In Preface to the Lyrical Ballad, William Wordsworth tells that he had chosen low and rustic life for treatment in his poems, unlike the Neo-classical poets who chose the life and manners and morals of the urban people, specially of the aristocratic class, to be the fittest subject for poetry. According to him, the humble and rustic life enables the essential passions of the heart to find a better soul in which they can attain their maturity. In this condition of life, the essential passions of the persons are less restraint and therefore express themselves in a plainer and more emphatic language.
Elementary feelings in low and rustic life
Wordsworth also says that the elementary feelings of human beings co-exists with the low and rustic life in a state of greater simplicity, and can therefore be more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated. The manners of rustic life germinate from those elementary feelings, and because of the necessary character of rural occupations, those manners are more easily comprehended. Finally in humble and rural life, the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent form of nature.
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