The greater part of the present collection deals with general principles rather than with criticisms of individual books or authors. The nineteenth century, having discarded the dogmas and ‘rules’ of Neo-classicism, had perforce to investigate afresh the Theory of Poetry, and though no systematic treatment of the subject in all its bearings appeared, some valuable contributions were made, the most notable of which came from the poets themselves.
The extracts from the Biographia Literaria are placed next to the Wordsworthian doctrines which they criticize; otherwise the arrangement of the essays is chronological.
American criticism is represented—inadequately, but, it is hoped, not unworthily—by the last two essays.
In the preparation of this volume I have received much valuable help from Mr. J. C. Smith, which I now gratefully acknowledge.
Edmund D. Jones.
CONTENTS
| Page | |
| [William Wordsworth, 1770-1850] | |
| Poetry and Poetic Diction. (1800) | [1] |
| [Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834] | |
| Wordsworth’s Theory of Diction. (1817) | [40] |
| Metrical Composition. (1817) | [57] |
| [William Blake, 1757-1827] | |
| The Canterbury Pilgrims. (1809) | [85] |
| [Charles Lamb, 1775-1834] | |
| On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, Considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage Representation. (1811) | [95] |
| [Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822] | |
| A Defence of Poetry. (1821) | [120] |
| [William Hazlitt, 1778-1830] | |
| My First Acquaintance with Poets. (1823) | [164] |
| [John Keble, 1792-1866] | |
| Sacred Poetry. (1825) | [191] |
| [John Henry Newman, 1801-1890] | |
| Poetry with reference to Aristotle’s Poetics. (1829) | [223] |
| [Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881] | |
| The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakespeare. (1840) | [254] |
| [James Henry Leigh Hunt, 1784-1859] | |
| An Answer to the Question: What is Poetry? (1844) | [300] |
| [Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888] | |
| The Choice of Subjects in Poetry. (1853) | [356] |
| [John Ruskin, 1819-1900] | |
| Of the Pathetic Fallacy. (1856) | [378] |
| [John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873] | |
| Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties. (1833, revised 1859) | [398] |
| [Walter Bagehot, 1826-1877] | |
| Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or, Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art in English Poetry. (1864) | [430] |
| [Walter Horatio Pater, 1839-1894] | |
| Coleridge’s Writings. (1866) | [492] |
| [Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882] | |
| Shakespeare; or, the Poet. (1850) | [535] |
| [James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891] | |
| Wordsworth. (1875) | [558] |