whitman! I said his -labors have been immense. The word is well chosen. I speak -within bounds when I say that, during those years, he has been -in contact with, and, in one form or another, either in hospital or -on the field, personally ministered to, upward of one hundred -thousand sick and wounded men. You mothers of America, -these were your sons! Faithfully and with a mother’s love, he -tended them for you! Many and many a life has he saved—many -a time has he felt his heart grow great with that delicious -triumph—many a home owes its best beloved to him. Sick and -wounded, officers and privates, the black soldiers the same as -the white, the teamsters, the poor creatures in the contraband -camps, the rebel the same as the loyal—he did his best for them -all; they were all sufferers, they were all men.—Let him pass. -I note Thoreau’s saying, that he suggests something more than -human. It is true. I see it in his book and in his life. To -that something more than human which is also in all men—to -the hour of judgment, to the hour of sanity—let me resign him. -Not for such as I to vindicate such as he. Not for him, perhaps, -the recognition of his day and generation. But a life -and deeds like his, lightly esteemed by men, sink deep into the -memory of Man. Great is the stormy fight of Zutphen; it is -the young lion of English Protestantism springing in haughty -fury for the defence of the Netherlands from the bloody ravin -of Spain; but Philip Sidney passing the flask of water from his -own lips to the dying soldier looms gigantic, and makes all the -foreground of its noble purpose and martial rage; and whatever -be the verdict of the present, sure am I that hereafter and to -the latest ages, when Bull Run and Shiloh and Port Hudson, -when Vicksburg and Stone River and Fort Donelson, when -Pea Ridge and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and the Wilderness, -and the great march from Atlanta to Savannah, and -Richmond rolled in flame, and all the battles for the life of the -Republic against her last internal foe, are gathered up in accumulated -terraces of struggle upon the mountain of history, well -relieved against those bright and bloody tumultuous giant tableaux, -and all the dust and thunder of a noble war, the men and -women of America will love to gaze upon the stalwart form of -the good gray poet, bending to heal the hurts of their wounded -and soothe the souls of their dying, and the deep and simple -words of the last great martyr will be theirs—“Well, he looks -like <span class='sc'>a Man</span>!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So let me leave him. And if there be any who think this -tribute in bad taste, even to a poet so great, a person so unusual, -a man so heroic and loving, I answer, that when on -grounds of taste foes withhold detraction, friends may withhold -eulogy; and that at any rate I recognize no reason for -keeping back just words of love and reverence when, as in this -case, they must glow upon the sullen foil of the printed hatreds -of ten years. To that long record of hostility, I am only glad -and proud to be able to oppose this record of affection.—And, -with respect to the crowning enmity of the Secretary of the -Interior, let no person misjudge the motives upon which I -denounce it. Personally, apart from this act, I have nothing -against Mr. Harlan. He is of my own party; and my politics -have been from my youth essentially the same as his own. I -do not know him; I have never even seen him; I criticise no -attitude nor action of his life but this; and I criticise this with -as little personality as I can give to an action so personal. I -withhold, too, as far as I can, every expression of resentment; -and no one who knew all I know of this matter could fail to -credit me with singular and great moderation. For, behind -what I have related, there is another history, every incident of -which I have recovered from the obscurity to which it was -confided; and, as I think of it, it is with difficulty that I -restrain my just indignation. Instead of my comparatively -cold and sober treatment, this transaction deserves rather the -pitiless exposure and the measureless, stern anger and red-hot -steel scourge of Juvenal. But I leave untold its darkest details; -and, waiving every other consideration, I rest solely and -squarely on the general indignity and injury this action offers -to intellectual liberty. I claim that to expel an author from a -public office and subject him to public contumely, solely -because he has published a book which no one can declare -immoral without declaring all the grand books immoral, is to -affix a penalty to thought, and to obstruct the freedom of -letters. I declare this act the audacious captain of a series of -acts and a style of opinions whose tendency and effect throughout -Christendom is to dwarf and degrade literature, and to -make great books impossible, except under pains of martyrdom. -As such, I arraign it before every liberal and thoughtful -mind. I denounce it as a sinister precedent; as a ban upon -the free action of genius; as a logical insult to all commanding -literature; and as in every way a most serious and heinous -wrong. Difference of opinion there may and must be upon -the topics which in this letter I have grouped around it, but -upon the act itself there can be none. As I drag it up here -into the sight of the world, I call upon every scholar, every -man of letters, every editor, every good fellow everywhere who -wields the pen, to make common cause with me in rousing -upon it the full tempest of reprobation it deserves. I remember -Tennyson, a spirit of vengeance over the desecrated grave -of Moore; I think of Scott rolling back the tide of obloquy -from Byron; I see Addison gilding the blackening fame of -Swift; I mark Southampton befriending Shakespeare; I recall -Du Bellay enshielding Rabelais; I behold Hutten fortressing -Luther; here is Boccaccio lifting the darkness from Dante, -and scattering flame on his foes in Florence; this is Bembo -protecting Pomponatius; that is Grostête enfolding Roger -Bacon from the monkish fury; there, covered with light, -is Aristophanes defending Æschylus: and if there lives aught -of that old chivalry of letters, which in all ages has sprung to -the succor and defence of genius, I summon it to act the part -of honor and duty upon a wrong which, done to a single member -of the great confraternity of literature, is done to all, and -which flings insult and menace upon every immortal page that -dares transcend the wicked heart or the constricted brain. I -send this letter to Victor Hugo, for its passport through Europe; -I send it to John Stuart Mill, to Newman, and Matthew Arnold, -for England; I send it to Emerson and Wendell Phillips; to -Charles Sumner; to every Senator and Representative in Congress; -to all our journalists; to the whole American people; -to every one who guards the freedom of letters and the -liberty of thought throughout the civilized world. God grant -that not in vain upon this outrage do I invoke the judgment -of the mighty spirit of literature, and the fires of every honest -heart!</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:10em;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.1em;'><span class='sc'>William Douglas O’Connor</span>,</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>Of Massachusetts.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.3em;font-weight:bold;'>LIST OF BOOKS</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:1em;font-weight:bold;'>PUBLISHED BY</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;'>BUNCE AND HUNTINGTON,</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.1em;'>No. 459, BROOME ST.,</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.1em;'>(<span class='sc'>West of Broadway</span>,) <span class='sc'>New York</span>.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk103'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>G</span>OLDEN LEAVES FROM THE AMERICAN -POETS. Collected by <span class='sc'>John W. S. Hows</span>. 16mo, 550 pp., tinted paper,</p> - -<table id='tab1' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>vellum cloth, gilt tops, bevelled boards</td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'> $2 50</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>Extra cloth, full gilt sides and edges</td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'> 3 00</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>Half morocco, or half calf</td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'> 3 50</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>Morocco antique, or extra gilt</td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'> 5 00</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk104'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>G</span>OLDEN LEAVES FROM THE BRITISH -POETS. Collected by <span class='sc'>John W. S. Hows</span>. Uniform with “Golden Leaves -from the American Poets.”</p> - -<table id='tab2' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'>Vellum cloth, gilt top</td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'> $2 50</td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'>Extra cloth, full gilt sides and edges</td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'> 3 00</td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'>Half morocco, or half calf</td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'> 3 50</td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'>Morocco antique, or extra gilt</td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'> 5 00</td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk105'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>G</span>OLDEN LEAVES FROM THE DRAMATIC -POETS. Collected and arranged by <span class='sc'>John W. S. Hows</span>. Uniform with -“Golden Leaves” from the British and American Poets. 16mo, 576 pp.,</p> - -<table id='tab3' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle0'>vellum cloth, gilt top</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle1'> $2 50</td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle0'>Extra cloth, full gilt sides and edges</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle1'> 3 00</td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle0'>Half morocco, or half calf</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle1'> 3 50</td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle0'>Morocco antique, or extra gilt</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle1'> 5 00</td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<div class='blockquote0r9'> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:larger'>⁂</span> <span class='it'>The “Golden Leaves” series are now put up in sets in boxes, but the volumes are -also sold separately. Combined they afford, it is believed, the most complete and desirable -selection of British and American poetry that has yet been made; while the elegant appearance -of the volumes commends them to persons of taste and culture.