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THE

FIRST CANTO

OF

RICCIARDETTO:

TRANSLATED FROM THE

ITALIAN OF FORTEGUERRI:

WITH

AN INTRODUCTION, CONCERNING THE PRINCIPAL ROMANTIC,
BURLESQUE, AND MOCK-HEROIC POETS;

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Neque enim concludere versum

Dixeris esse satis:neque si quis scribat uti nos.

ON LIBRA

NEW YORK

HOR.

PREFACE.

A FEW copies of this little book were printed some months ago. I had no fixed design at that time of submitting it to the criticism and presumed candour of the public at large. The circumstances which gave occasion. to its being written, at least the part which is in verse, are correctly set forth in the Introduction: the very miscellaneous notes are such as most probably might have occurred to me had it been, not my own, but the production of a friend who had entrusted it to my perusal. I do not say that I was entirely determined not to publish when I first sent my manuscript to the press: but the mere printing, correcting the errata, and adding the notes as chance suggested them, served to amuse me, then in bad health and spirits,

and gave me better opportunities of improving the book to the best of my skill, than I should otherwise have had. I believe whoever has dealt in printing, must have found that blemishes, even of style and composition, have struck him on reading the proof sheets, which had wholly escaped his attention in the manuscript; and also that many collateral thoughts, tending to elucidate and.. illustrate his meaning, had then first presented themselves to his mind: ⠀⠀

In parts of Germany where paper and printing are very cheap, and authorship much practised, I have understood that several of their writers have used them

selves to send their works, prose and verse, to the printer's, sheet by sheet, or leaf by leaf, never polishing or amending them till they receive the first of the printed proofs. I recollect that Wieland says, in

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