All 4 Uses
species
in
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
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- They who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will, no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and aukwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title.†
species = a similar group of animals or plants
- I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.†
- This is the only sensible manner of dealing with such verses: Why trouble yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the genus?†
*
- This part of my subject I have not altogether neglected; but it bas been less my present aim to prove, that the interest excited by some other kinds of poetry is less vivid, and less worthy of the nobler powers of the mind, than to offer reasons for presuming, that, if the object which I have proposed to myself were adequately attained, a species of poetry would be produced, which is genuine poetry; in its nature well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and likewise important in the multiplicity and quality of its moral relations.†
Definitions:
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(1)
(species) a group of animals or plants that are similar -- typically identified as belonging to the same group when they are of a kind that can reproduce new members of the group together
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)