Pessimus

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. fTlHIS the first offspring of my pen, my eldest essay in letters, just as it is, I offer to the literary republic. Neither apology nor excuse, for any hardihood in the attempt, do I bring with it. If I must petition for grace at all, it is this: that my poem may be subjected to a searching, scorching criticism. Let it stand or fall on its own merits or demerits. By showing himself pitiless and severe, the critic will be proved also and thereby my truest friend. Why should one who has read much, and thought more, who is conscious of a mission and prophetic burthen, and is prepared to abide the worst, cringe and fawn like a slave, or step diffidently like a girl, on entering the poetic circle ? Without expecting an introduction, without bow given, or pardon demanded, but simply sui juris, he invades this magic world. Like a young gladiator, impatient for the battle, as armed at all points?well equipped and trained, my harness on my back, and sword in hand, I descend, I leap boldly into the arena. In so doing and daring, I am not proud or presumptuous, but justly self-reliant, and as a man who feels and acts upon a proper calling. The voice of the spirit does not whisper false, it does not deceive and tempt with an alien ambition. I recognise and obey the present God. I have paused and worshipped; I have taken off my shoes, as standing on holy ground. With reverence I have written, believing and trembling. Thendoes it signify, if the writer is but a boy in years, only an undergraduate of dear old Oxford, when his mind is mature and pregnant? Shall the hero, who is stung by a divine…