Page:Letters of Life.djvu/367

Rh selections from such of my poems as had been deemed most popular, mingling with them new ones if I chose, and permit them to be issued in an illustrated octavo edition, uniform with those beautiful ones of Bryant, Longfellow, and Willis, and forming the fourth of the series. I was not insensible to so high a compliment, and acceded to their wishes. The book contained more than four hundred pages, with fourteen fine engravings from original designs, by Darley, and was the first of mine that in all respects of paper, typography, and binding, was quite accordant with my taste. Its sale at five dollars per copy, and seven dollars in turkey morocco, was also satisfactory to those who had so freely expended upon its execution. After the dissolution of that firm it appeared in a plainer form, and with fewer embellishments, several of the plates having been destroyed in a conflagration. It was dedicated to the late Samuel Rogers, then the oldest poet in Europe, to whom I was indebted for many marks of friendship when in his native clime, and who warmly appreciated the attention. He, to whom the grateful offering would have been more naturally paid, my first literary patron, Mr. Wadsworth, who permitted me to consecrate with his name my "Weeping Willow," had, a few months before the appearance of the above-named volume, laid his head in an honored grave, just before reaching his seventy-seventh birthday. Other tender reminiscences also cluster around it—of an eye, that,