Then science, the final critic of all, has the casting vote for
future poetry.
Note:
[47] This bit was in "Poet-lore" monthly for September, 1890.
"UNASSAIL'D RENOWN"
The N. Y. _Critic_, Nov. 24, 1889, propounded a circular to several
persons, and giving the responses, says, "Walt Whitman's views
[as follow] are, naturally, more radical than those of any other
contributor to the discussion":
Briefly to answer impromptu your request of Oct. 19--the question
whether I think any American poet not now living deserves a place
among the thirteen "English inheritors of unassail'd renown" (Chaucer,
Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Burns, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats,)--and which American poets would
be truly worthy, &c. Though to me the _deep_ of the matter goes down,
down beneath. I remember the London _Times_ at the time, in opportune,
profound and friendly articles on Bryant's and Longfellow's deaths,
spoke of the embarrassment, warping effect, and confusion on America
(her poets and poetic students) "coming in possession of a great
estate they had never lifted a hand to form or earn"; and the further
contingency of "the English language ever having annex'd to it a lot
of first-class Poetry that would be American, not European"--proving
then something precious over all, and beyond valuation. But perhaps
that is venturing outside the question. Of the thirteen British
immortals mention'd--after placing Shakspere on a sort of pre-eminence
of fame not to be invaded yet--the names of Bryant, Emerson, Whittier
and Longfellow (with even added names, sometimes Southerners,
sometimes Western or other writers of only one or two pieces,) deserve
in my opinion an equally high niche of renown as belongs to any on the
dozen of that glorious list.
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