to no school of the poets, pandered to no impure passion; I veiled no vice in delicate disguise, gratified no malignant propensity to personal satire; courted no powerful patronage; I wrote neither to suit the manners, the taste, nor the temper of the age; but I appealed to universal principles, to imperishable affections, to primary elements of our common nature, found wherever man is found in civilised society, wherever his mind has been raised above barbarian ignorance, or his passions purified from brutal selfishness.

"I sang of war,—but it was the war of freedom, in which death was preferred to chains. I sang the Abolition of the Slave Trade, that most glorious decree of the British Legislature at any period since the Revolution, by the first parliament in which you, my Lord, sat as the representative of Yorkshire. Oh! how should I rejoice to sing the Abolition of Slavery itself by some parliament of which your Lordship shall yet be a member! This greater act of righteous legislation is surely not too remote to be expected even in our day. Renouncing the Slave Trade was only ceasing to do evil;' extinguishing slavery will be 'learning to do well.' Again I sang of love, the love of country, the love of my own country; for,

:

next to heaven above,

Land of my fathers! thee I love; And, rail thy slanderers as they will, With all thy faults I love thee still!

I sang, likewise, the love of home; its charities, endearments, and relationship; all that makes Home sweet Home;' the recollection of which, when the air of that name was just now played from yonder gallery, warmed every heart throughout this room into quicker pulsations. I sang the love which man ought to bear towards his brother, of every kindred, and country, and clime upon earth. I sang the love of virtue which elevates man to his true standard under heaven. I sang, too, the love of God, who is love. Nor did I sing in vain. I found readers and listeners, especially among the young, the fair, and the devout; and as

youth, beauty, and piety will not soon cease out of the land, I may expect to be remembered through another generation at least, if I leave any thing behind me worthy of remembrance. I may add, that from every part of the British empire, from every quarter of the world where our language is spoken,—from America, the East and West Indies, from New Holland and the South Sea Islands themselves, I have received testimonies of approbation from all ranks and degrees of readers, hailing what I had done, and cheering me forward. I allude not to criticisms and eulogiums from the press, but to voluntary communications from unknown correspondents, coming to me like voices out of darkness, and giving intimation of that which the ear of a poet is always hearkening onward to catch, -the voice of posterity.

"But I might have been a notable politician in my day, and forgotten as soon as my day was over. I might have been a far greater poet than I am deemed, and have left a name behind me, which would have rendered illustrious the place where I had so long resided; and, in either of these cases, honours and rewards suitable to my pretensions might have been conferred upon me,—but they would not have been such as my townspeople and neighbours have this day bestowed upon me. For these I am mainly indebted to a circumstance of equal interest both to the benefactors and the beneficiary,-I have been your fellowlabourer in many a great and good work for the amelioration of the condition, not of the poor only, but of every class of the community in Sheffield and Hallamshire. * eyes have been continually upon me; and as I have seldom done absolutely ill, and appeared to be generally-nay, I will say sincerely, that I was actually-endeavouring to do well, I have gained credit for my deeds rather proportioned to my obvious intentions than my positive merits. The rewards and honours which I am enjoying through your kindness, therefore, are not the hasty expressions of temporary feeling;-they have been more than

* All

thirty years in preparation. For these I return you my most fervent and cordial acknowledgments; but, in conclusion, let me frankly state the situation in which you have placed me from this day forward.

voice.

"You have brought me to this altar of hospitality. We have broken bread, we have eaten salt together. And you have done this, not merely to give me a splendid proof, in the eyes of all the world, of the estimation in which you hold my general conduct and character since I became an inhabitant of Sheffield;— but you have done it, also, to require of me a pledge that my future conduct and character shall correspond with the past. And this I give you freely, fully, hand, and heart, and But let me remind you, that you have committed to my keeping a very perilous charge. The honour awarded to me, with all deference to your judgment, is one which, perhaps, ought rather to have been posthumous than antedated. * No man can be pronounced happy till he is dead,' said a sage of antiquity. In the same spirit I may say, No man's character is secure till death has set the seal of eternity upon it. Mine, however, unsealed, you have given to my own custody. Recollecting that the credit of yours is now implicated with it, I shall have a double motive to deliver safely, and in due course, this yet unratified instrument of trust, at the grave, there to be enregistered till the great day of account. If I succeed in doing this, I may with confidence leave the care of my good name to your posterity."

The foregoing records, rescued from the perishing pages of the local newspapers of the day, will not, after the lapse of fifteen years, be less, but rather more, necessary for the proper intelligence of many of the pieces, especially the earlier ones, contained in these volumes. The principal poems are now republished in the same order as they originally appeared, accompanied, for the most part, by the miscellaneous compositions then attached to them.

From the preface to the former edition of these collected productions the following paragraph shall close this retrospective preamble: -"On the greater part of these poems, the judgment of the public has been so long exercised, and so gradually formed, that it may, by this time, be considered irreversible. Wherefore, having little further to hope, and less, perhaps, than once he had to fear, the Author is willing to acknowledge that, with the place which has been assigned to him among numerous and far more successful contemporaries, he has abundant reason to be satisfied. What may become of his name and his writings in the next age, it is not for him to anticipate here; he has honestly endeavoured to serve his own generation, and, on the whole, has been careful to leave nothing behind him to make the world worse for his having existed in it, and obtained an influence, however small, beyond his personal circle, and to the brief limit of what may be his posthumous memory." The Mount, near Sheffield, October 27. 1840.