"The Newest Books."
Book Buyer 5
(January 1889), 584-5.
Time only can determine the exact place which Walt Whitman is to occupy
among the world's thinkers; and meanwhile it is instructive and interesting
to learn from this volume something of the origin, growth, and purpose
of his Leaves of Grass, the volume of verse around which so much
controversy has raged. In the opening essay, entitled "A Backward Glance
o'er Travel'd Roads," the author discusses this work with candor and at
length, explaining the motives that prompted it and the philosophy of life
that it attempts to expound. The essay is certainly interesting and throws
a great deal of valuable light upon the spirit that pervades the Leaves
of Grass, as well as upon its peculiar form. The first quality which
the author claims for this body of verse is its suggestiveness, and as
regards the lines that have called forth the most criticism, he says "the
work must stand or fall with them, as the human body and soul must remain
as an entirety." The author's later verse makes the second division of
the book, and is gathered under the title, "Sands at Seventy." The latter
half of the book consists of papers of varying length on literary, personal,
and other themes, much of it vigorous in expression and full of suggestiveness.
A portrait of the author taken from life in his seventieth year is the
frontispiece of the book, and is reproduced on the opposite page.