son why I never
mentioned to you, till now, an affair which I am just going to make
known to all the world (if that Mr. All-the-world should think it
worth his knowing) has been this--that, till within these few days, I
had not the honor to know it myself. This may seem strange, but it is
true; for, not knowing where to find underwriters who would choose to
insure them, and not finding it convenient to a purse like mine to run
any hazard, even upon the credit of my own ingenuity, I was very much
in doubt for some weeks whether any bookseller would be willing to
subject himself to an ambiguity that might prove very expensive in
case of a bad market. But Johnson has heroically set all peradventures
at defiance, and takes the whole charge upon himself. So out I come. I
shall be glad of my Translations from Vincent Bourne in your next
frank. My muse will lay herself at your feet immediately on her first
public appearance....

If[62] a writer's friends have need of patience, how much more the
writer! Your desire to see my muse in public, and mine to gratify you,
must both suffer the mortification of delay. I expected that my
trumpeter would have informed the world by this time of all that is
needful for them to know upon such an occasion; and that an
advertising blast, blown through every newspaper, would have said,
"The poet is coming." But man, especially man that writes verse, is
born to disappointments, as surely as printers and booksellers are
born to be the most dilatory and tedious of all creatures. The plain
English of this magnificent preamble is, that the season of
publication is just elapsed, that the town is going into the country
every day, and that my book can not appear till they return--that is
to say, not till next winter. This misfortune, however, comes not
without its attendant advantage: I shall now have, what I should not
otherwise have had, an opportunity to correct the press myself; no
small advantage upon any occasion, but especially important where
poetry is concerned! A single erratum may knock out the brains of a
whole passage, and that perhaps which, of all others, the unfortunate
poet is the most proud of. Add to this, that now and then there is to
be found in a printing-house a presumptuous intermeddler, who will
fancy himself a poet too, and what is still worse, a better than he
that employs him. The consequence is, that with cobbling, and
tinkering, and patching on here and there a shred of h