What is the reader to gain through reading the lyrical ballads?

Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads outlines a
theory of the nature and effect of poetry based on the concept that poetry is the "the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling" from the poet. Through poetic activity, the
poet trains, strengthens and refines his sensibility. Following the French philosopher
Jean Rousseau, Wordsworth sees civilization as corrupting and distorting the
sensibility, and feels that only by examining and portraying pastoral life may the poet
recapture authenticity of emotion.

IN his analysis of
reader response, Wordsworth assumes a sympathy of sentiment whereby the reader, as he
reads the poem, vicariously experiences a similar strengthening and refining of the
sensibility through sympathy with the emotions of the
poet.

This notion of poetry as training and refining the
emotions was a commonplace of neo-Aristotelian literary theory of the 18th century
(Dacier, Moor, Twining, Pye, etc.). The novelty in Wordsworth is synthesis of
Aristotelian poetic theory with the individual Romaniticism and pastoralism of
Rousseau.