_The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere_ was professedly written in imitation of the _style_, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets; but with a few exceptions, the Author believes that the language adopted in it has been equally intelligible for these three last centuries.

The lines entitled _Expostulation and Reply_, and those which follow, arose out of conversation with a friend who was somewhat unreasonably attached to modern books of moral philosophy.
[Footnote A: William Wordsworth (1770-1830), probably the greatest of the poets of the Romantic Movement in England, was also foremost in the critical defence of that movement.

The Prefaces and Essays printed here form a kind of manifesto of the reaction from the poetical traditions of the eighteenth century; and contain besides some of the soundest theorizing on the nature of poetry to be found in English.
They afford an interesting comparison with the parallel protest in Victor Hugo's Preface to "Cromwell," to be found later in the volume.].