CHAPTER XIV

Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally

proposed--Preface to the second edition--The ensuing controversy, its

causes and acrimony--Philosophic definitions of a Poem and Poetry with

scholia.

During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our

conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry,

the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence

to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty

by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which

accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sunset diffused over

a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability

of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested

itself--(to which of us I do not recollect)--that a series of poems

might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents

were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed

at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic

truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations,

supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every

human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time

believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class,

subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and

incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its

vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after

them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.

In this idea originated the plan of the LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it was

agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters

supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our

inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to

procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension

of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr.

Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object,

to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a

feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind’s attention

to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the

wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for

which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude,

we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither

feel nor understand.

With this view I wrote THE ANCIENT MARINER, and was preparing among

other poems, THE DARK LADIE, and the CHRISTABEL, in which I should have

more nearly realized my ideal, than I had done in my first attempt. But

Mr. Wordsworth’s industry had proved so much more successful, and the

number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead of

forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous

matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own

character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction, which is

characteristic of his genius. In this form the LYRICAL BALLADS were

published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether

subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and

extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed in

the language of ordinary life as to produce the pleasurable interest,

which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart. To the

second edition he added a preface of considerable length; in which,

notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import, he was

understood to contend for the extension of this style to poetry of all

kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms

of speech that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think,

adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of real life. From

this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny the

presence of original genius, however mistaken its direction might

be deemed, arose the whole long-continued controversy. For from the

conjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy I explain the

inveteracy and in some instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious

passions, with which the controversy has been conducted by the

assailants.

Had Mr. Wordsworth’s poems been the silly, the childish things, which

they were for a long time described as being had they been really

distinguished from the compositions of other poets merely by meanness of

language and inanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing more

than what is found in the parodies and pretended imitations of them;

they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion,

and have dragged the preface along with them. But year after year

increased the number of Mr. Wordsworth’s admirers. They were found too

not in the lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly among young

men of strong sensibility and meditative minds; and their admiration

(inflamed perhaps in some degree by opposition) was distinguished by its

intensity, I might almost say, by its religious fervour. These facts,

and the intellectual energy of the author, which was more or less

consciously felt, where it was outwardly and even boisterously denied,

meeting with sentiments of aversion to his opinions, and of alarm at

their consequences, produced an eddy of criticism, which would of itself

have borne up the poems by the violence with which it whirled them round

and round. With many parts of this preface in the sense attributed

to them and which the words undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never

concurred; but on the contrary objected to them as erroneous in

principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at least) both to other

parts of the same preface, and to the author’s own practice in the

greater part of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth in his recent

collection has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end

of his second volume, to be read or not at the reader’s choice. But he

has not, as far as I can discover, announced any change in his poetic

creed. At all events, considering it as the source of a controversy,

in which I have been honoured more than I deserve by the frequent

conjunction of my name with his, I think it expedient to declare once

for all, in what points I coincide with the opinions supported in that

preface, and in what points I altogether differ. But in order to render

myself intelligible I must previously, in as few words as possible,

explain my views, first, of a Poem; and secondly, of Poetry itself, in

kind, and in essence.

The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinction;

while it is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself

constantly aware, that distinction is not division. In order to obtain

adequate notions of any truth, we must intellectually separate its

distinguishable parts; and this is the technical process of philosophy.

But having so done, we must then restore them in our conceptions to

the unity, in which they actually co-exist; and this is the result of

philosophy. A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition;

the difference therefore must consist in a different combination of

them, in consequence of a different object being proposed. According to

the difference of the object will be the difference of the combination.

It is possible, that the object may be merely to facilitate the

recollection of any given facts or observations by artificial

arrangement; and the composition will be a poem, merely because it is

distinguished from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly.

In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem to

the well-known enumeration of the days in the several months;

“Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November,” etc.

and others of the same class and purpose. And as a particular pleasure

is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities,

all compositions that have this charm super-added, whatever be their

contents, may be entitled poems.

