New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1876-04-13

SERIOUSNESS ABskNI-IiiE FAVORABLE oilN'N
OLA NEW SCHOOL or ENGLISH AND AMERICAN
CRITICS.
TO the EdtfOr Of The TrfbWne.
SIR: As one Of the friends and admirers Of Walt
Whitman in this country deeply regret that you
should have felt obliged in repelling tic attack of
Robert Buchanan upon the guild of New-England
authorship in Tuesdays TRIBUNE, to throw the
weight Of Your great journal so decidedly against
the literary claim OF the American poet. II has been
nv good fortune 70 know Whitman long aud init
mately and owe him debt of gratitude can never
hope TO repay. As young man have obtained no
such moral and intellectual lifts, as some one has
aptly named this kind of service, from any other
source a. from his poems and his contact and con-
vcFsation He has been help to me, as know he
has been TO others, In way and to degree that
mere literature never can be-a help Ike that one
GETS from primitive sources and from the great
sciences. Hence | felt personally aggrieved over
your Endorsement of the critical estimate oil MN
pronounced by The London Daily NerS-all the moro
acgrieved because | know 1t to be sincere ana IN
,pired by no craft hostility.
The Ne,rs, no doubt, speaks the opinion Of large
number Of It's readers, and perhaps the opinion of
the majority of British literary journals but not the
opiuon of majority of the rising men in the fields
Of English poetry aud criticism as you are doubtless
aware. There is Mr. Buchanan himself, who has
certainly earned the right TO be heard, and who SAID
of Whitman nearly ten years ago that IN actuaI
living force in grippe and muscle he has no equal
among cotemporaries.p And | will say here that
this is very nearly the opinion of our poet pro-
nounced by the French journal, RerHe da luna on
the occasion of the publication OF his Drnn-laps.
But before Mr.. Buchanan, VIM. NJ. Rossetti, the ac-
complished London poet and critic, had come out
strongIv on behalf of Whitman, calling his " Leaves
81 no pzt
Next came Prof DOwden of Trinity College Duh
lin with an article in The Westminster EerCC, III as
noble and lofty a strain of welcome as was ever
called forth by any poet. Roden Noel, the rela-
tive of Byron, himself a poet and eX-M' l."
has also enrolled himself among the champions oil
Leaves of Grass" Prof. Clifford of the Royal IN
stitute welcomes its author as the poet OF all others
whose utterances are most in harmony with modern
science. j. Arlington SymOnds, an eminent Greek
scholar author of Studies of the Greek Poets ana
a poet himself says Whitman is more truly creek
than any other man of modern times. MI SWIM
burne's admiration of him is well known Arthur
Give celebrates HIN in he GeRHemda'S AGga-'no as
the Poet of JOY" and George Saintsbury, one OF
the critics of The academy and The Contemporary he
rec has lent his trenchant pen in his defense. The
attitude of Tennyson toward him is eminently cor
dial and sympathetic. In every literary gatherngm
London or Edinburgh OF Dublin an informed there
is always a large sprinklingof admirers of Whitman,
and it would appear that no man is 60 inuch dls-
cussed and champiOned. Then what shall we say OF
Freilierath's welcome of him and of the reception
given his works by the Danish and Norwegian poets
and critics7 Is it only possible or is 1t an actuaf
poet that has thus met with reception abroad
never given to any other American slngers1 am
aware that there are dissenting voices In Great
Britain but they are for the most part feeble voices.
~ ,rsfs of no ef
the Period" and author of recent drama. decnes
him as he does Tennyson and Browning. Peter
Bayne, too Peter so dense, friend says, that it
will take more than ono cockcrowing even TO wake
up his slumberng faculties.
At home the rising and the risen literary lights are
nearly all set against Whitman, though l know he
has large and an increasing circle OF appreclatiYe
readers in this country For my own part have no
more doubt of his greatness than have of the sun
at noon-day. He seems to Inc about the only
American poet that man, apart from the Verslher,
the scholar the professor, the gentleman OF elegant
leisure. &C., would want to read, because III him
alone there is breeze bracing and masculine as OF
the mountain or the shore am aware that there IS
something rude and forbdding abOuthm, just asthere
is about the open ar and that certain delicate in
door Compartments cannot endure him but 1t IS so
much the worse for them that they cannot We're
human or manly qualities, with the conscious
elegant literary worker uppermOst, his re-
ception in this country at least would have been
quite different But he would have been so
much less worthy of attention. The truth Is,
sweet poets elegant poets, learned correct beauti-
full poets. are not rare, in our age, but powerful
poets poets who can confront and compel the ggan-
tic materiasm of our times and land, and who by
dnt of inward native force can rise above the poetic
and literary consciousness with which the very at
mosphere rotten, rare, and it seems are msun-
understood when they come. The trouble with
Whitman is he gives us something more and better
than mere literature art, and the main influence
of his poems is in the direction of health, character,
and manly activity, and can never be to beget
critical, sophisticated, or Over-intelectual race,
which is the tendency of literary culture as such.
What he gives us is we'll oxygenated it is red, arte-
rial blood and has in it tho making of virlle robust
men, Can the same thing be said of the works OF
our popular poets
In highly refined and cultivated times like ours,
the great mass Of the poetry written as it were out
of the atmosphere out of the general store OF dis
titled and accumulated literary skill and refine
nlent and while it has its value for any high tonic
and national purposes it is absolutely worthless.
You Will agree with me that Whitman's poems are
NOT so written. They are breath from the sea and
the woods and not from the libraries, and Will be
valued highest by him whose spiritual lungs are
strongest and ceanest.
Are we never to get beyond the point where the
demand is for something elegant and scholarly, and
where the analogue in art of the power and inior-
mality of elemental nature is more acceptable than
any studied form and elaboration, however com
pletoi
Nav be Whitman is not poet or an artist in the
current acceptation Of those terms. He probably Is
not. So much the better if We have TO employ new