. It will perhaps appear
to them, that wishing to avoid the prevalent fault of the day,
the author has sometimes 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 with those in modern times who have been the most
successful in painting manners and passions, the fewer complaints of
this kind will he have to make.

An accurate taste in poetry, and in all the other arts, Sir Joshua
Reynolds has observed, is an acquired talent, which can only be
produced by severe thought, and a long continued intercourse with the
best models of composition. This is mentioned not with so ridiculous
a purpose as to prevent the most inexperienced reader from judging for
himself; but merely to temper the rashness of decision, and to suggest
that if poetry be a subject on which much time has not been bestowed,
the judgement may be erroneous, and that in many cases it necessarily
will be so.

The tale of _Goody Blake and Harry Gill_ is founded on a
well-authenticated fact which happened in Warwickshire. Of the other
poems in the collection, it may be proper to say that they are either
absolute inventions of the author, or facts which took place within
his personal observation or that of his friends. The poem of _The
Thorn_, as the reader will soon discover, is not supposed to be spoken
in the author's own person: the character of the loquacious narrator
will sufficiently show itself in the course of the story. _The Rime
of the Ancyent Marinere_ was professedly written in imitation of the
_style_, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets; but with a few
exceptions, the Author believes that the language adopted in it has
been equally intelligible for these three last centuries. The lines
entitled _Expostulation and Reply_, and those which follow, arose out
of conversation with a friend who was somewhat unreasonably attached
to modern books of moral philosophy.

[Footnote A: William Wordsworth (1770-1830), probably the greatest of
the poets of the Romantic Movement in England, was also foremost in
the critical defence of that movement. The Prefaces and Essays printed
here form a kind of manifesto of the reaction from the poetical
traditions of the eighteenth century; and contain besides some of the
soundest theorizing on the nature of poetry to be found in English.
They afford an interesting comparison wit