Matthew.
I believe it would startle and move any one if they could make a
certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not
droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any one would
then be able to see in it those truths which we are all courteously
supposed to know and all modestly refrain from applying. But upon
this subject it is perhaps better to be silent.
I come next to Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a book of singular
service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew
into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and,
having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a
strong foundation of all the original and manly virtues. But it
is, once more, only a book for those who have the gift of reading.
I will be very frank--I believe it is so with all good books
except, perhaps, fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so
wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more
apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries
out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round
that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the
contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what
is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself.
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