Airs of Palestine [electronic text] : a poem

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO THE
THIRD EDITION.

THE following poem was written in the cause of charity. It was intended, that the recitation of it should form a part of the performances of an evening concert of Sacred Musick for the benefit of the poor. It was indeed a volunteer in the cause;—but its aid was coldly received, or rather, was coldly declined wherever it made its trembling advances; and it was thus stung into the resolution of appearing before the publick, not indeed to solicit the succour of charity for others, but the rites of hospitality for itself.

From a call for a third edition, so soon after the publication of the first, I have a right to infer, that the offering which I have been thus in a measure compelled to lay upon the altar of literature, is attended with favourable omens;—that the birds fly and the thunders roll auspiciously.

To say that this is not flattering, is what I shall avoid, for two reasons. In the first place it would be false; and in the second, it would be a contemptible affectation of modesty, which I neither feel, nor am solicitous to feel; and of a contempt of publick approbation, to which no man who deserved it was ever indifferent. On the contrary I have considered that this generous treatment from the publick has imposed upon me an obligation to revise the poem, and render it less unworthy of the notice with which it has been honoured.

I have availed myself of all the liberal critical notices that I have seen, to improve those passages that were obviously obnoxious to manly and honourable criticism, and to fortify those points which, in my own opinion, were most vulnerable. But where there has been a difference of opinion between the critick and the author, the former has the satisfaction of seeing the assailable points still open to his attacks. It would indeed be a pity to deprive him of a subject for the exercise of his ingenuity;—and the critick is the last man in the republick of letters whom I would wish to hear exclaiming with the noble Moor,

"Othello's occupation's gone."

Not that I have the vanity to suppose all good cause of offence removed from the critical eye. My own has detected many that have not been pointed out by others;—but it is one thing to discover an imperfection, and another to remove it.

The double rhymes I have, in most instances where they occurred, suffered to remain: though they have been complained of I believe by the majority of criticks, and perhaps by the majority of the publick: though, on the other hand, they have met the decided approbation of many, whose taste, in matters of this sort, is entitled to high consideration. They were admitted for two reasons. In the first place, as I have before observed, the poem was begun and ended with the idea that it would be publickly rehearsed;—and I was aware how difficult even a good speaker finds it, to recite the best heroick poetry for any length of time, without perceiving in his hearers the somniferous effects of a regular cadence. The double rhyme was therefore occasionally thrown in, like a ledge of rocks in a smoothly gliding river, to break the current which, without it, might appear sluggish, and to vary the melody which might otherwise become monotonous.

The other reason which operated in favour of the double rhyme was merely auxiliary to my general purpose, which was an attempt to enlist the muses in the service of their oldest and firmest friends, virtue and religion. I was aware that they have been for some time past, in the habit of sporting in a more free and unrestrained measure than was allowed them, when upon sacred ground, under the more rigid discipline of Dryden and Pope. I thought it possible, therefore, that their votaries might not recognise them in the company of their old and venerable patroness, if they were compelled to move in right lines and perpendicular postures, laced up in the whalebone, and muffled in the buckram in which christianity has been almost in all ages disfigured and disguised by the starched and inflexible religionist. If there be grace in these movements, and grace which does not violate either delicacy or dignity, let the muses adopt them, even in the train of virtue:—and if a flower is springing up on the margin of the poetical liberties, I hope I may be excused in stepping one foot over to pluck it.

If, however, the double rhyme is never either beautiful or harmonious, and it shall be so decided by the publick taste, I shall only have failed

in an experiment which was worth making, and must plead the design with which it was made, in mitigation of the severity of the censure. It is now more difficult to alter the double rhymes than it was originally not to have written them, and till the publick disapprobation is distinctly expressed, they must remain as they are.

That I have succeeded entirely in all that I attempted, I do not even hope. If I have succeeded at all, I know it is to be attributed principally to the native charms of virtue and piety, when exhibited in a manner congenial to their own purity and simplicity: and I am sure it will tend to render my sleep of death peaceful and triumphant to know, that I have succeeded even partially in restoring to virtue the beauties of which dogmatists have plundered her;—and to religion the evidences of her claim to the love of the refined and the veneration of the learned—claims which have been withheld from her by the ignorance, or the arts, or the fanaticism of those, who arrogate to themselves the character of exclusively religious, while they are strangers to learning taste and refinement, and to the intimate friend of them all—Christian Charity.

Baltimore, Sept. 1817.