ich flower was meant, a kind of doubt which would
never accompany a floral description by Tennyson.

It is interesting to put beside this inspirational aspect of poetry the
fact that the poet at one time planned a newspaper with his friends
Felton and Cleveland, involving such a perfectly practical and
business-like communication as this, with his publisher, Samuel Colman,
which is as follows:{46}--

CAMBRIDGE, July 6, 1839.

MY DEAR SIR,--In compliance with your wishes I have ordered 2200
copies of Hyperion to be printed. I do it with the understanding,
that you will give your notes for $250 each, instead of the sums
mentioned in the agreement: and that I shall be allowed 50 copies
instead of 25 for distribution. This will leave you 150, which
strikes me as a very large number.

The first Vol. (212 pp.) will be done to-day: and the whole in a
fortnight, I hope. It is _very_ handsome; and those who praise you
for publishing _handsome_ books, will have some reason for saying
so.

Will you have the books, or any part of them done up here?--and in
the English style, uncut?--Those for the Boston market I should
think you would.

With best regards to Mellen and Cutler,

Very truly yours in haste

LONGFELLOW.

P. S. By the way; I was shocked yesterday to see in the New York
Review that _Undine_ was coming out in your Library of Romance. This
is one of the tales of the Wonderhorn. Have you forgotten? I intend
to come to New York, as soon as I get through with printing
Hyperion; and we will bring this design to an arrangement, and one
more beside.

Addressed to SAMUEL COLMAN, ESQ.
8 Astor House,
New York.

That was at a time when it was quite needful that American authors
should be business-like, since American publishers sometimes were not.
The very man to whom this letter was addressed became bankrupt six
months later; half the edition of "Hyperion" (1200 copies) was seized by
creditors and was locked up, so that the book was out of the market for
four months. "No matter," the young author writes in his diary, "I had
the glorious satisfaction of writing it." Meanwhile the "Knickerbocker"
had not paid its contributors for three years, and the success of
"Voices of th