While this Selection was passing through the press, it has been my
privilege to receive two letters from Mr. Whitman, besides another
communicated to me through a friend. I find my experience to be the same as
that of some previous writers: that, if one admires Whitman in reading his
books, one loves him on coming into any personal relation with him--even
the comparatively distant relation of letter-writing.
The more I have to thank the poet for the substance and tone of his
letters, and some particular expressions in them, the more does it become
incumbent upon me to guard against any misapprehension. He has had nothing
whatever to do with this Selection, as to either prompting, guiding, or
even ratifying it: except only that he did not prohibit my making two or
three verbal omissions in the _Prose Preface to the Leaves of Grass_, and
he has supplied his own title, _President Lincoln's Funeral Hymn_, to a
poem which, in my Prefatory Notice, is named (by myself) _Nocturn for the
Death of Lincoln_. All admirers of his poetry will rejoice to learn that
there is no longer any doubt of his adding to his next edition "a brief
cluster of pieces born of thoughts on the deep themes of Death and
Immortality." A new American edition will be dear to many: a complete
English edition ought to be an early demand of English poetic readers, and
would be the right and crowning result of the present Selection.
W. M. R.
1868.