"So Many Promising Youths" Emerson's Disappointing Discoveries of New England Poet-Seers

ALPH WALDO EMERSON'S letter of July 21, 1855 to Walt Whitman' is the Concord Sage's shot heard round the world of literary criticism. On his greeting to Whitman the beginning of a great career rests much of Emerson's reputation for critical perception. Twenty-one years after Emerson's death, F. B. Sanborn pointed out that when Walt Whitman appeared, with that extraordinary book of 1855, 'Leaves of Grass,' Emerson saw at once, what many were slow to perceive, the original force of the new man.2 John Moore, in The Master of Whitman, writes, It is well never to overlook these few but astonishing words of commendation from the unrivaled chief of American

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