The Works of Charlotte Smith, Part III vol 14

Stuart Curran

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138763920
• eBook ISBN: 9781000749366
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Includes the works of Charlotte Smith, revealing a writer who wrote well in many genres, and, in whatever form she undertook, was innovative with the forms she inherited and strongly influential on those who followed her.

ELEGIAC SONNETS, &C.

VOL. I.

Oh! Time has Changed me since you saw me last,
And heavy Hours with Time’s deforming Hand,
Have written strange Defeatures in my Face.

ELEGIAC SONNETS,

AND

OTHER POEMS,

BY CHARLOTTE SMITH.

__________

VOL. I.

__________

THE NINTH EDITION.

__________

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR T. CADELL, JUN. AND W. DAVIES,

IN THE STRAND.

1800.

R. NOBLE, Printer, Old Bailey.

TO
WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.¹

SIR,

WHILE I ask your protection for these essays, I cannot deny having myself some esteem for them. Yet permit me to say, that did I not trust to your candour and sensibility, and hope they will plead for the errors your judgment must discover, I should never have availed myself of the liberty I have obtained – that of dedicating these simple effusions to the greatest modern Master of that charming talent, in which I can never be more than a distant copyist.

I am, SIR,

Your most obedient

and obliged Servant,

CHARLOTTE SMITH. ^a

PREFACE

TO THE
FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS.

THE little Poems which are here called Sonnets, have, I believe, no very just claim to that title; but they consist of fourteen lines, and appear to me no improper vehicle for a single Sentiment. I am told, and I read it as the opinion of very good judges, that the legitimate² Sonnet is ill calculated for our language. The specimen³ Mr. Hayley has given, though they form a strong exception, prove no more than that the difficulties of the attempt vanish before uncommon powers.

Some very melancholy moments have been beguiled by expressing in verse the sensations those moments brought. Some of my friends, with partial indiscretion, have multiplied the copies they procured of several of these attempts, till they found their way into the prints of the day in a mutilated state;⁴ which, concurring with other circumstances, determined me to put them into their present form. I can hope for readers only among the few, who, to sensibility of heart, join simplicity of taste.^a5

PREFACE

TO THE
THIRD AND FOURTH EDITIONS.

THE reception given by the public, as well as my particular friends, to the two first editions of these poems, has induced me to add to the present such other Sonnets as I have written since, or have recovered from my acquaintance, to whom I had given them without thinking well enough of them at the time to preserve any copies myself.⁶ A few of those last written I have attempted on the Italian model; with what success I know not; but I am persuaded that, to the generality of readers, those which are less regular will be more pleasing.⁷

As a few notes were necessary, I have added them at the end. I have there quoted such lines as I have borrowed; and even where I am conscious the ideas were not my own, I have restored them to the original possessors.^a

PREFACE

TO THE
FIFTH EDITION.

IN printing a list of so many noble, literary, and resp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• References and Further Reading
• Elegiac Sonnets, Volume I
• Elegiac Sonnets, Volume II
• The Emigrants
• Beachy Head: With Other Poems
• Uncollected Poems
• Explanatory notes
• Textual notes