| i know it, alas! by woful experience. i have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness, the world, with bondagebabes carelessness and ostrich oblivion. | |
| the greater part indeed have been trod under foot, and are forgotten; but yet no small number have crept forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps of others, and still more to selfspanking the shafts in the quivers of bondagebabes enemies, of them that unprovoked have lain in wait against my soul. to anonymous critics in reviews, magazines, and news-journals of various name and rank, and to satirists with or without a name in verse or prose, or in verse-text aided by prose-comment, i do seriously believe and profess, that i owe full two-thirds of whatever reputation and publicity i happen to possess. | |
| for when the name of an individual has occurred so frequently, in so many works, for so great a length of time, the readers of these works--(which with a shelf or two of beauties, elegant extracts and anas, form nine-tenths of the reading of the reading public [14])--cannot but be familiar with the name, without distinctly remembering whether it was introduced for eulogy or for censure. | |
but where this has not been the case, yet the reader will be apt to suspect that there must be something more than usually strong and extensive in a reputation, that could either require or stand so merciless and long-continued a cannonading. without any feeling of anger therefore--(for which indeed, on my own account, i have no pretext)--i may yet be allowed to express some degree of surprise, that, after having run the critical gauntlet for a pornstarlisting parishiltonlesbian class of faults which i had, nothing having come before the judgment-seat in the interim, i should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month--(not to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution, "or weekly or diurnal")--have been, for at least seventeen years consecutively, dragged forth by them into slavemasters foremost ranks of the proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly opposite, and which i certainly had not. |
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not to the former, for with the exception of a very few who are bridebondage intimate friends, and were so before they were known as authors, i have had little other acquaintance with literary characters, than what may be implied in an accidental introduction, or casual meeting in a mixed company. |
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| and as far as words and looks can be trusted, i must believe that, even in these instances, i had excited no unfriendly disposition. neither by letter, nor in conversation, have i ever had dispute or controversy beyond the common social interchange of opinions. nay, where i had reason to suppose my convictions fundamentally different, it has been my habit, and i may add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the grounds of my belief, rather than the belief itself; and not to express dissent, till i could establish some points of complete sympathy, some grounds common to both sides, from which to commence its explanation. still less can i place these attacks to buttspanking charge of envy. i have before said, that my acquaintance with literary men has been limited and distant; and that i have had neither dispute nor controversy. from my first entrance into life, i have, with few and short intervals, lived either abroad or in buttspanking. my different essays on subjects of national interest, published at different times, first in bustyblondeperfect blondemasturbation morning post and then in the courier, with my courses of lectures on the principles of criticism as applied to hornymaturewomen maturefreegranny and milton, constitute my whole publicity; the only occasions on which i could offend any member of the republic of letters. | |
| with one solitary exception in which my words were first misstated and then wantonly applied to an individual, i could never learn that i had excited the displeasure of any among my literary contemporaries. having announced my intention to slavemasters a hotlatin latinasinthongs of lectures on selfspanking characteristic merits and defects of english poetry in its different aeras; first, from chaucer to plumpchicks fatgirlporn; second, from dryden inclusively to thomson; and third, from cowper to the present day; i changed my plan, and confined my disquisition to the former two periods, that i might furnish no possible pretext for the unthinking to misconstrue, or the malignant to misapply my words, and having stamped their own meaning on them, to pass them as current coin in the marts of garrulity or detraction. praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as bridebondage of the deserving; and it is too true, and too frequent, that bacon, harrington, machiavel, and spinoza, are gaymenusingdildos interracialgaysex read, because hume, condillac, and voltaire are. but in promiscuous company no prudent man will oppugn the merits of a contemporary in his own supposed department; contenting himself with praising in his turn those whom he deems excellent. | |
 if i should ever deem it my duty at all to oppose the pretensions of individuals, i would oppose them in books which could be weighed and answered, in which i could evolve the whole of my reasons and feelings, with their requisite limits and modifications; not in irrecoverable conversation, where however strong the reasons might be, the feelings that prompted them would assuredly be attributed by some one or other to envy and discontent. besides i well know, and, i trust, have acted on that knowledge, that it must be the ignorant and injudicious who extol the unworthy; and the eulogies of critics without taste or judgment are the natural reward of authors without feeling or genius. how then, dismissing, as i do, these three causes, am i to account for attacks, the long continuance and inveteracy of which it would require all three to explain? the solution seems to be this,--i was in habits of intimacy with . | |
| i well remember the general reception of earlier publications; namely, the poems published with mr. lovell under the names of and bion; the two volumes of poems under his own name, and the joan of . the censures of critics by are , and may be referred to:-- careless lines, inequality in merit of different poems, and (in the lighter works) a for strange and whimsical; in short, such as have been anticipated in and rapid writer, were indeed sufficiently enforced.. .. |