And I
have the satisfaction of knowing that it has been communicated to
many hundreds of people who would never have heard of it, had it not
been narrated as a Ballad, and in a more impressive metre than is
usual in Ballads.
Having thus adverted to a few of the reasons why I have written in
verse, and why I have chosen subjects from common life, and
endeavoured to bring my language near to the real language of men,
if I have been too minute in pleading my own cause, I have at the
same time been treating a subject of general interest; and it is for
this reason that I request the Reader's permission to add a few
words with reference solely to these particular poems, and to some
defects which will probably be found in them. I am sensible that my
associations must have sometimes been particular instead of general,
and that, consequently, giving to things a false importance,
sometimes from diseased impulses I may have written upon unworthy
subject; but I am less apprehensive on this account, than that my
language may frequently have suffered from those arbitrary
connections of feelings and ideas with particular words, from which
no man can altogether protect himself.
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