CHAP.
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Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author’s firstpublication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect ofcontemporary writers on youthful minds--Bowles’s Sonnets--Comparison between the poets before and since Pope II Supposed irritability of genius brought to the test offacts--Causes and occasions of the charge--Its injustice III The Author’s obligations to Critics, and the probableoccasion--Principles of modern criticism--Mr. Southey’sworks and character IV The Lyrical Ballads with the Preface--Mr. Wordsworth’searlier poems--On Fancy and Imagination--The investigationof the distinction important to the Fine Arts V On the law of Association--Its history traced from Aristotleto Hartley VI That Hartley’s system, as far as it differs from that ofAristotle, is neither tenable in theory, nor foundedin facts VII Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian Theory--Ofthe original mistake or equivocation which procured itsadmission--Memoria technica VIII The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refinedfirst by Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into thedoctrine of Harmonia praestabilita--Hylozoism--Materialism--None of these systems, or any possible theory ofAssociation, supplies or supersedes a theory ofPerception, or explains the formation of the Associable XI Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are itsconditions?--Giordano Bruno--Literary Aristocracy, or theexistence of a tacit compact among the learned as aprivileged order--The Author’s obligations to the Mystics-To Immanuel Kant--The difference between the letter andThe spirit of Kant’s writings, and a vindication ofPrudence in the teaching of Philosophy--Fichte’s attemptto complete the Critical system-Its partial success andultimate failure--Obligations to Schelling; and amongEnglish writers to Saumarez X A Chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interludepreceding that on the nature and genesis of the Imaginationor Plastic Power--On Pedantry and pedantic expressions--Advice to young authors respecting publication--Variousanecdotes of the Author’s literary life, and the progressof his opinions in Religion and Politics XI An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feelthemselves disposed to become authors XII A Chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusalor omission of the chapter that follows XIII On the Imagination, or Esemplastic power XIV Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originallyproposed--Preface to the second edition--The ensuingcontroversy, its causes and acrimony--Philosophicdefinitions of a Poem and Poetry with scholia XV The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in aCritical analysis of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, andRape of Lucrece XVI Striking points of difference between the Poets of thepresent age and those of the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies--Wish expressed for the union of thecharacteristic merits of both XVII Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth--Rustic life (above all, low and rustic life) especiallyunfavourable to the formation of a human diction-Thebest parts of language the product of philosophers, not ofclowns or shepherds--Poetry essentially ideal and generic--The language of Milton as much the language of real life,yea, incomparably more so than that of the cottager XVIII Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentiallydifferent from that of prose--Origin and elements of metre--Its necessary consequences, and the conditions therebyimposed on the metrical writer in the choice of his diction XIX Continuation--Concerning the real object, which, it isprobable, Mr. Wordsworth had before him in his criticalpreface--Elucidation and application of this XX The former subject continued--The neutral style, or thatcommon to Prose and Poetry, exemplified by specimens fromChaucer, Herbert, and others XXI Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals XXII The characteristic defects of Wordsworth’s poetry, with theprinciples from which the judgment, that they are defects,is deduced--Their proportion to the beauties--For thegreatest part characteristic of his theory only SATYRANE’S LETTERS XXIII Critique on Bertram XXIV Conclusion So wenig er auch bestimmt seyn mag, andere zu belehren, so wuenschter doch sich denen mitzutheilen, die er sich gleichgesinnt weis, (oderhofft,) deren Anzahl aber in der Breite der Welt zerstreut ist; erwuenscht sein Verhaeltniss zu den aeltesten Freunden dadurch wiederanzuknuepfen, mit neuen es fortzusetzen, und in der letzten Generationsich wieder andere fur seine uebrige Lebenszeit zu gewinnen. Er wuenschtder Jugend die Umwege zu ersparen, auf denen er sich selbst verirrte.(Goethe. Einleitung in die Propylaeen.) TRANSLATION. Little call as he may have to instruct others, he wishesnevertheless to open out his heart to such as he either knows or hopesto be of like mind with himself, but who are widely scattered in theworld: he wishes to knit anew his connections with his oldest friends,to continue those recently formed, and to win other friends among therising generation for the remaining course of his life. He wishes tospare the young those circuitous paths, on which he himself had lost hisway.
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