"that any expectations can be lower than mine concerning the
immediate effect of this little work upon what is called the public.
I do not here take into consideration the envy and malevolence, and
all the bad passions which always stand in the way of a work of any
merit from a living poet; but merely think of the pure, absolute,
honest ignorance in which all worldlings, of every rank and situation,
must be enveloped, with respect to the thoughts, feelings, and
images on which the life of my poems depends. The things which I
have taken, whether from within or without, what have they to do
with routs, dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door, from
street to street, on foot or in carriage; with Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox,
Mr. Paul or Sir Francis Burdett, the Westminster election or the
borough of Honiton? In a word--for I cannot stop to make my way
through the harry of images that present themselves to me--what have
they to do with endless talking about things that nobody cares
anything for, except as far as their own vanity is concerned, and
this with persons they care nothing for, but as their vanity or
_selfishness_ is concerned? What have they to do (to say all at
once) with a life without love? In such a life there can be no
thought; for we have no thought (save thoughts of pain), but as far
as we have love and admiration.

"It is an awful truth, that there neither is nor can be any genuine
enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons
who live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the world--among
those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, people of
consideration in society. This is a truth, and an awful one; because
to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is
to be without love of human nature and reverence for God.