aberrations. Some English critics, no doubt, have been more discerning--as
W. J. Fox, of old, in the _Dispatch_, the writer of the notice in the
_Leader_, and of late two in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _London
Review_;[2] but these have been the exceptions among us, the great majority
of the reviewers presenting that happy and familiar critical combination--
scurrility and superciliousness.

[Footnote 1: See _The Chronicle_ for 6th July 1867, article _Walt Whitman's
Poems_.]

[Footnote 2: Since this Prefatory Notice was written [in 1868], another
eulogistic review of Whitman has appeared--that by Mr. Robert Buchanan, in
the _Broadway_.]

As it was my lot to set down so recently several of the considerations
which seem to me most essential and most obvious in regard to Whitman's
writings, I can scarcely now recur to the subject without either repeating
something of what I then said, or else leaving unstated some points of
principal importance. I shall therefore adopt the simplest course--that of
summarising the critical remarks in my former article; after which, I shall
leave without further development (ample as is the amount of development
most of them would claim) the particular topics there glanced at, and shall
proceed to some other phases of the subject.

Whitman republished in 1867 his complete poetical works in one moderate-
sized volume, consisting of the whole _Leaves of Grass_, with a sort of
supplement thereto named _Songs before Parting_,[3] and of the _Drum Taps_,
with its _Sequel_. It has been intimated that he does not expect to write
any more poems, unless it might be in expression of the religious side of
man's nature. However, one poem on the last American harvest sown and