¹ “The volume [of 1798] undoubtedly was a puzzle, for it marked a complete change from anything that had appeared before” (Elsie Smith, An Estimate of William Wordsworth by His Contemporaries, Oxford, 1932, p. 33). The phrase is T. J. Wise's: “… the Ballads marked a complete change from the style and character of poetical composition then regarded as classic” (A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of William Wordsworth, London, 1916, p. 31). But the opinion has been widely expressed. Cf. Oliver Elton: “They [the Ballads] are mostly reflective narratives, of a great variety of forms … . There had been nothing of the sort before; the very faults were new” (A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830, 4th imp., London, 1933, ii, 64). Also Littledale: “The Volume of Lyrical Ballads made its appeal in 1798 to a small and unprepared public; it had to create the taste by which it was enjoyed” (Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, 1798, ed. H. Littledale, London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1931, p. vii).

² The Early Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, 1787-1805, ed. Ernest De Selincourt (Oxford, 1935), pp. 225-227.

³ Ibid., p. 122.

⁴ Emile Legouis, “Some Remarks on the Composition of the Lyrical Ballads of 1798,” Wordsworth and Coleridge: Studies in Honor of George McLean Harper (Princeton, 1939), pp. 3, 7. Cf. also C. H. Herford: “So singular a medley, touching, sometimes on adjoining pages, the grotesque and the exquisite, the pathetic and the sublime, was likely to divide or bewilder criticism when it came to be seriously judged at all” (Wordsworth, London: Routledge, 1930, p. 100).

⁵ A representative list of “Wordsworthian” titles from the magazines of 1788-98 is as follows: The Delights of a Still Evening, Stanzas on a Withered Leaf, A Thought on the Vicissitudes of the Seasons, On the Singing of a Red-Breast Late in Autumn, Inscription for a Rural Arbour, Sonnet to the River Arun, Inscription for a Coppice near Elsfield, Sonnet Written during a Morning's Walk, To a Tuft of Violets, On the Month of May, On the Return to the Country, An Autumn Thought, The Lake of Wyndemere, Description of a Morning in May, Contemplation by Moonlight, To the Daisy, To the Primrose, Ode to the Cuckoo. The exact citations will not be given, since there are literally hundreds of such poems. Underneath many of the “nature” poems of the magazines is the familiar conviction that nature is beautiful and full of joy; that man is corrupted by civilization; that God may be found in nature; and that the study of nature not only brings pleasure, therefore, but generates moral goodness. The nature poetry of the Christian's Magazine (1760-67), for example, has numerous “Wordsworthian” features.

⁶ Cf. Catherine M. Maclean: “[Wordsworth] created new interests. But some of these have now become so much part and parcel of most people's mentality that they have ceased to interest. These too have become hackneyed. Appreciation of the externals of Nature is now a commonplace” (Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Cambridge, 1927, p. 118). J. R. Sutherland: “[Wordsworth] himself ‘created the taste by which he is to be enjoyed.‘ But I am not sure that he has not induced some of his disciples to lose their sense of proportion about Nature, and he is largely responsible, along with his fellow romantics, for that dreariest of all cults, the cult of scenery” (“Wordsworth and Pope,” Proc. Brit. Acad., xxx [1944], 49). Derek Patmore: “Readers still under the influence of the eighteenth-century tradition and its stiff formality were not ready for Wordsworth with his cult of Nature and his poems about the humble of this world” (“Wordsworth and His Contemporaries,” Tribute to Wordsworth, London, 1950, p. 229). George Mallaby: “It is … a plain fact that in the world of literature Wordsworth ignored the fashion of the age and marched boldly forward along his own chosen path amongst the jeers of the idle and ignorant scoffers, until he had succeeded in creating the taste by which he desired to be judged. It is evident enough that the objects of his poetry … and the style … do not belong to the eighteenth century …” (Wordsworth, a Tribute, Oxford, 1950, pp. 27-28). See also some of the opinions cited in n. 21.

⁷ How much is embraced by the “experiments” of the Lyrical Ballads? Is it the language alone? Or the style in a larger sense? Or does it involve also the materials of poetry—“human passions, human characters, and human incidents”? In Hazlitt's account (in “My First Acquaintance with Poets”) the Lyrical Ballads are explicitly described as an experiment in language alone; and this is the burden of the Biographia as well.

