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.

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