Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems.

PREFACE

TO THE
SECOND VOLUME.

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IT so rarely happens that a second attempt in any species of writing equals the first, in the public opinion, when the first has been remarkably successful; that I send this second volume of small Poems into the world with a considerable degree of diffidence and apprehension.

Whatever inferiority may be adjudged to it, I cannot plead want of time for its completion, if I should attempt any excuse at all; for I do not forget that more than three years have elapsed since I reluctantly yielded to the pressing instances of some of my friends; * and accepted their offers to promote a subscription to another volume of Poems­ I say, accepted the offers of my friends, because, with a single exception, I never made any application myself.

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Having once before had recourse to the indulgence of the public, in publishing a book by subscription, and knowing that it had been so often done by persons with whom it is honourable to be ranked, it was not pride that long withheld my consent from this manner of publication; and, certainly, the pecuniary inconveniences I had been exposed to for so many years, never pressed upon me more heavily than at the moment this proposal was urged by my friends; if then I declined it, it was because I even at that period doubted, whether from extreme depression of spirit, I should have the power of fulfilling, so as to satisfy myself, the engagement I must feel myself bound by, the moment I had accepted subscriptions.

Could any one of the misfortunes that so rapidly followed have been foreseen, nothing should have induced me to have consented to it; for what expectation could I entertain of resisting such calamities as the detention of their property has brought on my children? Of four sons, all seeking in other climates the competence denied them in this, two were, for that reason, driven from their prospects in the church to the army, where one of them was maimed during the first campaign he served in, and is now a lieutenant of invalids. The loveliest, the most beloved of my daughters, the darling of all her family, was torn from us for ever. The

rest deprived of every advantage to which they are entitled; and the means of proper education for my youngest son denied me! while the money that their inhuman trustees have suffered yearly to be wasted, and what they keep possession of on false and frivolous pretences, would, if paid to those it belongs to, have saved me and them from all these now irremediable misfortunes.

I am well aware that the present is not a time when the complaints of individuals against private wrong are likely to be listened to; nor is this an opportunity fit to make those complaints; but I know so much has been said, so much more than so trifling a matter could be worth, of the delay of this publication, that it becomes in some measure a matter of self‐defence, to account for that delay. Those who have expressed such impatience for it, were apprehensive, indeed they owned they were of the loss of the half guinea they had paid. I have more than once thought of returning their money, rather than have remained under any obligation to persons who could suspect me of a design to accumulate, by gathering subscriptions for a work I never meant to publish, a sum, which no contrivance, no success, was likely to make equal to one year of the income I ought to possess. Surely, any who have entertained and expressed such an opinion of me, must either never have understood, or must

have forgotten, what I was, what I am, or what I ought to be.

To be suspected even by arrogant ignorance of such an intention to impose on public generosity, has not been the least among the mortifications I have within these last years been subjected to; I place them to the same long account of injuries, where this, however, is almost lost in the magnitude of others! Let not the censors of literary productions, or the fastidious in private life, again reprove me for bringing forward "with querulous egotism," the mention of myself, and the sorrows, of which the men, who have withheld my family property, have been the occasion. Had they never so unjustly possessed, and so shamelessly exercised the power of reducing me to pecuniary distress, I should never, perhaps, have had occasion to ask the consideration of the reader, or to deprecate the severity of the critic. Certainly I should never have been compelled to make excuses as a defaulter in point of punctuality to the subscriber. Nor should I to any of these have found it necessary to state the causes that have rendered me miserable as an individual, though now I am compelled to complain of those who have crushed the poor abilities of the author, and by the most unheard of acts of injustice, for twice seven years, have added the painful sensations of indignation to the incon‐

veniences and deprivations of indigence; and aggravating by future dread, the present suffering, have frequently doubled the toil necessary for tomorrow, by palsying the hand and distracting the head, that were struggling against the evils of today!

