I recd your favor of April 13th and the book, which I'm delighted to have.2 Pardon my delay in acknowledging, due to illness. I'm delighted to learn that your lecture loc.01337.002_large.jpg and Reading, in the Academy of Music, was so great a success.3 I hope you may repeat it for many years to come. Americans are apt to forget their great men, unless their work in this world, is kept before their minds, through annual presentations of it.
loc.01337.003_large.jpgIt was a great disappointment to me, when I was last in Philada , that press of work and shortness of time, did not allow me to see you. When I next visit the city, I shall certainly arrange to have a talk with you, on loc.01337.004_large.jpg certain points upon which I have been long pondering—one especially, that of language-shaping, and the tendency toward impassioned prose, which I feel will be the poetic form of the future, and of which, I think, your "Leaves of Grass" is the most marked prophecy.
Very truly yours, Hiram CorsonWalt Whitman, Esq.
loc.01337.005_large.jpg loc.01337.006_large.jpg see notes June 8 1888 from Prof: CorsonCorrespondent:
Hiram Corson (1828–1911) was
a scholar of English literature from Philadelphia, where he taught at Girard
College. While his studies focused mainly on canonical British texts
(Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc.), Corson would also give public readings of
Whitman's verse.