le, it would be necessary to give a full account of the
present state of the public taste in this country, and to determine how
far this taste is healthy or depraved; which, again, could not be
determined, without pointing out in what manner language and the human
mind act and re-act on each other, and without retracing the
revolutions, not of literature alone, but likewise of society itself. I
have therefore altogether declined to enter regularly upon this defence;
yet I am sensible, that there would be something like impropriety in
abruptly obtruding upon the Public, without a few words of introduction,
Poems so materially different from those upon which general approbation
is at present bestowed.

It is supposed, that by the act of writing in verse an Author makes a
formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of
association; that he not only thus apprises the Reader that certain
classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that
others will be carefully excluded. This exponent or symbol held forth by
metrical language must in different eras of literature have excited very
different expectations: for example, in the age of Catullus, Terence,
and Lucretius, and that of Statius or Claudian; and in our own country,
in the age of Shakspeare and Beaumont and Fletcher, and that of Donne
and Cowley, or Dryden, or Pope. I will not take upon me to determine the
exact import of the promise which, by the act of writing in verse, an
Author in the present day makes to his reader: but it will undoubtedly
appear to many persons that I have not fulfilled the terms of an
engagement thus voluntarily contracted. They who have been accustomed to
the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they
persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will, no doubt,
frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and
awkwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to
inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to
assume that title. I hope therefore the reader will not censure me for
attempting to state what I have proposed to myself to perform; and also
(as far as the limits of a preface will permit) to explain some of the
chief reasons which have determined me in the choice of my purpose: that
at least he may be spared any unpleasant feeling of disappointment, and
that I myself may be protected from one of the most dishonourable
accusations whi