⁸ Cf. “Sonnet on Revisiting—–,” Edinburgh Mag., viii (1788), 297; “Verses Written on Visiting the Ruins of Dunkeswell-Abbey, in Devonshire, by Miss Hunt,” ibid., n.s. ii (1793), 234; “Ode, Written on the Banks of the Avon,” ibid., xiii (1791), 509; “Sonnet, Written on the Seashore,” European Mag., xvii (1790), 70; “Verses Written Extempore, on a Fair Winter Night at D—–y,” ibid., xviii (1790), 70; “Sonnet, Written on the Banks of the River Eden,” ibid., xxix (1796), 275; “Sonnet Written in Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire,” ibid., xxx (1796), 119; “Sonnet, Written under a Lofty Cliff, on the Banks of the Severn, upon a Summer's Evening,” ibid., xxxii (1797), 342; “Reflections on the Ruins of a Monastery, near the Sea, at —–,” Gentleman's Mag., lxiv (1794), 937; “Sonnet, Written on the Cliffs near Margate,” ibid., lxiv (1794), 940; “Evening, a Descriptive Ode,” Hibernian Mag., Sept. 1792, p. 279; “Lines (Written at Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, in 1790),” Lady's Mag., xxiv (1793), 495; “Verses Written among the Ruins of an Ancient Castle,” ibid., xxvi (179S), 192; “An Evening's Reflection on the Universe, in a Walk on the Seashore,” Literary Mag. and British Rev., iv (1790), 459-460; “A Summer Evening's Meditation,” ibid., vii (1791), 145; “A Hymn, Composed in a Morning's Walk near Congleton,” Monthly Mag., ii (1796), 567-568; “Lines, Occasioned by the Recollection of Once Seeing Avondale, in the County of Wicklow,” Sentimental and Masonic Mag., iv (1794), 545; “Verses Composed in the Prospect of Ross, in Herefordshire,” Town and Country Mag., xxiii (1791), 330; “Ode to the River Coly,—1789 by Mr. Polwhele,” ibid., xxvi (1794), 264; “Netley Abbey, an Ode,” Universal Mag., lxxxix (1791), 389.

Note: Only a single citation will be given for each poem in the bibliographies, although some of them were widely reprinted, and in general not more than 20 poems of each kind will be named. In the bibliographies, titles of poems will be put in quotation marks to distinguish them sharply from titles of magazines; but in the text, titles of poems have been italicized for legibility. I am greatly indebted to the staffs of the Newberry Library and the Rare Book Room of the Library of Congress for many courtesies shown me in the gathering of this material.

⁹ Cf. Robert A. Aubin: “In the here-I-am-again motif, the retirement theme, the intensely personal tone which is friendly without being obtrusive, the decorative hermit, the incidental meditation which for once is not banal, the early recollections theme which admits fresh values, the apostrophe to the river, and the address to a person near to the poet, one recognizes [in Tintern Abbey] old friends in shining raiment” (Topographical Poetry in XVIII-Century England, New York: MLA, 1936, p. 238). Cf. Oliver Elton: In the Lyrical Ballads “the contributions of Wordsworth are signal, not only for the new scene of life he disclosed, and the new manner of language which he critically defended, but for his invention and execution of fresh species of poetry, the ‘lyrical ballad’ being one, and the meditation, like Tintern Abbey, another” (A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830, ii, 52).

¹⁰ Helen Darbishire, The Poet Wordsworth (Oxford, 1950), p. 46. Cf. also Walter Raleigh: “It is the interest of Wordsworth's career, studied as an episode of literary history, that it takes us at once to the root of the matter, and shows us the genesis of poetry from its living material, without literary intermediary … . The dominant passion of Wordsworth's life owed nothing to books” (Wordsworth, New York, 1903, pp. 44-45). H. Littledale: “… they [the readers of the time] were hardly prepared for lyric poems that treated the simplest themes with a new emotional interest, which seemed to derive no inspiration either from the poetry of literary convention or from the ballads of quasi-popular origin” (op. cit., p. ix) See also the account of Cazamian (pp. 1004-09) where everything in the Ballads tends to be seen as a fresh poetical effort by the “innovators,” and the only literary models which figure are those of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and the Reliques.

¹¹ Monthly Mirror, vi (1798), 224.

¹² Cf. “An Evening Address to a Nightingale, by Mr. Shaw,” Aberdeen Mag., iii (1798), 248; “On the Nightingale,” The Bee, vi (1791), 266; “Ode to the Nightingale, by Mrs. Robinson,” Edinburgh Mag., xiv (1791), 247-248; “To the Nightingale, a Pastoral,” European Mag., xxi (1792), 476-477; “To the Nightingale,” General Mag., iv (1790), 514; “Sonnet to the Nightingale,” Gentleman's Mag., lx (1790), 74; “Address to the Nightingale, on Hearing Her in a Walk in the Fields in the Night of April 25, 1790,” ibid., lx (1790), 554; “Address to the Nightingale, on Hearing Her in a Tree Adjoining a Church-yard,” ibid., lx (1790), 937-938; “Sonnet, to the Nightingale, by Miss Locke,” ibid., lxiv(1794), 842-843; “To the Nightingale,” Monthly Mirror, i (1796), 305; “Ode to May, or the Nightingale,” New Lady's Mag., i (1796), 219-220. This list is greatly abbreviated. There were scores of such poems.

