Thomas Love Peacock denounced poets and Poetry in his notorious booklet The Four Ages of Poetry. He wrote that poets were only exploring myths and legends and were thus "wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance'. He further wrote, "A poet in our times is a semi barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the ways that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backward". Keeping these absurd allegations in his mind, Richards pleaded that even in this age of science, scepticism and interrogation, poetry has its great value. It enlivens, ennobles and regenerates our benevolent and humanitarian feelings and emotions. Thus it plays a vital role in the life of the individual and society. In the mind and heart so enlightened by poetry there lies the hope of civilization.
Explaining his point of view, Richards says that experience of life may be both good and bad. The poet responds to and communicates only the good and pleasurable ones through the medium of his poetry. Normally, in routine life, mind receives all kinds of experiences, impressions, and reactions. In course of time the weaker and unpleasant impressions are washed away, and only the deeper, pleasurable and benevolent ones get imprinted in the mind. The poet enshrines there deeper and nobler experiences in his poetry and unconsciously communicates them to society. Thus poetic experiences and impulses take the form of highest moral values. They create and spread currents of hope, delight, refinement, and highest moral values in human environment. Nothing can be nobler that poetic experience and its dissemination.
