PREFACE. IN the present edition of his poetical works, doubtless the most ornamental and correct shape in which they will ever be offered to the public, the author has embodied poems never before printed; has restored several which were overlooked in the editions of late years; has, for the first time, critically re-read and corrected the entire collection; and has thus assembled, he believes, in their final and best form, all of his writings in verse (his plays excepted) which he can venture to think worthy of preservation. In his corrections, (he should remark, perhaps,) he has confined himself to the removal of inaccuracies of sense and metaphor; many of the poems, though popular on account of the feeling which embalms them, having been written in a stage of immature taste, and being incapable of elevation to a high critical standard without a remodelling which would effectually destroy them. Some poems have been restored which had been rejected from other collections, and some left which the author would prefer to have rejected. now; the frequent choice of these, for selected miscellanies, and other unmistakeable signs of their popularity, overruling even the possibility of suppressing them. |