“Write to me whatever you think about the ‘Dial.’ I wish very much to get interested in it, and I can only do so by finding those I love and prize are so. It is very difficult to me to resolve on publishing any of my own writing: it never seems worth it, but the topmost bubble on my life; and the world, the Public! alas! — give me to realize that there are individuals to whom I can speak!”[1]
She appears, by her correspondence, to have had the usual trials of an editor in respect to the procrastination of others; and we find her actively angling for contributions from Emerson, Parker, Hedge, Alcott, Channing, Clarke, Dwight, Cranch, and the rest. Parker even sent her poetry, as appears by the following letter from him: —
“Herewith I send you a couple of little bits of verse, which I confess to you, sub rosâ rosissimâ, are mine. Now, I don’t think myself made for a poet, least of all for an amatory poet. So, if you throw the lines under the grate, in your critical wisdom, I shall not be grieved, vexed, or ruffled; for, though I have enough of the irritabile in my composition, I have none of the irritabile vatis.”[2]
These distrusted love verses were, as I learn from Mr. G. W. Cook, those printed in the “Dial” for July, 1841, under the name of “Protean Wishes.”[3]
