I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "Leaves of Grass."1 I find it the
most extraordinary piece of wit & wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am
very loc.02109.002_large.jpg happy in
reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of
what seemed the sterile & stingy nature, as if too much handiwork or too much
lymph in the temperament were making our western wits fat & mean. I give you joy
of
loc.02109.003_large.jpg your free &
brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably
well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment,
which so delights us, & which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at
the beginning of a great career, which yet
loc.02109.004_large.jpg must have had a long foreground
somewhere for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no
illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best
merits, namely, of fortifying & encouraging.
I did not know until I, last night, saw loc.02109.005_large.jpg the book advertised in a
newspaper, that I could trust the name as real & available for a Post Office. I
wish to see my benefactor, & have felt much like striking my tasks, &
visiting New York to pay you my respects.
Correspondent:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803–1882) was an American poet and essayist who began the
Transcendentalist movement with his 1836 essay Nature.
For more on Emerson, see Jerome Loving, "Emerson, Ralph Waldo [1809–1882]," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).