sympathize with them. At present it will be sufficient for my purpose,
if I have proved, that Mr. Southey's writings no more than my own
furnished the original occasion to this fiction of a new school of
poetry, and to the clamours against its supposed founders and
proselytes.

As little do I believe that Mr. Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads were in
themselves the cause. I speak exclusively of the two volumes so
entitled. A careful and repeated examination of these confirms me in
the belief, that the omission of less than a hundred lines would have
precluded nine-tenths of the criticism on this work. I hazard this
declaration, however, on the supposition, that the reader has taken it
up, as he would have done any other collection of poems purporting to
derive their subjects or interests from the incidents of domestic or
ordinary life, intermingled with higher strains of meditation which
the poet utters in his own person and character; with the proviso,
that these poems were perused without knowledge of, or reference to,
the author's peculiar opinions, and that the reader had not had his
attention previously directed to those peculiarities. In that case, as
actually happened with Mr. Southey's earlier works, the lines and
passages which might have offended the general taste, would have been
considered as mere inequalities, and attributed to inattention, not to
perversity of judgment. The men of business who had passed their lives
chiefly in cities, and who might therefore be expected to derive the
highest pleasure from acute notices of men and manners conveyed in
easy, yet correct and pointed language; and all those who, reading but
little poetry, are most stimulated with that species of it, which
seems most distant from prose, would probably have passed by the
volumes altogether. Others more catholic in their taste, and yet
habituated to be most pleased when most excited, would have contented