Content:
This manuscript consists of notes about various poetic meters, with Whitman writing the derivation of the term, a description of the meter, and then providing an example of a poetic line employing that meter. The example for hexameter (at the bottom of leaf 1 recto) is taken from a line in Homer. Whitman marked this line in an article published in an 1846 issue of the
American Whig Review
("Translators of Homer"
American Whig Review
4, no. 1 [July 1846]: 364). Thus, the date of this manuscript is after 1846. The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that probably date from around or before 1855. In his transcription of the manuscript, Edward Grier includes an additional section copied from Richard Maurice Bucke's
Notes and Fragments
. See
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
, ed. Edward F. Grier (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:355–356.
