Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Autor: Claudio Martins | Publicado: 2012-03-01T11:13:00-04:00



Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)


William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Lyrical
Ballads (1798)

LYRICAL BALLADS, 

WITH 

A FEW OTHER POEMS.


LONDON: 

PRINTED FOR J. &amp; A. ARCH, GRACECHURCH-STREET. 

1798. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 


It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that&nbsp;its materials are to be found in every subject&nbsp;which can interest the human mind. The evi­dence of this fact is to be sought, not in the&nbsp;writings of Critics, but in those of Poets them­&nbsp;selves.&nbsp;The majority of the following poems are to be&nbsp;considered as experiments. They were written&nbsp;chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower&nbsp;classes of society is adapted to the purposes of&nbsp;poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern&nbsp;writers, if they persist in reading this book to its&nbsp;conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to&nbsp;struggle with feelings of strangeness and auk­wardness: they will look round for poetry, and&nbsp;will be induced to enquire by what species of&nbsp;courtesy these attempts can be permitted to&nbsp;assume that title. It is desirable that such&nbsp;readers, for their own sakes, should not suffer&nbsp;the solitary word Poetry, a word of very disputed&nbsp;meaning, to stand in the way of their gratifica­tion; but that, while they are perusing this&nbsp;book, they should ask themselves if it contains a&nbsp;natural delineation of human passions, human&nbsp;characters, and human incidents; and if the&nbsp;answer be favorable to the author's wishes, that they&nbsp;should consent to be pleased in spite of that&nbsp;most dreadful enemy to our pleasures, our own&nbsp;pre-established codes of decision.



Readers of superior judgment may disapprove of the&nbsp;style in which many of these pieces are execu­ted it must be expected that many lines and phra­ses will not exactly suit their taste. It will perhaps&nbsp;appear to them, that wishing to avoid the pre­valent fault of the day, the author has sometimes&nbsp;descended too low, and that many of his expres­sions are too familiar, and not of sufficient dig­nity. It is apprehended, that the more con­versant the reader is with our elder writers, and&nbsp;with those in modern times who have been the&nbsp;most successful in painting manners and passions,&nbsp;the fewer complaints of this kind will he have&nbsp;to make.&nbsp;An accurate taste in poetry, and in all the other&nbsp;arts, Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed, is an&nbsp;acquired talent, which can only be produced by&nbsp;severe thought, and a long continued intercourse&nbsp;with the best models of composition. This is mentioned not with so ridiculous a purpose&nbsp;as to prevent the most inexperienced reader&nbsp;from judging for himself; but merely to temper&nbsp;the rashness of decision, and to suggest that if&nbsp;poetry be a subject on which much time has not&nbsp;been bestowed, the judgment may be erroneous,&nbsp;and that in many cases it necessarily will be so. "The tale of Goody Blake" and "Harry Gill" is&nbsp;founded on a well-authenticated fact which hap­pened in Warwickshire. Of the other poems in&nbsp;the collection, it may be proper to say that they&nbsp;are either absolute inventions of the author, or&nbsp;facts which took place within his personal obser­vation or that of his friends. "The poem of the&nbsp;Thorn", as the reader will soon discover, is not&nbsp;supposed to be spoken in the author's own per­son: the character of the loquacious narrator will&nbsp;sufficiently shew itself in the course of the story. "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" was professedly written in imitation of the style, as well as&nbsp;of the spirit, of the elder poets; but with a few&nbsp;exceptions, the Author believes that the language adopted in it has been equally intelligible&nbsp;or these three last centuries. The lines entitled expostulation and Reply, and those which follow, arose out of conversation with a friend&nbsp;who was somewhat unreasonably attached to&nbsp;modern books of moral philosophy.