No More Learning

I shall understand the expressive silence of
those sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak. I
shall endeavour to extract, from the midst of insult and contempt and
maledictions, those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever
imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious
appeal to the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted as they
are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their
virulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be
amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the Public
judge that my composition is worthless, I shall indeed bow before the
tribunal from which Milton received his crown of immortality, and
shall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may
nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be worthless.
I cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose
doctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge, and whose
eloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure
as the hired sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome
might affix to what he should produce. It was at the period when
Greece was led captive and Asia made tributary to the Republic, fast
verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a multitude of Syrian
captives, bigoted to the worship of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the
unworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious
subsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the vices
and vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead,
with a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favour of that
contempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in
portents, the most fatal substitute for benevolence in the
imaginations of men, which, arising from the enslaved communities of
the East, then first began to overwhelm the western nations in its
stream. Were these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise and
lofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with a salutary awe? The
latest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his footsteps
would disdain to hold life on such conditions.

The Poem now presented to the Public occupied little more than six
months in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task
with unremitting ardour and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful
and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would
willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which
long labour and revision is said to bestow. But I found that, if I
should gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much
of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh
from my mind.
And, although the mere composition occupied no more than
six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many
years.

I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those
opinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the
characters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are
properly my own. The erroneous and degrading idea which men have
conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not
the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons
whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as
injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different
from my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the
spirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have
avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our
nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the
most beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to Revenge, or
Envy, or Prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law
which should govern the moral world.


DEDICATION.

There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is: there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law. --CHAPMAN.

TO MARY -- --.

1.
So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,
And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery,
Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;
Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become _5
A star among the stars of mortal night,
If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite
With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light.

2.
The toil which stole from thee so many an hour, _10
Is ended,--and the fruit is at thy feet!
No longer where the woods to frame a bower
With interlaced branches mix and meet,
Or where with sound like many voices sweet,
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green, _15
Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;
But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.