Project Gutenberg's Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today, by Henry Eduard Legler

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Title: Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today

Author: Henry Eduard Legler

Release Date: January 20, 2010 [EBook #31027]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WALT WHITMAN

_Yesterday & Today_

BY

HENRY EDUARD LEGLER

CHICAGO
BROTHERS OF THE BOOK
1916

COPYRIGHT 1916
BY THE
BROTHERS OF THE BOOK

The edition of this book consists of six hundred copies on this
Fabriano hand-made paper, and the type distributed.

This copy is Number 2

TO DR. MAX HENIUS

CONSISTENT HATER OF SHAMS
ARDENT LOVER OF ALL OUTDOORS
AND GENEROUS GIVER OF SELF
IN GENUINE FELLOWSHIP

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

_Walt Whitman: Yesterday & Today_

I

On a day about mid-year in 1855, the conventional literary world was
startled into indecorous behavior by the unannounced appearance of a
thin quarto sheaf of poems, in form and in tone unlike anything of
precedent issue. It was called Leaves of Grass, and there were but
twelve poems in the volume. No author's name appeared upon the title
page, the separate poems bore no captions, there was no imprint of
publisher. A steel engraving of a man presumably between thirty and
forty years of age, coatless, shirt flaringly open at the neck, and a
copyright notice identifying Walter Whitman with the publication,
furnished the only clues. Uncouth in size, atrociously printed, and
shockingly frank in the language employed, the volume evoked such a
tirade of rancorous condemnation as perhaps bears no parallel in the
history of letters. From contemporary criticisms might be compiled an
Anthology of Anathema comparable to Wagner's Schimpf-Lexicon, or the
Dictionary of Abuse suggested by William Archer for Henrik Ibsen. Some
of the striking adjectives and phrases employed in print would include
the follow