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PREFACE.
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 of Deity, is an Egotist; an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of love-verses, is an Egotist; and your 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 it is well-calculated to give an innocent pleasure. With what anxiety every fashionable author avoids the
