Preface to Lyrical Ballads: A Portent

Preface to Lyrical Ballads: A Portent IGeorge Whalley I conclude, that Poetic Genius is not only a very delicate but a very rare plant.-COLERIDGE (1815) Is there a Poet now alive who will pretend to believe himself equal in genius to Wordsworth's?-CoLERlDGE (1819) The Preface to Lyrical Ballads has secured to itself generations of superstitious veneration. To pedagogues it has commended itself as a solid handhold where so much else eludes the grasp. It has been treated as central, not so much because it was unquestionably central, but because it was portable and expoundable . "To be mistaught," Wordsworth observes drily in the Essay Supplementary , "is worse than to be untaught; and no perverseness equals that which is supported by system, no errors so difficult to root out as those which the understanding has pledged its credit to uphold." It would be difficult to decide which has done more disservice to the understanding of Wordsworth and Coleridge: the careless habit of bundling them together into the capacious bosom of "Romanticism," or the amiable device of fitting them out in football jerseys of different colours and playing them off one against the other with the final result decided before the match begins. Wordsworth and Coleridge do not accommodate us by being either heaveuly twins or sworn enemies. The Preface to Lyrical Ballads was in some sense a joint production. Yet a close study of the Preface, of its origins, and of the controversy it attracted in Wordsworth's day, brings one to see how peculiarly Wordsworthian a document it is, and how little rooted in Coleridge's practice of poetry or in his instinctive philosophy. Coleridge stood aside from the Preface; and the Preface, far from securing Wordsworth's poetic freedom, consolidated his movement towards disaster. The disaster was the arrest in his development when he was coming into his 467 468 GEORGE WHALLEY the trasze(][v that he courted disaster and secured his own fall. As soon as the 1802 version of the Preface had been COilerlaj;~e started to out the "radical difference" he sensed between his and Wordsworth's views. he Daniel Stuart that the Preface " Letters to ....n1'I"'''::.~''~r and ~OUtIJleV are more calltlcms. I must set coincidence with his Creed. It most arose from the heads mutual Conversations &c & the first pa:~sa,ges were indeed from notes of for it was at :first that the Preface written .. But... , J will you of one that altho' Wordsworth's Preface is half a child my own Brain & so arose out of Conversations so T,..p..-nl,,,,,,,t with few we could either of us pe]["haps. oos'ltr~relv which :first started any . . .• yet with W()rdswlorth. ahlllse.::...-'''msults which monumental atic defence" which should treat the with all "the clearness and coherence of which it is did not mind that omission and he was "ul,........,,.... in them ... the n,.,1rn~'1"'1:7 laws of our nature"; man's calJaC:ltv and violent stimulation"; to pn)dl1Ce ... which is " Of these attainable need not aSSllm]:)tiO][lS lie. the first two that Wordsworth's In his desire to release from the of inane exces... stunUlants, and bombast, Wordsworth very pf()pe:rlv sinlplici1':y But on what evidence is and lucidi1ey ex(;lu:sivlelv to be found in "the middle and lower classes of "....,.,.""h'" or in "low and rustiC life"? When Wordsworth his reason for does he assume for rural when in "a state On what evidence could he assume that in a rural inc1orpora.ted with the and peI'malnellt ful desc:nptlons apIJealS to ple:asulre power.. ne1~lec:t to discuss the comform of a PREFACE TO Lyrical Ballads 475 And why does he so often indicate poetic activity by the words "describe ," "imitate," "represent"? These questions cannot be satisfactorily answered from the Preface alone. And wben we tum to the Biographia to see how Coleridge formulated his complaints, we find that even he ran into difficulties. With many parts of this preface, in the sense attributed to them, and which the words undoubtedly seem to authorise, I never concurred; but on the contrary objected to them as erroneous in principle...