Shaw.
The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to describe our own
sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted;
and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually
associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the 20
description. "True!" (it may be answered) "but how are the Public
interested in your Sorrows or your Description?" We are for ever
attributing personal Unities to imaginary Aggregates.—What is the Public,
but a term for a number of scattered Individuals? Of whom as many
will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or 25
similar.
"Holy be the lay,
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way."
If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that
the most interesting passages in our most interesting Poems are those, in 30
which the Author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice of Cona[1144:1]
never sounds so sweetly as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost
suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the
third book of the Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a law of
our Nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for 35
sympathy; but a Poet's feelings are all strong. Quicquid amet valde amat.
Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy, when he classes
Love and Poetry, as producing the same effects:
"Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms 40
Their own."—Pleasures Of Imagination.
There is one species of Egotism which is truly disgusting; not that
which leads us to communicate our feelings to others, but that which
would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The
Atheist, who exclaims, "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises 45
of Deity, is an Egotist: an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of
Love-verses is an Egotist: and the sleek Favorites of Fortune are
Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy, discontented" verses.
Surely, it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases
ourselves but to consider whether or no there may not be others to whom 50
it is well-calculated to give an innocent pleasure.
I shall only add that each of my readers will, I hope, remember that
these Poems on various subjects, which he reads at one time and under
the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times and
prompted by very different feelings; and therefore that the supposed 55
inferiority of one Poem to another may sometimes be owing to the temper
of mind, in which he happens to peruse it.
[Pp. [xvii]-xx.]
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I return my acknowledgments to the different Reviewers for the
assistance, which they have afforded me, in detecting my poetic deficiencies.
I have endeavoured to avail myself of their remarks: one third of
the former Volume I have omitted, and the imperfections of the republished
part must be considered as errors of taste, not faults of carelessness. My 5
poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of double-epithets, and
a general turgidness. I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing
hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of
thought and diction. This latter fault however had insinuated itself
into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes 10
I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the
flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that
of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure
when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect,
or unappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, 15
like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract
truths, like Collins's Ode on the poetical character, claims not to be
popular—but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the
Reader. But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is
warm and rapid, must expect from his contemporaries. Milton did not 20
escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins.
We now hear no more of it; not that their poems are better understood
at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is
established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention,
who should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet 25
sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his
feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath,
than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from my poems the same
easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song, for him I have not
written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero. 30