Your kind remembrance of me on your birthday, & the gifts of copies of your new edition of Leaves of Grass1 have given me the greatest pleasure. I have to thank you also for November Boughs,2 a most welcome gift, which reached me after some delay loc.01502.002_large.jpgthrough Mr Lewis Fry3 of Bristol. But more even than your kind thought of me it rejoices me to know that you are somewhat better in health, & that the love & honour due to you by your own country has come to you—all in good time. I wrote a loc.01502.003_large.jpg few lines to a friend of yours on the occasion of your 70th birthday which I believe will be printed in a pamphlet.4 But I want also, at least in fancy, to reach my hand across the sea, & to take your hand, & to tell you that your friendship is a good possession for me. loc.01502.004_large.jpg I think of seventy years as quite the vestibule of age, because my own father is rigorous, at least in mind, now in his ninetieth year. And the recent songs you have sung have only the maturity & flavour of well-ripened fruit, growing on a sound-timbered tree. At eighty perhaps you may have even a happier birthday, with yet more new friends & still the old ones.
Always dear friend yours Edward DowdenCorrespondent:
Edward Dowden (1843–1913), professor of
English literature at the University of Dublin, was one of the first to
critically appreciate Whitman's poetry, particularly abroad, and was primarily
responsible for Whitman's popularity among students in Dublin. In July 1871,
Dowden penned a glowing review of Whitman's work in the Westminster Review entitled "The Poetry of Democracy: Walt Whitman," in which Dowden described
Whitman as "a man unlike any of his predecessors. . . . Bard of America, and
Bard of democracy." In 1888, Whitman observed to Traubel: "Dowden is a book-man:
but he is also and more particularly a man-man: I guess that is where we
connect" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden,
Sunday, June 10, 1888, 299). For more, see Philip W. Leon, "Dowden, Edward (1843–1913)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).