or bitterness, I should yet have frequented so much the thorny paths of satire, has always, to myself and those best acqainted with me, been a matter of surprise. By supposing the imagination, however, to be, in such cases, the sole or chief prompter of the satire-which, in my own instance, I must say, it has generally been --an easy solution is found for the difficulty. The same readiness of fancy which, with but little help from reality, can deck out "the Cynthia of the minute" with all possible attractions, will likewise be able, when in the vein, to shower ridicule on a political adversary, without allowing a single feeling of real bitterness to mix itself with the operation. Even that sternest of all satirists, Dante, who, not content with the penal fire of the pen, kept an Inferno ever ready to receive the victims of his wrath,-even Dante, on becoming acquainted with some of the persons whom he had thus doomed, not only revoked their awful sentence, but even honoured them with warm praise*; and probably, on a little further acquaintance, would have admitted them into his Paradiso. When thus loosely and shallowly even the sublime satire of Dante could strike its roots in his own heart and memory, it is easy to conceive how light and passing may be the feeling of hostility with which a partizan in the field of satire plies his laughing warfare; and how often it may happen that even the pride of hitting his mark outlives but a short time the flight of the shaft.

tioning some particulars respecting an early squib of mine, -the Parody on the Prince Regent's Letter,-I spoke of a dinner at which I was present on the very day of the first publication of that Parody, when it was the subject of much conversation at table, and none of the party, except our host, had any suspicion that I was the author of it. This host was Lord Holland; and as such a name could not but lend value to any anecdote connected with literature, I only forbore the pleasure of adding such an ornament to my page, from knowing that Lord Holland had long viewed with disapprobation and regret much of that conduct of the Whig party towards the Regent in 1812-13†, of the history of which this squib, and the welcome reception it met with, forms an humble episode.

Lord Holland himself, in addition to his higher intellectual accomplishments, possessed in no ordinary degree the talent of writing easy and playful vers de société; and, among the instances I could give of the lightness of his hand at such trifles, there is one no less characteristic of his good-nature than his wit, as it accompanied a copy of the octavo edition of Baylet, which, on hearing me rejoice one day that so agreeable an author had been at last made portable, he kindly ordered for me from Paris.

So late, indeed, as only a month or two before his lordship's death, he was employing himself, with all his usual cheerful eagerness,

- This swarm of themes that settled on my pen,
Which I, like summer-flies, shake off again,”-

without venturing to add that I have now to connect with them one mournful recollectionone loss from among the circle of those I have longest looked up to with affection and admiration-which I little thought, when I began this series of prefatory sketches, I should have to mourn before their close. I need hardly add, that, in thus alluding to a great light of the social and political world recently gone out, I

mean the late Lord Holland.

occasionally consulted both Mr. Rogers and myself as to different readings of some of the lines. In one of the letters which I received from him while thus occupied, I find the following postscript:

"'Tis thus I turn th' Italian's song,
Nor deem I read his meaning wrong.
But with rough English to combine
The sweetness that's in every line,
Asks for your Muse, and not for mine.
Sense only will not quit the score;

We must have that, and little More.

He then adds, "I send you, too, a melancholy Epigram of mine, of which I have seen many,

In his Convito he praises very warmly some persons whom he bad before abused. See Foscolo, Discorso sul Testo di Dante.

+ This will be seen whenever those valuable papers come

to be published, which Lord Holland left behind him, containing Memoirs of his own times and of those immediately preceding them.

In sixteen volumes, published at Paris, by Desoer.

"A minister's answer is always so kind!

I starve, and he tells me he'll keep me in mind. Half his promise, God knows, would my spirits restore: Let him keep me - - and, faith, I will ask for no more." The only portion of the mass of trifles contained in this volume, that first found its way to the public eye through any more responsible channel than a newspaper, was the Letters of the Fudge Family in England,—a work which was sure, from its very nature, to encounter the double risk of being thought dull as a mere sequel, and light and unsafe as touching on follies connected with the name of Religion. Into the question of the comparative dulness of any of my productions, it is not for me, of course, to enter; but to the charge of treating religious subjects irreverently, I shall content myself with replying in the words of Pascal, -"Il a bien de la différence entre rire de la religion et rire de ceux qui la profanent par leurs opinions extravagantes."

PREFACE

ΤΟ

THE TENTH VOLUME.

