public action; and the unceasing alternation of a melancholy and a cheerfulness, equally native to my blood, and the latter of which I have suffered to go its lengths, both as an innocent propensity and a means of resistance, -have combined in me to baffle conclusion, and filled me full of these perhapses, which I have observed growing upon my writings for many years past. Perhaps the question is not worth a word I have said of it, except upon that principle of "gossiping" with which my preface sets out, and which I hope will procure me the reader's pardon for starting it. All that I was going to say was, that if I cannot do in poetry what ought to be done, I know what ought not; and that if there is no truth in my my verses, I look for no indulgence.

As I do write poetry however, such as it is, I must have my side of confidence as well as of misgiving; and when I am in the humour for thinking that I have done something that may dare hope to be called by the name, I fancy I know where my station is. I please myself with thinking, that had the circumstances of my life permitted it, I might have done something a little worthier of acceptance, in the way of a mixed kind of narrative poetry, part lively and part serious, somewhere between the longer poems of the Italians, and the Fabliaux of the old French. My propensity

would have been (and, oh! had my duties permitted, how willingly would I have passed my life in it! how willingly now pass it!) to write "eternal new stories" in verse, of no great length, but just sufficient to vent the pleasure with which I am stung on meeting with some touching adventure, and which haunts me till I can speak of it somehow. I would have dared to pretend to be a servant in the train of Ariosto, nay, of Chaucer,

"-and far off his skirts adore."

I sometimes look at the trusting animal spirits in which the following poems were written, (for my doubts come after I have done writing, and not while I am about it,) and wonder whether or not they are of a right sort. I know not. I cannot tell whether what pleased me at the moment, was mere pleasure taken in the subject, or whether it involved the power of.communicating it to the reader. All I can be sure of is, that I was in earnest; that the feelings, whatever they were, which I pretended to have, I had. It was the -mistake of the criticism of a northern climate, to think that the occasional quaintnesses and neologisms, which formerly disfigured the Story of Rimini, arose out of affectation. They were the sheer license of animal

spirits. While I was writing them, I never imagined that they were not proper to be indulged in. I have tropical blood in my veins, inherited through many generations, and was too full of impulse and sincerity to pretend to anything I did not feel. Probably the criticisms were not altogether a matter of climate; for I was a writer of politics as well as verses, and the former (two years ago!) were as illegal as the sallies of phraseology. Be this as it may, I have here shown, that I have at any rate not enough of the vanity of affectation to hinder me from availing myself of experience, and ridding my volume both of superfluities of a larger sort, and of those petty anomalies of words and phrases which I never thought worth defending. I believe there are but two words remaining in the Story of Rimini, to which any body would think it worth while to object; and one of these (the word swirl in page 2) I had marked to be taken out, but found it restored by a friend who saw the passage as it was going through the press (no stickler for neologisms), and who put a wondering "quære" why it should be omitted. I used it to express the entrance of a sailing boat into harbour, when it turns the corner of it, and comes round with a sweeping motion. "Sweep" would have described the motion but not the figure. "Wheel" appeared

to me too mechanical, and to make the circle too complete. I could find, therefore, no other word for the mixed idea which I wished to convey; and as swirl is in the dictionaries, I had no hesitation in submitting to the query, and letting it remain. The other word is "cored," at page 41, meaning something that has taken root in the heart of our consciousness. I give it up to the critic, if he dislikes it, having accidentally let the proof-sheet, which contained it, go to press beyond power of recal. I care no more for it, than if it had been the oldest and least venerable of common-places. I should beg the reader's pardon for detaining him so long with these trifles, did not my value for his good opinion in higher matters, make me wish not to be thought contemptuous of it in the smallest.

My verses having thus been corrected, as far as I saw occasion, and evidence enough (I hope) having been given to show that I have no overweening value for what I have written, merely because I have written it, I should prove indeed that I had no reason to doubt the measure of my pretensions, if I gave up the right of keeping my own opinion, upon points on which I did not feel it shaken.* I have therefore retained in

* See, with reference to feelings of this kind, and upon many of

b

my versification, not only the triplets and alexandrines which some have objected to, because they have been rarely used in heroic poetry since the time of Dryden, but the double rhymes which have been disused since the days of Milton.

It has been said of the triplet, that it is only a temptation to add a needless line, to what ought to be comprised in two. This is manifestly a half-sighted objection; for at least the converse of the proposition may be as true; namely, that it comprises, in one additional line, what two might have needlessly extended. And undoubtedly compression is often obtained by the triplet, and should never be injured by it; but I take its true spirit to be this;-that it carries onward the fervour of the poet's feeling; delivers him for the moment, and on the most suitable occasions, from the ordinary laws of his verse; and enables him to finish his impulse with triumph. In all instances, where the triplet is not used for the mere sake of convenience, it expresses continuity of some sort, whether for the purpose of extension, or inclu

the highest points of his art, the Essays of a great living poet (Mr. Wordsworth). and especially every critical reader of it, intimate with them.

accompanying the works Every lover of poetry, ought to make himself