PREFAC E. REPRESENTATIONS have been made to the author that his present Poem is open to grave misconstructions, which nothing but an explanatory preface can guard against. Much against his inclination, therefore, (having in view the impropriety of seeming to criticise his own work,) he inserts these few lines to say that, whatever object he may have had in view, he certainly did not write this Poem with the idea of advocating indiscriminate abolition of all forms of marriage. He hopes, moreover, that as the Poem is entirely dramatic its catastrophe will be accepted as sufficient evidence of his freedom from such an intention. |