Elmwood, Saturday, Aug.
2, 1862.
My dear Fields, — I have an idea—nay, I honestly believe
even two ideas (which is perhaps more than in fairness falls to a single
person); but I can't persuade the words to marry either of them — such matches
are made in heaven. Did you ever (when you were a boy) play “Bat, bat, come
into my hat”? I have since I was I
won't say how old, and under the most benign conditions — fine evening, smooth
lawn, lovely woman to inspire, and, more than all, a new hat. The bat that can
resist all these inducements must be little better than a brick-bat, and yet
who ever knew one of those wayward, noctivagant creatures to condescend even to
such terms? They will stoop towards the soaring Castor, they will look into
that mysterious hollow which some angry divinity has doomed us to wear, which
is the Yankee's portmanteau and travelling-safe; but they will not venture
where we venture the most precious (or most worthless) part of our person
twenty times a day. Yet an owl will trap you one in a minute and make no bones
of it. Well, I have been pestering my two ideas (one for a fable by Mr. Wilbur,
the other a dialogue with a recruiting-drum by Mr. Biglow — with such a
burthen to it!) just in that way, but I might as well talk to Egg Rock. If I
were an owl (don't you see?) I should have no trouble. I shouldn't consult the
wishes of my bat, but just gobble him up and done with it.
Truth is, my dear Fields, I am amazed to think how I ever
kept my word about the six already caught. I look back and wonder how in great
H. I ever did it. But Sunday is always a prosperous day with me; so pray wait
till Monday, and then I shall either have done my job or shall know it can't be
done.
But what shall one say? Who feels like asking more recruits
to go down into McClellan's beautiful trap, from which seventy thousand men
can't get away? Hasn't he pinned his army there like a bug in a cabinet? — only
you don't have to feed your bug! I feel “blue as the blue forget-me-not,”
and don't see how we are to be saved but by a miracle, and miracles aren't
wrought for folks without heads, at least since the time of St. Denys.
I am much obliged to you for introducing me to Dr. Brown's
book, which I like very much. There is a soul in it somehow that one
does not find in many books, and he seems to me a remarkably good critic, where
his Scoticism doesn't come in his way.
Give me a victory and I will give you a poem; but I am now
clear down in the bottom of the well, where I see the Truth too near to make
verses of.
Truly yours,
J. R. L.
SOURCE: Charles Eliot Norton, Editor, Letters of James Russell
Lowell, Volume 1, p. 359-61
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