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INTRODUCTION.

When, more than three years ago, my talented young parishioner, Mr.
Biglow, came to me and submitted to my animadversions the first of his
poems which he intended to commit to the more hazardous trial of a city
newspaper, it never so much as entered my imagination to conceive that
his productions would ever be gathered into a fair volume, and ushered
into the august presence of the reading public by myself. So little are
we short-sighted mortals able to predict the event! I confess that there
is to me a quite new satisfaction in being associated (though only as
sleeping partner) in a book which can stand by itself in an independent
unity on the shelves of libraries. For there is always this drawback
from the pleasure of printing a sermon, that, whereas the queasy stomach
of this generation will not bear a discourse long enough to make a
separate volume, those religious and godly-minded children (those
Samuels, if I may call them so) of the brain must at first lie buried in
an undistinguished heap, and then get such resurrection as is
vouchsafed to them, mummy-wrapt with a score of others in a cheap
binding, with no other mark of distinction than the word
"_Miscellaneous_" printed upon the back. Far be it from me to claim any
credit for the quite unexpected popularity which I am pleased to find
these bucolic strains have attained unto. If I know myself, I am
measurably free from the itch of vanity; yet I may be allowed to say
that I was not backward to recognize in them a certain wild, puckery,
acidulous (sometimes even verging toward that point which, in our rustic
phrase, is termed _shut-eye_) flavour, not wholly unpleasing, no