That piece of writing of yours in the last "Critic" is to me very impressive.1 It is seldom you have fallen into such a noble & lofty strain. As I am myself trying to write a little these days, it makes me sad. It is like a great ship that comes to windward of me & takes the breeze out of the sail of my little shallop. I shall have to lay by today & let the impression wear loc.01149.002_large.jpg off. I think you have hit it exactly with that word physiological. It lets in a flood of light. The whole essay is one to be long conned over.
I went down to N.Y. to hear Arnold2 on Emerson3 Friday night. Curtis4—the pensive Curtis introduced the lecturer. I wonder if you have heard Curtis speak? Tis a pity he is not a little more robust & manly. He fairly leans & languishes on the bosom of the Graces, one after another. Arnold looked hearty & strong & spoke in a foggy, misty English voice, that left the outlining of his sentences pretty loc.01149.003_large.jpg obscure, but which had a certain charm after all. The lecture contained nothing new. The Tribune report you sent me, is an admirable summary—the pith of the whole lecture. He does not do full justice to Emerson as I hope to show in my essay. At least Emerson can be shorn of these things & left a more impressive figure than Arnold leaves him. He had much to say about Carlyle5 too, but would not place him with the great writers! Because he was more than a great literary man he denied him literary honors. Drop me a line when you feel like it. Winter loc.01149.004_large.jpg is in full blush up here & the river snores & groans like an uneasy sleeper.
With much love, John BurroughsCorrespondent:
The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).