consciously guilty, if I say that I feel two difficulties; one arising
from long disuse of versification, added to what I know, better than the
most hostile critic could inform me, of my comparative weakness; and the
other, that _any_ work in Poetry strikes me with more than common awe,
as proposed for realization by myself, because from long habits of
meditation on language, as the symbolic medium of the connection of
Thought with Thought, and of Thoughts as affected and modified by
Passion and Emotion, I should spend days in avoiding what I deemed
faults, though with the full preknowledge that their admission would not
have offended perhaps three of all my readers, and might be deemed
Beauties by 300--if so many there were; and this not out of any respect
for the Public (_i.e._ the persons who might happen to purchase and look
over the Book), but from a hobby-horsical, superstitious regard to my
own feelings and sense of Duty. Language is the sacred Fire in this
Temple of Humanity, and the Muses are its especial and vestal
Priestesses. Though I cannot prevent the vile drugs and counterfeit
Frankincense, which render its flame at once pitchy, glowing, and
unsteady, I would yet be no voluntary accomplice in the Sacrilege. With
the commencement of a PUBLIC, commences the degradation of the GOOD and
the BEAUTIFUL--both fade and retire before the accidentally AGREEABLE.
"Othello" becomes a hollow lip-worship; and the "CASTLE SPECTRE," or any
more recent thing of Froth, Noise, and Impermanence, that may have
overbillowed it on the restless sea of curiosity, is the _true_ Prayer
of Praise and Admiration.

I thought it right to state to you these opinions of mine, that you
might know that I think the Translation of the "Faust" a task demanding
(from _me_, I mean), no ordinary efforts--and why? This--that it is
painful, very painful, and even odious to me, to attempt anything of a
literary nature, with any motive of _pecuniary_ advantage; but that I