I should add that some friends and admirers of Whitman are not
    prepared to accept the evidence of the letter to Symonds.  I am
    indebted to “Q.” for the following statement of the objections:—­

“I think myself that it is a mistake to give much weight to this letter—­perhaps a mistake to introduce it at all, since if introduced it will, of course, carry weight.  And this for three or four reasons:—­

“1.  That it is difficult to reconcile the letter itself (with its strong tone of disapprobation) with the general ‘atmosphere’ of Leaves of Grass, the tenor of which is to leave everything open and free.

“2.  That the letter is in hopeless conflict with the ‘Calamus’ section of poems.  For, whatever moral lines Whitman may have drawn at the time of writing these poems, it seems to me quite incredible that the possibility of certain inferences, morbid or other, was undreamed of.

    “3.  That the letter was written only a few months before his last
    illness and death, and is the only expression of the kind that he
    appears to have given utterance to.

“4.  That Symonds’s letter, to which this was a reply, is not forth coming; and we consequently do not know what rash expressions it may have contained—­leading Whitman (with his extreme caution) to hedge his name from possible use to justify dubious practices.”

    I may add that I endeavored to obtain Symonds’s letter, but he
    was unable to produce it, nor has any copy of it been found among
    his papers.

It should be said that Whitman’s attitude toward Symonds was marked by high regard and admiration.  “A wonderful man is Addington Symonds,” he remarked shortly before his own death; “some ways the most indicative and penetrating and significant man of our time.  Symonds is a curious fellow; I love him dearly.  He is of college breed and education, horribly literary and suspicious, and enjoys things.  A great fellow for delving into persons and into the concrete, and even into the physiological and the gastric, and wonderfully cute.”  But on this occasion he delved in vain.

The foregoing remarks (substantially contained in the previous editions of this book) were based mainly on the information received from J.A.  Symonds’s side.  But of more recent years interesting light has been thrown on this remarkable letter from Walt Whitman’s side.  The Boswellian patience, enthusiasm, and skill which Horace Traubel has brought to his full and elaborate work, now in course of publication, With Walt Whitman in Camden, clearly reveal, in the course of various conversations, Whitman’s attitude to Symonds’s question and the state of mind which led up to this letter.

Whitman talked to Traubel much about Symonds from the twenty-seventh of April, 1888 (very soon after the date when Traubel’s