﻿WORDSWORTH 'S MIND 



9 



pleasure. Eeaders accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phrase- 

 ology of many modern writers * * * will perhaps frequently 

 have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness : 

 they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to in(|uire by 

 what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume 

 that title. * * * it will perhaps appear to them, that wishing to 

 avoid the prevalent fault of the clay, the author has sometimes de- 

 scended too low, and that many of his expressions are too familiar, 

 and not of sufficient dignity. * * * An accurate taste in poetry, 

 and in all other arts, Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed, is an ac- 

 quired talent, v/hich can only be produced by severe thought, and 

 a long continued intercourse with the best models of composition.' 

 This is practically a confession, when taken with the characters of 

 the poems themselves, that some of them are tours de force. In the 

 preface of 1800, feeling that this theory as stated, embarrassed his 

 poetry — especially such poems as 'Lines Above Tintern, ' — he 

 changed the phrase about ' the language of conversation in the mid- 

 dle and lower classes,' and said the poems were written 'to ascer- 

 tain how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the 

 real language of men in a vivid state of sensation, that sort of pleas- 

 ure and that quality of pleasure may be imparted, which a poet 

 may rationally endeavor to impart. ' In 1802, he added twenty-four 

 pages to this preface, and amended his theory of diction still 

 further, saying that his principal object is to describe 'incidents 

 and situations from common life' in a 'selection of language really 

 used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain 

 coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be pre- 

 sented to the mind in an unusual aspect.' Here, in place of 'the 

 conversation of the middle and lower classes,' we are now further 

 told that the language of poetry, 'if selected truly and judiciously, 

 must necessarily be dignified and variegated, and alive with meta- 

 phors and figures ;' and that 'this selection, whenever it is made with 

 true taste and feeling will of itself form a distinction far greater 

 than would at first be imagined, and will entirely separate the com- 

 position from the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life.' 



'What a change in four years!' Mr. Dana remarks. 'The dem- 

 'ocrat enthusiast of 1798 who would adopt the language of the mid- 

 dle and lower classes, now looks for "selection," for "taste," for 

 "distinction." The young revolutionary already begins to object 

 to what he calls "the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life." ' 

 That Wordsworth's taste greatly changed in practice, might be 

 made obvious by citing the emendations he introduced into later 



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