 Griswold continued editing and contributing literary criticism for various publications , both full @-@ time and freelance , including 22 months from July 1 , 1850 , to April 1 , 1852 , with The International Magazine . There , he worked with contributors including Elizabeth Oakes Smith , Mary E. Hewitt and John R. Thompson . In the November 10 , 1855 , issue of The Criterion , Griswold anonymously reviewed the first edition of Walt Whitman 's Leaves of Grass , declaring : " It is impossible to image how any man 's fancy could have conceived such a mass of stupid filth " . Griswold charged that Whitman was guilty of " the vilest imaginings and <unk> license " , a " degrading , beastly sensuality . " Referring to Whitman 's poetry , Griswold said he left " this gathering of muck to the laws which ... must have the power to suppress such gross obscenity . " Whitman later included Griswold 's review in a new edition of Leaves of Grass . He ended his review with a phrase in Latin referring to " that horrible sin , among Christians not to be named " , the stock phrase long associated with Christian condemnations of sodomy . Griswold was the first person in the 19th century to publicly point to and stress the theme of erotic desire and acts between men in Whitman 's poetry . More attention to that aspect of Whitman 's poetry would only surface late in the 19th century . 
