Lyrical Ballads With Other Poems, 1800, vol 1 | Page 4

therefore appeared to me that to endeavour to produce
or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any
period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times,
is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes unknown
to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the
discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary
exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most
effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily
taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, where
the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary
incident which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies.
To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical
exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. The invaluable
works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare
and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid
German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in
verse.--When I think upon this degrading thirst after outrageous
stimulation I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble effort
with which I have endeavoured to counteract it; and reflecting upon the
magnitude of the general evil, I should be oppressed with no
dishonorable melancholy, had I not a deep impression of certain
inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind, and likewise of
certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act upon it which
are equally inherent and indestructible; and did I not further add to this
impression a belief that the time is approaching when the evil will be
systematically opposed by men of greater powers and with far more
distinguished success.
Having dwelt thus long on the subjects and aim of these Poems, I shall
request the Reader's permission to apprize him of a few circumstances
relating to their style, in order, among other reasons, that I may not be
censured for not having performed what I never attempted. Except in a

very few instances the Reader will find no personifications of abstract
ideas in these volumes, not that I mean to censure such personifications:
they may be well fitted for certain sorts of composition, but in these
Poems I propose to myself to imitate, and, as far as possible, to adopt
the very language of men, and I do not find that such personifications
make any regular or natural part of that language. I wish to keep my
Reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I
shall interest him. Not but that I believe that others who pursue a
different track may interest him likewise: I do not interfere with their
claim, I only wish to prefer a different claim of my own. There will
also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic
diction; I have taken as much pains to avoid it as others ordinarily take
to produce it; this I have done for the reason already alleged, to bring
my language near to the language of men, and further, because the
pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart is of a kind very
different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper
object of poetry. I do not know how without being culpably particular I
can give my Reader a more exact notion of the style in which I wished
these poems to be written than by informing him that I have at all times
endeavoured to look steadily at my subject, consequently I hope it will
be found that there is in these Poems little falsehood of description, and
that my ideas are expressed in language fitted to their respective
importance. Something I must have gained by this practice, as it is
friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely good sense; but it
has necessarily cut me off from a large portion of phrases and figures of
speech which from father to son have long been regarded as the
common inheritance of Poets. I have also thought it expedient to
restrict myself still further, having abstained from the use of many
expressions, in themselves proper and beautiful, but which have been
foolishly repeated by bad Poets till such feelings of disgust are
connected with them as it is scarcely possible by any art of association
to overpower.
If in a Poem there should be found a series of lines, or even a single
line, in which the language, though naturally arranged and according to
the strict laws of metre, does not differ from that of prose, there is a
numerous class of critics who, when they stumble upon these