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 INTRODUCTION.

��THE RANDALL FAMILY.

I.

The poems here collected, although published in part more than forty years ago, are in truth now given to the world for the first time. In 1856, a small volume in black or brown cloth binding, very unpretentious in appearance and altogether unheralded by advertisements, was printed and put on sale for a while in Boston by John P. Jewett and Company, well known at the time as the publishers of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." The book was entitled " Consola- tions of Solitude," and went out anonymously to meet the fate which is common to anonymous books, especially when, like this one, they are published at the author's expense and get no help from the trade. A few copies were sold ; more were given away. The author, too proud to permit what he called "puffery," and too jealous of the poet's high calling to sanction the pushing of his work by means which he thought detracted from its dignity, refused to resort even to quite legitimate advertising, and chose to let his strains die unheard rather than to force them, or even seem to force them, on a single unwilling ear. The result could easily be foreseen, and it would be quite unfair to hold the publisher alone responsible for it.

Indeed, the poet himself never complained of his pub- lisher for not advertising the book, and, when the vener-

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