1 6 INTR on UC TION
New York, Aug. lo, 1864. Dear John,
You are a very mean fellow. You are an outrageous curmudgeon. You deserve to be exposed. I have a great mind to (I have more than once vowed that I would) re- view you. What right have you, I should like to know, to keep such poems as these to yourself . They belong to your friends, if not to the public, and it is a wrong to them, and, I insist upon it, a wrong to poor human nat- ure, which has few enough of these " Consolations," to keep them locked up in your desk, or to quarrel with your printer because he wished to make them known.
Seriously, your volume has afforded me unmingled de- light. Before I had had the book forty-eight hours, I had read it through, and many of the poems several times. Since then I have recurred to it again and again, and am really annoyed to think it could have been in print so long without my knowing it. During the long period of ill health which I went through, I used often to long for some new poetry, and, if I had had your book, should have got most of it by heart.
Now one object of this communication is this : namely, to beg of you to publish the rest of your six volumes and as many more as you can write — to publisJi them, I say, not merely print them ; and this includes the sending copies to the newspapers in the usual way (which is open to objections, certainly, but, being the usual way, it is un- wise to kick against it).
I take it this is a class of your poems. I know it only shows one side of your mind. Let us see, let the public see, the whole of it, or at least such parts as it would not be painful to you to expose. Of course, every man has a right to a private recess in his soul that no mortal may in-
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