“Images drawn from nature are poetically finer than those drawn from art.”

The brief formula that set him against Byron, Campbell and the Pope party · Critical writings on Pope and the principles of poetry

• Art
• Nature
• Poetry

“The objects of artificial life are, per se, less fitted for the purposes of poetry than those of nature, and than the passions of the human heart.”

His summary of why satires of manners stand below nature and passion · Writings in the Pope controversy

• Art
• Nature
• Poetry

“This may serve in some measure to obviate the common remark on melancholy poetry, that it has been very often gravely composed, when possibly the heart of the writer had very little share in the distress he chose to describe.”

He distinguishes genuine sorrow from the fashionable pose of literary melancholy · Preface to the Sonnets, 1805

• Melancholy
• Poetry
• Sincerity