 | The conquest of Canäan |  |
As this poem is the first of the kind, which has been published in this country, the writer begs leave to introduce it with several observations, which that circumstance alone may perhaps render necessary.
He has taken to himself the liberty of altering the real order of the two last battles, because he imagined the illustrious events, which attended the battle of Gibeon, would make it appear to be the catastrophe of the poem, wherever inserted.
He has varied the story of the embassy from Gibeon, for reasons, which he thinks will be obvious to every reader, and which he hopes will be esteemed his sufficient justification.
To give entire Unity to the Action, he has made Jabin the Canäanitish hero through the whole poem; and has transferred the scene of the battle, between Hazor and Israel, from the shores of the lake Merom to the neighbourhood of Ai.
In the Manners, he has studied a medium between absolute barbarism and modern refinement. In the best characters, he has endeavoured to represent such manners, as are removed from the peculiarities of any age, or country, and might belong to the amiable and virtuous, of every age: such as are elevated without design, refined without ceremony, elegant without fashion, and agreeable, because they are ornamented with sincerity, dignity, and religion, not because they are polished by art and education. Of such manners, he hopes he may observe, without impropriety, that they possess the highest advantages for universal application.
He has made use of Rhyme, because he believed it would be more generally relished than blank verse, even amongst those who are esteemed persons of taste.
It may perhaps be thought the result of inattention or ignorance, that he chose a subject, in which his countrymen had no national interest. But he remarked that the Iliad and Eneid were as agreeable to modern nations, as to the Greeks and Romans. The reason he supposed to be obvious—the subjects of those poems furnish the fairest opportunities of exhibiting the agreeable, the novel, the moral, the pathetic, and the sublime. If he is not deceived,
It will be observed that he has introduced some new words, and annexed to some old ones, a new signification. This liberty, allowed to others, he hopes will not be refused to him: especially as from this source the copiousness and refinement of language have been principally derived.
That he wishes to please he frankly confesses. If he fails in the design, it will be a satisfaction that he shall have injured no person but himself. As the poem is uniformly friendly to delicacy, and virtue, he hopes his countrymen will so far regard him with candour, as not to impute it to him as a fault, that he has endeavoured to please them, and has thrown in his mite, for the advancement of the refined arts, on this side of the Atlantic.
| The conquest of Canäan | |