ÒPrefaceÓ to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
... Several of my
Friends are anxious for the success of these Poems from a belief, that, if the
views with which they were composed were indeed realized, a class of Poetry
would be produced, well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and not
unimportant in the multiplicity, and in the quality of its moral relations: and
on this account they have advised me to prefix a systematic defense of the
theory, upon which the poems were written. But I was unwilling to undertake the
task, because I knew that on this occasion the Reader would look coldly upon my
arguments, since I might be suspected of having been principally influenced by
the selfish and foolish hope of reasoning him into an approbation of these particular Poems: and I
was still more unwilling to undertake the task, because, adequately to display
my opinions, and fully to enforce my arguments, would require a space wholly
disproportionate to the nature of a preface. For to treat the subject with the
clearness and coherence, of which I 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 re-act 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 defense; 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. ... 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. They who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will, no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title. 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. ...
The principal
object, then, which I proposed to myself in these Poems was to choose incidents
and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as
far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the
same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby
ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way; and,
further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations 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
condition, 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 condition of life our elementary
feelings co-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 condition 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 influence
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 honor 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.
... All good
poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: but though this be
true, Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any
variety of subjects but by a man, who being possessed of more than usual
organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our continued
influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed
the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating the
relation of these general representatives to each other we discover what is
really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our
feelings will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be
originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced,
that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of those habits, we
shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature and in such
connection with each other, that the understanding of the being to whom we
address ourselves, if he be in a healthful state of association, must
necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections ameliorated.
I have said that
each of these poems has a purpose. I have also informed my Reader what this
purpose will be found principally to be: namely to illustrate the manner in
which our feelings and ideas are associated in a state of excitement. But,
speaking in language somewhat more appropriate, it is to follow the fluxes and
refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections of our
nature. ...
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. The Reader will find that personifications of abstract
ideas rarely occur in these volumes; and, I hope, are utterly rejected as an
ordinary device to elevate the style, and raise it above prose. I have proposed
to myself to imitate, and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of
men; and assuredly such personifications do not make any natural or regular
part of that language. They are, indeed, a figure of speech occasionally
prompted by passion, and I have made use of them as such; but I have endeavored
utterly to reject them as a mechanical device of style, or as a family language
which Writers in meter seem to lay claim to by prescription. I have wished to
keep my Reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I
shall interest him. I am, however, well aware 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
endeavored to look steadily at my subject, consequently, I hope 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. ...
But, as the
pleasure which I hope to give by the Poems I now present to the Reader must
depend entirely on just notions upon this subject, and, as it is in itself of
the highest importance to our taste and moral feelings, I cannot content myself
with these detached remarks. And if, in what I am about to say, it shall appear
to some that my labor is unnecessary, and that I am like a man fighting a
battle without enemies, I would remind such persons, that, whatever may be the
language outwardly held by men, a practical faith in the opinions which I am
wishing to establish is almost unknown. If my conclusions are admitted, and
carried as far as they must be carried if admitted at all, our judgments concerning
the works of the greatest Poets both ancient and modern will be far different
from what they are at present, both when we praise, and when we censure: and
our moral feelings influencing, and influenced by these judgments will, I
believe, be corrected and purified.
Taking up the
subject, then, upon general grounds, I ask what is meant by the word Poet? What
is a Poet? To whom does he address himself? And what language is to be expected
from him? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more
lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge
of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common
among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who
rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting
to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of
the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find
them. To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than
other men by absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up
in himself passions, which are indeed far from being the same as those produced
by real events, yet (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which
are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by
real events, than any thing which, from the motions of their own minds merely,
other men are accustomed to feel in themselves; whence, and from practice, he
has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and
feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or
from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external
excitement.
But, whatever
portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there
cannot be a doubt but that the language which it will suggest to him, must, in
liveliness and truth, fall far short of that which is uttered by men in real
life, under the actual pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the
Poet thus produces, or feels to be produced, in himself. However exalted a
notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious,
that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether
slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and
substantial action and suffering. So that it will be the wish of the Poet to
bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes,
nay, for short spaces of time perhaps, to let himself slip into an entire
delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with theirs;
modifying only the language which is thus suggested to him, by a consideration
that he describes for a particular purpose, that of giving pleasure. Here,
then, he will apply the principle on which I have so much insisted, namely,
that of selection; on this he will depend for removing what would otherwise be
painful or disgusting in the passion; he will feel that there is no necessity
to trick out or to elevate nature: and, the more industriously he applies this
principle, the deeper will be his faith that no words, which his fancy or
imagination can suggest, will be to be compared with those which are the emanations
of reality and truth.
