Lyrical Ballads With Other Poems, 1800, vol 1 | Page 2

believe it susceptible, it would be necessary to give a full
account of the present state of the public taste in this country, and to
determine how far this taste is healthy or depraved; which again could
not be determined, without pointing out, in what manner language and
the human mind act and react on each other, and without retracing the
revolutions not of literature alone but likewise of society itself. I have
therefore altogether declined to enter regularly upon this defence; yet I
am sensible, that there would be some impropriety in abruptly
obtruding upon the Public, without a few words of introduction, Poems
so materially different from those, upon which general approbation is at
present bestowed.
It is supposed, that by the act of writing in verse an Author makes a
formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of
association, that he not only thus apprizes the Reader that certain
classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that
others will be carefully excluded. This exponent or symbol held forth
by metrical language must in different aeras of literature have excited
very different expectations: for example, in the age of Catullus Terence
and Lucretius, and that of Statius or Claudian, and in our own country,
in the age of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher, and that of
Donne and Cowley, or Dryden, or Pope. I will not take upon me to
determine the exact import of the promise which by the act of writing
in verse an Author in the present day makes to his Reader; but I am
certain it will appear to many persons that I have not fulfilled the terms
of an engagement thus voluntarily contracted. I hope therefore the
Reader will not censure me, if I attempt to state what I have proposed
to myself to perform, and also, (as far as the limits of a preface will
permit) to explain some of the chief reasons which have determined me
in the choice of my purpose: that at least he may be spared any
unpleasant feeling of disappointment, and that I myself may be

protected from the most dishonorable accusation which can be brought
against an Author, namely, that of an indolence which prevents him
from endeavouring to ascertain what is his duty, or, when his duty is
ascertained prevents him from performing it.
The principal object then which I proposed to myself in these Poems
was to make the incidents of common life interesting by tracing in them,
truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly
as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of
excitement. Low and rustic life was generally chosen because in that
situation the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which
they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a
plainer and more emphatic language; because in that situation our
elementary feelings exist in a state of greater simplicity and
consequently may be more accurately
contemplated and more
forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate
from those elementary feelings; and from the necessary character of
rural occupations are more easily comprehended; and are more durable;
and lastly, because in that situation the passions of men are
incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. The
language too of these men is adopted (purified indeed from what appear
to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or
disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects
from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because,
from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their
intercourse, being less under the action of social vanity they convey
their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions.
Accordingly such a language arising out of repeated experience and
regular feelings is a more permanent and a far more philosophical
language than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who
think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art in
proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men,
and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression in order to
furnish food for fickle tastes and fickle appetites of their own
creation.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is worth while here to observe that the affecting parts of

Chaucer are almost always expressed in language pure and universally
intelligible even to this day.]
I cannot be insensible of the present outcry against the triviality and
meanness both of thought and language, which some of my
contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical
compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect where it exists, is
more dishonorable to the Writer's own character than false
refinement
or arbitrary innovation, though