ABSTRACT
It is now a period of one-and-twenty years since I first wrote some of the most perfect compositions (except certain pieces I have written in my later days) that ever dropped from poetical pen. My heart hath been right and powerful all its years. I never thought an evil or a weak thought in my life. It has been my aim and my achievement to deduce moral thunder from buttercups, daisies * , celandines, 1 and (as a poet, scarcely inferior to myself, hath it) “such small deer.” 2 Out of sparrows’ eggs I have hatched great truths, 3 and with sextons’ barrows 4 have I wheeled into human hearts, piles of the weightiest philosophy I have persevered with a perseverance truly astonishing, in persons of not the most pursy purses;— but to a man of my inveterate morality and independent stamp, (of which Stamps I am proud to be a Distributor) 5 the sneers and scoffings of impious 6 Scotchmen, and the neglect of my poor uninspired countrymen, fall as the dew upon the thorn, (on which plant I have written an immortal stanza or two) 7 and are as fleeting as the spray of the waterfall, (concerning which waterfall I have composed some great lines which the world will not let die.) 8 — Accustomed to mountain solitudes, I can look with a calm and dis-passionate eye upon that fiend-like, vulture-souled, adder-fanged critic, 9 whom I have not patience to name, and of whose Review I loathe the title, and detest the contents.— Philosophy has taught me to forgive the misguided miscreant, and to speak of him only in terms of patience and pity. I love my venerable Monarch and the Prince Regent * . My Ballads are the 186noblest pieces of verse in the whole range of English poetry: and I take this opportunity of telling the world I am a great man. Milton was also a great man. Ossian was a blind old fool. Copies of my previous works may be had in any numbers, by application at my publisher.
