bear upon him by the press, by many of his
friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to
change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served
as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the
more deeply he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The
fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and
aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could
have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no
publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was
threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy
Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would
omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for
one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always
did.

Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down
Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which
was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable
conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so,
whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet
probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had
not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your
own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your
private heart is true of all men,--that is genius."

In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson
invoked and prayed for,--the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who
should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be
Greek, or Italian, or French, or English, but only himself; who should
not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate,
or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debasements of
our times the lineaments of the same gods that so ravished the bards of
old.

The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the
books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
thank and revere him."

Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has
done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works
in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a
time, to the voice of