DEDICATION, TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.
Mv dear friend—
I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an
absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary
efforts.
Those writings which I have hitherto published, have been little else
than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful
and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects
incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to
be, or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality.
I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content
to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which has
been.
Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that
it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the
ornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent and brave;
one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet
himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive, and
how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he
can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of
purer life and manners I never knew: and I had already been fortunate
in friendships when your name was added to the list.
In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political
tyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated,
and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us,
comforting each other in our task, live and die.
All happiness attend you! Your affectionate friend,