DEAR M December, 1846. By way of saving time, I'll do this letter up in rhyme, Whose slim stream through four pages flows Ere one is packed with tight-screwed prose, Threading the tube of an epistle, Smooth as a child's breath through a whistle. The great attraction now of all Beaming forth sunshine through his glasses ('T was natural Sam should serve his trunk ill, For G., you know, has cut his uncle,) There was MARIA CHAPMAN, too, of The Pennsylvania Freeman, where the verses were first published. With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue, The expansive force without a sound Who might, with those fair tresses shorn, And there, too, was ELIZA FOLLEN, There jokes our EDMUND, plainly son 'T is natural he should love a hit; Like a new hopfield which is all poles, There, with one hand behind his back, Old fogies, when he lightens at 'em, Whose shoalness can't be seen for mud; His words are red hot iron searers, Hard by, as calm as summer even, To all the Churches and the Clergies, Not with soft book upon the knee, His oratory is like the scream Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam A Judith, there, turned Quakeress, Whom, though condemned by ethics strict, Serving a table quietly, The heart refuses to convict. Beyond, a crater in each eye, Sways brown, broad-shouldered PILLS BURY, Who tears up words like trees by the roots, The wager of eternal war To whom we sacrifice each year As if that mild and downcast eye So the same force which shakes its dread These last three (leaving in the lurch IN a Prefatory Note which Mr. Lowell prefixed to a later issue of this poem, the history of its inception and publication is thus briefly told: "This jeu d'esprit was extemporized, I may fairly say, so rapidly was it written, purely for my own amusement and with no thought of publication. I sent daily instalments of it to a friend in New York, the late Charles F. Briggs. He urged me to let it be printed, and I at last consented to its anonymous publication. The secret was kept till after several persons had laid claim to its authorship." In the Letters it is possible to get a closer view of the author at work. In a letter to Mr. Briggs, written November 13, 1847, he says: "My satire remains just as it was. About six hundred lines I think are written. I left it because I wished to finish it in one mood of mind, and not to get that and my serious poems in the new volume entangled. It is a rambling, disjointed affair, and I may alter the form of it, but if I can get it read, I know it will take. I intend to give it some serial title and continue it at intervals." On the last day of the same year, he writes to his correspondent: "I have been hard at work copying my satire, that I might get it (what was finished of it, at least) to you by New-Year's Day as a present. As it is, I can only send the first part. It was all written with one impulse and was the work of not a great many hours, but it was written in good spirits (con amore, as Leupp said he used to smoke), and therefore seems to me to have a hearty and easy swing about it that is pleasant. But I was interrupted midway by being obliged to get ready the copy for my volume, and I have never been able to weld my present mood upon the old one without making an ugly swelling at the joint. "I wish you to understand that I make you a New Year's gift, not of the manuscript, but of the thing itself. I wish you to get it printed (if you think the sale will warrant it) for your own benefit. At the same time I am desirous of retaining my copyright, in order that, if circumstances render it desirable, I may still possess a control over it. Therefore, if you think it would repay publishing (I have no doubt of it, or I should not offer it to you) I wish you would enter the copyright in your own name, and then make a transfer to me in consideration of,' etc. "I am making as particular directions as if I were drawing my will, but I have a sort of presentiment (which I never had in regard to anything else) that this little bit of pleasantry will take. Perhaps I have said too much of the Centurion. But it was only the comicality of his character that attracted me man himself personally never entered my head. - for the But the sketch is clever?" --- Again under date of March 26, 1848: "Since I sent you the first half, I have written something about Willis and about Longfellow and I am waiting for pleasanter weather in order to finish it. I want to get my windows open and to write in the fresh air. I ought not to have sent you any part of it till I had finished it entirely. I feel a sense of responsibility which hinders my pen from running along as it ought in such a theme. I wish the last half to be as jolly and unconstrained as the first. If you had not praised what I sent you, I dare say you would have had the whole of it ere this. Praise is the only thing that can make me feel any doubt of myself." Six Reader! walk up at once (it will soon be too late), and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate A FABLE FOR CRITICS: OR, BETTER, (I LIKE, AS A THING THAT THE READER'S FIRST FANCY MAY STRIKE, AN OLD-FASHIONED TITLE-PAGE, SUCH AS PRESENTS A TABULAR VIEW OF THE VOLUME'S CONTENTS), A GLANCE AT A FEW OF OUR LIT- (MRS. MALAPROP'S WORD) FROM THE TUB OF DIOGENES; A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY, THAT IS, A SERIES OF JOKES Bp A Wonderful Quiz, WHO ACCOMPANIES HIMSELF WITH A RUB-A-DUB-DUB, FULL Set forth in October, the 21st day, weeks later he wrote, May 12: "When I can sit at my open window and my friendly leaves hold their hands before my eyes to prevent their wandering to the landscape, I can sit down and write. I have begun upon the Fable again fairly, and am making some headway. I think with what I sent you (which I believe was about five hundred lines) it will make something over a thousand. I have done, since I sent the first half, Willis, Longfellow, Bryant, Miss Fuller, and Mrs. Child. In Longfellow's case I have attempted no characterization. The same (in a degree) may be said of S. M. F. With her I have been perfectly good-humored, but I have a fancy that what I say will stick uncomfortably. It will make you laugh. So will L. M. C. After S. M. F. I make a short digression on bores in general, which has some drollery. Willis I think good. Bryant is funny, and as fair as I could make it, immitigably just. Indeed I have endeavored to be so in all." The volume was affectionately inscribed to Charles F. Briggs, and furnished with the following rhymed title page and preliminary note, a second note being prefixed to a second edition. IT being the commonest mode of proced- This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I asked their advice when 't would make no confusion. For though (in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it. I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhyme-y winged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned, digressions chancehatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which I held in my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree), to the size which you see. it grew by degrees I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull. |