The criticism was followed by the compilation of a volume of selections containing nearly one half of the current _Leaves of Grass_, and a large part of the original Preface of 1855. The enterprise brought the compiler into cordial personal relations with the poet.[462] There had at first been a slight misunderstanding as to the scope of the English version, and an expurgated but otherwise complete edition had been suggested. Whitman could not be a party to such a volume, and would naturally have preferred his own complete book to any selections. But in Mr. Rossetti he recognised an understanding friend. While frankly expressing his own views, he was most cordial and generous in the declaration of his faith in his correspondent's wisdom, and of his desire to leave him unshackled. The selections contained none of the poems which had aroused the indignation of Mr. Harlan and his friends, and would probably have more than satisfied the very different criticisms of Emerson. Their publication established the foundation of Whitman's English fame, which now rapidly outstripped his American. Already known to the few--to such men for instance as Tennyson, Dante G. Rossetti, Swinburne, W. Bell Scott, J. A. Symonds and Thomas Dixon--_Leaves of Grass_ was from this time eagerly sought after by a considerable number of the younger and more vigorous thinkers. * * * * * Although they never met, Whitman's friendship with Symonds is so important that I cannot pass it by without some reference to the younger man's character.[463] He had been, as is well known, an exceptionally brilliant Oxford scholar; who had shown so little trace of the disqualifying elements of genius that his painfully accurate poetic form carried off the Newdigate prize. After his studies at Balliol, he entered early manhood with impaired sight, an irritable brain and incipient consumption. His temper was naturally strenuous, but this quality was accompanied by introspective morbidity. In the autumn of 1865, at the age of five and twenty,[464] the late Mr. Frederick Myers introduced him to _Leaves of Grass_; his reading of one of the Calamus poems--"Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me"[465]--from the edition of 1860, sending, as Symonds says, electric thrills through the very marrow of his bones. Whitman of course rode rough-shod over all the scholar's academic and aristocratic prejudices, and required slow assimilation. This process continued during the next four years; but he says that the book became eventually a more powerful formative influence in his life than Plato's works,[466] or indeed any other volume, save the Bible. Married already, and already largely an invalid, life was full of difficulties for so keen and eager a mind; and the _Leaves_ became his anchor, especially the poems of Calamus.[467] It was in 1869 and 1870[468] that he realised their full value.