This highly individualized diction always tempted Coleridge's powers of analysis. Indeed he was first led to his speculation on the difference between imagination and fancy by his attempts to define the peculiar quality of Wordsworth's poetry, as distinguished from verse that might seem more brilliant or clever or obviously skilful.1 This analysis he carries further in his famous criticism of Wordsworth's style, and theory of style, in the Biographia Literaria. Would any but a poet-at least could any one without being conscious that he had expressed himself with noticeable vivacity-have described a bird singing loud by, "The thrush is busy in the wood," or have spoken of boys with a string of club-moss round their rusty hats, as the boys "with their green coronal?”—or have translated a beautiful May day into "Both earth and sky keep jubilee”? or have brought all the different marks and circumstances of a sea-loch before the mind, as the actions of a living and acting power? or have represented the reflection of the sky in the water, as "That uncertain heaven received into the bosom of the steady lake?" Even the grammatical construction is not unfrequently peculiar; as "The wind, the tempest roaring high, the tumult of a tropic sky, might well be dangerous food to him, a youth to whom was given etc." There is a peculiarity in the use of the ȧσvváρтητOV (that is the omission of the connective particle before the last of several words, or several sentences used grammatically as single words, all being in the same case and governing or being governed by the same verb) and not less in the 'construction of words by apposition (“to him, a youth”).'

But Coleridge's brilliant and suggestive analysis of the characteristic features of Wordsworth's style-the unique and imaginative metaphors, the rich and often curiously felicitous diction, and the peculiar grammatical structure—

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is, after all, rather fragmentary. Every remark is a seedthought which needs development. Moreover, there is something exasperating and even misleading in the attitude that he chose to assume to the theory of diction which lies at the basis of the Lyrical Ballads. Coleridge, rather than Wordsworth, had been responsible for the critical propaganda1 which, as he says, was the real cause of Wordsworth's unpopularity. The Preface that he does not understand was half a child of his own brain, written by Wordsworth to please him, and superintended and corrected by him. Forgetting all this, he proceeds to adopt the hesitating manner of a stranger to statements that partly originated in his own fertile brain, and fails to supply the one invaluable thing that he only could supply-a more detailed account of the thoughtful and eager dialogues that were behind Wordsworth's somewhat inadequate utterances in print. Hence, though this criticism by Coleridge is the necessary starting-point for any investigation of Wordsworth's theory and practice, he was far from saying the last word on the subject. Wordsworth had more reasons than wounded vanity for his dissatisfaction with the remarks of his former collaborator.

Despite the natural unwillingness of lesser men to enter into competition with Coleridge and Lamb, it is astonishing

1L. W. F. 3. 121, 152.

2 B. L. 1. 50-53.

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'Although Wordsworth's Preface is half a child of my own brain, and arose out of conversations so frequent that, with few exceptions, we could scarcely either of us, perhaps, positively say which first started any thought (I am speaking of the Preface as it stood in the second volume), yet I am far from going all lengths with Wordsworth.'-Letter to Southey, July 1802. (Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1. 386.) Coleridge speaks as if the first consciousness of this difference in opinion were felt in 1802.Letters 1. 375.

*An Account of the Wordsworth and Coleridge MSS. in the Possession of Mr. T. Norton Longman, p. 19.

that this analysis of Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction as illustrated in his style, so ably begun by them in the poet's own lifetime, should not have been carried on more systematically by the many critics who have praised Wordsworth so well. We find, indeed, a considerable number of scattered observations and brief studies of Wordsworth's style which are highly illuminating. For instance R. H. Hutton's little paper on Wordsworth's Two Styles is really discriminating. So also are Principal Shairp's delicate appreciation of the style of The White Doe of Rylstone, and Bagehot's essay on Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art. The various remarks of Hutchinson and Dowden-the accomplished students of Wordsworth's text-in their editions of the whole or parts of his work are always valuable. Moreover, the definitive text of Wordsworth's complete poems in the Oxford edition, and the Concordance of Professor Lane Cooper, have furnished the indispensable basis for a more scientific study of Wordsworth's poetic diction; and Professor Emile Legouis has set a shining example in the detailed analysis of the Early Poems in The Early Life of William Wordsworth. But these more scholarly efforts, added to the brilliant comments of Wordsworth's innumerable critics from Aubrey de Vere to Professor Harper, have been insufficient to dispel the popular misconceptions inherited from the reviewers. Wordsworth's readers to-day' have more sympathy for his 'philosophy' than the Monthly Reviewer of 1815, but they hold much the same opinions concerning his style, and have scarcely more foundation for them.

