Among the caprices of the "genus irritabile vatum," is that of hiding their talents. Some, from sheer spleen, will not write. John Randolph used to say that he would go to his grave "guiltless of rhyme." Yet he talked poetry from morning till night.
As I am out a purveyor for your journal, and not a contributor, I am bound to see that they, from whose writings I pilfer, come by no wrong. I must therefore enter a complaint on behalf of the friend whose letter I sent you, describing a scene on the Mississippi. His "clumps" of trees your compositor has cut down to "stumps." Can you wonder that your neighbor (contemporary I believe is the word in fashion,) thought his letter but "so so?" He was no more bound to suppose that this was a misprint, than to reflect that a traveller, writing from the wilds of Missouri to a friend, might innocently make an unimportant mistake in quoting from a book that perhaps never crossed the Mississippi. But though he has to bear the brunt of the censure, it should in justice fall on you or me. The thing was well enough as a letter. The fault was in publishing it. But I shall attempt no defence. I thought it but "so so-ish" when I sent it to you, and therefore I said so. It was a plain unvarnished description, which had enabled me to see very distinctly what was well worth seeing, and I wished others to see it too. Had the composition been of a different character—had the painter thrust himself between the spectator and his picture, or so glossed it over that every object was lost in undistinguished glare, I should have given it to the public eye by other means. I should certainly not have defaced with it your modest pages. It surely would not be hard to fix on some periodical in which any sort of tinsel would be welcome, and find itself in congenial company. Such is the proper receptacle for all the trumpery wares of frothy declamation, incongruous metaphor, false eloquence and flippant wit, which make up what is commonly called fine writing. There, in the gay confusion of glass bead and gewgaw, any bauble, however worthless, finds its place, escaping censure by escaping notice.
To take more shame to myself, I acknowledge that the misquotation struck me as I copied the letter. But the turn of the passage did not admit of its correction; and I did not think it worth while to append a note to tell what every body knows, and no one needs to know.
But I shall do better in future. While you continue to publish what I send you, I shall continue to cater for you. In doing this, I shall henceforth cross the t's and dot the i's in my copies, although this should have been omitted in the original. "I am wae to think" indeed, as Burns says, what small critics would do for want of such mistakes. A link in nature's chain (the last and lowest indeed) would be lost. The auceps syllabarum "the word catcher that lives on syllables" would be starved out. The race would be extinct for want of food. The king of these insects bears among naturalists the formidable name of the dragon fly. The boys call him the musquito hawk. He shall have no more food from me. Your friend,
X. Y.
FROM EASTERN VIRGINIA.
... I yesterday sent you some lines composed "Lang Syne," and written from memory.... Do not print these things, I beseech you, unless you like them. At the hazard of rapping my own knuckles, I shall quarrel with you if you publish much trash. You may lose a subscriber by rejecting it; but you will gain ten by every number you issue in which every article is good. Horace tells us that neither gods nor men can endure middling poetry. And what shall be said of that which is not even middling? Let us take an example. Byron's name is sacred to the muses. No man whose lips are not touched with the fire of inspiration should be allowed to use it. Yet we have him shown up, and words put into his mouth in many a piece, the writers of which cannot even count their feet.