eness and narrow circle of their intercourse,
being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their
feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions.
Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and
regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical
language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets,
who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their
art, in proportion as they separate themselves from 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.[1]

[1] It is worth while here to observe, that the affecting
parts of Chaucer are almost always expressed in language pure
and universally intelligible even to this day.

I cannot, however, be insensible to the present outcry against the
triviality and meanness, both of thought and language, which some of
my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical
compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect, where it exists, is
more dishonourable to the Writer's own character than false refinement
or arbitrary innovation, though I should contend at the same time,
that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences. From
such verses the Poems in these volumes will be found distinguished at
least by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy
_purpose_. Not that I always began to write with a distinct purpose
formally conceived; but habits of meditation have, I trust, so
prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such
objects as strongly excite those feelings, will be found to carry
along with them a _purpose_. If this opinion be erroneous, I can have
little right to the name of a Poet. For all good poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true,
Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any
variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than
usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our
continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our
thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past
feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general
representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to
men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our f