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In this idea originated the plan of the "Lyrical Ballads," in which my endeavours were to be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to attempt to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us--an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

With this view I wrote the "Ancient Mariner," and was preparing, among other poems, the "Dark Ladie" and "Christabel." But the number of Mr. Wordsworth's poems was so much greater that my compositions appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter.

With many parts of Mr. Wordsworth's preface to the "Lyrical Ballads," in which he defines his poetic creed, I have never concurred, and I think it expedient to declare in what points I coincide with his opinions, and in what points I differ.

A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition; the difference, therefore, must consist in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object proposed. The mere addition of metre does not in itself entitle a work to the name of poem, for nothing can permanently please which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so and not otherwise. Our definition of a poem may be thus worded. "A poem is that species of composition which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part."

For, in a legitimate poem, the parts must mutually support and explain each other; all in their proportion harmonising with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of, metrical arrangement.

VI.--A Criticism of Wordsworth

Let me enumerate the prominent defects, and then the excellences, of Mr. Wordsworth's published poems. The first characteristic, though only an occasional defect, is the inconstancy of style; the sudden and unprepared transitions from lines or sentences of peculiar felicity to a style not only unimpassioned, but undistinguished. He sinks too often, too abruptly, into the language of prose. The second defect is a certain matter-of-factness in some of his poems, consisting in a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the representations of objects, and in the insertion of accidental circumstances, such as are superfluous in poetry. Thirdly, there is in certain poems an undue predilection for the dramatic form; and in these cases either the thoughts and diction are different from those of the poet, so that there arises an incongruity of style, or they are the same and indistinguishable, and then it presents a species of ventriloquism. The fourth class includes prolixity, repetition, and an eddying instead of progression of thought. His fifth defect is the employment of thoughts and images too great for the subject; an approximation to what might be called mental bombast, as distinguished from verbal.

To these occasional defects I may oppose the following excellences. First, an austere purity of language both grammatically and logically; in short, a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. Secondly, a correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments, won not from books, but from the poet's own meditative observation. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. Third, the sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs; the frequent curious felicity of his diction. Fourth, the perfect truth of Nature in his images and descriptions as taken immediately from Nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives the expression to all the works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by its greater softness and lustre.

Fifth, a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility; a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy of a contemplator, from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, of toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. The superscription and the image of the Creator still remain legible to him under the dark lines with which guilt or calamity had cancelled or cross-barred it. In this mild and philosophic pathos, Wordsworth appears to me without a compeer.