polite literature, while the small portion of leisure time he can now enjoy is spent and courted in the best society of London, -whose simultaneous taste and decision made me reject a disagreeably jingling word from the third line of the stanzas addressed to the Earl of G -d; To the elegant scholar and polished gentleman, best loved where most known, in that select society to which his delicate health and discriminating choice require him chiefly to confine himself,—who I believe will find banished from my verses almost all the words and expressions which his just and scrupulous acumen condemned; To one of the persons before-mentioned, by me ever most honoured, esteemed, and admired,-whose quick eye, and skill, and experience, in building the lofty or pathetic song, discovered at once that worse than bellman's rhyme in my 85th stanza, which, had it been left there, would probably have brought on me such a deluge of epigrammatic quizzing, and critical sarcasm, as to render me and all my 95 ottave rime "Sacred to ridicule my whole life long, To him, who, if he is not always named in the very first rank of our best contemporary poets, has his ill health, or a disposition perhaps unambitious of such mere literary fame, certainly not his muse, to blame ;-and who corrected a hasty superficial note of mine, in an instance where my early and long habitual use of the most northern dialect of our mother tongue had misled me," manserunt, hodieque manent vestigia ruris;”— To the most amiable person, also already mentioned, whose mild susceptibility perceived, while a friendly fear of hurting the almost morbid sensibility of an author (genus irritabile),-perhaps most partial to what is most objectionable in his writings, -only permitted the surmise of a fault which might probably be imputed to me, and which in deference to that suggestion I have above attempted, perhaps unsuccessfully, to palliate or defend;— To that citizen of the world, in the best sense of a term so frequently misapplied, who is entitled to be considered as a classic, and also as a critic of safe and sure judgment and taste, equally in English and Italian literature "degno d'esser salutato maestro di color che sanno;"-and who, amidst his most pressing literary occupations and pursuits, has found time attentively to peruse, and has spoken indulgently and favourably of my prose and rhymes ;— To the most valued and respected friend, with whose acquaintance I have been so long honoured-distinguished for natural eloquence both in foreign languages and our own, and a superior understanding and acquirements, cultivated and refined by the most steady and persevering application of the happiest faculties to the study and practice of all that can improve the morals and manners of polite and social life—who has taught me to reconsider and amend many passages to which I had not before sufficiently attended ; To each individual of the much regretted assemblage mentioned in my Introduction -regretted, for we shall never all meet again in this world-who were the motives, I may say, and witnesses of what their approbation gave me the courage to attempt, and which may now afford some excuse, I hope, for the mock importance I am at pre sent endeavouring to give it :—and, among them, To our then host,-the most learned, yet the least pedantic of men; of knowledge and literature the most profound, because acquired by the most capacious and most retentive memory; possessed too of the quickest, keenest sense of ridicule, with the happiest vein of playful humour in expressing that sense, yet this so tempered by the milk of human kindness as never to give offence:-in short, the best good man with the best-natured muse ;my near and dear relation, chosen by me for many affecting reasons to be the poetical patron of this tardy and feeble effort of my widowed and childless old age : To all these I thus again devote, dedicate, and consecrate, the following pages. |