University of Virginia Library

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


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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


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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


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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

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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,

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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


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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

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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


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“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


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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.
 

Preface to Isabel, a tale by C. Lloyd, p. 28.

Ditto, p. 33.

Preface to Isabel, p. 28, 29.

Romans, chap xiv. v. 13, 21.