Adam Kidd, “Preface” and “Cathleen” from Th e Huron Chief, and Other Poems (1830)

At a time when Poetry has received the highest polish, from the master hands of a B and a M,113 it seems almost rashness in a youthful bard to attempt to cull, from the banks of Helicon, even one leaf of the immortal baccalia, to adorn his aspiring brow-while the consequences may prove as serious before the ordeal of Criticism as the eff orts of Pliny, who perished in the fi re of Vesuvius, while searching into the cause of the beauteous, but destructive element.114