Preface to the First Edition

[Pp. [xiii]-xvi.]

Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not
unfrequently condemned for their querulous Egotism. But Egotism is to be
condemned then only when it offends against Time and Place, as in an
History or an Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody or Sonnet is almost
as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write Sonnets 5
or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else
could. After the more violent emotions of Sorrow, the mind demands
amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late
sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected
with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is 10
a painful and most often an unavailing effort:

But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of Misery to impart—
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of woe!

Shaw.

The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to describe our own
sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted;
and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually
associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the 20
description. "True!" (it may be answered) "but how are the Public
interested in your Sorrows or your Description?" We are for ever
attributing personal Unities to imaginary Aggregates.—What is the Public,
but a term for a number of scattered Individuals? Of whom as many
will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or 25
similar.

"Holy be the lay,
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way."

If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that
the most interesting passages in our most interesting Poems are those, in 30
which the Author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice of Cona
never sounds so sweetly as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost
suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the
third book of the Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a law of
our Nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for 35
sympathy; but a Poet's feelings are all strong. Quicquid amet valde amat.
Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy, when he classes
Love and Poetry, as producing the same effects:

"Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms
Their own."—Pleasures Of Imagination.

There is one species of Egotism which is truly disgusting; not that
which leads us to communicate our feelings to others, but that which
would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The
Atheist, who exclaims, "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises 45
of Deity, is an Egotist: an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of
Love-verses is an Egotist: and the sleek Favorites of Fortune are
Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy, discontented" verses.
Surely, it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases
ourselves but to consider whether or no there may not be others to whom 50
it is well-calculated to give an innocent pleasure.

I shall only add that each of my readers will, I hope, remember that
these Poems on various subjects, which he reads at one time and under
the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times and
prompted by very different feelings; and therefore that the supposed 55
inferiority of one Poem to another may sometimes be owing to the temper
of mind, in which he happens to peruse it.

[Pp. [xvii]-xx.]