To account for the variations which may be remarked in this last edition of my Sonnets, from that which was first published fifty years ago, it may be proper to state, that to the best of my recollection, they now appear nearly as they were originally composed in my solitary hours; when, in youth a wanderer among distant scenes, I sought forgetfulness of the first disappointment in early affections.

Delicacy even now, though the grave has long closed over the beloved object, would forbid entering on a detail of the peculiar circumstances in early life, and the anguish which occasioned these poetical meditations. In fact, I never thought of writing them down at the time, and many had escaped my recollection;²² I confined myself to fourteen lines, because fourteen lines seemed best adapted to unity of sentiment. I thought nothing about the strict Italian model; the verses naturally flowed in unpremeditated harmony, as my ear directed, but the slightest inspection will prove they were far from being mere elegiac couplets. The subjects were chiefly from river scenery, and the reader will recollect what Sir Humphrey Davy has said on this subject so beautifully; it will be recollected, also, that they were published ten years before those of Mr Wordsworth on the river Duddon, Yarrow, et cet. There have been many claimants, among modern poets, for the laurel of the sonnet, but, in picturesque description, sentiment, and harmony, I know none superior to those of my friend the Rev. Charles Hoyle, on scenery in Scotland, the mountains of Ben Nevis, Loch Lomond, et cet. but three years after my return to England, on my way to the banks of Cherwell, where

passing through Bath, I wrote down all I could recollect of these effusions, most elaborately mending the versification from the natural flow of music in which they occurred to me, and having thus corrected and written them out, took them myself to the late Mr Cruttwell, with the name of "Fourteen Sonnets, written chiefly on Picturesque Spots during a Journey."

I had three times knocked at this amiable printer's door, whose kind smile I still recollect; and at last, with much hesitation, ventured to unfold my message; it was to inquire whether he would give any thing for "Fourteen Sonnets," to be published with or without the name. ³³ To account for the present variations, some remained as originally with their natural pauses, others for the press I thought it best to correct into verse less broken, and now, after fifty years, they are recorrected, and restored, I believe, more nearly to the original shape in which they were first meditated.He at once declined the purchase, and informed me he doubted very much whether the publication would repay the expense of printing, which would come to about five pounds. It was at last determined one hundred copies, in quarto, should be published[Page 3] as a kind of "forlorn hope;" and these "Fourteen Sonnets" I left to their fate and thought no more of getting rich by poetry! In fact, I owed the most I ever owed at Oxford, at this time, namely, seventy pounds;⁴⁴ I hoped by my Sonnets to pay this vast debt. and knowing my father's large family and trying circumstances, and those of my poor mother, I shrunk from asking more money when I left home, and went back with a heavy heart to Oxford, under the conscious weight, that my poetic scheme failing, I had no means of paying Parsons, the mercer's, bill! This was the origin of the publication.

As this plain account is so connected with whatever may be my name in criticism and poetry, it is hoped it will be pardoned.

All thoughts of succeeding as a poet were now abandoned; but, half a year afterwards, I received a letter from the printer informing me that the hundred copies were all sold, adding, that if I had published five hundred copies, he had no doubt they would have been sold also.

This, in my then situation, my father now dead, and my mother a widow with seven children, and with a materially reduced income (from the loss of the rectories of Uphill and Brean in Somerset), was gratifying indeed; all my golden dreams of poetical success were renewed; — the number of the sonnets first published was increased, and five hundred copies, by the congratulating printer, with whose family I have lived in kindest amity from that hour, were recommended to issue from the press of the editor of the Bath Chronicle.

But this was not all, the five hundred copies were sold to great advantage, for it was against my will that five hundred copies should be printed, till the printer told me he would take the risk on himself, on the usual terms, at that time, of bookseller and author.

Soon afterwards, it was agreed that seven hundred and fifty copies should be printed, in a smaller and elegant size. I had received Coleridge's warm testimony; but soon after this third edition came out, my friend, Mr Cruttwell, the printer, wrote a letter saying that two young gentlemen, strangers, one a particularly handsome and pleasing youth, lately from Westminster School, and both literary and intelligent, spoke in high commendation of my volume, and if I recollect right, expressed a desire to have some poems printed in the same type and form. Who these young men were I knew not at the time, but the communication of the circumstance was to me most gratifying; and how much more gratifying, when, from one of them, after he himself had achieved the fame of one of the most virtuous and eloquent of the writers in his generation, I received a first visit at my parsonage in Wiltshire upwards of forty years afterwards! It was Robert Southey. We parted in my garden last year, when stealing time and sorrow had marked his still manly, but most interesting countenance. ⁵⁵ His companion, Mr Lovel, died in youth.— Therefore,[Page 4]