[Footnote 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.]