have amounted, at best, to a tame and unamusing portrait, which it
was not our object to present. Although fully aware that their names
would, in the theatrical phrase, have conferred great strength upon
our bill, we were reluctantly compelled to forego them, and to
confine ourselves to writers whose style and habit of thought, being
more marked and peculiar, was more capable of exaggeration and
distortion. To avoid politics and personality, to imitate the turn
of mind as well as the phraseology of our originals, and, at all
events, to raise a harmless laugh, were our main objects; in the
attainment of which united aims, we were sometimes hurried into
extravagance, by attaching much more importance to the last than to
the two first. In no instance were we thus betrayed into a greater
injustice than in the case of Mr. Wordsworth--the touching sentiment,
profound wisdom, and copious harmony of whose loftier writings we
left unnoticed, in the desire of burlesquing them; while we pounced
upon his popular ballads, and exerted ourselves to push their
simplicity into puerility and silliness. With pride and pleasure do
we now claim to be ranked among the most ardent admirers of this true
poet; and if he himself could see the state of his works, which are
ever at our right hand, he would, perhaps, receive the manifest
evidences they exhibit of constant reference and delighted re-
perusal, as some sort of amende honorable for the unfairness of which
we were guilty when we were less conversant with the higher
inspirations of his muse. To Mr. Coleridge, and others of our
originals, we must also do a tardy act of justice, by declaring that
our burlesque of their peculiarities has never blinded us to those
beauties and talents which are beyond the reach of all ridicule.

One of us {3} had written a genuine Address for the occasion, which
was sent to the Committee, and shared the fate it merited, in being