Coleridge called his poem “A Conversational Poem”—which led the reviewer in the British Critic to declare: “… we do not perceive it to be more conversational than Cowper's Task, which is the best poem in that style our language possesses” (xiv [1799] 366). Compare the style of The Nightingale with that of the popular Moon-light (Gentleman's Mag., lix [1789], 448), which begins:

¹³ “There is something sensible in these remarks [of the Advertisement], and they certainly serve as a very pertinent introduction to the studied simplicity, which pervades many of the poems” (Analytical Rev., xxviii [1798], 583). “Many of the ballads are distinguished by great simplicity and tenderness” (New Annual Register, 1798, 1799, p. 310). “The endeavour of the author is to recall our poetry from the fantastical excess of refinement, to simplicity and nature” (British Critic, xiv [1799], 364). The opinion of the reviewer in the Monthly Mirror for 1798 has already been quoted (n. 11). In 1801, he found “Energy of thought, pathos of sentiment, and exquisite discrimination in selecting whatever is picturesque in imagery, or interesting in nature,” together with “a romantic search after simplicity” (xi, 389). The reviewer in the New London Review (i [1799], 33-35) regarded the remarks of the Advertisement as a misguided theory which confused a vulgar simple style with true simplicity. The Port Folio (Philadelphia), in noticing the Ballads on 17 Jan. 1801, referred to them as “a collection remarkable for originality, simplicity, and nature” (i, 24).

¹⁴ Cf. “Eliza, an Elegaic Ballad, by Mr. S. Collins,” British Mag. and Rev., iii (1787), 457; “Verses Written near the Grave of an Unfortunate Fair One, Who Fell a Sacrifice to Perfidy,” Gentleman's and London Mag. (1794), p. 664; “Pastoral Ballad, by Miss Locke,” Gentleman's Mag., lxi (1791), 1144; “Edwin and Colla, a Tale,” ibid., lxviii (1798), 609; “The Distressed Mother,” Hibernian Mag. (1792), p. 88; “The Ruined Girl's Tale,” Lady's Mag., xx (1789), 492-493; “The Fugitive, a Poem,” ibid., xxviii (1797), 326; “Julia, an Ancient Ballad,” ibid., xxviii (1797), 619; “The Penitent Mother, by a Young Lady,” ibid., xxix (1798), 38; “Ballad from Rannie's Poems,” Literary Mag., vi (1791), 465; “Cascarilla, an American Ballad,” ibid., xi (1793), 397; “On an Unfortunate Female, Abandoned, and Found Dead,” Monthly Register of Literature, i (1792), 448; “The Lass of Fair Wone, from the German of Burger,” Monthly Mag., i (1796), 223-224; “Maria,” ibid., i (1796), 315-316; “Annabella,” ibid., iii (1797), 52; “The Penitent Mother,” ibid., iii (1797), 142; “Hannah, a Plaintive Tale, by Robert Southey,” ibid., iv (1797), 287; “Lamentation of an African Maid,” Pocket Mag., i (1794), 343-344; “The Penitent Prostitute,” Scots Mag., l (1788), 345-346; “The Forsaken Fair,” Weekly Mag., xxxix (1778), 281. Southey's “Hannah” was endlessly reprinted in the magazines.

¹⁶ Cf. “Mad Peg, from Dibdin's Will of the Wisp,” Britannic Mag., iv (1796), 377; “Crazy Kate, by William Cowper, Esq., of the Inner Temple,” County Mag., i (1786), 13; “The Maniac” (from Mrs. Robinson's Poems), “Edinburgh Mag., n.s. iii (1794), 388; ”Poor Mary, the Maid of the Inn,“ ibid., n.s. ix (1797), 144-145; ”Alwyn, or the Suicide,“ European Mag., xviii (1790), 387; ”Mental Sickness, a Sonnet,“ ibid., xxii (1792), 307; ”Madness, an Elegy, by Dr. Perfect,“ Freemason's Mag., iii (1794), 437-440; ”The Suicide,“ General Mag., i (1797), 271-273; ”A Mind Diseased,“ ibid., vi (1792), 69; ”Crazy Luke,“ Gentleman's Mag., lxviii (1798), 242-243; ”Bess of Bedlam,“ Hibernian Mag., (1790), pp. 471-472; ”On Madness,“ Monthly Miscellany, iii (1775), 318-319; ”Ellen, or the Fair Insane, by Mr. C. J. Pitt,“ Scots Mag., lvii (1795), 96; ”Moll Pott, the Mad Woman of Gloucester-Street,“ Sentimental and Masonic Mag., iv (1794), 549; ”The Maniac, by Mr. Charters,“ ibid., vi (1795), 263; ”The Idiot,“ Sporting Mag., xiii (1798), 58-59; ”The Maniac, a Dramatic Poem,“ Town and Country Mag., xvi (1784), 383; ”The Habitation of Insanity, from the Pains of Memory, a Poem, by Robert Merry, A.M.,“ Universal Mag., xcix (1796), 430; ”The Horrors of a Guilty Mind,“ Universal Mag. and Rev., vi (1791), 178-179. Some of these poems were extremely popular. Eight reprintings of Southey's ”Mary“ were observed, and there probably are many more.

Some poems involving children are: “A Father's Instructions to His Son,” Biographical and Imperial Mag., ii (1789), 231-232; “Upon a Child of Two Years Old, Crying,” Town and Country Mag., xx (1788), 335; “A Child to His Sick Grandfather,” English Rev., xviii (1791), 17 ff. In the last-named ballad (reprinted from Poems, Wherein It Is Attempted to Describe Certain Views of Nature and of Rustic Manners, 1790) the speaker is unable to understand his grandfather's approaching death.

