know how without being culpably particular I can give my Reader a
more exact notion of the style in which I wished these poems to be
written than by informing him that I have at all times endeavoured
to look steadily at my subject, consequently I hope it will be found
that there is in these Poems little falsehood of description, and
that my ideas are expressed in language fitted to their respective
importance. Something I must have gained by this practice, as it is
friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely good sense; but
it has necessarily cut me off from a large portion of phrases and
figures of speech which from father to son have long been regarded
as the common inheritance of Poets. I have also thought it expedient
to restrict myself still further, having abstained from the use of
many expressions, in themselves proper and beautiful, but which have
been foolishly repeated by bad Poets till such feelings of disgust
are connected with them as it is scarcely possible by any art of
association to overpower.

If in a Poem there should be found a series of lines, or even a
single line, in which the language, though naturally arranged and
according to the strict laws of metre, does not differ from that of
prose, there is a numerous class of critics who, when they stumble
upon these prosaisms as they call them, imagine that they have made
a notable discovery, and exult over the Poet as over a man ignorant
of his own profession. Now these men would establish a canon of
criticism which the Reader will conclude he must utterly reject if he
wishes to be pleased with these volumes. And it would be a most easy
task to prove to him that not only the language of a large portion
of every good poem, even of the most elevated character, must
necessarily, except with reference to the metre, in no respect
differ from that of good prose, but likewise that some of the most