Books: Leaves & Leavings

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF WALT WHITMAN, VOLUMES I & II (394 & 387 pp.)—Edited by Edwin Haviland Miller—New York University Press ($ 10 each).

Unlike that of Walt Whitman's captain, the fearful task of American scholarship will never be done. Sixty-nine years after Whitman's death, a squad of 14 scholars is at work on a projected 14-volume edition of his collected writings. The first two volumes consist of 707 letters handsomely printed and annotated, and apparently not so much as a postcard to a landlady has escaped. It is a curious collection, not only...