¹⁶ Compare “The circumstances related in the following ballad happened some years since in Herefordshire” (The Idiot), with Wordsworth's statement in the Advertisement, “The tale of Goody Blake and Harry Gill is founded on a well-authenticated fact which happened in Warwickshire.” Many of the narrative poems of the day claimed to be “founded on fact.” Three from the New Lady's Magazine are: “A Ballad, Founded on Fact” (1786); “Theron and Nancy, a Ballad, Founded on Facts” (1787); “Henry and Drusilla, a Ballad, Founded on Fact” (1788).

¹⁷ Cf. “The Female Beggar, from Wordsworth's Evening Walk,” Edinburgh Mag., n.s iii (1794), 386-387; “The Blind Beggar” (by Peter Pindar, Esq.), ibid., n.s. v (1795). 384-385; “The Soldier, a Fragment, by Mr. Anderson of Carlisle,” “The Beggar Girl, a Song, by the Same,” ibid., n.s. xii (1798), 61-63; “The Beggar's Petition,” Gentleman's Mag., lxi (1791), 852; “The Beggar Boy,” ibid., lxiv (1794), 365; “The Beggar,” Hibernian Mag. (1792), p. 560; “The Poor Blind Girl,” ibid. (1795), p. 280; “Sonnet to a Poor Boy, by R. Anderson,” ibid. (1798), p. 723; “Lines Written Extempore on Seeing a Poor Object Turned in an Unfeeling Manner from a Great House,” Lady's Mag., xxvi (1795), 384; “The Beggar Girl” (by T. Lacey), ibid., xxviii (1797), 567; “The Dying Soldier,” ibid., xxix (1798), 378; “To a Wretch Shivering in the Street,” Monthly Mag., ii (1796), 889; “Lines Written on Seeing a Negro Boy Begging in Great Distress,” Monthly Mirror, ii (1796), 498; “Elegy, the Dead Beggar, by Charlotte Smith,” Scots Mag., liv (1792), 610; “The Beggars, a Tale, by E. S. J.,” ibid., lx (1798), 469; “Stanzas Written at Pisa … on Seeing an Infirm Old Man Treated with Contempt,” Scottish Register, iii (1794), 302; “Sonnet, Written on Viewing an Object of Distress in a Stormy Night, in London,” Weekly Entertainer (Sherbourne), xxxi (1798), 19-20.

¹⁸ “The Soldier, a Fragment,” begins:

¹⁹ Cf. “The Poor Debtor's Lamentation,” Argus, or General Observer (1796), p. 132; “The Bastile, an Ode, by Mr. Thelwall,” Biographical and Imperial Mag., ii (1789), 313-315; “The Prisoner's Lamentation,” Britannic Mag., ii (1795), 335; “Verses written in a Prison,” ibid., iv (1796), 218; “The Female Convict, from Southey's Botany Bay Eclogues,” Cabinet Mag., i (1797), 418-420; “Lines Lately Written at Portsmouth, by a Botany Bay Convict,” Diary, or Woodfall's Register (6 August 1789), p. 4; “The Debtor, by the Late Sir John Henry Moore, Bart.,” Freemason's Mag., i (1793), 74-75; “Verses on the State of English and Foreign Prisons,” Gentleman's Mag., lviii (1788), 638; “The Complaint of a Transport in Botany Bay,” ibid., lxii (1792), 559-560; “Eulogy on Mr. Howard,” Hibernian Mag. (1792), p. 88; “Lines Written by a Gentleman during a Long Confinement in Paris,” Lady's Mag., xxvii (1796), 374; “Idyllium, the Prison, by Dr. Darwin,” Monthly Mag., i (1796), 54; “Botany Bay Eclogue, Edward and Susan, by W. T. [Southey], Oxford,” ibid., v (1798), 41-42; “A Tribute to Howard, Written for the Use of a School,” New Lady's Mag., vi (1791), 93-94; “Lines on the Foregoing, Addressed to Mrs. G. W. Willson,” ibid., vi (1791), 94; “On the Necessity of Solitary Confinement in Gaols,” Scots Mag., liv (1792), 76; “Lines, Written in a French Prison, in 1794,” ibid., lx (1798), 195; “On the Death of the late Benevolent Mr. Howard,” Town and Country Mag., xxii (1790), 379; “The Bastille, a Vision … by H. M. Williams,” Universal Mag., lxxxvi (1790), 151; “A Prison,” ibid., xciv (1794), 368. The last-named poem draws a contrast between the “cool grot on verdant mead” and the “soul-appalling” prospect of the prison, with the languishing captives “left to perish” there.

²⁰ “Remarks on the Composition of the Lyrical Ballads,” pp. 8, 10.

