Chapter LXI: Preface: To the Second Edition

I return my acknowledgments to the different Reviewers for the / assistance, which they have afforded me, in detecting my poetic deficien/cies. I have endeavoured to avail myself of their remarks: one third of / the former Volume I have omitted, and the imperfections of the republished / part must be considered as errors of taste, not faults of carelessness. My / poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of double-epithets, and / a general turgidness. I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing / hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of / thought and diction. This latter fault however had insinuated itself / into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes / I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the / flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that / of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure / when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, / or unappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, / like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract / truths, like Collins's Ode on the poetical character, claims not to be / popular--but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the / Reader. But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is / warm and rapid, must expect from his _contemporaries_. Milton did not / escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. / We now hear no more of it; not that their poems are better understood / at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is / established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention, / who should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet / sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his / feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath, / than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from my poems the same / easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song, for him I have not / written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero.

I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I consider / myself as having been amply repayed without either. Poetry has been to / me its own[1146:1] "exceeding great reward": it has soothed my afflictions: it / has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; / and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the Good and the / Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend / and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me / a complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum / omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odere. My friend CHARLES LLOYD has / likewise joined me; and has contributed every poem of his, which he / deemed worthy of preservation. With respect to my own share of the / Volume, I have omitted a third of the former Edition, and added almost / an equal number. The Poems thus added are marked in the Contents by / Italics. S. T. C. STOWEY, _May_, 1797.

MS. Notes attached to proof sheets of the second Edition.

(_a_) As neither of us three were present to correct the Press, and as my handwriting is not eminently distinguished for neatness or legibility, the Printer has made a few mistakes. The Reader will consult equally his own convenience, and our credit if before he peruses the volume he will scan the Table of Errata and make the desired alterations. S. T. Coleridge. Stowey, May 1797.

(_b_) Table of Contents. (N.B. of my Poems)--and let it be printed in the same manner as Southey's Table of Contents--take care to mark _the new poems_ of the Edition by Italics.

_Dedication._

Preface to the first Edition.
_Refer to the_ Second Edition.
_Ode on the departing Year._
Monody on the death of Chatterton, etc., etc.--

[_MS. R._]

P. [69].

[Half-title] [=Sonnets=], / _Attempted in the Manner_ / Of The / Rev. W. L. Bowles. / Non ita certandi cupidus, quam propter amorem / Quod te IMITARI aveo. / LUCRET.

[Pp. 71-74.]