Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon) read again with deepest interest the Songs of Parting. I keep touching deeper & not before understood tho'ts with my plummet in reading you,—espec. in these solemn hymns of the Infinite. The productions of Homer & Milton seem quite boyish in comparison with the profound cosmic epic L. of G. It is a refreshing draught to me after the Bafflement of the week in newspapers. Be sure to read Tyndall's2 fascinating long article of reminiscences of Carlyle3 in January Fortnightly.
With the old love— W. S. K. loc.03072.001.jpgCorrespondent:
William Sloane Kennedy
(1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also
published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on
the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander
Gardener, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was to become a fierce defender of Whitman,
in his first published article he admitted reservations about the "coarse
indecencies of language" and protested that Whitman's ideal of democracy was
"too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February
1881), 149–158. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).