The principal reason for this neglect is that the world has never taken Wordsworth's so-called theory of poetic diction seriously. Having jumped to the conclusion that Wordsworth's practice was inconsistent with his principles, most of his readers have failed either to recognize the scholarly background of much that he has to say, or to perceive the real comprehensiveness of his complete ideal

of expression. In point of fact, Wordsworth is not inconsistent. His most dignified and elaborate style is inconsistent only with a single clause of his definition of the proper language of poetry, when that is detached from its context and arbitrarily taken to represent the whole.

The notion that poetry in general should employ the language of the 'lower and middle classes of society' was never Wordsworth's ideal at any time. It is only his definition of an experiment1 that he chose to try in thirteen out of the nineteen poems by him in the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads; and the famous Preface is little more than a somewhat unwilling and frankly inadequate attempt to explain this same experiment.2 Wordsworth himself suggests that an exposition of the whole theory would involve a complete history of literature and a social psychology.3 After modifying his original suggestion until the 'language of conversation in the lower and middle classes of society' became, in 1800, 'a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation,' and after softening this, in 1802, by a further emphasis upon the selective power of the poet, Wordsworth finally merges his special ideal in a

"The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments.' Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads, 1798.

2 'I was still more unwilling to undertake the task [of writing a systematic defense of the theory upon which the Lyrical Ballads were written] because adequately to display the opinions, and fully to enforce the arguments would require a space wholly disproportionate to the nature of a preface. . I have therefore altogether declined to enter regularly upon this defense.'-Preface to the Lyrical Ballads of 1800.

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'For to treat the subject with the clearness and coherence, of which I believe it susceptible, it would be necessary to give a full account of the present state of public taste in this country, and to determine how far this taste is healthy or depraved; which again could not be determined without pointing out in what manner language and the human mind act and react on each other, and without retracing the revolutions, not of literature alone, but likewise of society itself.'-Ibid.

general respect for the purity and integrity of the English language a new and more vital interpretation of that correctness so cherished by the eighteenth century. In the first collected edition of his poems in 1815 (which included the Lyrical Ballads and the poems of 1807, with a few additions of later origin), he relegates his original preface to the Appendix as containing 'little of special application to the greater part, perhaps, of the collection." Why has Wordsworth's own strict limitation of his 'theory' to a few poems been so systematically ignored?

But if the theory, in its more limited form, was merely an explanation of a small group of poems, much more was meant by it than commonly meets the eye of the casual

'The observations prefixed to that portion of these volumes which was published many years ago, under the title of "Lyrical Ballads," have so little of special application to the greater part, perhaps, of the collection as subsequently enlarged and diversified, that they could not with any propriety stand as an introduction to it. Not deeming it, however, expedient to suppress that exposition, slight and imperfect as it is, of the feelings which had determined the choice of subjects, and the principles which had regulated the composition of those Pieces, I have transferred it to the end of the second volume, to be attended to, or not, at the pleasure of the reader.' In all the complete editions between 1815 and 1845 this formed the first paragraph of the Preface which was reprinted from the volumes of 1815, as an introduction to the continually increasing collection of Wordsworth's poems. When this preface was transferred to the Appendix in the edition of 1845, the paragraph just quoted was replaced by the following note: 'In the succeeding editions, when the collection was much enlarged and diversified, this Preface [the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads] was transferred to the end of the volumes, as having little of special application to the contents.' In the reprints of the Preface of 1815 by Grosart, Knight, George, and Nowell Smith, the last edition has naturally been followed; and for this reason the important introductory paragraph is known only to those who have access to an early edition. When the critical edition of Wordsworth's literary criticism, which, despite the efforts of Nowell Smith, is still a desideratum, shall appear, it is to be hoped that so important an utterance will be." restored.