Nescit vox missa reverti.--Horat. Ars Poetica.
Ab lis qua non adjuvant quam mollissime oportet pedem referre.--
Quintillian, L. VI. C. 4.
These verses have always been printed in my collected poems, and as the
best of them may bear a single reading, I allow them to appear, but in a
less conspicuous position than the other productions. A chick, before
his shell is off his back, is hardly a fair subject for severe criticism.
If one has written anything worth preserving, his first efforts may be
objects of interest and curiosity. Other young authors may take
encouragement from seeing how tame, how feeble, how commonplace were the
rudimentary attempts of the half-fledged poet. If the boy or youth had
anything in him, there will probably be some sign of it in the midst of
his imitative mediocrities and ambitious failures. These "first verses"
of mine, written before I was sixteen, have little beyond a common
academy boy's ordinary performance. Yet a kindly critic said there was
one line which showed a poetical quality:--
"The boiling ocean trembled into calm."
One of these poems--the reader may guess which--won fair words from
Thackeray. The Spectre Pig was a wicked suggestion which came into my
head after reading Dana's Buccaneer. Nobody seemed to find it out, and
I never mentioned it to the venerable poet, who might not have been
pleased with the parody. This is enough to say of these unvalued copies
of verses.