But where Friends fail us, we’ll supply
  Our friendships with our charity;
  Men that remote in sorrows live,
  Shall by our lusty brimmers thrive.

  We’ll drink the wanting into wealth,
  And those that languish into health,
  The afflicted into joy; th’ opprest
  Into security and rest.

  The worthy in disgrace shall find
  Favour return again more kind,
  And in restraint who stifled lie,
  Shall taste the air of liberty.

  The brave shall triumph in success,
  The lover shall have mistresses,
  Poor unregarded Virtue, praise,
  And the neglected Poet, bays.

  Thus shall our healths do others good,
  Whilst we ourselves do all we would;
  For, freed from envy and from care,
  What would we be but what we are?

When I sate down to write this Preface, it was my intention to have made it more comprehensive; but, thinking that I ought rather to apologize for detaining the reader so long, I will here conclude.

[Footnote 3:  As sensibility to harmony of numbers, and the power of producing it, are invariably attendants upon the faculties above specified, nothing has been said upon those requisites.]

[Footnote 4:  Charles Lamb upon the genius of Hogarth.]

ESSAY SUPPLEMENTARY TO PREFACE

(1815)

With the young of both sexes, Poetry is, like love, a passion; but, for much the greater part of those who have been proud of its power over their minds, a necessity soon arises of breaking the pleasing bondage; or it relaxes of itself;—­the thoughts being occupied in domestic cares, or the time engrossed by business.  Poetry then becomes only an occasional recreation; while to those whose existence passes away in a course of fashionable pleasure, it is a species of luxurious amusement.  In middle and declining age, a scattered number of serious persons resort to poetry, as to religion, for a protection against the pressure of trivial employments, and as a consolation for the afflictions of life.  And, lastly, there are many, who, having been enamoured of this art in their youth, have found leisure, after youth was spent, to cultivate general literature; in which poetry has continued to be comprehended as a study.

Into the above classes the Readers of poetry may be divided; Critics abound in them all; but from the last only can opinions be collected of absolute value, and worthy to be depended upon, as prophetic of the destiny of a new work.  The young, who in nothing can escape delusion, are especially subject to it in their intercourse with Poetry.  The cause, not so obvious as the fact is unquestionable, is the same as that from which erroneous judgements in this art, in the minds of men of all ages, chiefly proceed; but upon Youth it operates with peculiar force.  The appropriate business of poetry (which, nevertheless,