²¹ H. J. C. Grierson: “… in a deeper sense these ballads were a democratic manifesto … he [Wordsworth] will try what poetry can do to change people's hearts and enlarge their sympathy for man as man. He will not write heroics for the amusement of a corrupt Society; he will write of simple folk in simple language … . Therefore Wordsworth seeks his subjects not among Godwinian intellectuals, but among forsaken women, old men in distress, children, and crazy persons, in whom these instincts and emotions show themselves in their simplest and most recognizable forms” (A Critical History of English Poetry, London, 1947, p. 314). S. F. Gingerich: “No one can doubt the sincerity and the courage of Wordsworth in selecting such a group of characters [in the Ballads]. The account of how he came to make so remarkable a selection is not fully given in the advertisement … or in the prefaces …” (Essays in the Romantic Poets, New York, 1924, p. 121). H. V. D. Dyson and John Butt: “The chief interest of Lyrical Ballads is of course not in language but in Subject. For the first time, not common ordinary people merely—the eighteenth century had dealt well enough with them—but people of total insignificance, the outcast, the maimed, the betrayed, the solitary, the defective are fully enfranchised” (Augustans and Romantics 1689-1830, London, 1946, p. 89). Helen Darbishire: “Wordsworth's discovery of a new poetic world and the revolution he brought about in revealing it are taken now as a matter of course … . He emancipated the poetic subject; and he brought back poetic language to its source in the living tongue. Thanks to Wordsworth, Browning could take as subject Mr. Sludge the medium no less than Fra Lippo Lippi. Tennyson could develop a rustic theme with even a banal simplicity … .” (The Poet Wordsworth, Oxford, 1950, p. 56). Douglas Bush: “It was Wordsworth who, in that [the 1798 edition] and later volumes, showed that poetry could be written in simple language about ordinary humble life” (Wordsworth Centenary Studies, Princeton Univ. Press, 1951, p. 4).

²² “Old Oliver, or the Dying Shepherd, by Peter Pindar, Esq.,” Scots Mag., lviii (1796), 207; “The Unfortunate Cottager,” Lady's Mag., xxii (1791), 437-438; “The Beggar's Petition,” Gentleman's Mag., lxi (1791), 852.

²³ For example, “Elegy, Occasioned by the Present Frequent Pernicious Custom of Monopolizing Farms,” Edinburgh Mag., n.s. ix (1797), 217-220. In this poem the peasant introduced inhabited, in a happier day, the “neat small farm in yonder vale,” but he lost his birthright of decency and happy humanity as a result of the encroachment of “monopoly.” Like the family of the The Female Vagrant he was driven from his farm by the rich land-owner, whose “new fash'd mansion” has displaced the “simple cottage.” See also “The Emigrant, an Eclogue, Occasioned by the Late Numerous Emigrations from the Highlands of Scotland,” Weekly Mag., xxx (1776), pp. 399-400. In this poem the brokenhearted speaker bids farewell to his friends and neighbors and his flocks and herds. He once knew “sweet content” in the Highlands, but has now been driven from the land by the “avaricious [and absentee] tyrant of the plain.” The same evil is attacked in “The Peasant's Lamentation on the Exportation of Corn” in Pig's Meat, or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude, iii (1795), 259-261.

²⁴ Cf. “The Squire and the Countryman,” Aberdeen Mag., i (1788), 51-52; “The Irish Wake, a Song, from Dibdin's Will of the Wisp,” Britannic Mag., iv (1796), 57; “Paddy O'Blarney (from the same),” ibid., iv (1796), 121; “Home is Home, However Homely,” Edinburgh Mag., x (1789), 144; “Gaffer Gray, from Holcroft's Adventures of Hugh Trevor,” ibid., n.s. iv (1794), 141-142; “The Duke of Richmond's Dog Thunder, and the Widow's Pigs, by Peter Pindar, Esq.,” Genius of Kent (1794), pp. 39-40; “A Gypsy Ballad, by Peter Pindar,” Scots Mag., lv (1793), 243; “The Pedlar, by Mr. Dibdin,” Sporting Mag., ix (1797), 350.

²⁵ This difference should not be exaggerated; e.g., see “Joseph, An Attempt at Simplicity” (Monthly Mirror, vii [March 1799], 175-176), and the later discussion of the poem (ibid., x [1800], 84-86). In this parody, which is one of several “imitations of our most fashionable poetry,” it is impossible to tell whether the author is glancing at Wordsworth's “Simon Lee,” or poems like Southey's “Hannah” and Charles Lloyd's sentimental tale in Blank Verse (London, 1798, pp. 40-47). The emphasis upon blank verse suggests the latter pair. The specific object of the ridicule is less important, perhaps, than the fact that it could have been all three poems. Clearly, before March of 1799 more than one writer of “fashionable poetry” had been combining a “minute observation” of rustic life with “exquisite sensibility.” By this token both “Goody Blake” and “Simon Lee,” as well as “Michael” (about to be written—in blank verse), belong to a recognized class of poems.

²⁶ Gentleman's Mag., lxvii, 694-695, 692, 783.

²⁷ Wordsworth, p. 99.

²⁸ Cf. Littledale: “Nor was the diction the only new thing about these Lyrical Ballads, although it was the difference most dwelt upon in the Advertisement prefixed to the collection. They were distinguished no less by a special choice of subject matter and a special mode of treatment” (Wordsworth and Coleridge, p. viii). Oliver Elton: “He [Wordsworth] was the greatest inventor, between Gray and Shelley, of poetical forms; a service which his campaign for a simpler diction has too much obscured … the short ‘lyrical ballad,‘ the blank verse tale of middle length, the long psychological poem in epic guise, were discoveries …” (A Survey of English Literature, ii, 63). Helen Darbishire: “Ballads had a vogue in the 18th century. Collectors published anthologies of traditional ballads, and threw in modern lyrics … . Wordsworth, with no antiquarian interest, created a new form of his own, and in so doing achieved poetry of highest value both in its intrinsic power and in its far-reaching influence” (The Poet Wordsworth, p. 44).

