Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ... Preparing for Publication. Crown 8vo, Cloth. With Portraits and Illustrations. Walt Whitman. Byrichardmauricebucke. With ADDENDA BY PROF. EDWARD DOWDEN, LL.D. 'Whitman is pre-eminently a poet of the modern world. No other has more thoroughly adopted the conclusions of science, or made a more splendid and impressive use of them in his writings. Not unseldom they give a vastness and grandeur to his thought, which is well-nigh overwhelming. At the same time he is very far from being in any sense or degree a materialist. The supremacy of the spiritual he always loyally, and sometimes ostentatiously, recognises. Though almost Greek in his sympathy with nature, and notwithstanding the manner in which he has sung of man's physical constitution, the position which he assigns to the soul is always incomparably higher.'--Scottish Review. 'We know Whitman better after having read Dr. Bucke's book; we feel, through his words, the powerful fascination of the man. . . . If I were to put it in my own way, I should say that Whitman's feeling for the spiritual, as involved in and emerging out of what is natural and even material, gives their peculiar quality to his writings. And accordingly he is at once a mystic or transcendentalist and the keenest of observers. Like Wordsworth, like Mr. Browning, Whitman has lived long enough to see indifference and opposition yield, and a kind of cult (not perhaps always of the wisest) take their place. The edition of "Leaves of Grass" published last year, without the omission of a line or word, was all sold in one day, and there has been quite a general and steady sale since. Dr. Bucke brings together some of the praise and dispraise of a quarter-of-a-century as found in Reviews and Magazines. This volume reprints...
