part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflections suggested to me by particular events; but still more as introductory to the statement of my principles in Politics, Religion and Philosophy, and the application of the rules, deduced from 5 philosophical principles, to poetry and criticism. But of the objects which I proposed to myself, it was not the least important to effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the long-continued controversy concerning the true nature of poetic diction, and at the same time to define with the 10 utmost impartiality the real poetic character of the poet, by whose writings this controversy was first kindled, and has been since fuelled and fanned. 15 In 1794, when I had barely passed the verge of manhood, I published a small volume of juvenile poems.1 They were received with a degree of favour which, young as I was, I well knew was bestowed on them not so much for any positive merit, as because they were considered buds of hope and promises of better works to come. The critics of that day, the most flattering equally with the severest, concurred in 20 objecting to them obscurity, a general turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new-coined double epithets.2 The first is the fault which a writer is the least able to detect in his own compositions; and my mind was not then sufficiently disciplined to receive the authority of others as a substitute for 25 my own conviction. Satisfied that the thoughts, such as they were, could not have been expressed otherwise, or at least more perspicuously, I forgot to inquire whether the thoughts themselves did not demand a degree of attention unsuitable to the nature and objects of poetry. This re 30 mark, however, applies chiefly, though not exclusively, to the Religious Musings. The remainder of the charge I ad mitted to its full extent, and not without sincere acknowledgments to both my private and public censors for their friendly admonitions. In the after editions I pruned the double epithets with no sparing hand, and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and dic- 5 tion; though, in truth, these parasite plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such intricacy of union, that I was often obliged to omit disentangling the weed, from the fear of snapping the flower.1 From that period to the date of the present work I have 10 published nothing with my name which could by any possibility have come before the board of anonymous criticism. Even the three or four poems, printed with the works of a friend, as far as they were censured at all, were charged with the same or similar defects, though I am persuaded, 15 not with equal justice; with an excess of ornament, in addition to strained and elaborate diction.2 May I be permitted to add, that, even at the early period of my juvenile poems, I saw and admitted the superiority of an austerer and more natural style, with an insight not less clear than I at present 20 possess. My judgment was stronger than were my powers of realizing its dictates, and the faults of my language, though indeed partly owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths, in which a new world then seemed to open 25 upon me, did yet, in part likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative talent. During several years of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced those who had reintroduced the manly simplicity of the Grecian, and of our own elder poets, with such enthusiasm, as made 30 the hope seem presumptuous of writing successfully in the . part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflections suggested to me by particular events; but still more as introductory to the statement of my principles in Politics, Religion and Philosophy, and the application of the rules, deduced from 5 philosophical principles, to poetry and criticism. But of the objects which I proposed to myself, it was not the least important to effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the long-continued controversy concerning the true nature of poetic diction, and at the same time to define with the 10 utmost impartiality the real poetic character of the poet, by whose writings this controversy was first kindled, and has been since fuelled and fanned. 15 In 1794, when I had barely passed the verge of manhood, I published a small volume of juvenile poems. They were received with a degree of favour which, young as I was, I well knew was bestowed on them not so much for any positive merit, as because they were considered buds of hope and promises of better works to come. The critics of that day, the most flattering equally with the severest, concurred in 20 objecting to them obscurity, a general turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new-coined double epithets.2 The first is the fault which a writer is the least able to detect in his own compositions; and my mind was not then sufficiently disciplined to receive the authority of others as a substitute for 25 my own conviction. Satisfied that the thoughts, such as they were, could not have been expressed otherwise, or at least more perspicuously, I forgot to inquire whether the thoughts themselves did not demand a degree of attention unsuitable to the nature and objects of poetry. This re 30 mark, however, applies chiefly, though not exclusively, to the Religious Musings. The remainder of the charge I ad mitted to its full extent, and not without sincere acknowledgments to both my private and public censors for their friendly admonitions. In the after editions I pruned the double epithets with no sparing hand, and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and dic- 5 tion; though, in truth, these parasite plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such intricacy of union, that I was often obliged to omit disentangling the weed, from the fear of snapping the flower.1 From that period to the date of the present work I have 10 published nothing with my name which could by any possibility have come before the board of anonymous criticism. Even the three or four poems, printed with the works of a friend, as far as they were censured at all, were charged with the same or similar defects, though I am persuaded, 15 not with equal justice; with an excess of ornament, in addition to strained and elaborate diction.2 May I be permitted to add, that, even at the early period of my juvenile poems, I saw and admitted the superiority of an austerer and more natural style, with an insight not less clear than I at present 20 possess. My judgment was stronger than were my powers of realizing its dictates, and the faults of my language, though indeed partly owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths, in which a new world then seemed to open 25 upon me, did yet, in part likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative talent. During several years of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced those who had reintroduced the manly simplicity of the Grecian, and of our own elder poets, with such enthusiasm, as made 30 the hope seem presumptuous of writing successfully in the 5 same style. Perhaps a similar process has happened to others; but my earliest poems were marked by an ease and simplicity, which I have studied, perhaps with inferior success, to impress on my later compositions.1 At school I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master.2 He early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare 10 Lucretius (in such extracts as I then read), Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman poets of the so-called silver and brazen ages, but with even those of the Augustan era; and, on grounds of plain sense and universal logic, to see and assert the superi15 ority of the former, in the truth and nativeness both of their thoughts and diction. At the same time that we were studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons; and they were the lessons, too, which required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to es20 cape his censure. I learnt from him that poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own as severe as that of science, and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets, 25 he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word; and I well remember that, availing himself of the synonymes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us attempt to show, with regard to each, why it would not have answered the same purpose, and 30 wherein consisted the peculiar fitness of the word in the original text. |