C.4.
These verses have always been printed in my collected poems, and as the best of them may bear a single reading, I allow them to appear, but in a less conspicuous position than the other productions.

A chick, before his shell is off his back, is hardly a fair subject for severe criticism.
If one has written anything worth preserving, his first efforts may be objects of interest and curiosity.

Other young authors may take encouragement from seeing how tame, how feeble, how commonplace were the rudimentary attempts of the half-fledged poet.

If the boy or youth had anything in him, there will probably be some sign of it in the midst of his imitative mediocrities and ambitious failures.

These "first verses" of mine, written before I was sixteen, have little beyond a common academy boy's ordinary performance.