A Ninth Edition of the following Poems having been called for by the
public, 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 them;
and wherever such scenes appeared to harmonise 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 cud of sweet
and bitter fancy;" but they have been forgotten as he left the places
which gave rise to them; and the greater part of those originally
committed to the press were written down, for the first time, from
memory.
This is nothing to the public; 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
public he might only mention the sudden death of a deserving young
woman, with whom,
... _Sperabat longos heu! ducere soles,
Et fido acclinis consenuisse sinu._[1]