I am proud to say that nobody could well have been politer
Than the critics, for they, call'd it "but a step from the
sublime."
I was laudably ambitious to extend my reputation,
And I plann'd a pretty novel on a pretty novel plan;
I would make it independent both of sin and of "sensation,"
And my villain should be pictured as a persecuted man.
For your Bulwers and your Braddons and your Collinses
may grovel
In an atmosphere of horror and a wilderness of crime;