182 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



suggestions had been made, Osgood of Boston, would appear to have 

 been his original choice. But Osgood was not in the humour. He 

 had just then been forced by threats of prosecution by the Attorney- 

 General of Massachusetts to withdraw from sale his edition of " Leaves 

 of Grass." Early in May, 18S2, Bucke wrote O'Connor that Osgood 

 had declined "Walt Whitman, a Study.'' O'Connor wrote another 

 scathing letter to the press, defending the " Leaves." On the 3rd June, 

 he wrote AAliitman that Bucke had written him " quite jubilant over 

 my letter, and telling me the fix T have got his book into, which is 

 comic as a scene from ]\Iolière. You will see the fun, when you know 

 that he had sent his MS. to Osgood ! ! " 



Whitman, as has been stated, took an active interest in the " Life." 

 His extended and varied experience, as compositor^ editor, proof-reader, 

 business manager, was at Bucke's disposal, and was invaluable. It 

 was ^\^iitman who arranged with Gutekunst for proofs of portraits of 

 his father and mother, the number of copies to be printed and the 

 price. The first twenty-four pages were written by him. 



He suggested names of publishers, and finally, when Osgood 

 declined the liook, it was Whitmnn who, on 19th February, 1883, with 

 his own hand drew up the agreement between Dr. Bucke and David 

 iVfcKay of Philadelphia, for the publication of "Walt A^Tiitman, a 

 Contemporaneous Study." The agreement shows Whitrann'^ bi^siness 

 ability aiul carefulness in looking after details, and is witnessed by him. 



24. 



It was under the title, " Walt Wliitman the Man," that the volume 

 at last appeared from the press of David McKay. 



In the following year, the Glasgow edition appeared with an addi- 

 tion entitled, " English Critics on Walt Whitman," edited l)y Edward 

 Dowden, LL.D., Professor of English Literature in the University of 

 Dublin. 



" The book is valuable," says Ernest Pihys in his introduction to 

 the volume of Selections from Walt Whitman in the Canterbury Poets, 

 " not only as an authoritative biography — the standard biograpliy — 

 but for its collection of contemporary notices and criticisms, European 

 and American, favourable and the reverse, of 'Leaves of Grass.' " " In 

 the English list the names of Euskin, Tennyson, Swinburne, Buchanan, 

 Symonds, and other leading poets and writers Ijear unique testimony 

 to Whitman's influence." 



In the Introduction, Dr. Bucke asserts that the basic meaning: 

 and value to us of the man, Walt Whitman, and the book Leaves of 



