If any person should presume to assert This story is not moral, first, I pray, That they will not cry out before they’re hurt, Then that they’ll read it o’er again, and say (But, doubtless, nobody will be so pert) That this is not a moral tale, though gay; Besides, in Canto Twelfth, I mean to show The very place where wicked people go. If, after all, there should be some so blind To their own good this warning to despise, Led by some tortuosity of mind, Not to believe my verse and their own eyes, And cry that they ‘the moral cannot find,’ I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies; Should captains the remark, or critics, make, They also lie too—under a mistake. The public approbation I expect, And beg they’ll take my word about the moral, Which I with their amusement will connect (So children cutting teeth receive a coral); Meantime, they’ll doubtless please to recollect My epical pretensions to the laurel: For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish, I’ve bribed my grandmother’s review—the British. I sent it in a letter to the Editor, Who thank’d me duly by return of post— I’m for a handsome article his creditor; Yet, if my gentle Muse he please to roast, And break a promise after having made it her, Denying the receipt of what it cost, And smear his page with gall instead of honey, All I can say is—that he had the money. I think that with this holy new alliance I may ensure the public, and defy All other magazines of art or science, Daily, or monthly, or three monthly; I Have not essay’d to multiply their clients, Because they tell me ’twere in vain to try, And that the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Treat a dissenting author very martyrly. ‘Non ego hoc ferrem calida juventa Consule Planco,’ Horace said, and so Say I; by which quotation there is meant a Hint that some six or seven good years ago (Long ere I dreamt of dating from the Brenta) I was most ready to return a blow, And would not brook at all this sort of thing In my hot youth—when George the Third was King. But now at thirty years my hair is grey (I wonder what it will be like at forty? I thought of a peruke the other day)— My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I Have squander’d my whole summer while ’twas May, And feel no more the spirit to retort; I Have spent my life, both interest and principal, And deem not, what I deem’d, my soul invincible. No more—no more—Oh! never more on me The freshness of the heart can fall like dew, Which out of all the lovely things we see Extracts emotions beautiful and new, Hived in our bosoms like the bag o’ the bee: Think’st thou the honey with those objects grew? Alas! ’twas not in them, but in thy power To double even the sweetness of a flower.