publication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect of contemporary
writers on youthful minds--Bowles's Sonnets--Comparison between the
poets before and since Pope.


It has been my lot to have had my name introduced both in
conversation, and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to
explain, whether I consider the fewness, unimportance, and limited
circulation of my writings, or the retirement and distance, in which I
have lived, both from the literary and political world. Most often it
has been connected with some charge which I could not acknowledge, or
some principle which I had never entertained. Nevertheless, had I had
no other motive or incitement, the reader would not have been troubled
with this exculpation. What my additional purposes were, will be seen
in the following pages. It will be found, that the least of what I
have written concerns myself personally. I have used the narration
chiefly for the purpose of giving a continuity to the work, in part
for the sake of the miscellaneous reflections suggested to me by
particular events, but still more as introductory to a statement of my
principles in Politics, Religion, and Philosophy, and an application
of the rules, deduced from philosophical principles, to poetry and
criticism. But of the objects, which I proposed to myself, it was not
the least important to effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the
long continued controversy concerning the true nature of poetic
diction; and at the same time to define with the utmost impartiality
the real poetic character of the poet, by whose writings this
controversy was first kindled, and has been since fuelled and fanned.

In the spring of 1796, when I had but little passed the verge of
manhood, I published a small volume of juvenile poems. They were