ABSTRACT
Extracts from pseudonymous (‘Matador’) review, New York Graphic (25 November 1873). Reprinted in Bucke, pp. 209–10.
The interest of this brief essay lies in the candour with which it speaks of the author’s change of heart about Whitman. Taste, unlike the love described by Marlowe in Hero and Leander, is not created by overpowering first impressions necessarily. It may develop rather slowly. This reader’s avowal seems to be a perfect illustration of the truth of William Blake’s Proverb: We are led to believe a lie When we see with not through the eye.
The progress of his experience is from seeing Whitman’s work with his eye merely (at which time it appeared completely ridiculous) to seeing it through his eye with entire identification and sympathy. It then became something sublime. The lines that he chooses to illustrate Whitman’s genius to those who are still sceptical (from the middle of section 21 of ‘Song of Myself’: ‘I am he that walks with the tender and growing night’) have been appreciated even by those critics and scholars, like Esther Shephard, who have been least charitable in their assessments of Whitman’s character and poetic originality.
