PREFACE.
THE Tragedy which is contained in the following
volume was written twenty-four years ago, though it
has since undergone many alterations. The Author
mentions this circumstance, because, in many respects,
it is not such a performance as, at his present time of
life, he would have written. The candid reader must
be the judge whether he has been too much influenced
by that partiality which all writers, more or less, feel
for their own productions, when he has deemed that it
is not altogether unworthy of being presented to the
public. The Author can truly say, that he sees many
imperfections in it; he even questions whether the turn
of his mind, which rather leads him to analyze feelings,
than to clothe them with the freshness, or to embody
them in the flesh and blood vitality, of dramatic composition,
does not utterly disqualify him for this species
of writing. The Author would just hint that where
expectations of success are so doubtful, and where a
consciousness of demerit is so deeply felt, even if he
should not be deemed to have succeeded, he hopes that
no great disgrace would attend such a failure.
With regard to the other Poem in this volume, the
Author presents the reader with one more tale, a part
of whose outline is taken from the Novels of Boccacio,
notwithstanding the accusation of the monthly reviewers,
that he has attempted to imitate, and failed in the
attempt, the mixture of pathos and humour of the
Italian writers. It is rather singular that in one of the
poems, “Titus and Gisippus,” with regard to which
this assertion is made, not one instance of, or even the
most remote approach to, an attempt at the humorous
can be found; notwithstanding the said reviewers so
facetiously remark, in reply to the allegation of the
Author that this is the case, that they have heard of
persons doing many things unconsciously, but never
before heard of a person being humorous without being
aware of it.
Whatever be the Author's failings as a writer (and he
is willing to submit to the imputation of many), this
one, he is sure, cannot attach to him, the sin of imitation.
If he write at all, it is not so much from premeditation
and design, as in obedience to an impulse which
it would be painful to resist.—The Author has partially
availed himself in his printed poems of the outline of
two stories from Boccacio, not being blessed with a genius
very fertile in the invention of incidents; but these
were merely pegs, as it were, to which he wished to attach
his own feelings. He never dreamed of imitating the
style of the Italian authors, any more than Shakspeare
may be supposed to have done (a genius with whom the
Author would never think of comparing himself, except
on those points which are common to all human beings)
when he framed, as the Author presumes that he did,
his two plays of “Cymbeline,” and “All's Well that
Ends Well,” from the tales of Boccacio.
Many very excellent persons disapprove altogether of
performances in which portraitures of the passions are
introduced. The Author therefore briefly, and not
without a jealousy over himself lest he should be in the
wrong, while he is sensible that his opinion combats that
of the more respectable part of the community, here
ventures to state his ideas on the subject.—It is certain,
whether impassioned delineations exist in books or not,
that there will be what are called impassioned characters.
They are these characters which produce and like these
books, not these books which encourage, much less produce,
these characters. None but these would relish
works of the description to which the Author has been
alluding; and he is constrained to suggest, that, in
general, he believes the prejudice which is entertained
against impassioned performances arises from the fact,
that, in the breast of the greater part of readers, they
excite a painful sense of their own deficiency as respects
the scope and intensity of their feelings. Sooner, therefore
than avow their own defect, they will erect a negation
of passion into a positive virtue. On the other
hand, the Author has known persons who have blended
exquisite sensibility with deep early religious impressions,
and who also have been much limited and restricted
in their course of reading and social intercourse,
who have found on taking up works of an impassioned
tendency, that they too violently stimulated
their minds, and destroyed that equanimity and composure,
to secure which ought to be one of the first objects
of the religious and devout. Of course the Author
would never try to persuade persons on whom such performances
thus operate to turn to them; no—he respects
too much the
innate purity, and the
exquisite moral
and religious tact of such characters, to wish to
dim the
one, or to
blunt the other. But to the generality of
those who complain of illegitimate influence from such
works, the Author thinks that he may with justice
reply in the language of Rousseau in answer to a similar
allegation brought against his performances, “Que
celle qui lira celui ci, malgré son titre, ne se plaigne
point du mal qu'il lui aura fait; elle ment. Le mal
etoit fait d'avance: elle n'a plus rien a risquer.”—For
one person that objects to books of an impassioned tendency
from an exquisite nicety and impressibility of
temperament, there are many, many indeed, who only
do it as a screen for their own coldness; or to speak
perhaps more correctly, as well as more liberally, from
a sort of instinctive dislike to the portraiture of feelings
to which no corresponding chord vibrates in their
bosoms. The main objection, the Author conceives,
which can be made against impassioned works is the
following. Not only no person would either read them
or write them while under the impression of religious
feeling, but also a taste for them and a taste for religion
could not co-exist in the same mind. Is this true? If
it be, not a word would the Author of the following
performance say in their extenuation. But in his
opinion, if, by really religious persons, neutral pursuits
may be at all tolerated, pursuits which are neither
religious nor irreligious, and whose only recommendation
is that they exercise the intellectual faculties (such
subjects for instance as those of science, history, and
the greater part of those which form the basis of poetry),
works in which the passions are delineated may also lay
claim to the same toleration. Of course the Author
entirely excludes either from toleration, or from the
compass of this apology, those works which pourtray
the passions in an inflammatory or seductive manner.
