Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES Dialect has been retained. Printer's errors and corrections are described at the end of the text. Underscores have been used to mark _italic text_. Note that there is an index to the poems at the end of the text. AWD ISAAC, THE STEEPLE CHASE, AND OTHER POEMS; WITH A GLOSSARY OF THE YORKSHIRE DIALECT: BY JOHN CASTILLO. WHITBY: PUBLISHED BY HORNE & RICHARDSON. 1843. PREFACE. The Author of the following Poems prefixes a “Preface” to them, lest he should seem to be wanting in respect to his readers, did he not comply with a custom which is universal. In doing so, however, he would eschew two kinds of Preface, viz: that in which the author arrogates to himself the merit of having produced a work entirely _new_, both in subject, and in manner of expression, and on that score claims the plaudits of his friends and the public;—and that in which the author professes to feel himself inadequate to the task of composing a book, but at the pressing solicitation of his friends, with great distrust of his abilities for such a work, he yields to their entreaties, and pleads his inability in mitigation of the critic’s wrath. With respect to the former, the writer of the present volume professes not to offer to his readers any thing _new_, either as to matter, or to language; and as to the latter, the following pieces were most of them composed several years ago, at distant intervals of time, and were frequently perused by his friends long before he had thoughts of publishing them:—the character of his poetry is therefore pretty well known to those who are likely to become purchasers of his book; and it would be but a bungling apology did he attempt to shelter its defects under the plea of inability for his task.