G.P. PUTNAM, BROADWAY.
James Russell Lowell
It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks
TO THE READER:--
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 'twould 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, rhymeywinged,
with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously
planned, digressions chance-hatched, 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),--it grew by degrees to the size which you see. 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.
Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is
neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows,
some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is
becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in
following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more
than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like
Mephistopheles, that the Public will doubt, as they grope through my
rhythm, if in truth I am making fun _of_ them or _with_ them.
So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is
already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land but
will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of
being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in it. Now,
I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten
thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review
and Magazine critics call _lofty_ and _true_, and about thirty
thousand (_this_ tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed
_full of promise_ and _pleasing_. The Public will see by a glance
at this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about
courting _them_, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of
for boiling my pot.
As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my
pages, with praises or blames, let them SEND IN THEIR CARDS, without
further DELAY, to my friend G.P. PUTNAM, Esquire, in Broadway, where a
LIST will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour of
receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time (that
is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each
his PROPER POSITION, at the rate of ONE AUTHOR to each NEW EDITION. Thus
a PREMIUM is offered sufficiently HIGH (as the magazines say when they
tell their best lie) to induce bards to CLUB their resources and buy the
balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run
through the mill.
One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read books with
something behind the mere eyes, of whom in the country, perhaps, there
are two, including myself, gentle reader, and you. All the characters
sketched in this slight _jeu d'esprit_, though, it may be, they seem,
here and there, rather free, and drawn from a somewhat too cynical
standpoint, are _meant_ to be faithful, for that is the grand point,
and none but an owl would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells you,
without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub.