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Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)

XXI.— Leaves of Grass Horsell, London, 1856.

"We have glanced through this book with disgust and astonishment;—astonishment that anyone can be found who would dare to print such a farrago of rubbish,—lucubrations more like the ravings of a drunkard, or one half crazy, than anything which a man in his senses could think it fit to offer to the consideration of his fellow men. Where these bald, confused, disjointed, caricatures of blank verse have any meaning, it is generally indecent; several times execrably profane. We should not have bestowed one line of notice upon such an insult to common sense and common propriety, as this book but that, to our unspeakable surprise, we find bound up with it extracts from various American papers highly laudatory of this marvellous production: and we think it right to call the attention of our American readers to the fact, that any (even of the meanest) of their literary critics, should be mistaken enough to lend a sanction to such trash as this."

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