A certain publisher, who honored very much Walt Whitman, could have paid
him no higher tribute than to have closed the preface to Whitman's Poems
as follows: "To have met Whitman was a privilege, to have been his
friend was an honor. The latter was mine; and among the many
reminiscences of my life, none are to me more pleasing than those which
gather about the name of 'The Good Grey Poet'."
John Burroughs was for thirty years the intimate friend and constant
associate of Walt Whitman, and I have heard him say that those were
among the most pleasant years of his life. All who ever knew Whitman,
and became in any way intimate with him, have practically the same to
say of him. No writer ever unfolded himself and his greatness more
completely than Whitman, and yet we have a great many excellent critics
who are pretty harsh on him. This we believe is so, because the critics
have not read the poet aright. They have failed to get out of the poems
what was put in them. Whitman is not a poet according to classical
standards, but as a "Creator" he is.
Emerson says of his poetry: "I find it the most extraordinary piece of
wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." Julian Hawthorne says
of it: "Original and forceful, Whitman cannot be judged by ordinary
literary standards. His scornful trampling upon all metrical rules, and
his freedom in treating of matters, usually passed in silence, have so
far been a decided barrier to the approval of his work."
Professor Underwood of the California University has the following good
word for the poet: "Pupils who are accustomed to associate the idea of
poetry with regular classic measure in rhyme, or in ten-syllabled blank
verse or elastic hexameter, will commence these short and simple prose
sentences with surprise, and will wonder how any number of them can form
a poem. But let them read aloud with a mind in sympathy with the picture
as it is displayed, and they will find by Nature's unmistakable
response, that the author is a poet, and possesses the poets'
incommunicable power to touch the heart."
Professor Pattee of the Pennsylvania State College, on the other hand
says: "It is certainly true that to the majority of readers, 'Leaves of
Grass', contains a few good things amid a disgusting mass of rubbish.
"Whitman is confessedly the poet of the body. His book is not upward. He
grovels in the earthly and disgusting parts of human life and
experience. His egotism is remarkable.
"All the great poets have looked away from their disgusting surroundings
and fleshly fetters, into a world of their creation that was bright and
ethereal, but Whitman cries: 'I am satisfied with the perishable and the
casual.' This alone would debar him from the company of the great
masters of song."
Professor Newcomer of Stanford University, divides honors by offending
and defending:
First: "It deliberately violates the rules of art, and unless we admit
that our rules are idle, we must admit Whitman's defects."