Read it through once

It was a production of which her father thought little at first, declaring that the title alone gave him the vapours. Her mother and the maid Lucy were half-blinded with tears when it was read to them, but then, as Miss Mitford remarked: “they are so tender-hearted that I am afraid it is not a complete trial of my pathetic powers.” In this case Sir William was the first to scan the lines, an arrangement due possibly to the stress of work then being engaged in by Coleridge and Campbell—the former with lectures on Poetry and the latter in the writing of his famous biographical prefaces to his collection of the poets. Eventually the book was produced in the December of 1812, news of which, apart from any other source, we glean from a letter of its author in which she says: “_Blanch_ is out—out, and I have not sent her to you! The truth is, my dear Sir William, that there are situations in which it is a duty to give up all expensive luxuries, even the luxury of offering the little tribute of gratitude and friendship; and I had no means of restraining papa from scattering my worthless book all about to friends and foes, but by tying up my own hands from presenting any, except to two or three very near relations. I have told you all this because I am not ashamed of being poor, and because perfect frankness is in all cases the most pleasant as well as the most honourable to both parties.”