I was glad to see again once more a scrawl from you, even in a paper. I felt also glad to see there is someone else more gifted then me trying to honour you and make your Work known in our Old land. I noted the French Review—fain would I have read it, but alas I can only read my own tongue. I often and often—wish one could conjure up some Spirit to give one the meaning of much I see in other tongues, but alas though I often call up spirit alas—comes to aid me at my call. Well to cease I got your Essay on Burns1 reprinted here in two local papers. I enclose one rejoinder from a canny Scot, a decent soul, a man that came here a Journeyman and now is the working Manager of 500 men. he is also a Ryhmer one little Sketch of his I enclose you.2 you will see he is of a narrow school of thought, wants width, he has got a good heart though
loc.01456.002_large.jpgI must confess I felt disapointed somewhat in the Burns. I fear you are not well up in Burns' Life. he was to all intents and purposes a Nature akin to yours. true not so wide, not so democratic, still a democrat. he lost promotion through his sympathy with the French Revolution 1793—he sent some guns to them which were stopped. that speaks for the man's sympathy with the cause of man. Carlyle's3 Essay on him and his Poems is by far the justest I have read with Lockheart 's4 Life of him. feeling how much there is of real Kinship between your two natures I felt sorry to find you had not fully grasped the hand of my Hero of Scotland in 1793. A man's a man for ah that."5 what a cheering voice that is to any soul that is able to read it. then again his idea that even "auld Nick "might be saved if he only would take a thought and mend" is the widest stretch of true charity I find in any—Poetry. I find his poetry comes home to the heart of all human Kind. I find in my travels and talks with men, many of their poor hard toiling souls to whom his Poems are the very gospel of consolation and hope.
loc.01456.003_large.jpgI hope you will look it up again for us if possible. He will repay some thought I think I only wish I had you here beside me, then we could talk it over together so nicely. the stray notices I could place into your hands would enable you to see the full man. I feel glad you have done what you have, but yearn for more. give us Essays on Emerson6 & Tennyson.7 I often try to make out for myself what you really think of these two men. you are so dear to me, I often wish I was by your side. I feel there is so much I sympathise and love in Literature.—that we could chat over. and I think where it so, how many nice Essays would be done that would rejoice the hearts of brothers in the same grand school of human sympathy. the great hearts of our Time are begginning to wake up—we are begginning to shake of the bondage cast over us by the Jewish Race through their Books and the priesthood that has arisen from them.
loc.01456.004_large.jpgI learn with sorrow and deep regret, your Poems are still a venture of your own. are your pupils too poor? What are we think you? if our prophet starve? excuse me being to bold: The great heart of America surely cannot long allow this to be true? or is it the penalty all prophets pay for being such to a people? Well I hope sunshine will come, and that soon. If I can in anyway be helpful let me know. I can at least try. we are far apart that is true. yet even here something I might do as a manifestation of my love and fellowship. I enclose some cuttings that have been saved for your reading.8 with a kind of boy's care I have gathered them. I would have sent them by news post, only I was afraid they would get lost, so thought this way was the best. I write you these few lines, simply as a quick reply to your scrawl, not by any means all I hoped to write you. If silent never once think you are forgotten even by one of the Old land.
Yours in true sympathy of heart Thomas DixonCorrespondent:
Thomas Dixon (1831–1880), a corkcutter of
Sunderland, England, was one of Walt Whitman's early English admirers. In 1856,
he had bought copies of Leaves of Grass from a book
peddler; one of these copies was later sent by William B. Scott to William
Michael Rossetti. Dixon vigorously supported cultural projects and represented
the ideal laborer of John Ruskin, who printed many of his own letters to the
corkcutter in Time and Tide (1867). See Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott, ed. W. Minto
(1892), 2, 32–33, 267–269; Harold Blodgett, Walt
Whitman in England (1934), 15–17; The Works of
John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (1905), 17:
lxxviii–lxxix.