It is passed!­The injuries I have so long suffered under are not mitigated; the aggressors are not removed: but however soon they may be disarmed of their power, any retribution in this world is impossible­they can neither give back to the maimed the possession of health, nor restore the dead. The time they have occasioned me to pass in anxiety, in sorrow, in anguish, they cannot recall to me­to my children they can make no amends, but they would not if they could; nor have I the poor consolation of knowing that I leave in the callous hearts of these persons, thorns to
                    

"goad and sting them,"

for they have conquered or outlived all sensibility of shame; they are alive neither to honesty, honour, or humanity; and at this moment, far from feeling compunction for the ruin they have occasioned, the dreadful misfortunes they have been the authors of, one shrinks from the very attempt to make such redress as he might yet give, and wraps himself up

in the callous insolence of his imagined consequence; while the other uses such professional subterfuges as are the disgrace of his profession, to baffle me yet a little longer in my attempts to procure that restitution, that justice, which they dare not deny I am entitled to; and to insult me by a continuation of tormenting chicaneries, perpetuating to the utmost of their power the distresses they have occasioned, and which their perseverance in iniquity has already put it out of the power of Heaven itself to remedy!

Would to God I could dismiss these oppressors from my mind forever, as I now do from the notice of any future readers, whom I may engage to any work of mine; though very probably I may now take my last leave of the public. And let me, while I account for the delay of this work, and for many defects that may perhaps be found in it, assign the causes for both, and lament that such have been the circumstances under which I have composed it, as may rather render it a wonder I have produced it at all, than that it has been so long in appearing, and yet appears defective. Surely I shall be forgiven once more for "querulous egotism," when the disadvantages I have laboured under are considered; complaint may be pardoned when the consequences of what I deplore mingle themselves in all my feelings, embitter

every hour of my life, and leave me no hope but in the oblivion of the grave.

Some degree of pride which
                    

"Still travels on, nor leaves us till we die,"

makes me somewhat solicitious to account for the visible difference in point of numbers between the subscribers to this and the former volume. If I were willing to admit that these Poems are inferior to those that preceded them, I know that such a supposition would not have withheld a single subscription­but I also know, that as party can raise prejudices against the colour of a ribband, or the cut of a cape, it generates still stranger antipathies, even in regard so [sic] things almost equally trifling. And there are, who can never forgive an author that has, in the story of a Novel, or the composition of a Sonnet, ventured to hint at any opinions different from those which these liberal‐minded personages are determined to find the best.

I know, therefore, perfectly well, how I have sinned against some ci‐devant, I was going to say friends, but I check myself, and change the word for acquaintance,
                    

"Since friendship should be made of stronger stuff,"

acquaintance, who when my writing first obtained popularity, erected themselves into patrons and

patronesses. To the favour they then conferred I am not insensible; and I hope they will accept it as a proof of my perfectly understanding the extent of the obligation, that I have so silently acquiesced in not expecting it to be repeated, and have never suffered them to be put under the painful necessity of avowing their dereliction in 1797, of the writer whom they affected so warmly to patronize in 1787. Ten years do indeed operate most wonderful changes in this state of existence.

Perhaps in addition to the friends, or soi‐disant tel, whose notice and whose names have for some such causes as these, been withheld, I might add as another cause, that for many months past I have been so apprehensive of not having health enough to superintend the publication of even this small volume, that I had desired those few friends who had voluntarily engaged to collect subscriptions, not to persevere in their kind endeavours; and I had written to my elder sons, entreating them, should death overtake me before I could complete my engagements, to place, as soon afterwards as they could, in the hands of Messrs Cadell and Davies, a sum sufficient to reimburse them any expenses they might have incurred, and to repay the subscriptions.

I am at length enabled to send it into the world­and have certainly omitted nothing that was in my power to make it not entirely unworthy the

general favour, and of the particular kindness of those without whose support I believe it would have been impossible for me to have prepared the few verses I had by me, or to have composed others. That these are gloomy, none will surely have a right to complain; for I never engaged they should be gay. But I am unhappily exempt from the suspicion of feigning sorrow for an opportunity of showing the pathos with which it can be described­a suspicion that has given rise to much ridicule, and many invidious remarks, among certain critics and others, who carry into their closets the same aversion to any thing tragic, as influences, at the present period, their theatrical taste.

It is, indeed, a melancholy truth, that at this time there is so much tragedy in real life, that those who have escaped private calamity, can withdraw their minds a moment from that which is general, very naturally prefer to melancholy books, or tragic representations, those lighter and gayer amusements, which exhilarate the senses, and throw a transient veil over the extensive and still threatening desolation, that overspreads this country, and in some degree, every quarter of the world.

CHARLOTTE SMITH.

May 15th, 1797.

Notes

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  * Particularly those of Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq. of Dublin, by whose friendly and successful applications in Ireland I am particularly obliged.