I hope to be understood as speaking of myself comparatively, and in proportion to the claims, which others are entitled to make on my time or my talents. By what I have effected, am I to be judged by my fellow men; what I could have done, is a question for my own conscience. On my own account I may perhaps have had sufficient reason to lament my deficiency in self-control, and the neglect of concentering my powers to the realization of some permanent work. But to verse rather than to prose, if to either, belongs the voice of mourning for Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; And fears self-willed that shunned the eye of hope; And hope that scarce would know itself from fear; Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, And genius given and knowledge won in vain; And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all, Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers Strewed on my corpse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, for the self-same grave! These will exist, for the future, I trust, only in the poetic strains, which the feelings at the time called forth. In those only, gentle reader, Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis Perlegis invidiae, curasque revolvis inanes, Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in aevo. Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acuta Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus. Omnia paulatim consumit longior aetas, Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo. Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor; Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago, Vox aliudque sonat--Jamque observatio vitae Multa dedit--lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit. CHAPTER XI An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel themselves disposed to become authors.