A Letter: Hopkins: To Bridges: Stonyhurst
College, Blackburn. Oct.
18, 1882 p.254
Dearest Bridges, ---I have read of Whitman’s (1) ‘Pete’ in
the library…(2) two pieces in the Athenaeum or Academy, one on the Man-of-War
Bird, the other beginning ‘Spirit that formed this scene’; (3) short extracts
in a review by Saintsbury in the Academy:….
This, though very
little, is quite enough to give a strong impression of his marked and original
manner and way of thought and in particular his rhythm. It might be enough, I shall not deny, to
originate or, much more, influence another’s style: they say the French trace
their whole modern school of landscape to a single piece of Constable’s*
exhibited at the Salon early this century.
[*Notes: Constable.
‘The Hay Wain,’ ‘A View near London’,
and ‘The Lock on the Stour’ were exhibited at the Paris
Salon in 1824. (p.395)]
The question then
is only about the fact. But first I may
as well say what I should not otherwise have said, that I always knew in my
heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s
living. As he is a very great scoundrel
this is not a pleasant confession…
…The pieces of his
I read were mostly in an irregular rhythmic prose: that is what they are
thought be meant for and what they seemed to me to be. Here is a fragment of a line I remember: ‘or
a handkerchief designedly dropped’.*
This is in a dactylic rhythm---or let us say anapestic…[*or a handkerchief. See Saintsbury’s review (L I, note P).
(p.395)]
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