Excerpt from The Village Patriarch, Love, and Other Poems, Vol. 2 I AM called, as I expected to be, an unsuccessful imitator of the pauper-poetry of Wordsworth; ai though, with the exception of his great work, I never read his writings, until long after this poem was first printed. I might be truly called an unfortunate imitator of Crabbe, that most British of poets; for he has long been bosomed with me; and if he had never lived, it is quite possible that I might never have written pauper-poetry. However, my imitation fails, if it fail, not because it is servile, nor because I have failed to stamp my own individuality upon it, but because my pencil wants force, though it is dipped in sadness, and familiar with shadow. The clerical artist works with a wire brush but he has been unjustly blamed for the stern colours in which he paints the sublimity of British wretchedness. In what other manner could a true poet have depicted the blessedness of ultra taxation, bread-monopoly. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.