Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Because the theme recently has been country folk, and because in class at the moment we are looking at the Romantics, I thought it a good idea to post an extract from the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, a seminal piece of writing which has come to be regarded as a kind of 'manifesto' for the Romantic poets - although they did not think of themselves in terms of a distinct movement of that name at the time. 

There come times, regularly in human history, when the old ways are worn thin and no longer serve their purpose; when people long for renewal, wanting to put aside old forms and embrace the new. This was the case of the many Romantic poets, including Wordsworth and Coleridge, who are the joint authors of the Lyrical Ballads. The preface was written by Wordsworth for the second edition published in 1801. In this important work, he extols the virtues, long-forgotten, of simplicity of expression, feeling and thought, everyday language, and ordinary country life. All this is in reaction to the stale complexities of the past. 

  The principal object, then, proposed 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 colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; 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. Humble 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 coexist 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 has been 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 honour 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.