It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are tobe found in every subject which ihe human mind. Theevidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of Critics,but in those of Poets themselves.
The majority of the following poems are to be sidered as experiments.They were written chie?y with a view to ascertain how far the languageof versation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted tothe purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers aced to the gaudiness andinane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in readingthis book to its clusion, will perhaps frequently have tlewith feelings of strangeness and aukwardness: they will look round forpoetry, and will be io enquire by ecies of courtesy theseattempts be permitted to assume that title. It is desirable thatsuch readers, for their own sakes, should not suffer the solitary wordPoetry, a word of very disputed meaning, to stand in the way of theirgrati?cation; but that, while they are perusing this book, they shouldask themselves if it tains a natural deliion of human passions,human characters, and human is; and if the answer be favourableto the authors wishes, that they should sent to be pleased in spiteof that most dreadful eo our pleasures, our owablishedcodes of decision.
Readers of superior judgment may disapprove of the style in which manyof these pieces are executed it must be expected that many lines andphrases will ly suit their taste. It will perhaps appear tothem, that wishing to avoid the prevalent fault of the day, the authorhas sometimes desded too low, and that many of his expressions aretoo familiar, and not of suf?t dignity. It is apprehehat themore versant the reader is with our elder writers, and with those iimes who have been the most successful in painting manners andpassions, the fewer plaints of this kind will he have to make.
An accurate taste iry, and in all the other arts, Sir JoshuaReynolds has observed, is an acquired talent, which only be producedby severe thought, and a long tinued intercourse with the best modelsof position. This is mentioned not with so ridiculous a purpose as toprevent the most inexperienced reader from judging for himself; butmerely to temper the rashness of decision, and to suggest that if poetrybe a subje which much time has not beeowed, the judgment maybe erroneous, and that in many cases it necessarily will be so.
The tale of Goody Blake and Harry Gill is founded on awell-authenticated fact which happened in Warwickshire. Of the otherpoems in the colle, it may be proper to say that they are eitherabsolute iions of the author, or facts which took place within hispersonal observation or that of his friends. The poem of the Thorn, asthe reader will soon discover, is not supposed to be spoken ihors own person: the character of the loquacious narrator willsuf?tly shew itself in the course of the story. The Rime of theA Marinere rofessedly written in imitation of the _style_, aswell as of the spirit of the elder poets; but with a few exceptions, theAuthor believes that the language adopted in it has been equallyintelligible for these three last turies. The liledExpostulation and Reply, and those which follow, arose out ofversation with a friend who was somewhat unreasonably attached tomodern books of moral philosophy.