Hopkins and Whitman

I've read almost everything Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in English - and almost nothing of Walt Whitman. 

That may be partly because I did a very English strand in my old Eng Lit course.  But it still seems strange. 

But then Hopkins is a poet I've known and loved for years, and for years I have known that he wrote:

But first I may as well say what I should not otherwise have said, that I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession. And this also makes me the more desirous to read him and the more determined that I will not.

(Letter to Robert Bridges, 18 October1882).

Have I been channelling Hopkins views? - I can't say.  He was clearly both attracted and repelled by the idea of Whitman.  Whatever, I think he will be my poet for the next few weeks - once I've finished with Pope.