This exponent or symbol held
forth by metrical language must in different aeras of literature
have excited very different expectations: for example, in the age of
Catullus Terence and Lucretius, and that of Statius or Claudian, and
in our own country, in the age of Shakespeare and Beaumont and
Fletcher, and that of Donne and Cowley, or Dryden, or Pope. I will
not take upon me to determine the exact import of the promise which
by the act of writing in verse an Author in the present day makes to
his Reader; but I am certain it will appear to many persons that I
have not fulfilled the terms of an engagement thus voluntarily
contracted. I hope therefore the Reader will not censure me, if I
attempt to state what I have proposed to myself to perform, and also,
(as far as the limits of a preface will permit) to explain some of
the chief reasons which have determined me in the choice of my
purpose: that at least he may be spared any unpleasant feeling of
disappointment, and that I myself may be protected from the most
dishonorable accusation which can be brought against an Author,
namely, that of an indolence which prevents him from endeavouring to
ascertain what is his duty, or, when his duty is ascertained
prevents him from performing it.
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