²⁹ “Julia, an Ancient Ballad,” Lady's Mag., xxviii (1797), 619; “Laura, a Ballad, by a Young Lady of Fifteen,” ibid., xxvii (1796), 566-567.

³⁰ Cf. Lyric Odes for the Year 1785, by Peter Pindar, Esq., 1785; Sonnets, with Other Poems, by W. L. Bowles, 3rd ed., 1794; Miscellaneous Poems, 1794; Poems, Lyric and Pastoral, by Edward Williams, 1794; Sonnets and Other Poems, by S. E. Brydges, 1795; Elegaic Sonnets and Other Poems, 1795; Poems, Chiefly Dramatic and Lyric, Dublin, 1796; Elegaic Stanzas, by the Rev. W. L. Bowles, 1796; Sonnets, and Other Small Poems, 1797; Lyric Poems, by James Mercer, 1797; English Lyrics, 1797. “Lyric odes,” “lyric effusions,” and “lyric stanzas” were fairly common in the magazines.

The terms used by reviewers to describe some of these volumes of poetry in the 1790's often make them seem startling prefigurations of the Lyrical Ballads.

³¹ Cf. “Complaint of a Negro Man, Deserted by his Master,” Attic Miscellany, I (1790), 416; “The Poor Negro Beggar's Petition and Complaint,” The Bee, in (1791), 65; “Matilda's Complaint, a Love Elegy,” European Mag., xxix (1796), 274-275; “A Shepherd's Complaint to his Lamb, in the Manner of Shenstone,” ibid., xxxi (1797), 37; “The Cadet's Complaint,” ibid., xxxii (1797), 342-344; “The African's Complaint on-board a Slave Ship,” Gentleman's Mag., lxiii (1793), 749; “The Captive's Complaint,” Hibernian Mag. (1798), p. 184; “Damon's Complaint, a Pastoral,” Lady's Mag., xix (1788), 541-542; “Nellie's Complaint, a Ballad, by J. Thelwall,” ibid., xxvi (1795), 47; “The Complaint,” ibid., xxvi (1795), 336; “The Complaint,” Literary Mag., i (1788), 388; “The Wretched Sailor's Complaint,” ibid., ii (1789), 137-138; “The Negro's Complaint, by Mr. Cowper,” ibid., iii (1789), 378; “The Negro's Complaint,” by “R.B.,” Town and Country Mag., xxiv (1792), 184; “Thalia's Complaint,” Universal Mag., lxxxiii (1788), 98; “The Complaint,” ibid., lxxxiv (1789), 153; “Marian's Complaint, by Peter Pindar,” ibid., xcv (1794), 376; “Anna's Complaint, or the Miseries of War, Written in the Isle of Thanet, 1794, by Mrs. Moody, a Ballad,” ibid., xcvi (1795), 205-206; “The Complaint of a Piano-Forte for the Absence of Its Mistress,” ibid., xcviii (1796), 215; “Elegy, the Complaint of a Circassian Slave, Confined in the Ottoman Seraglio,” ibid., xcix (1796), 55-56.

³² Cf. “The Soldier's Funeral, a Fragment,” Britannic Mag., vi (1798), 409-410; “The Curate, a Fragment,” Edinburgh Mag., viii (1788), 289; “The Soldier, a Fragment, by Mr. Anderson of Carlisle,” ibid., n.s. xii (1798), 61-62; “The Bedesman on Nith-side, a Fragment,” ibid., vii (1788), 67-68; “An Elegaic Fragment upon a Country Pastor,” Gentleman's Mag., lxiv (1794), 165; “The Blind Man, a Fragment [in dialogue], from Poetical Sketches, by Anne B—–,” ibid., lxv (1795), 325; “A Fragment,” ibid., lxviii (1798), 519-520; “A Fragment,” Hibernian Mag., (1792), p. 183; “The Mother, a Fragment,” ibid. (1798), 725; “A Pathetic Fragment, by the Late Unfortunate Miss Whitman,” Literary Mag., xi (1793), 155-156; “Sir Hubert and Elfrida, a Fragment, in Imitation of the German, by I. T. Hughes,” Monthly Mirror, v (1798), 235-239; “Maria, a Sentimental Fragment” [in prose dialogue], Pocket Mag., ii (1795), 112; “Night, or the Hermit's Tale, a Fragment,” ibid., iii (1795), 196-198; “Written in London, a Fragment, by Sir John Ramsea,” ibid., iii (1795), 339-340; “Autumn, a Fragment, Written in Novemb.,” Town and Country Mag., xxv (1793), 39.

