CHAP.

I Motives to the present work—Reception of the Author's first
publication—Discipline of his taste at school—Effect of
contemporary writers on youthful minds—Bowles's Sonnets—
Comparison between the poets before and since Pope

II Supposed irritability of genius brought to the test of
facts—Causes and occasions of the charge—Its injustice

III The Author's obligations to Critics, and the probable
occasion—Principles of modern criticism—Mr. Southey's
works and character

IV The Lyrical Ballads with the Preface—Mr. Wordsworth's
earlier poems—On Fancy and Imagination—The investigation
of the distinction important to the Fine Arts

V On the law of Association—Its history traced from Aristotle
to Hartley

VI That Hartley's system, as far as it differs from that of
Aristotle, is neither tenable in theory, nor founded
in facts

VII Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian Theory—Of
the original mistake or equivocation which procured its
admission—Memoria technica

VIII The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes—Refined
first by Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the
doctrine of Harmonia praestabilita—Hylozoism—Materialism
—None of these systems, or any possible theory of
Association, supplies or supersedes a theory of
Perception, or explains the formation of the Associable

XI Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its
conditions?—Giordano Bruno—Literary Aristocracy, or the
existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a
privileged order—The Author's obligations to the Mystics-
To Immanuel Kant—The difference between the letter and
The spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of
Prudence in the teaching of Philosophy—Fichte's attempt
to complete the Critical system-Its partial success and
ultimate failure—Obligations to Schelling; and among
English writers to Saumarez

X A Chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude
preceding that on the nature and genesis of the Imagination
or Plastic Power—On Pedantry and pedantic expressions—
Advice to young authors respecting publication—Various
anecdotes of the Author's literary life, and the progress
of his opinions in Religion and Politics

XI An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel
themselves disposed to become authors

XII A Chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal
or omission of the chapter that follows

XIII On the Imagination, or Esemplastic power

XIV Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally
proposed—Preface to the second edition—The ensuing
controversy, its causes and acrimony—Philosophic
definitions of a Poem and Poetry with scholia

XV The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a
Critical analysis of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and
Rape of Lucrece

XVI Striking points of difference between the Poets of the
present age and those of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries—Wish expressed for the union of the
characteristic merits of both

XVII Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth—
Rustic life (above all, low and rustic life) especially
unfavourable to the formation of a human diction-The
best parts of language the product of philosophers, not of
clowns 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 essentially
different from that of prose—Origin and elements of metre
—Its necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby
imposed on the metrical writer in the choice of his diction

XIX Continuation—Concerning the real object, which, it is
probable, Mr. Wordsworth had before him in his critical
preface—Elucidation and application of this

XX The former subject continued—The neutral style, or that
common to Prose and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from
Chaucer, Herbert, and others

XXI Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals

XXII The characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry, with the
principles from which the judgment, that they are defects,
is deduced—Their proportion to the beauties—For the
greatest part characteristic of his theory only

SATYRANE'S LETTERS

XXIII Critique on Bertram

XXIV Conclusion