PREFACE. A Seventh Edition of the following Poems being called for by the publick, the author is induced to say a few words, particularly concerning those which, under the name of Sonnets, describe his personal feelings. They can be considered in no other light, than as exhibiting occasional reflections which naturally arose in his mind, chiefly during various excursions, undertaken to relieve, at the time, depression of spirits. They were therefore, in general, suggested by the scenes before him and wherever such scenes appeared to harmonize with his disposition at the moment, the sentiments were involuntarily prompted. Numberless poetical trifles of the same kind have occurred to him, when perhaps, in his solitary rambles, he has been "chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy;" but they have been forgotten, as he left the places which gave rise to them, and the greatest part of those originally committed to the press were written down, for the first time, from memory. This is nothing to the publick; but it may serve in some measure to obviate the common remark on melancholy poetry, that it has been very often gravely composed, when possibly the heart of the writer had very little share in the distress he chose to describe. But there is a great difference between natural and fabricated feelings, even in poetry:-To which of these two characters the poems before the reader belong, the author leaves those, who have felt sensations of sorrow, to judge. They who know him, know the occasions of them to have been real; to the publick he might only mention the sudden death of a deserving young woman, with whom, Sperabat longos beu! ducere soles, "Et fido acclinis consenuisse sinu." DONHEAD, SEPT. 5, 1800. |