But it may be
said by those who do not object to the general spirit of these remarks, that,
as it is impossible for the Poet to produce upon all occasions language as
exquisitely fitted for the passion as that which the real passion itself
suggests, it is proper that he should consider himself as in the situation of a
translator, who deems himself justified when he substitutes excellences of
another kind for those which are unattainable by him; and endeavors
occasionally to surpass his original, in order to make some amends for the
general inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. But this would be to
encourage idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who
speak of what they do not understand; who talk of Poetry as of a matter of
amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us as gravely about a taste
for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste
for Rope-dancing, or Frontiniac or Sherry. Aristotle, I have been told, hath
said, that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object
is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing
upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth
which is its own testimony, which gives strength and divinity to the tribunal
to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal. Poetry is the
image of man and nature. The obstacles which stand in the way of the fidelity
of the Biographer and Historian, and of their consequent utility, are
incalculably greater than those which are to be encountered by the Poet, who
has an adequate notion of the dignity of his art. The Poet writes under one
restriction only, namely, that of the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to
a human Being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not
as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer or a natural philosopher,
but as a Man. Except this one restriction, there is no object standing between
the Poet and the image of things; between this, and the Biographer and
Historian there are a thousand.
Nor let this
necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered as a degradation of the
Poet's art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the
universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because it is not formal, but
indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the
spirit of love: further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of
man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and
feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy but what is propagated by
pleasure: I would not be misunderstood; but wherever we sympathize with pain it
will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtle
combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, no general
principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been
built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The Man of Science,
the Chemist and Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have
had to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects
with which the Anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge
is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no knowledge. What then does
the Poet? He considers man and the objects that surround him as acting and
re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and
pleasure; he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as
contemplating this with a certain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain
convictions, intuitions, and deductions which by habit become of the nature of
intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and
sensations, and finding every where objects that immediately excite in him
sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an
overbalance of enjoyment.
To this knowledge
which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in which without
any other discipline than that of our daily life we are fitted to take delight,
the Poet principally directs his attention. He 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. And thus the Poet,
prompted by this feeling of pleasure which accompanies him through the whole
course of his studies, converses with general nature with affections akin to
those, which, through labour and length of time, the Man of Science has raised
up in himself, by conversing with those particular parts of nature which are
the objects of his studies. The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man of
Science is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary
part of our existence, our natural and unalienable inheritance; the other is a
personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and
direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow- beings. The Man of Science seeks
truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his
solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him,
rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion.
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned
expression which is in the countenance of all Science. Emphatically may it be
said of the Poet, as Shakespeare hath said of man, "that he looks before
and after." He is the rock of defense of human nature; an upholder and
preserver, carrying every where with him relationship and love. In spite of
difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs,
in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed,
the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human
society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects
of the Poet's thoughts are every where; though the eyes and senses of man are,
it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an
atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and
last of all knowledge--it is as immortal as the heart of man. If the labors of
men of Science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect,
in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet
will sleep then no more than at present, but he will be ready to follow the
steps of the man of Science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he
will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the
Science itself. The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or
Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it
can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be
familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the
followers of these respective Sciences shall be manifestly and palpably
material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come
when what is now called Science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to
put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine
spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as
a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man. It is not, then, to be
supposed that any one, who holds that sublime notion of Poetry which I have
attempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures
by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavor to excite admiration of
himself by arts, the necessity of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed
meanness of his subject.
What I have thus
far said applies to Poetry in general; but especially to those parts of
composition where the Poet speaks through the mouths of his characters; and
upon this point it appears to have such weight that I will conclude, there are
few persons, of good sense, who would not allow that the dramatic parts of
composition are defective, in proportion as they deviate from the real language
of nature, and are coloured by a diction of the Poet's own, either peculiar to
him as an individual Poet, or belonging simply to Poets in general, to a body
of men who, from the circumstance of their compositions being in metre, it is
expected will employ a particular language.
It is not, then,
in the dramatic parts of composition that we look for this distinction of
language; but still it may be proper and necessary where the Poet speaks to us
in his own person and character. To this I answer: by referring my Reader to
the description which I have before given of a Poet. Among the qualities which
I have enumerated as principally conducting to form a Poet, is implied nothing
differing in kind from other men, but only in degree. The sum of what I have
there said is, that the Poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a
greater promptness to think and feel without immediate external excitement, and
a greater power in expressing such thoughts and feelings as are produced in him
in that manner. But these passions and thoughts and feelings are the general
passions and thoughts and feelings of men. And with what are they connected?
Undoubtedly with our moral sentiments and animal sensations, and with the
causes which excite these; with the operations of the elements and the
appearances of the visible universe; with storm and sun-shine, with the
revolutions of the seasons, with cold and heat, with loss of friends and
kindred, with injuries and resentments, gratitude and hope, with fear and
sorrow. These, and the like, are the sensations and objects which the Poet
describes, as they are the sensations of other men, and the objects which
interest them. The Poet thinks and feels in the spirit of the passions of men.
How, then, can his language differ in any material degree from that of all
other men who feel vividly and see clearly? It might be proved that it is
impossible. But supposing that this were not the case, the Poet might then be
allowed to use a peculiar language, when expressing his feelings for his own
gratification, or that of men like himself. But Poets do not write for Poets
alone, but for men. Unless therefore we are advocates for that admiration which
depends upon ignorance, and that pleasure which arises from hearing what we do
not understand, the Poet must descend from this supposed height, and, in order
to excite rational sympathy, he must express himself as other men express
themselves. ...
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. ...
From what has been said, and from a perusal of the Poems, the Reader will be able clearly to perceive the object which I have proposed to myself: he will determine how far I have attained this object; and, what is a much more important question, whether it be worth attaining; and upon the decision of these two questions will rest my claim to the approbation of the public.