course of Lectures upon Poetry given by him at the
Royal Institution. For the various merits of thought and language in
Shakespeare's _Sonnets_, see Nos. 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 54, 64, 66, 68,
73, 76, 86, 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114,
116, 117, 129, and many others.]

[Footnote 7: Hughes is express upon this subject in his dedication of
Spenser's Works to Lord Somers, he writes thus 'It was your Lordship's
encouraging a beautiful edition of _Paradise Lost_ that first brought
that incomparable Poem to be generally known and esteemed.']

[Footnote 8: This opinion seems actually to have been entertained by
Adam Smith, the worst critic, David Hume not excepted, that Scotland,
a soil to which this sort of weed seems natural, has produced.]

[Footnote 9: CORTES, _alone in a night-gown_.

All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead;
The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head.
The little Birds in dreams their songs repeat,
And sleeping Flowers beneath the Night-dew sweat:
Even Lust and Envy sleep; yet Love denies
Rest to my soul, and slumber to my eyes.

DRYDEN'S _Indian Emperor_.]

[Footnote 10: Since these observations upon Thomson were written, I
have perused the second edition of his _Seasons_, and find that even
_that_ does not contain the most striking passages which Warton points
out for admiration, these, with other improvements, throughout the
whole work, must have been added at a later period.]

[Footnote 11: Shenstone, in his _Schoolmistress_, gives a still more
remarkable instance of this timidity On its first appearance (see
D'Israeli's 2d Series of the _Curiosities of Literature_) the Poem was
accompanied with an absurd prose commentary, showing, as indeed some
incongruous expressions in the text imply, that the whole was intended
for burlesque. In subsequent editions, the commentary was dropped, and
the People have since continued to read in seriousness, doing for the
Author what he had not courage openly to venture upon for himself.]

PREFACE TO CROMWELL

BY VICTOR HUGO. (1827)[A]

The drama contained in the following pages has nothing to commend
it to the attention or the good will of the public. It has not, to
attract the interest of political disputants, the advantage of the
veto of the official censorship, nor even, to win for it at the outset
the literary sympathy of men of taste, the honour of having been
formally rejected by an infallible reading