Preface to Lyrical Ballads

"Essay on Criticism"

the poet

• "a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with a more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul"
• in the poet there is "nothing different in kind from other men, but only in degree"

•"Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy Nature is to copy them" (who is in a position to know the rules?)
•both poet and critic "must like from Heaven derive their light"--i.e. "true genius is but rare"
• "Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit"

how to write a poem
• "all good poetry is the overflow of spontaneous feelings"
• poetry "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility"		 • "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance"

the proper subjects of poetry
• "incidents and situations from common life"
• "Low and rustic life was generally chosen"
 • "Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress and when indulge our flights"
[-->DECORUM, sometimes honored in the breach, as in mock epic]

the language of poetry

•"in a selection of language really used by men"

  • "personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur in these volumes"
  • "little of what is usually called poetic diction"
  • "there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition"

• "True wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed"
•"True expression, like the unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon;
It gilds all objects, but it alters none."

and in practice:

• personifications abound: Nature, Pride, etc.
• "great examples" (so, e.g., imitation of Homeric epithets like "wine-dark sea"; use of classical rhetorical tropes, etc.)
• lots of poetic diction, sometimes used parodically (e.g. "shining altars of Japan")

the purposes of poetry

• "poetry is the image of man and nature"
• the poet "is the rock of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love....the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society"

• "to illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas are associated in a a state of excitement....to follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections of our nature"

  • "the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants"
  • "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"
    (those causes: "great national events"--Fr. Rev and aftermath; "increasing accumulation of men in cities"; "rapid communication of intelligence"; all leading to "thirst for outrageous stimulation")

• "giving pleasure"

  • "necessity of producing immediate pleasure" = "acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe"
  • poetry regards in life "an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure," finds objects which are "accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment"

"Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art."

 

 

Swift's "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" is useful here also:

"...all people bought 'em [Swift's poems]
As with a moral view designed
To cure the vices of mankind."

poetry and the world

• the poet "considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting qualities of nature"

•see the above: Nature is "source" and "end" of art
• "Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
.....
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beans of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away."