He writes:--
"My dear Fields,--I am extremely glad you like the new poems so well.
What think you of the enclosed instead of the sad ending of 'The
Ship'? Is it better?... I send you also 'The Lighthouse,' once more: I
think it is improved by your suggestions. See if you can find anything
more to retouch. And finally, here is a letter from Hirst. You see
what he wants, but I do not feel like giving my 'Dedication' to the
'Courier.' Therefore I hereby give it to you so that I can say it is
disposed of. Am I right or wrong?"
Of Longfellow's student days, Mr. Fields once wrote: "I hope they keep
bright the little room numbered twenty-seven in Maine Hall in Bowdoin
College, for it was in that pleasant apartment, looking out on the
pine groves, that the young poet of nineteen wrote many of those
beautiful earlier pieces, now collected in his works. These early
poems were all composed in 1824 and 1825, during his last years in
college, and were printed first in a periodical called 'The United
States Literary Gazette,' the sapient editor of which magazine once
kindly advised the ardent young scholar to give up poetry and buckle
down to the study of law! 'No good can come of it,' he said; 'don't
let him do such things; make him stick to prose!' But the pine-trees
waving outside his window kept up a perpetual melody in his heart, and
he could not choose but sing back to them."
One of the earliest pictures I find of the every-day life of
Longfellow when a youth is a little anecdote told by him, in humorous
illustration of the woes of young authors.
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