Who was ever made ambitious by reading Macbeth, or
King Richard the Third; jealous by reading Othello;
and died a martyr to the frenzies of imagination, or to
the fervours of love, from the perusal of Hamlet or of
Romeo and Juliet?—and who of an intellectual cast,
who had read these tragedies, would wish not to have
been introduced to such exquisite delineations of the
workings of the human mind?
On the other hand, having premised that there will
be persons of an impassioned cast, whether or not there
be literary performances adapted to their character, the
Author affirms that such persons, in an excited state of
mind, will not, cannot find an interest in matter-of-fact
books, or books of science; he further thinks that the
perusal of works adapted (of course in no way offensive
to the interests of morality) to the above excited state
of mind, instead of augmenting that excitement, often,
as it were, rather absorbs the redundant sparks of passion
which are ready to fly off in all directions, and
which not only o'erinform, but absolutely disease the
mind
“In the opinion of the Author, books develope,
never create; they are only relished in proportion
as they reflect back what they already find in the mind;
they modify the previous impressions, they seldom afford
new materials for excitement.”
“The Author
has seen in many religious families from which books of
imagination were very much excluded, the same intellectual
ennui, the same indisposition, and incapacity
for receiving excitement from ordinary reading which
by the superficial is supposed to be an effect produced
exclusively by the habit of perusing works of an impassioned
and exciting cast. The Author allows that
many of these works have a most pernicious tendency;
yet he believes that the worst books are a very inefficient
part of the causes of vice in any given character;
books are resorted to in states of meditation, and not in
states of active impulse; and it is in the latter state
chiefly, when strong impressions happen to be made
upon it, that the character is irrevocably formed.”—
The Author himself thinks, that he has found when his
mind has been in an excited and restless state, that the
perusal of a book which has described a similar one, so
far from acting as a stimulus, has rather operated as a
sedative; the matter of the book has neutralized the
exacerbations of his spirit; has absorbed its redundancies;
and from such an employment he has often arisen
refreshed and tranquillized, when had he attempted to
seek refreshment or tranquillity from some author
whose topics were one shade more remote from his then
state of mind, than the one in question happened to be,
he either would have turned from it in disgust, or
would have found it incompetent to fix his attention.—
“Books,” as we have said before, “modify the previous
impressions; they seldom afford new materials of
excitement. If this remark be just, the objection to
impassioned works falls at once. The impassioned, if
deprived of them, will only be impassioned in a more
dangerous way, because with less of intellectual association;
the unimpassioned are always secured from their
influence, by the texture of their minds, and by the
contempt which they affect, or feel, for them.” Besides,
to sum up all which can be said on this subject
in one phrase, is it not better to
educate, than to endeavour
to
annihilate the passions?—there are many even
of perilous natures who might be conciliated by the former
process—how many are there that are driven to
desperation, and goaded, as it were, to an inseparable
distance from the virtuous, between whom and themselves
an impassable gulph seems to yawn, by the
latter!
The Author can scarcely forbear adding, that it was
not till the following Tragedy had gone through the
press to nearly the middle of the fourth act, that it struck
him that the feelings of some of his more serious friends
might be hurt by it. Under this impression he would
gladly have cancelled it, had not the expence attending
such a change, and the pledge given to the publisher of
the following work as to its contents, been the source of
considerations which weighed upon him on the other
hand. The Author knows that we are commanded by
Apostolic authority not to
“put a stumbling block in
a brother's way,” nor to do “any thing” whereby a
“brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak;”
and he can truly say, that, had it occurred to him before
the contents of this volume were sent to the press,
that any portion of them had such a tendency, he would
at once have consigned them to oblivion, even though
had he thought far more highly than he now thinks of
them in a literary point of view: and now that, too late
to effect any change, except by means of an inconvenience
which seems fraught with greater evil than can be
produced by suffering that which is already printed to
remain, the idea has been suggested to him that such
offence might be taken at some parts of the following
Tragedy, all that the Author can say is, to produce
such an impression was so far from forming any part of
his object in publishing it, that in as much as such an
impression is produced he shall have to regret that he
was inadvertent of the possibility of such a consequence
till it was too late to avoid it.
There are many ways in which probably this Tragedy
might be altered for the better, particularly in the fifth
act. Some final destination ought perhaps to be assigned
to Courtenaye and Despard; and indeed the
Author had added a scene, which would have lengthened
the present Tragedy, in which something of this kind
was attempted, but he felt as if the catastrophe at the
end of the first scene of the fifth act closed the interest
of the piece, and any further detail, and amplification
of its
denouement would but weaken and attenuate
it. Besides, to speak the truth, the identity is passed
from the Author which led to the composition of this
piece; all attempts from him to alter it would be but so
much patch-work. It is better that a composition should
be defective from curtailment, than enfeebled by too
much detail; in a former part of this preface, the Author
has said, “if he write at all, that he must write
in obedience to an impulse which it would be painful to
resist, rather than from premeditation and design,” and
not only the reverse of all this, but also to write in absolute
opposition to inclination and impulse, would be
his predicament, were he to attempt to add to this
jeu
d'esprit of former years.
The Author hopes that it is supererogatory to intimate
that the defence of duelling in the second scene of
the fourth act of this Tragedy is merely inserted as
characteristic of the personage into whose mouth it is
put, and not the expression of his own sentiments.
Besides it is but a relative and comparative defence: it
is not there pretended that the practice is good in itself,
but only better than something which has been introduced
in its place; it is not spoken of as a commendable
thing, but as a lesser evil.
Woodfield, May 16, 1822.
