In preparing his writings for a new definitive edition, Lowell did much more than merely see to an orderly arrangement. He took great pains with his prose, going over his various papers with care, and tucking in new sentences, or erasing sentences he did not like. He did not meddle much with his poetry; he wished indeed he might get rid of some of his juvenilia, and it was suggested that he should dismiss them to the back-yard of an Appendix. The question was raised if it would be well to date his poems, for the student of literature rightly values the opportunity of marking development in the author he is at work on, but the objection was made that such dating coming from him would be authoritative, and would give sanction to those publishers who lined the legal fence and were ready to seize upon an author’s work the moment it was technically out of copyright, whether the author were living or not, and whether he and his family still had an interest in an undisturbed possession. It was in answer to all this that be wrote me: “_Manet litera scripta_ is a law which might have given points to that of the Medea and Persians. There is no good in squirming. If one could only learn it early enough! I must bear my penalty. I must march through Coventry with my tatterdemalions, whether I like it or not. As for dates, as I have never kept copies of my books (in some of which dates were given), I could not hunt them down without more trouble than it is worth. I had not thought of the bucaneer (I leave out one intrusive _c_) objection till you suggested it. It is enough. Let them go hang!--both dates and bucaneers. And my Lord Chief Justice Holt (wasn’t it he who first made the unrighteous distinction between the property of authors and that of their worsers?), let him swing amidst of ’em! This settles the Appendix.” Lowell loved the minutiæ of verbal criticism. It was part of his jealousy for the purity of the language, and meant that touch which the artist gives. Slovenliness was his abhorrence, and free as he was with the vernacular, he made a clear distinction between the undress and the dress occasions of speech. I transmitted to him at this time a criticism which took him to task for the use of the form “try and.” He replied: “I am much obliged to Mr. ---- for his friendly interest in my English. The phrase ‘try and,’ like ‘come and,’ is to some extent conversational, but it is idiomatic. There is plenty of authority for it. Here is one from Thackeray, who uses it often:-- “Don’t they try and pass off their ordinary-looking girls? &c.’[107] “You will observe that in the passage criticised by Mr. ---- I am supposing another person to speak, and therefore made it purposely familiar. ‘Come and’ occurs in the first motto of the Bay Colony: ‘Come over and help us’--from the Bible, ‘Come over into Macedonia, and help us.’ Matthew Arnold uses it, and I think it is in Shakespeare also.”