Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps
"Literary
Review."
Boston Commonwealth,
24 February 1866, p. 1.
Such is the title of the latest volume of poems by a man of singular
genius, Mr. Walter Whitman, of Brooklyn, N. Y. lately displaced from a
humble clerkship in Washington by the husband of Mrs. Harlan. In it is
included also a smaller collection of verses, called "Sequel to Drum Taps,"
and containing chiefly poems which relate to the death of President Lincoln
and the close of the war. The poems called Drum Taps, as the
name indicates, relate mostly to the beginning and the progress of the
war. Before noticing at any length either these poems or their author,
let us make a little comparison which is not without significance.
Mr. Whitman is a native of New York, a staunch patriot, and through
the war, by his services to our soldiers in camp and hospital, has earned
the gratitude of tens of thousands of the men who fought and died for their
country. He has tenderly cared for the wounded, nursed the sick, consoled
the dying and buried the dead. This he did not for pay or for glory - for
he got neither - but for love of the sacred cause of freedom and of mankind.
He had previously been known to many of his countrymen as a poet of original
powers, occupied with the most important themes, which he did not always
treat in conformity to the preconceived opinions of the multitude. Having
served in his chosen work through the war, both before and after his appointment
and dismissal from a clerkship at Washington, he sought in his native
city a publisher for his patriotic verses, but he found none willing to
put his name to the volume. Messrs. Bunce & Huntington finally printed
it, but without their name, and without taking any of customary steps to
introduce the book to the reading public. It is scarcely to be got at a
bookstore, has hardly been noticed by a newspaper, and, though full of
the noblest verses, is utterly unknown to the mass of readers.
Now, look at another fact. Mr. John Esten Cooke is a Virginian, who
early joined the rebellion, in which his State played so prominent a part.
He served in the army, and did his noble best to destroy the government
and kill our brave soldiers. Being a writer, too, he aided his sword by
his pen; and by what passes in Virginia for fine writing, he encouraged
his fellow-traitors to prolong their treason. He had been known at
the North, too, before the war, as a writer of trashy verses and sensational
fiction.
Whether Mr. Cooke was pardoned by President Johnson at the urgency of
Mrs. Cobb, or whether he is still unpardoned, (if he ever rose to the rank
which made a pardon necessary,) we do not know. But he has had the effrontery
to come to New York with a fourth-rate novel, written in the style of Mrs.
Henry Wood, but full of the rankest treason and laudation of traitors,
and he, too,
has needed a publisher. But he did not wait long. Messrs. Bunce &
Huntington, the same who treat Mr. Whitman so cavalierly, are eager
to put his trash into the market. They announce it months in advance; they
advertise it in all the newspapers; they send advance copies and secure
long notices in the leading journals. The Advertiser devotes nearly
a column to it; the Evening Post notices it at some length;
the Round Table blows a trumpet before and behind it; and other
journals pay it the courtesy of a serious review. Yet neither the author
nor the book have any merit to be compared with Tupper and the Country
Parson, while both are full of the vilest political heresy and bad taste.
This is the way we encourage poets and patriots; this is the way we
reward them, and make treason odious!
Yet this displaced and slighted poet has written the most touching
dirge for Abraham Lincoln of all that have appeared. Here it is copied
from [the] volume before us: -
["O Captain! My Captain!" quoted in full]
[...]
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