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PREFACE.
lenient public, if I resembled the moderns in the spirit of my composition, would excuse me for giving it an old fashioned form.
It may possibly be objected to me, by the modern sect of poets, that I had no right to consider Mr. Scott and lord Byron as belonging to their party, because the one paints the visible forms of nature, whether animate or inanimate, with the pencil of Spencer; and the other develops the deep and dark passions of the mind with the touches of a Greek tragedian. I subscribe to the justice of the premises, but deny the validity of the conclusion. Though, in some respects, those writers have not abandoned the ancient prejudices; yet, in others, they have both discovered so obvious a leaning
