IN the year 1855 the American people knew but little of books. Their
ideals, their models, were English. Young and Pollok, Addison and Watts,
were regarded as great poets. Some of the more reckless read Thomson's
"Seasons" and the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott. A few, not quite
orthodox, delighted in the mechanical monotony of Pope, and the
really wicked--those lost to all religious shame--were worshipers of
Shakespeare. The really orthodox Protestant, untroubled by doubts,
considered Milton the greatest poet of them all. Byron and Shelley were
hardly respectable--not to be read by young persons. It was admitted
on all hands that Burns was a child of nature of whom his mother was
ashamed and proud.
In the blessed year aforesaid, candor, free and sincere speech, were
under the ban. Creeds at that time were entrenched behind statutes,
prejudice, custom, ignorance, stupidity, Puritanism and slavery; that is
to say, slavery of mind and body.
Of course it always has been, and forever will be, impossible for
slavery, or any kind or form of injustice, to produce a great
poet. There are hundreds of verse makers and writers on the side of
wrong--enemies of progress--but they are not poets, they are not men of
genius.
At this time a young man--he to whom this testimonial is given--he upon
whose head have fallen the snows of more than seventy winters--this man,
born within the sound of the sea, gave to the world a book, "Leaves of
Grass." This book was, and is, the true transcript of a soul. The man is
unmasked. No drapery of hypocrisy, no pretence, no fear. The book was
as original in form as in thought. All customs were forgotten
or disregarded, all rules broken--nothing mechanical--no
imitation--spontaneous, running and winding like a river, multitudinous
in its thoughts as the waves of the sea--nothing mathematical or
measured--in everything a touch of chaos; lacking what is called form,
as clouds lack form, but not lacking the splendor of sunrise or the
glory of sunset. It was a marvelous collection and aggregation of
fragments, hints, suggestions, memories, and prophecies, weeds and
flowers, clouds and clods, sights and sounds, emotions and passions,
waves, shadows and constellations.
His book was received by many with disdain, with horror, with
indignation and protest--by the few as a marvelous, almost miraculous,
message to the world--full of thought, philosophy, poetry and music.
In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous. A great soul appears
and fills the world with new and marvelous harmonies. In his words is
the old Promethean flame. The heart of nature beats and throbs in his
line. The respectable prudes and pedagogues sound the alarm, and cry, or
rather screech: "Is this a book for a young person?"
A poem true to life as a Greek statue--candid as nature--fills these
barren souls with fear.
They forget that drapery about the perfect was suggested by immodesty.
The provincial prudes, and others of like mold, pretend that love is a
duty rather than a passion--a kind of self-denial--not an over-mastering
joy. They preach the gospel of pretence and pantalettes, In the presence
of sincerity, of truth, they cast down their eyes and endeavor to feel
immodest. To them, the most beautiful thing is hypocrisy adorned with a
blush.
They have no idea of an honest, pure passion, glorying in its
strength--intense, intoxicated with the beautiful, giving even to
inanimate things pulse and motion, and that transfigures, ennobles, and
idealizes the object of its adoration.
They do not walk the streets of the city of life--they explore the
sewers; they stand in the gutters and cry "Unclean!" They pretend that
beauty is a snare; that love is a Delilah; that the highway of joy is
the broad road, lined with flowers and filled with perfume, leading to
the city of eternal sorrow.
Since the year 1855 the American people have developed; they are
somewhat acquainted with the literature of the world. They have
witnessed the most tremendous of revolutions, not only upon the fields
of battle, but in the world of thought. The American citizen has
concluded that it is hardly worth while being a sovereign unless he has
the right to think for himself.
And now, from this height, with the vantage-ground of to-day, I propose
to examine this book and to state, in a general way, what Walt Whitman
has done, what he has accomplished, and the place he has won in the
world of thought.