Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to Collins, the latest authour I
know of who has emulated the classicks in the latter style. But in the
time of a Civil War worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to sing, it
may be reasonably doubted whether the publick, never too studious of
serious instruction, might not consider other objects more deserving of
present attention. Concerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has
adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the
name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick in phrase (for, though
the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by
Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its
capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments
and expressions), while it is also descriptive of real scenery and
manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question
(which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my
correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch as
the interlocutors therein are purely imaginary beings, and the whole is
little better than [Greek: kapnou skias onar]. The plot was, as I
believe, suggested by the 'Twa Brigs' of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet
of the last century, as that found its prototype in the 'Mutual
Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey' by Fergusson, though, the metre of
this latter be different by a foot in each verse. Perhaps the Two Dogs
of Cervantes gave the first hint. I reminded my talented young
parishioner and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the
edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there
was no greater mistake of an authour than to suppose the reader had no
fancy of his own; that, if once that faculty was to be called into
activity, it were _better_ to be in for the whole sheep than the
shoulder; and that he knew Concord like a book,--an expression
questionable in propriety, since there are few things with which he is
not more familiar than with the printed page. In proof of what he
affirmed, he showed me some verses which with others he had stricken
out as too much delaying the action, but which I communicate in this
place because they rightly define 'punkin-seed' (which Mr. Bartlett
would have a kind of perch,--a creature to which I have found a rod or
pole not to be so easily equivalent in our inland waters as in the books
of arithmetic) and because it conveys