whom he had in some sense prepared the way, and that on July 21, 1855, he wrote to the then almost unknown poet the following memorable letter:
Dear Sir: I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seems the sterile and stingy Nature, as if too much handiwork or too much lymph in the temperament were making our Western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things, said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.
I, greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.
I did not know, until I last night saw the book advertised in a newspaper, that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office.
I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks, and visiting New York to pay you my respects.
Now Whitman's "free and brave thought," his determination to trust himself, body and soul, impelled him in the first gush of his self-expression to