THE Story which occupies this volume was intended originally to be told in verse; and a great portion of it was at first written in that form. This fact, as well as the character, perhaps, of the whole work, which a good deal partakes of the cast and colouring of poetry, have been thought sufficient to entitle it to a place in this general collection of my poetical writings.

How little akin to romance or poesy were some of the circumstances under which this work was first projected by me, the reader may have seen from a preceding preface*; and the following rough outline, which I have found among my papers, dated Paris, July 25. 1820, will show both my first general conception, or fore-shadowing of the story, and likewise the extent to which I thought right, in afterwards working out this design, to reject or modify

some of its details.

"Began my Egyptian Poem, and wrote

Preface to the Eighth Volume, p. xl. of this edition.

about thirteen or fourteen lines of it. The story to be told in letters from a young Epicurean philosopher, who, in the second century of the Christian era, goes to Egypt for the purpose of discovering the elixir of immortality, which is supposed to be one of the secrets of the Egyptian priests. During a Festival on the Nile, he meets with a beautiful maiden, the daughter of one of the priests lately dead. She enters the catacombs, and disappears. He hovers around the spot, and at last finds the well and secret passages, &c. by which those He sees this maiden who are initiated enter. in one of those theatrical spectacles which formed a part of the subterranean Elysium of the Pyramids - finds opportunities of conversing with her—their intercourse in this mysterious region described. They are discovered; and he is thrown into those subterranean pri

sons, where they who violate the rules of Initiation are confined. He is liberated from thence by the young maiden, and taking flight together, they reach some beautiful region, where they linger, for a time, delighted, and she is near becoming a victim to his arts. But taking alarm, she flies; and seeks refuge with a Christian monk, in the Thebaid, to whom her mother, who was secretly a Christian, had consigned her in dying. The struggles of her love with her religion. A persecution of the Christians takes place, and she is seized (chiefly through the unintentional means of her lover), and suffers martyrdom. The scene of her martyrdom described, in a letter from the Solitary of the Thebaid, and the attempt made by the young philosopher to rescue her. He is carried off from thence to the cell of the Solitary. His letters from that retreat, after he has become a Christian, devoting his thoughts entirely to repentance and the recollection of the beloved saint who had gone before him.If I don't make something out of all this, the deuce is in't."

According to this plan, the events of the story were to be told in Letters, or Epistolary Poems, addressed by the philosopher to a young Athenian friend; but, for greater variety, as well as convenience, I afterwards distributed the task of narration among the chief personages of the Tale. The great difficulty, however, of managing, in rhyme, the minor details of a story, so as to be clear without

growing prosaic, and still more, the diffuse length to which I saw narration in verse would extend, deterred me from following this plan any further; and I then commenced the tale anew in its present shape.

Of the Poems written for my first experiment, a few specimens, the best I could select, were introduced into the prose story; but the remainder I had thrown aside, and nearly forgotten even their existence, when a circumstance somewhat characteristic, perhaps, of that trading spirit, which has now converted Parnassus itself into a market, again called my attention to them. The late Mr. Macrone, to whose general talents and enterprise in business all who knew him will bear ready testimony, had long been anxious that I should undertake for him some new Poem or Story, affording such subjects for illustration as might call into play the fanciful pencil of Mr. Turner. Other tasks and ties, however, had rendered my compliance with this wish impracticable; and he was about to give up all thoughts of attaining his object, when on learning from me accidentally that the Epicurean was still my own property, he proposed to purchase of me the use of the copyright for a single illustrated edi

tion.

The terms proffered by him being most liberal, I readily acceded to the proposed ar

rangement; but, on further consideration, there arose some difficulty in the way of our treaty-the work itself being found insufficient to form a volume of such dimensions as would yield any hope of defraying the cost of the numerous illustrations then intended for it. Some modification, therefore, of our terms was thought necessary; and then first was the notion suggested to me of bringing forth from among my papers the original sketch, or opening of the story, and adding these fragments, as a sort of make-weight, in the mutual adjustment of our terms.

That I had myself regarded the first experiment as a failure, was sufficiently shown by my relinquishment of it. But, as the published work had then passed through several editions, and had been translated into most of the languages of Europe, it was thought that an insight into the anxious process by which such success had been attained, might, as an encouragement, at least, to the humble merit of painstaking, be deemed of some little use.

The following are the translations of this Tale which have reached me: viz. two in French, two in Italian (Milan, 1836—Venice, 1835), one in German (Inspruc, 1828), and one in Dutch, by M. Herman van Loghem (Deventer, 1829).