“I send half the proof to-day—t’ other to-morrow with Irving and Judd. I am druv like all possessed. I am keeping up with the printers with Wilbur’s Notes, Glossary, Index, and Introduction. I have two sets of hands to satiate, one on the body of the book, one on the extremities.
“I wish to see title-page and preface. Also, be sure and have a written acknowledgment from G. P. P. that the copyright remains with you. Then send me a transfer of it for value received. I will endorse in such a way that it shall remain to you and yours in case anything happen to me. Don’t think my precaution indelicate. I only wish to provide against accidents. Let Putnam take out copyright and let it stand in your name as far as he and the rest of the world are concerned. I am anxious about it (I need scarcely say) solely on these two accounts, that it may never fall into strangers’ hands, and that it may never be taken from you. More to-morrow.”
Two days later he wrote to Briggs, “I am, you see, as good as my word and better. For, as I was copying the other verses this morning, I thought I might as well throw you in Holmes to boot. Let the new passage begin thus,—
“Here, ‘Forgive me, Apollo,’ I cried, ‘while I pour’ &c., &c.
Please make the alteration and put in marks of quotation at the beginning of each new paragraph if I have omitted them. Also in this line if it runs as I think it does,
“‘So, compared to you moderns, is old Melesigines,’
insert ‘sounds’ instead of ‘is.’
“I wish you would do up a copy with ‘author’s and so forths,’ dated New York, and put it into Ticknor’s first box directed to Dr. O. W. Holmes, Boston, and also one directed to Professor Felton, Cambridge, in Ticknor’s or Nichols’s as it may chance....
“Print the title-page thus:—
“‘Reader, walk up’ etc., as far as ‘ruinous rate’ in large italics in old-fashioned style in an inverted cone