In the year 1855 the American people knew but little of books. Their ideals, their models, were English. Young and Pollok, Addison and Watts were regarded as great poets. Some of the more reckless read Thomson's "Seasons" and the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott. A few, not quite orthodox, delighted in the mechanical monotony of Pope, and the really wicked--those lost to all religious shame--were worshipers of Shakespeare. The really orthodox Protestant, untroubled by doubts, considered Milton the greatest poet of them all. Byron and Shelley were hardly respectable--not to be read by young persons. It was admitted on all hands that Burns was a child of nature of whom his mother was ashamed and proud. In the blessed year aforesaid, candor, free and sincere speech, were under the ban. Creeds at that time were entrenched behind statutes, prejudice, custom, ignorance, stupidity, Puritanism and slavery; that is to say, slavery of mind and body. Of course it always has been, and forever will be, impossible for slavery, or any kind or form of injustice, to produce a great poet. There are hundreds of verse makers and writers on the side of wrong--enemies of progress--but they are not poets, they are not men of genius. At this time a young man--he to whom this testimonial is given--he upon whose head have fallen the snows of more than seventy winters--this man, born within the sound of the sea, gave to the world a book, "Leaves of Grass." This book was, and is, the true transcript of a soul. The man is unmasked. No drapery of hypocrisy, no pretense, no fear. The book was as original in form as in thought. All customs were forgotten or disregarded, all rules broken--nothing mechanical--no imitation--spontaneous, running and winding like a river, multitudinous in its thoughts as the waves of the sea--nothing mathematical or measured. In everything a touch of chaos--lacking what is called form as clouds lack form, but not lacking the splendor of sunrise or the glory of sunset. It was a marvelous collection and aggregation of fragments, hints, suggestions, memories, and prophecies, weeds and flowers, clouds and clods, sights and sounds, emotions and passions, waves, shadows and constellations. His book was received by many with disdain, with horror, with indignation and protest--by the few as a marvelous, almost miraculous, message to the world--full of thought, philosophy, poetry and music. In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous. A great soul appears and fills the world with new and marvelous harmonies. In his words is the old Promethean flame. The heart of nature beats and throbs in his line. The respectable prudes and pedagogues sound the alarm, and cry, or rather screech: "Is this a book for a young person?" A poem true to life as a Greek statue--candid as nature--fills these barren souls with fear. They forget that drapery about the perfect was suggested by immodesty.