To William Bell Scott
DEAR SCOTT,--Among various gifts which I have received from you, tangible
and intangible, was a copy of the original quarto edition of Whitman's
_Leaves of Grass_, which you presented to me soon after its first
appearance in 1855. At a time when few people on this side of the Atlantic
had looked into the book, and still fewer had found in it anything save
matter for ridicule, you had appraised it, and seen that its value was real
and great. A true poet and a strong thinker like yourself was indeed likely
to see that. I read the book eagerly, and perceived that its substantiality
and power were still ahead of any eulogium with which it might have come
commended to me--and, in fact, ahead of most attempts that could be made at
verbal definition of them.
Some years afterwards, getting to know our friend Swinburne, I found with
much satisfaction that he also was an ardent (not of course a _blind_)
admirer of Whitman. Satisfaction, and a degree almost of surprise; for his
intense sense of poetic refinement of form in his own works and his
exacting acuteness as a critic might have seemed likely to carry him away
from Whitman in sympathy at least, if not in actual latitude of perception.
Those who find the American poet "utterly formless," "intolerably rough and
floundering," "destitute of the A B C of art," and the like, might not
unprofitably ponder this very different estimate of him by the author of
_Atalanta in Calydon_.
May we hope that now, twelve years after the first appearance of _Leaves of
Grass_, the English reading public may be prepared for a selection of
Whitman's poems, and soon hereafter for a complete edition of them? I trust
this may prove to be the case. At any rate, it has been a great
gratification to me to be concerned in the experiment; and this is enhanced
by my being enabled to associate with it your name, as that of an early and
well-qualified appreciator of Whitman, and no less as that of a dear
friend.
Yours affectionately,