Felicia Hemans

“ But the great labour and research necessary to the development of a plan which included the superstitions of every age and country, from the earliest of all idolatries—the adoration of the sun, moon, and host of heaven, alluded to in the book of Job—to the still existing rites of the Hindoos—would have demanded a course of study too engrossing to be compatible with the many other claims, both domestic and literary, which daily pressed more and more upon the author’s time. ”

“ Her original design will be best given In her own words, from a letter to her friend Miss Park:—"I have been thinking a good deal of the plan we discussed together, of a poem on national superstitions. 'Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain,' and in the course of my lucubrations on this subject, an idea occurred to me, which I hope you will not think me too presumptuous in wishing to realise. Might not a poem of some extent and importance, if the execution were at all equal to the design, be produced, from contrasting the spirit and tenets of Paganism with those of Christianity? ”