Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Published Writings
  3. Periodicals
  4. Journalism
  5. per.00856

[An incorrigible bookworm]

About This Item

  • Title: [An incorrigible bookworm]
  • Date: 15 December 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00856
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 15 December 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Samantha Gilmore Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "[An incorrigible bookworm]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00856.xml (TEI)
image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

An incorrigible bookworm, turning over some old manuscripts the other day at the Imperial Library in Paris, fumbled out a strange, musty piece of paper, which proved to be a pawn-ticket of Torquato Tasso1—a real curiosity of literature. It shows that the author of “Jerusalem Delivered” had pledged his father’s waistcoat with “Signor Abraham Levi” for “venticinque lire,” on the 2d of March, 1570.

What a strange charm genius throws around the commonest of common things! What a magic alchemy it possesses in converting incidents in themselves poor and base into matters of special note in years to come! Who would care to preserve the most intimate personal relics of an English nobleman of the 16th century, and who would not cherish as a precious treasure a scrap of manuscript, a broken goblet—an old glove even—that the sacred hand of William Shakspeare,2 the Warwickshire deer stealer, had touched? And so with this pawn-ticket alluded to above. Time surrounds great men and not only them, but everything that has been in contact with them, with rainbow hues.

Notes:

1. No information has been found on Mr. Brady. [back]

2. "The Courship of Miles Standish" is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. [back]

Back to top