exercise his imagination as he chooses, without reference to the imagination of society.

In this contention there is an element of

truth:

Pictoribus atque poetis

Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas. Wordsworth gave expression, with greater power and feeling than any other poet, to certain universal perceptions in the English mind, to which society during the prevalence of urban habits in the eighteenth century had become insensible. He was therefore fully justified in asserting his own liberty against the conventional canons of criticism, in so far as these helped to dull the sense of natural beauty. But he went much further, and, in the preface of which Coleridge speaks, endeavoured to establish a code of abstract principles by which the value of all poetry might be tested. As his reasoning largely influenced his own practice and the subsequent course of English poetry, I shall attempt in this paper to examine how far it is in harmony with the fundamental principles of the art.

In the first place, however, in order to test

the character of Wordsworth's theory, it is important to recall the circumstances under which it was evolved. What roused him into rebellion against the canons of criticism generally accepted in his day was undoubtedly the style of 'poetical diction' then considered to be the indispensable dress of all true poetry. He saw that the 1 mode of expression employed by Darwin in his 'Botanic Garden' was widely admired, yet the colouring of this poem appeared to him, as to most men of just and manly taste, to be false and gaudy. Looking back to the earlier poets of the century, he found that germs of the same diction were discoverable in them; as, for instance, in Pope's 'Messiah,' in some of Johnson's verses, and, indeed, in almost all the characteristic poems of the age. Instead of reasoning that the defect might spring from the natural corruption of some true principle of art, he inferred from his observations that it arose from a false ideal of composition, consciously adopted by the poets. And, as so often happens to men of a combative turn, his violent sentiments of dislike led him to argue that all true

poetry must be composed on a system exactly opposite to the style which he condemned. Darwin seemed to withdraw himself deliberately from the common sympathies of humanity; true poetry, Wordsworth argued, should, therefore, look for its subjects in the objects and incidents of every-day life. Darwin's diction was artificial in the highest degree; it follows that the genuine language of poetry should resemble as closely as possible the language of the peasantry. Darwin wrote in a style which was the antithesis of prose; hence Wordsworth would have us believe that there is no essential difference between the language of prose and verse, and that the fact of poems being written in metre is merely to be regarded as an accident of the art.

In considering the justice of these views I suppose that everybody would be on Wordsworth's side as far as he was opposed to Darwin. Almost any species of verse-writing, if it show sincere feeling, is better than a style inspired simply by pomposity and affectation. To enlarge the spiritual experience of an artificialised society by imaginative representations of the beauty of

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Nature and common life was a just and noble aim for poetry, but it was not a new one. To take only a few examples which at once occur, Virgil had written the Georgics,' Thomson the 'Seasons,' Gray the 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard,' Goldsmith the Deserted Village.' All these were subjects chosen from ordinary life,' just as much as 'Peter Bell,' the 'Idiot Boy,' 'Alice Fell,'' Beggars,' or the 'Sailor's Mother.' The real innovation introduced by Wordsworth was one of poetical form, and lay in the manner in which he employed the imagination to present objects to the reader with a view of producing pleasure. On this point it is best to let him speak for himself.

The principal object, then, proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and at the same time to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and further and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement.

1

Here we have a compendious statement of the radical difference between the practice of Wordsworth and that of preceding poets who had dealt with 'subjects chosen from ordinary life.' Neither Virgil, nor Thomson, nor Gray, nor Goldsmith, had attempted to present the objects they described to the mind in an unusual aspect.' They trusted to produce pleasure by associating qualities inherent in these objects. with other beautiful ideas, naturally connected with them, and expressed in a noble and harmonious form of verse. With them the subject matter of poetry lay in associations of ideas existing in their readers' imaginations equally with their own, With Wordsworth, on the other hand, all depended on the perception of the poet himself, and his power to displace and recombine the ordinary association of ideas so as to 'present them to the mind in an unusual aspect.' And, of course, if he had been able to produce great and permanent pleasure on the principles he lays down, all objection would have been silenced, and the only thing to be said would be that he had discovered principles of art which had hitherto been unknown or neglected.