</span></p> - -</div> - -<hr class='tbk106'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>T</span>HE MECHANICS’, MACHINISTS’, AND ENGINEERS’ -PRACTICAL BOOK OF REFERENCE. By <span class='sc'>Charles Haslett</span>, -Civil Engineer. Edited by Professor <span class='sc'>Charles W. Hackley</span>, late Professor of -Mathematics in Columbia College, New York. A new edition. 18mo, 518 pp.,</p> - -<table id='tab4' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab4c1 tdStyle0'>pocket form, morocco tucks</td><td class='tab4c2 tdStyle1'> $2 50</td><td class='tab4c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk107'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>P</span>ARSON AND PEOPLE; <span class='sc'>or, Incidents in the Every-Day -Life of a Clergyman</span>. By the Rev. <span class='sc'>Edward Spooner</span>, M. A., Vicar -of Heston, Middlesex. From the Second London Edition. With a Preface by -an American Clergyman.</p> - -<table id='tab5' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab5c1 tdStyle0'>16mo, cloth, bevelled, with an Illustration</td><td class='tab5c2 tdStyle1'> $1 25</td><td class='tab5c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk108'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>W</span>HAT TO DO WITH THE COLD MUTTON. -A Book of Réchauffés. Together with numerous approved receipts for the -kitchen of a gentleman of moderate income.</p> - -<table id='tab6' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab6c1 tdStyle0'>16mo, cloth, 218 pp.</td><td class='tab6c2 tdStyle1'> 80 cts.</td><td class='tab6c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<p class='pindent'>This volume, while including the usual range of receipts, is of special economical -value, as affording valuable directions for re-serving cold dishes.</p> - -<hr class='tbk109'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>A</span>BRAHAM LINCOLN; an Horatian Ode. By <span class='sc'>Richard -Henry Stoddard</span>.</p> - -<table id='tab7' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab7c1 tdStyle0'>8vo, paper</td><td class='tab7c2 tdStyle1'> 25 cts.</td><td class='tab7c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk110'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>T</span>HE LINCOLN MEMORIAL. A Record of the Life, -Assassination, and Obsequies of the Martyred President. Containing a sketch -of President Lincoln’s Life; an accurate report of the Assassination; the particulars -of the Obsequies; the principal Funeral Orations; and the Eulogiums pronounced, -both in America and in Europe. Portrait and vignette title.</p> - -<table id='tab8' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab8c1 tdStyle0'>8vo, 288 pp., extra cloth, bevelled boards</td><td class='tab8c2 tdStyle1'> $2 00</td><td class='tab8c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk111'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>S</span>OLDIERS’ LETTERS. A Collection of Letters from -Soldiers, both Officers and Privates, relating their Personal Adventures and Sufferings -in the Great Rebellion. With vignette title.</p> - -<table id='tab9' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab9c1 tdStyle0'>12mo, cloth, 472 pp.</td><td class='tab9c2 tdStyle1'> $2 00</td><td class='tab9c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk112'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>O</span>UR FARM OF TWO ACRES. By <span class='sc'>Harriet Martineau</span>.</p> - -<table id='tab10' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab10c1 tdStyle0'>16mo, 48 pp., paper</td><td class='tab10c2 tdStyle1'> 20 cts.</td><td class='tab10c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk113'/> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='float:left; clear: left; margin:0 0.1em 0 0; padding:0; line-height: 1.0em; font-size: 200%;'>T</span>WO MEN; a Novel. By <span class='sc'>Elizabeth Stoddard</span>. 12mo,</p> - -<table id='tab11' summary='' class='left'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 0em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab11c1 tdStyle0'>291 pp., cloth</td><td class='tab11c2 tdStyle1'> $1 50</td><td class='tab11c3 tdStyle0'></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='tbk114'/> - -<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;font-size:1.1em;'><span class='bold'>Transcriber’s Notes:</span></p> - -<p class='noindent'>Punctuation and type-setting errors have been corrected without note. Hyphenation and archaic spellings have been retained as in the original.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Good Gray Poet, A Vindication, by -William Douglas O'Connor - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOOD GRAY POET, A VINDICATION *** - -***** This file should be named 51043-h.htm or 51043-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/0/4/51043/ - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed -Proofreaders Canada team (http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from -page images generously made available by the Internet -Archive American Libraries -(https://archive.org/details/goodgraypoetvind00ocon) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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