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 be
buried in an undistinguished heap, and then get such resurrection as is
vouchsafed to them, mummy-wrapped 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-eyed_) flavor, not wholly unpleasing, nor
unwholesome, to palates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed and
cultivated fruit.
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