No More Learning

He confessed to having no talent for
industry, and that his forte was 'loafing and writing poems:' he was poor,
but had discovered that he could, on the whole, live magnificently on bread
and water. . . . On no occasion did he laugh, nor indeed did I ever see him
smile. "

[Footnote 4: In the _Fortnightly Review_, 15th October 1866. ]

The first trace of Whitman as a writer is in the pages of the _Democratic
Review_ in or about 1841. Here he wrote some prose tales and sketches--poor
stuff mostly, so far as I have seen of them, yet not to be wholly
confounded with the commonplace. One of them is a tragic school-incident,
which may be surmised to have fallen under his personal observation in his
early experience as a teacher. His first poem of any sort was named _Blood
Money_, in denunciation of the Fugitive Slave Law, which severed him from
the Democratic party. His first considerable work was the _Leaves of
Grass_. He began it in 1853, and it underwent two or three complete
rewritings prior to its publication at Brooklyn in 1855, in a quarto
volume--peculiar-looking, but with something perceptibly artistic about it.
The type of that edition was set up entirely by himself. He was moved to
undertake this formidable poetic work (as indicated in a private letter of
Whitman's, from which Mr. Conway has given a sentence or two) by his sense
of the great materials which America could offer for a really American
poetry, and by his contempt for the current work of his
compatriots--"either the poetry of an elegantly weak sentimentalism, at
bottom nothing but maudlin puerilities or more or less musical verbiage,
arising out of a life of depression and enervation as their result; or else
that class of poetry, plays, &c.
, of which the foundation is feudalism,
with its ideas of lords and ladies, its imported standard of gentility, and
the manners of European high-life-below-stairs in every line and verse. "
Thus incited to poetic self-expression, Whitman (adds Mr. Conway) "wrote on
a sheet of paper, in large letters, these words, 'Make the Work,' and fixed
it above his table, where he could always see it whilst writing.
Thenceforth every cloud that flitted over him, every distant sail, every
face and form encountered, wrote a line in his book. "

The _Leaves of Grass_ excited no sort of notice until a letter from
Emerson[5] appeared, expressing a deep sense of its power and magnitude. He
termed it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has
yet contributed. "

[Footnote 5: Mr. Burroughs (to whom I have recourse for most biographical
facts concerning Whitman) is careful to note, in order that no
misapprehension may arise on the subject, that, up to the time of his
publishing the _Leaves of Grass_, the author had not read either the essays
or the poems of Emerson. ]

The edition of about a thousand copies sold off in less than a year.
Towards the end of 1856 a second edition in 16mo appeared, printed in New
York, also of about a thousand copies. Its chief feature was an additional
poem beginning "A Woman waits for me. " It excited a considerable storm.
Another edition, of about four to five thousand copies, duodecimo, came out
at Boston in 1860-61, including a number of new pieces. The _Drum Taps_,
consequent upon the war, with their _Sequel_, which comprises the poem on
Lincoln, followed in 1865; and in 1867, as I have already noted, a complete
edition of all the poems, including a supplement named _Songs before
Parting_. The first of all the _Leaves of Grass_, in point of date, was the
long and powerful composition entitled _Walt Whitman_--perhaps the most
typical and memorable of all of his productions, but shut out from the
present selection for reasons given further on. The final edition shows
numerous and considerable variations from all its precursors; evidencing
once again that Whitman is by no means the rough-and-ready writer,
panoplied in rude art and egotistic self-sufficiency, that many people
suppose him to be.