Page:The poetical works of Leigh Hunt, containing many pieces now first collected 1849.djvu/14

 of "Christabel" and the "Ancient Mariner." This, of course, is stated out of a sense of what is due on my own part, and not from any overweening supposition that the mere statement of an opinion is to settle the question for others.

A considerable, though in no sense of the word the better part of the poem entitled "Captain Sword and Captain Pen," was devoted to an exhibition of the horrors of war. I detailed them, because, at the time I wrote it, I thought it my duty to do so. That opinion has ceased, owing to the progress of mechanical science and its fusion of nations one with another; for the closeness of their intercourse will assuredly render war as absurd and impossible by-and-by, as it would be for Manchester to fight with Birmingham, or Holborn Hill with the Strand. The superfluous part of these horrors, therefore, has disappeared from the poem, and only enough of them been retained to give entireness to the subject, and a due contrasting effect to the blessings of the growth of knowledge and good-will. I must add, that I objected to war in no spirit of mere inconsiderate common-place, or effeminate shrinking from pain; as any reader may see who chooses to look at the original edition with its notes. Indeed, if I had shrunk from pain, I should have avoided the subject; for it sometimes gave me more than I choose to express; nor would anything but a sense of duty have induced me to go on with it; though if I might venture to state what I regard as the most approaching to poetry, essentially so called, in any of the