Note 6 — A POET DEFINED[6]

From the famous "Preface" to the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," published in 1800. The poems in the first edition of "Lyrical Ballads," published in 1798, had been the joint production of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The volume was published in Bristol by Cottle. It met with a cold, if not scoffing, reception, altho among its contents were the "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey." When Cottle's publishing business was transferred to Longmans in 1799, the value of the copyright of "Lyrical Ballads," for which Cottle had paid the authors 30 guineas, was estimated at nothing. Cottle then presented the copyright to Wordsworth and Coleridge. Wordsworth, meanwhile, had written other poems and Longmans offered him £100 for a new and enlarged edition of "Lyrical Ballads," restricted to his own verse and to which Wordsworth was to contribute an explanatory preface, the same being the "Preface" which aroused a controversy now historical in the history of English poetry. Critics were deeply incensed at Wordsworth's defense of his own poems. The "Preface" was a revolutionary proclamation against the taste in poetry which had been established in a previous century.