reak justice upon it. Its
success for the moment is the affair of the publisher alone. If then
the wrath of the critics is aroused by the publication of this essay,
he will let them do their worst. What reply should he make to them?
He is not one of those who speak, as the Castilian poet says, "through
the mouths of their wounds."

Por la boca de su herida.

One last word. It may have been noticed that in this somewhat long
journey through so many different subjects, the author has generally
refrained from resting his personal views upon texts or citations of
authorities. It is not, however, because he did not have them at his
hand.

"If the poet establishes things that are impossible according to the
rules of his art, he makes a mistake unquestionably; but it ceases to
be a mistake when by this means he has reached the end that he
aimed at; for he has found what he sought,"--"They take for nonsense
whatever the weakness of their intellects does not allow them to
understand. They are especially prone to call absurd those wonderful
passages in which the poet, in order the better to enforce his
argument, departs, if we may so express it, from his argument. In
fact, the precept which makes it a rule sometimes to disregard rules,
is a mystery of the art which it is not easy to make men understand
who are absolutely without taste and whom a sort of abnormality of
mind renders insensible to those things which ordinarily impress men."

Who said the first? Aristotle. Who said the last? Boileau. By these
two specimens you will see that the author of this drama might, as
well as another, have shielded himself with proper names and taken
refuge behind others' reputations. But he preferred to leave that
style of argument to those who deem it unanswerable, universal and
all-powerful. As for himself, he prefers reasons to authorities; he
has always cared more for arms than for coats-of-arms.

_October_, 1827.

[Footnote A: Victor Hugo (1802-1883) the chief of the romantic school
in France, issued in the Preface to "Cromwell" the manifesto of the
movement. Poet, dramatist, and novelist, Hugo remained through a
long life the most conspicuous man of letters in France; and in the
document here printed he laid down the principles which revolutionized
the literary world of his time.]

PREFACE TO LEAVES OF GRASS

BY WALT WHITMAN. (1855)[A]

America does not repel the past or what it has produced under
its forms or a