FEAST OF THE POET

deprecates,

curious and, in many respects, very masterly pre face to the Lyrical Ballads, is this ;-that owing to a variety of existing causes, among which are the ac cumulation of men in cities and the necessary uniformity of their occupations, and the consequent craving for extraordinary incident, which the present state of the world is quick to gratify, the taste of society has become so vitiated and so accustomed to gross stimulants, such as "frantic novels, sickly and stupid German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse," as to require the counteraction of some simpler and more primitive food, which should restore to readers their true tone of enjoyment, and enable them to relish once more the beauties of simplicity and nature;-that, to this purpose, a poet in the present age, who looked upon men with his proper eye, as an entertainer and instructor, should chuse subjects as far removed as possible from artificial excitements, and appealing to the great and primary affections of our nature ;→ thirdly and lastly, that these subjects, to be worthily and effectively treated, should be clothed in language

uses a

NOTES ON THE

equally artless. I pass over the contingent parts of the Preface, though touching out, as they go, some beautiful ideas respecting poets and poetry in general, both because I have neither time nor room to consider them, and because they are not so immediate to my purpose. I shall merely observe, by the way, that Mr. Wordsworth does not seem to have exercised his feelings much on the subject of versification, and must protest against that attempt of his to consider perfect poetry as not essentially connected with metre,—an innovation, which would detract from the poet's properties, and shut up one of the finest inlets of his enjoyment and nourishers of his power, the sense of the harmonious.

Now the object of the theory here mentioned has clearly nothing in the abstract, that can offend the soundest good sense or the best poetical ambition. In fact, it is only saying, in other words, that it is high time for poetry in general to return to nature and to a natural style, and that he will perform a great and useful work to society, who shall assist it to do so. I am not falling, by this interpretation, into the

error which Mr. Wordsworth very justly deprecates, when he warns his readers against affecting to agree with him in terms, when they really differ with him in taste. The truth which he tells, however obvious, is necessary to be told, and to be told loudly; and he should enjoy the praise which he deserves, of having been the first, in these times, to proclaim it. But the question is, (and he himself puts it at the end of his Preface) has Mr. Wordsworth" attained his object"? Has he acted up to his theory? Has he brought back that natural style, and restored to us those healthy and natural perceptions, which he justly describes as the proper state of our poetical constitution? I think not. He has shewn that he could do it, and in some instances he has set the example; but the popular effect of his poetry appears to me to be far otherwise; it gives us puerility for simplicity, affectation for nature; and only tends, in my mind, to go to the other extreme of what he deprecates, and substitute one set of diseased percep tions for another.

Delight or utility is the aim of the poet. Mr. Wordsworth, like one who has a true sense of the dignity of his profession, would unite both; and indeed, for their perfect ends, they cannot be sepa rated. He finds then our taste for the one vitiated, and our profit of the other destroyed, and he says to us "Your complexion is diseased; your blood fevered; you endeavour to keep up your pleasurable sensations by stimulants too violent to last, and which must be succeeded by others of still greater violence:this will not do: your mind wants air and exercise,-fresh thoughts and natural excitements :--jup, , my friend; come out with me among the beauties of nature and the simplicities of life, and feel the breath of heaven about you."No advice can be better: we feel the call instinctively; we get up, accompany the poet into his walks, and acknowledge them to be the best and most beautiful; but what do we meet there? Idiot Boys, Mad Mothers, Wandering Jews, Visitations of Ague, and Frenzied Mariners, who are fated to accost us with tales that

álmost make one's faculties topple over.*-These are his refreshing thoughts, his natural excitements; and when you have finished with these, you shall have the smallest of your fugitive reflections arrested and embodied in a long lecture upon a thorn, or a story of a duffel-cloak, till thorns and duffel-cloaks absolutely confound you with their importance in life ;and these are his elementary feelings, his calm and counteracting simplicities.

Let the reader observe that I am not objecting to these subjects in behalf of that cowardly self-love falsely called sensibility, or merely because they are of what is termed a distressing description, but because they are carried to an excess that defeats the poet's intention, and distresses to no purpose. Nor should I select them as exhibiting a part of the character of Mr. Wordsworth's writings, rather than pass them over as what they really are, the defects of a great poet, if the author himself had not especially invited our attention towards them as part of his sys

* The last of these ❝ idle and extravagant stories” was written, it seems, by Mr. Coleridge.