《西清詩話》為宋代蔡絛所著。其引人爭議之處，在於作者蔡絛與元祐黨人之間存在政治立場的矛盾，而《西清詩話》中又多載元祐黨人之言，蔡絛甚至因此獲罪。本文認為《西清詩話》僅是一部與它同時期詩話性質相同的著作，因此本文重點並不在於蔡絛在《西清詩話》中是否提出了創見，相反地，正是要指出《西清詩話》與其它宋代詩話的主流價值相同，以說明蔡絛此書僅是以一讀者角度收錄詩壇詩事，而非具有特殊政治動機。本文以《西清詩話》所收錄的內容類型說明蔡絛的詩學立場，並以書中蔡絛的評論抽繹出蔡絛的詩學主張，藉以說明《西清詩話》確實的樣貌。

”Cai Tao” wrote a book ”Xiqing Shihua”, in Song Dynastry. It was through that the purpose of this book was to collect political opponent's ideas. However, ”Cai Tao” and ”Yuanyu party” had contradictory political stands. But from the content of this book, one can see that ”Cai Tao” cared about the Poetics to more than politics.The author thought that ”Xiqing Shihua” was only to collect poems at that time, not to collect the political opponent's ideas. The key point is that ”Xiqing Shihua” and other shihua in Sung Dynasty were the same. This book can show the mainstream value of poems in Song Dynasty.This article shows how ”Cai Tao” described several ”Yuanyu party” members. From his opinion proved that he did not smear ”Yuanyu party” members intentionally. Instead, the book reveals his poetic ideas.