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INDIANA UNIVEHSITY STUDIES 



editions of these early poems, emendations in almost every case 

 making for more imaginative, more poetical, and less merely con- 

 versationally natural effects. 



To illustrate the significance of this change more broadly, it is 

 well to call attention, once more, to Wordsworth's connection with 

 Crabbe. In fact, it is not too much to say that a literal following 

 out of the principles laid down in 1798 would have resulted in verse 

 more like that of the chief realist of the age than like anything 

 Wordsworth truly had in his own soul to write. They each realized 

 that the matter of their poetry had much in common. Crabbe held 

 that the country-folk are good poetical subjects because, (as he says, 

 in this class 'more originality of character, more variety of fortune 

 will be met with; because, on the other hand, they do not live in 

 the eye of the world, and therefore are not kept in awe by the 

 dread of observation and indecorum.'^ Wordsworth says that for 

 his poems in the ' Lyrical Ballads, ' ' humble and rustic life was gen- 

 erally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of 

 the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, 

 are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic 

 language ; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings 

 coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be 

 more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; 

 because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary 

 feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are 

 more easily comprehended, and are more durable ; and, lastly, be- 

 cause in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with 

 the l)eautiful and permanent forms of nature.'- Wordsworth's 

 statement is prior to Crabbe 's, though Crabbe had given his prac- 

 tical illustration years before. Except, however, for this bit of 

 similar theory and its application to the choice of subjects, their 

 poetry is far apart. 



The difference between them is the difference, as understood at 

 that time, between the realistic treatment of a subject and its imag- 

 inative or romatic treatment. In a note prefixed to 'Lucy Gray,' 

 a story Crabbe might well have liked to tell in a far different man- 

 ner, Wordsworth says : ' The way in which the incident was treated 

 and the spiritualizing of the character might furnish hints for con- 

 trasting the imaginative influences which I have endeavored to 

 throw over common life with Crabbe 's matter of fact style of treat- 

 ing subjects of the same kind.' He explains that this is not said 

 in Crabbe 's disparagement, but with a consciousness of the differ- 



1 'The Life and Poetical Works of George Crabbe.' London, 190L p. 55. 

 2 'Lyrical Ballads.' Preface of 1802. 



