No More Learning

D. --it is still the same: no book whose subject-matter admits as possible
of an impropriety according to current notions can be depended upon to fail
of containing such impropriety,--can, if those notions are accepted as the
canon, be placed with a sense of security in the hands of girls and youths,
or read aloud to women; and this holds good just as much of severely moral
or plainly descriptive as of avowedly playful, knowing, or licentious
books. For my part, I am far from thinking that earlier state of
literature, and the public feeling from which it sprang, the wrong ones--
and our present condition the only right one. Equally far, therefore, am I
from indignantly condemning Whitman for every startling allusion or
expression which he has admitted into his book, and which I, from motives
of policy, have excluded from this selection; except, indeed, that I think
many of his tabooed passages are extremely raw and ugly on the ground of
poetic or literary art, whatever aspect they may bear in morals. I have
been rigid in exclusion, because it appears to me highly desirable that a
fair verdict on Whitman should now be pronounced in England on poetic
grounds alone; and because it was clearly impossible that the book, with
its audacities of topic and of expression included, should run the same
chance of justice, and of circulation through refined minds and hands,
which may possibly be accorded to it after the rejection of all such
peccant poems. As already intimated, I have not in a single instance
excised any _parts_ of poems: to do so would have been, I conceive, no less
wrongful towards the illustrious American than repugnant, and indeed
unendurable, to myself, who aspire to no Bowdlerian honours. The
consequence is, that the reader loses _in toto_ several important poems,
and some extremely fine ones--notably the one previously alluded to, of
quite exceptional value and excellence, entitled _Walt Whitman_. I
sacrifice them grudgingly; and yet willingly, because I believe this to be
the only thing to do with due regard to the one reasonable object which a
selection can subserve--that of paving the way towards the issue and
unprejudiced reception of a complete edition of the poems in England. For
the benefit of misconstructionists, let me add in distinct terms that, in
respect of morals and propriety, I neither admire nor approve the
incriminated passages in Whitman's poems, but, on the contrary, consider
that most of them would be much better away; and, in respect of art, I
doubt whether even one of them deserves to be retained in the exact
phraseology it at present exhibits. This, however, does not amount to
saying that Whitman is a vile man, or a corrupt or corrupting writer; he is
none of these.

The only division of his poems into sections, made by Whitman himself, has
been noted above: _Leaves of Grass_, _Songs before Parting_, supplementary
to the preceding, and _Drum Taps_, with their _Sequel_. The peculiar title,
_Leaves of Grass_, has become almost inseparable from the name of Whitman;
it seems to express with some aptness the simplicity, universality, and
spontaneity of the poems to which it is applied. _Songs before Parting_ may
indicate that these compositions close Whitman's poetic roll. _Drum Taps_
are, of course, songs of the Civil War, and their _Sequel_ is mainly on the
same theme: the chief poem in this last section being the one on the death
of Lincoln. These titles all apply to fully arranged series of
compositions.
The present volume is not in the same sense a fully arranged
series, but a selection: and the relation of the poems _inter se_ appears
to me to depend on altered conditions, which, however narrowed they are, it
may be as well frankly to recognise in practice. I have therefore
redistributed the poems (a latitude of action which I trust the author may
not object to), bringing together those whose subject-matter seems to
warrant it, however far separated they may possibly be in the original
volume. At the same time, I have retained some characteristic terms used by
Whitman himself, and have named my sections respectively--

1. Chants Democratic (poems of democracy).
2. Drum Taps (war songs).
3. Walt Whitman (personal poems).
4. Leaves of Grass (unclassified poems).
5. Songs of Parting (missives).

The first three designations explain themselves. The fourth, _Leaves of
Grass_, is not so specially applicable to the particular poems of that
section here as I should have liked it to be; but I could not consent to
drop this typical name. The _Songs of Parting_, my fifth section, are
compositions in which the poet expresses his own sentiment regarding his
works, in which he forecasts their future, or consigns them to the reader's
consideration. It deserves mention that, in the copy of Whitman's last
American edition revised by his own hand, as previously noticed, the series
termed _Songs of Parting_ has been recast, and made to consist of poems of
the same character as those included in my section No.