Lyrical Ballads With Other Poems, 1800, vol 1 | Page 8

of a few individuals, or even of certain classes of men;
for where the understanding of an Author is not convinced, or his

feelings altered, this cannot be done without great injury to himself: for
his own feelings are his stay and support, and if he sets them aside in
one instance, he may be induced to repeat this act till his mind loses all
confidence in itself and becomes utterly debilitated. To this it may be
added, that the Reader ought never to forget that he is himself exposed
to the same errors as the Poet, and perhaps in a much greater degree:
for there can be no presumption in saying that it is not probable he will
be so well acquainted with the various stages of meaning through
which words have passed, or with the fickleness or stability of the
relations of particular ideas to each other; and above all, since he is so
much less interested in the subject, he may decide lightly and
carelessly.
Long as I have detained my Reader, I hope he will permit me to caution
him against a mode of false criticism which has been applied to Poetry
in which the language closely resembles that of life and nature. Such
verses have been triumphed over in parodies of which Dr. Johnson's
Stanza is a fair specimen.
"I put my hat upon my head,
And walk'd into the Strand,
And there
I met another man
Whose hat was in his hand."
Immediately under these lines I will place one of the most justly
admired stanzas of the "Babes in the Wood."
"These pretty Babes with hand in hand
Went wandering up and down;

But never more they saw the Man
Approaching from the Town."
In both of these stanzas the words, and the order of the words, in no
respect differ from the most unimpassioned conversation. There are
words in both, for example, "the Strand," and "the Town," connected
with none but the most familiar ideas; yet the one stanza we admit as
admirable, and the other as a fair example of the superlatively
contemptible. Whence arises this difference? Not from the metre, not
from the language, not from the order of the words; but the matter
expressed in Dr. Johnson's stanza is contemptible. The proper method
of treating trivial and simple verses to which Dr. Johnson's stanza

would be a fair parallelism is not to say this is a bad kind of poetry, or
this is not poetry, but this wants sense; it is neither interesting in itself,
nor can lead to any thing interesting; the images neither originate in
that sane state of feeling which arises out of thought, nor can excite
thought or feeling in the Reader. This is the only sensible manner of
dealing with such verses: Why trouble yourself about the species till
you have previously decided upon the genus? Why take pains to prove
that an Ape is not a Newton when it is self-evident that he is not a man.
I have one request to make of my Reader, which is, that in judging
these Poems he would decide by his own feelings genuinely, and not by
reflection upon what will probably be the judgment of others. How
common is it to hear a person say, "I myself do not object to this style
of composition or this or that expression, but to such and such classes
of people it will appear mean or ludicrous." This mode of criticism so
destructive of all sound unadulterated judgment is almost universal: I
have therefore to request that the Reader would abide independently by
his own feelings, and that if he finds himself affected he would not
suffer such conjectures to interfere with his pleasure.
If an Author by any single composition has impressed us with respect
for his talents, it is useful to consider this as affording a presumption,
that, on other occasions where we have been displeased, he
nevertheless may not have written ill or absurdly; and, further, to give
him so much credit for this one composition as may induce us to
review what has displeased us with more care than we should otherwise
have bestowed upon it. This is not only an act of justice, but in our
decisions upon poetry especially, may conduce in a high degree to the
improvement of our own taste: for an accurate taste in Poetry and in all
the other arts, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed, is an acquired
talent, which can only be produced by thought and a long continued
intercourse with the best models of composition. This is mentioned not
with so ridiculous a purpose as to prevent the most inexperienced
Reader from judging for himself, (I have already said that I wish him to
judge for himself;) but merely to temper the rashness