...ore, taking up a volume of Scott's Border Minstrelsy, he had received in a similar way the suggestion of The Beleaguered City and of The Luck of Edenhall. We know by Longfellow's own statement to Mr. W. C. Lawton , that it was his rule to do his best in polishing a poem before printing it, but afterwards to leave it untouched, on the principle that the readers of a poem acquired a right to the poet's work in ...