The first edition of “Atalantis” was published in 1832. It has been subsequently revised, and, I trust, amended. I am not satisfied that the dramatic form was appropriately adopted, since it leads to expectations which the character of the poem will scarcely satisfy. The advantage of the dialogue consists simply in permitting that diversification of the descriptive portions, which, in a work so purely fanciful, would seem necessary to prevent monotony.—This poem, with those pieces which follow it, belongs to a class, the standards of which are almost entirely imaginative. The reader who looks here for the merely human sentiment, will find himself at fault. The province of poetry is too various for the application of laws derived wholly from individual tastes; and he who opens the pages of an author must always be prepared to ascend that mount of vision from which he has made his survey. The highest regions of the ideal, are unquestionably such as belong to the spiritual nature. To this nature, exclusively, verse which is solely imaginative must commend itself. It is not the less human, though it may be more remote and foreign, than that which simply appeals to mortal passions, and the more earthly purposes of man and life.
