Critical Analysis Of Preface To Lyrical Ballads Sumit Sharma Lyrical Ballads is a joint publication by William Wordsworth and an equally accomplished poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which is cited as the most prominent reason responsible for the launch of Romantic Age in English Literature. Preface to this text therefore is of utmost importance to me, being a student of English literature. It is evident that this collection of poems is intended at the masses and not merely the aristocracy or those highly placed as previously the case would be, and specially so, common men. Never before had poems dared to address the theme of ‘low and rustic’. This quality defines well the reason why a work of this nature must be called ‘revolutionary’. It didn’t only change the way humanity would look at poems but also attempted to question the moral values of the then society and hoped for much needed change, which brings me to say that the intension of the initiative was as noble as the cause. Lyrical Ballads is an exhausting explanation (calling it defence might outrage Mr. Wordsworth) which even though with initial reluctance, later upon the insistence of good wishers is pursued rigorously and presented before us as an imperfectly constructed litigation document contradicting its own stand after every few pages. In the very beginning Wordsworth denies the charges of reasoning the reader into an approbation of his work, however in the very next paragraph he very cleverly ridicules the works of everyone from Terence to Shakespeare to Donne to Pope. He stoops to every low possible, right from questioning the integrity and character of every poet before him to calling the critics of his work as being in unhealthful state of association, thus manifesting his bigoted self. Further, another thing which is as perplexing as it is amusing is that he chooses to see flaws in every aspect of the poets before him and shamelessly endorses his ignorance of ‘vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life’, of ‘men’ whom he repeatedly calls ‘flesh and blood’ and whom he so passionately boasts of including as a subject of his poems, I however appreciate his choice being unostentatious in the language of the poetic content. Perplexing because while it is a commendable endeavour to include those who’ve been shunned for ages, unaccepted by those whom he refers to as intelligent readers, forget alone being muses of such an art, but what justification would Mr. Wordsworth offer to the Poets whom he accuses of collecting ‘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’ not to mention being ‘slavish and mechanical’, is not it then amusing that he relentlessly
advocates the cause of common men, knowing well of ‘the great national events’, ‘accumulation of men in cities’ and ‘craving for extraordinary incident’? Is he himself not appeasing a section of men whom he predicts shall rule tomorrow? Is this not the kind of description a man tired of atrocities of the upper class yearns to hear?
His brilliance is sure worth a mention for how well he manipulates us into affirming to his standards of morality. Though I am completely empathetic with the mammoth task he’d ventured himself into and the world of good that it had the potential to bestow upon the then completely savagely world, but having said that, it is no justification for all the callousness he’s offered to us which in fact has ended up affronting the sensibilities of many, including me. I personally feel that the Preface To Lyrics Ballads was least essential and has ended up being a scar on the image of an otherwise marvelous Poet. The wings of change had witnessed a flight of its own just when the first volume of these poems was published without a preface.
