Meanwhile, when _Putnam’s_ was at the top of its brief tide, another attempt at a good literary magazine was made in Boston. The extraordinary success of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had emboldened its publisher, Mr. John P. Jewett, to undertake what its projector, Mr. F. H. Underwood, called a “Literary and Anti-Slavery Magazine.” It was the intention to issue the first number in January, 1854, and to use the great reputation of Mrs. Stowe to float it by printing a new novel by her. Mr. Underwood[98] was particularly desirous of securing Lowell’s aid, especially as he esteemed his poetry quite the best to be had in America, and he was elated at receiving from him the poem “The Oriole’s Nest,” afterward called simply “The Nest.” But the design which had been germinating for two or three years was suddenly brought to naught by the failure of the luckless publishers, whose success with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” seems to have been thrust upon them, rather than to have been due to their business ability. So a fortnight after sending his poem, Lowell was forced to write the disconcerted editor: “I cannot help writing a word to say how truly sorry I was to hear of the blowing up of your magazine. But it is not so irreparable as if it had been a powder-magazine, though perhaps all the harder to be borne because it was only _in posse_ and not _in esse_. The explosion of one of those Castles in Spain sometimes sprinkles dust on all the rest of our lives, but I hope you are of better heart, and will rather look upon the affair as a burning of your ships which makes victory the more imperative. Although I could prove by a syllogism in _barbara_ that you are no worse off than you were before, I know very well that you _are_, for if it be bad to lose mere coin, it is still worse to lose hope, which is the mint in which most gold is manufactured. “But, after all, is it a hopeless case? Consider yourself to be in the position of all the world before the Mansion of our Uncle Thomas (as I suppose we must call it now, it has grown so respectable) was published, and never to have heard of this Mr. Jew-wit. I think he ought to be--that something ought to be done for him: but for that matter nearly all booksellers stand in the same condemnation. There are as good fish in that buccaneering sea of Bibliopoly as ever were caught, and if one of them has broken away from your harpoon, I hope the next may prove a downright kraaken, on whom, if needful, you can pitch your tent and live. “Don’t think that I am trifling with you. God knows any jests of mine would be of a bitter sort just now; but I know that it is a good thing for a man to be made to look at his misfortune till it assumes its true relations to things about it. So don’t think me intrusive if I nudge your elbow among the rest.” * * * * *