The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 | Page 9

gave rise to them; and the greater part of those originally
committed to the press were written down, for the first time, from
memory.
This is nothing to the public; but it may serve in some measure to
obviate the common remark on melancholy poetry, that it has been very
often gravely composed, when possibly the heart of the writer had very
little share in the distress he chose to describe.
But there is a great difference between _natural_ and _fabricated_
feelings, even in poetry. To which of these two characters the poems
before the reader belong, the author leaves those who have felt
sensations of sorrow to judge.
They who know him, know the occasions of them to have been real; to
the public he might only mention the sudden death of a deserving
young woman, with whom,
... _Sperabat longos heu! ducere soles,
Et fido acclinis consenuisse
sinu._[1]
DONHEAD, _April 1805._
[1] The early editions of these Sonnets, 1791, were dedicated to the
Reverend Newton Ogle, D.D., Dean of Winchester.
INTRODUCTION TO THE EDITION OF 1837.
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;[2] but three years after my
return to England, on my way to the banks of Cherwell, where
"I bade the pipe farewell, and that sad lay
Whose music, on my
melancholy way,
I wooed,"
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.[3]
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 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;[4] 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