³³ Cf. Sketches of Beauty, Natural and Moral, Sacred to Love and Virtue, London, 1788; Bagatelles, or Poetical Sketches, by E. Walsh, M.D., Dublin, 1793; Descriptive Sketches in Verse … By W. Wordsworth, B.A., London, 1794; A Sketch from the Landscape, Addressed to R. P. Knight, Esquire, London, 1794; Poetical Sketches, by Ann Batten Cristall, London, 1794; Sketches in Verse, by Thomas Robinson, London, 1796. Examples from the magazines are: “The Soldier That Has Seen Service, a Sketch from Nature,” County Mag., II (1788), 98; “Sir Hildebrand, or the Patriot's Progress, a Poetical Sketch,” Hibernian Mag. (1784), pp. 453-455, 528-530; “Sketches in Verse, Sentimental and Descriptive,” Lady's Mag., xvii (1786), 202-204, 351-353; “Sketches from Two Characters, Drawn from Life,” Monthly Mag., i (1796), 134; A Poetical Sketch, Tributary to the Beauties of Preston-Court, New Lady's Mag., vi (1791), 478-479; “March, a Pastoral Sketch, by Dr. Perfect,” Pocket Mag., ii (1795), 185-188; “A Descriptive Sketch,” Sentimental and Masonic Mag., iv (1794), 164-165.

³⁴ Universal Mag., lxxiii (1793), 477. Examples of anecdotes in verse are: “Poetical Anecdote of Henry the Fourth of France,” Lady's Mag., xxi (1790), 46; “Anecdote,” ibid., xxii (1791), 326; “The Great Eater, a Swedish Anecdote,” Town and Country Mag., xvii (1785), 72; “Cymon, a Real Anecdote Versified,” Universal Mag., lxxxvi (1790), 100; “Anecdote,” Weekly Mag., xl (1778), 160.

³⁵ Cf. “Truth's Answer to a Man's Inquiry,” Aberdeen Mag., i (1788), 160; “The Reply to Vivacious Charlotte,” Berkshire Repository, I (1797), 8-9; “Sonnet, the Perfect Beauty,” “Sonnet to Melinda, in Reply to the Perfect Beauty,” Biographical and Imperial Mag., iii (1790), 60; “Sonnet, on Damon's Labouring under a Depression of Spirits,” “Sonnet, the Answer,” ibid., iii (1790), 187-188; “Expostulatory Ode, by Peter Pindar, Esq.,” County Mag., iii (1789), 251; “Reason's Expostulation with Love,” “Love's Answer to Reason,” Edinburgh Mag., viii (1788), 151-152; “From Peter Pindar, on Seeing a Recent Musical Production by Dr. Harrington, of Bath,” “The Retort Courteous, or Innocence Defended, by Dr. Harrington,” European Mag., xix (1791), 229-230; “Childhood Regretted,” “Answer to the Foregoing,” Literary Mag., viii (1792), 226; “The Expostulation, to Delia, by Lord G.,” “The Reply, by Lady Mary S.,” London Mag., lxxxix (1770), 379-380; “The Farewell, to Henry, in Imitation of the Scotch Ballad Donald,” “The Answer,” Sentimental and Masonic Mag., i (1792), 570; “Stanzas, by R. B. Sheridan, Esq.,” “The Reply, by Mrs. Sheridan,” Town and Country Mag., xxii (1790), 379; “What Is Pleasure?,” “An Answer,” ibid., xxiii (1791), 42, 139; “An Invocation to the Nymph of the Spring, at Tunbridge-Wells … by Lady Burrell,” “Answer to the Same, by a Gentleman,” Universal Mag., ci (1797), 131-132; “The Wish, by a Bachelor,” “The Reply to the Bachelor's Wish, by a Husband,” Weekly Mag., xxv (1774), 18, 50; “The Expostulation, by an Unhappy Lady,” ibid., xxvi (1774), 178.

³⁶ Cf. “Inscription for a Rural Arbour,” The Bee, v (1791), 65; “Verses Made at Sea in a Heavy Gale,” Gentleman's Mag., lviii (1788), 638; “Lines Suggested by Walking in a Grove One Moonlight Evening,” ibid., lviii (1788), 1107; “Inscription on a Seat in Netherton Vale, near Hufborn Tarrant, Hants.,” ibid., lxiii (1793), 847; “Verses Found under a Yew-Tree at Penshurst,” ibid., lxv (1795), 863; “Lines Written Extemporaneously, on the Ordination of a Young Clergyman,” Hibernian Mag., (1797), pp. 558-559; “Verses Written in the Winter on a Tree by the Side of a Rivulet,” Lady's Mag., xxi (1790), 269; “Verses Left in a Summer-house,” ibid., xxiv (1793), 383; “Verses Written among the Ruins of an Ancient Castle,” ibid., xxvi (1795), 192; “Lines on the River Derwent, Written in a Romantic Valley near Its Source,” Monthly Mirror, v (1798), 174; “Inscription for a Coppice,” Town and Country Mag., xxvi (1794), 130-131; “Verses Written on Visiting the Ruins of Dunkeswell-Abbey in Devonshire, by Miss Hunt,” ibid., xxvi (1794), 131; “Verses, Occasioned by the Flight of a Linnet, Which Had Been Singing on the Top of a Beech, at the Foot of Which the Author Was Reclined,” Universal Mag., xcvi (1795), 370; “Lines, Written by Sir Richard Hill, Bart at Hawkestone, His Elegant Seat in Shropshire, When Contemplating the Scenes around Him, in His Own Park; and to Be Seen in a Natural Cavern of a Vast Rock, from the Top of Which Is a Very Diversified and Romantic Prospect,” ibid., xcix (1796), 55. With the fourth, fifth, and last items above, compare Wordsworth's “Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which stands near the Lake of Esthwaite, on a desolate part of the Shore, yet commanding a beautiful Prospect.”