So much for the superficial form. A difference of object and contents

supplies an additional ground of distinction. The immediate purpose

may be the communication of truths; either of truth absolute and

demonstrable, as in works of science; or of facts experienced and

recorded, as in history. Pleasure, and that of the highest and most

permanent kind, may result from the attainment of the end; but it is not

itself the immediate end. In other works the communication of pleasure

may be the immediate purpose; and though truth, either moral or

intellectual, ought to be the ultimate end, yet this will distinguish

the character of the author, not the class to which the work belongs.

Blest indeed is that state of society, in which the immediate purpose

would be baffled by the perversion of the proper ultimate end; in which

no charm of diction or imagery could exempt the BATHYLLUS even of an

Anacreon, or the ALEXIS of Virgil, from disgust and aversion!

But the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work

not metrically composed; and that object may have been in a high degree

attained, as in novels and romances. Would then the mere superaddition

of metre, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems? The

answer is, that nothing can permanently please, which does not contain

in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be

superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it. They must be

such, as to justify the perpetual and distinct attention to each

part, which an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound are

calculated to excite. The final definition then, so deduced, may be thus

worded. A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works

of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth;

and from all other species--(having this object in common with it)--it

is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as

is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.

Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the disputants

attaching each a different meaning to the same word; and in few

instances has this been more striking, than in disputes concerning the

present subject. If a man chooses to call every composition a

poem, which is rhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave his opinion

uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent to characterize

the writer’s intention. If it were subjoined, that the whole is likewise

entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a series of interesting

reflections; I of course admit this as another fit ingredient of a poem,

and an additional merit. But if the definition sought for be that of a

legitimate poem, I answer, it must be one, the parts of which mutually

support and explain each other; all in their proportion harmonizing

with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of metrical

arrangement. The philosophic critics of all ages coincide with the

ultimate judgment of all countries, in equally denying the praises of a

just poem, on the one hand, to a series of striking lines or distiches,

each of which, absorbing the whole attention of the reader to itself,

becomes disjoined from its context, and forms a separate whole,

instead of a harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an unsustained

composition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result

unattracted by the component parts. The reader should be carried

forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity,

or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the

pleasureable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey

itself. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the

emblem of intellectual power; or like the path of sound through

the air;--at every step he pauses and half recedes; and from the

retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him

onward. Praecipitandus est liber spiritus, says Petronius most happily.

The epithet, liber, here balances the preceding verb; and it is not easy

to conceive more meaning condensed in fewer words.

But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem,

we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of Plato,

and Jeremy Taylor, and Burnet’s Theory of the Earth, furnish undeniable

proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and even

without the contradistringuishing objects of a poem. The first chapter

of Isaiah--(indeed a very large portion of the whole book)--is poetry

in the most emphatic sense; yet it would be not less irrational than

strange to assert, that pleasure, and not truth was the immediate object

of the prophet. In short, whatever specific import we attach to the

word, Poetry, there will be found involved in it, as a necessary

consequence, that a poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be,

all poetry. Yet if an harmonious whole is to be produced, the remaining

parts must be preserved in keeping with the poetry; and this can be

no otherwise effected than by such a studied selection and artificial

arrangement, as will partake of one, though not a peculiar property of

poetry. And this again can be no other than the property of exciting a

more continuous and equal attention than the language of prose aims at,

whether colloquial or written.

My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of the

word, have been in part anticipated in some of the remarks on the Fancy

and Imagination in the early part of this work. What is poetry?--is so

nearly the same question with, what is a poet?--that the answer to the

one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction

resulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the

images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet’s own mind.

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man

into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other

according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and

spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each,

by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively

appropriate the name of Imagination. This power, first put in action by

the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though

gentle and unnoticed, control, laxis effertur habenis, reveals “itself

in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant” qualities:

of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea

with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of

novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual

state of emotion with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and

steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement;

and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still

subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration

of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry. Doubtless, as Sir John

Davies observes of the soul--(and his words may with slight alteration

be applied, and even more appropriately, to the poetic Imagination)--

Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns

Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,

As fire converts to fire the things it burns,

As we our food into our nature change.

From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,

And draws a kind of quintessence from things;

Which to her proper nature she transforms

To bear them light on her celestial wings.

Thus does she, when from individual states

She doth abstract the universal kinds;

Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates

Steal access through the senses to our minds.

Finally, Good Sense is the Body of poetic genius, Fancy its Drapery,

Motion its Life, and Imagination the Soul that is everywhere, and in

each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.