shaped anew, as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed by
an antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claim
a copyright in these immortal fables. They seem never to have been
made; and certainly, so long as man exists, they can never perish; but,
by their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for
every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and
to imbue with its own morality. In the present version they may have
lost much of their classical aspect (or, at all events, the author has
not been careful to preserve it), and have, perhaps, assumed a Gothic or
romantic guise.

In performing this pleasant task,--for it has been really a task fit for
hot weather, and one of the most agreeable, of a literary kind, which he
ever undertook,--the author has not always thought it necessary to write
downward, in order to meet the comprehension of children. He has
generally suffered the theme to soar, whenever such was its tendency,
and when he himself was buoyant enough to follow without an effort.
Children possess an unestimated sensibility to whatever is deep or high,
in imagination or feeling, so long as it is simple, likewise. It is
only the artificial and the complex that bewilder them.

Lenox, July 15, 1851.




THE GORGON'S HEAD

TANGLEWOOD PORCH