³⁷ “The Lyrical Ballads were unquestionably popular; and, we have no hesitation in saying, deservedly popular …” (Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Rev., xi [1807], 214). A critic writing in Philadelphia in Feb. 1804 began: “I know few performances which have assumed the name of poetry and which have obtained a considerable share of celebrity, so truly worthless as Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads …. Mr. Wordsworth's writings have had some influence in establishing perverted principles of taste. His works have been admired in London, and in this city …” The Literary Magazine, and American Register (Philadelphia), i (1804), 336.

³⁸ Poems reprinted in the reviews in full, or in excerpts of 25 lines or more, between Oct. 1798 and June 1801 are as follows: “The Idiot Boy” (80 lines), “The Female Vagrant” (90), “Tintern Abbey” (46), Critical Rev., Oct. 1798; “Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree,” Monthly Mirror, Oct., 1798; “Goody Blake and Harry Gill,” Analytical Rev., Dec. 1798; “The Nightingale,” “Expostulation and Reply,” Monthly Rev., June 1799; “The Ancient Mariner” (25 lines), “The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman,” British Critic, Oct. 1799; “Strange Fits of Passion,” “She Dwelt among th' Untrodden Ways,” ibid., Feb., 1801; “The Old Cumberland Beggar” (25 lines), “We Are Seven,” Monthly Mirror, June 1801.

³⁹ During the four years between Oct. 1798 and Aug. 1802, the following poems were printed in magazines:

1. (1)

   (1) “Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree,” Monthly Epitome, and Catalogue of New Publications, ii (Nov. 1798), 432-433.

2. (2)

   (2) “The Female Vagrant,” Lady's Mag., xxxi (Supplement for 1800), 721-724.

3. (3)

   (3) “Goody Blake and Harry Gill,” New Annual Register, 1798 (1799), pp. 200-203; Ipswich Mag. (Ipswich), April 1799, pp. 118-119; Universal Mag., cv (Oct. 1799), 270-271; Edinburgh Mag., n.s. xiv (Nov. 1799), 387-389.

4. (4)

   (4) “We Are Seven,” Lady's Mag., xxxi (April 1800), 214.

5. (5)

   (5) “The Dungeon,” The Microscope, or Minute Observer (Belfast), II (Sept. 1800), 423; Lady's Mag., xxxii (Dec. 1801), 663.

6. (6)

   (6) “Lines Written near Richmond,” Lady's Mag., xxxi (Nov. 1800), 558.

7. (7)

   (7) “Expostulation and Reply,” Scot's Mag., lxi (Dec. 1799), 843.

8. (8)

   (8) “The Tables Turned; an Evening Scene,” ibid., lxi (Dec. 1799), 843.

9. (9)

   (9) “The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman,” Lady's Mag., xxxi (Dec. 1800), 669.

10. (10)

    (10) “The Convict,” Monthly Epitome, and Catalogue of New Publications, ii (Nov. 1798), 433; Edinburgh Mag., n.s. xii (Dec. 1798), 466-467.

1. (11)

   (11) “Lucy Gray,” Lady's Mag., xxxii (April 1801), 212.

2. (12)

   (12) “Poor Susan,” Universal Mag., cviii (Feb. 1801), 133; Miscellanea Perthensis (Perth), April 1801, p. 82.

3. (13)

   (13) “Ruth,” Entertaining Mag., i (May 1802), 187-189; Weekly Entertainer (Sherbourne), xl (16 Aug. 1802), 138-140.

4. (14)

   (14) “Written in Germany on One of the Coldest Days,” Universal Mag., cviii (Feb. 1801), 133-134; Miscellanea Perthensis (Perth), April 1801, pp. 82-83.

5. (15)

   (15) “The Old Cumberland Beggar,” Entertaining Mag., I (March 1802), 89-90.

⁴⁰ “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” was printed in Beauties of British Poetry, Selected by Sidney Melmoth, Esq. (Hudderfield, 1801), pp. 306-309. “The Dungeon” and “Ellen Irwin or the Braes of Kirtle” were printed in Select and Fugitive Poetry, a Compilation with Notes Biographical and Historical, by Richard Dinsmore (Washington City, 1802). “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” was printed in the Farmer's Museum, or Lay Preacher's Gazette, Walpole, N. H., for 2 Sept. 1799; and between 18 Jan. 1801 and 19 Dec. 1801, the Port Folio, Philadelphia, published the following: “Simon Lee,” “The Thorn,” “The Last of the Flock,” “Anecdote for Fathers,” “The Mad Mother,” “Ellen Irwin,” “Strange Fits of Passion,” “The Waterfall and the Eglantine,” “Lucy Gray,” and “Andrew Jones.” (Most of these are cited in Leon Howard, “Wordsworth in America,” MLN, xlviii [1933], 359-365; and Lewis Loury's “Addenda,” ibid., lviii [1943], 391 ff.)