No More Learning

Nevertheless, I was encouraged by the approval of many whose opinions I
valued. With a feeling too tender and grateful to be mixed with any
vanity, I mention as one of these the late A. H. Clough, who more than
any one of those I have known (no longer living), except Hawthorne,
impressed me with the constant presence of that indefinable thing we
call genius. He often suggested that I should try my hand at some Yankee
Pastorals, which would admit of more sentiment and a higher tone without
foregoing the advantage offered by the dialect. I have never completed
anything of the kind, but, in this Second Series, both my remembrance of
his counsel and the deeper feeling called up by the great interests at
stake, led me to venture some passages nearer to what is called poetical
than could have been admitted without incongruity into the former
series. The time seemed calling to me, with the old poet,--

'Leave, then, your wonted prattle,
The oaten reed forbear;
For I hear a sound of battle,
And trumpets rend the air! '

The only attempt I had ever made at anything like a pastoral (if that
may be called an attempt which was the result almost of pure accident)
was in 'The Courtin'. ' While the introduction to the First Series was
going through the press, I received word from the printer that there was
a blank page left which must be filled. I sat down at once and
improvised another fictitious 'notice of the press,' in which, because
verse would fill up space more cheaply than prose, I inserted an extract
from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow. I kept no copy of it, and the
printer, as directed, cut it off when the gap was filled. Presently I
began to receive letters asking for the rest of it, sometimes for the
_balance_ of it. I had none, but to answer such demands, I patched a
conclusion upon it in a later edition. Those who had only the first
continued to importune me.
Afterward, being asked to write it out as an
autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commission Fair, I added other
verses, into some of which I fused a little more sentiment in a homely
way, and after a fashion completed it by sketching in the characters'
and making a connected story. Most likely I have spoiled it, but I shall
put it at the end of this Introduction, to answer once for all those
kindly importunings.

As I have seen extracts from what purported to be writings of Mr.
Biglow, which were not genuine, I may properly take this opportunity to
say, that the two volumes now published contain every line I ever
printed under that pseudonyme, and that I have never, so far as I can
remember, written an anonymous article (elsewhere than in the 'North
American Review' and the 'Atlantic Monthly,' during my editorship of it)
except a review of Mrs. Stowe's 'Minister's Wooing,' and, some twenty
years ago, a sketch of the antislavery movement in America for an
English journal.

A word more on pronunciation. I have endeavored to express this so far
as I could by the types, taking such pains as, I fear, may sometimes
make the reading harder than need be. At the same time, by studying
uniformity I have sometimes been obliged to sacrifice minute exactness.
The emphasis often modifies the habitual sound. For example, _for_ is
commonly _fer_ (a shorter sound than _fur_ for _far_), but when emphatic
it always becomes _for_, as 'wut _for! _' So _too_ is pronounced like
_to_ (as it was anciently spelt), and _to_ like _ta_ (the sound as in
the _tou_ of _touch_), but _too_, when emphatic, changes into _tue_, and
_to_, sometimes, in similar cases, into _toe_, as 'I didn' hardly know
wut _toe_ du! ' Where vowels come together, or one precedes another
following an aspirate, the two melt together, as was common with the
older poets who formed their versification on French or Italian models.
Drayton is thoroughly Yankee when he says 'I 'xpect,' and Pope when he
says, 't' inspire. ' _With_ becomes sometimes _'ith_, _'[)u]th_, or
_'th_, or even disappears wholly where it comes before _the_, as, 'I
went along _th'_ Square' (along with the Squire), the _are_ sound being
an archaism which I have noticed also in _choir_, like the old Scottish
_quhair_. [33] (Herrick has, 'Of flowers ne'er sucked by th' theeving
bee. ') _Without_ becomes _athout_ and _'thout_.