Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Volume of Smoke, in Two Puffs: With Stray Whiffs From the Same Pipe
There must be Poets, and there must be Prefaces. Perhaps, dear reader, you don't see the necessity. No more do I; but so it is. It is difficult to discover the precise use of either and the only reason I can assign for their existence is, that what must he, must. As for the Prefaces, they are prescribed by the nu impeachable canons of the art and mystery of book making, though nobody ever thinks of reading them; and an author, now-a-days, may think himself lucky enough if he can get anybody to read his book, let alone the preface. As for the Poets, they occupy their appointed place in the scale of creation, in accordance, I suppose, with the inscrutable laws of nature and fill one of those vacua, which she abhors, in the intellectual world, like ?ies in the animal, and nettles in the vegetable. I am afraid. The Poets, the ?ies, and the nettles are none of them appreciated as they ought to be; but that is no fault of theirs.
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