Essays on Poetry and Poets

... with others in the subject of his poems as well as in his real life. In "Preface to Lyrical Ballads," he would not have written, "I have pleased a greater number than I ventured to hope I should please" (141) if he was only concentrating on the self. Wordsworth was concerned for all responses from all mankind and not only his personal response. He emphasized and focused on the common man in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads by writing in a common language that the ordinary man can easily understand and appreciate. There are no phrases or figures of speech in his poems that would not be found in conversation between the ordinary, working man. "Because men hourly commun ...