Wordsworth somewhat shyly slipped in at the end of the volume a statement of his literary creed, and an example of the new manner of writing so noble, so full, and so momentous, that it has never been excelled, even by himself.

LYRICAL BALLADS,

Thus, in a little russet volume published at Bristol, and anonymously put forth by two struggling lads of extreme social obscurity, the old order of things literary was finally and completely changed. The romantic school began, the classic school disappeared, in the autumn of 1798. It would be a great error, of course, to suppose that this revolution was patent to the world the incomparable originality and value of "Tintern Abbey" was noted, as is believed, by one solitary reader; the little book passed as a collection of irregular and somewhat mediocre verse, written by two eccentric young men suspected of political disaffection. But the change was made, nevertheless; the marvellous verses were circulated, and everywhere they created disciples. So stupendous was the importance of the verse written on the Quantocks in 1797 and 1798, that if Wordsworth and Coleridge had died at the close of the latter year we should indeed have lost a great deal of valuable poetry, especially of Wordsworth's; but the direction taken by literature would scarcely have been modified in the slightest degree. The association of these intensely brilliant and inflammatory minds at what we call the psychological moment, produced fullblown and perfect the exquisite new flower of romantic poetry.

WITH

1 FEW OTHER POEMS.

BRISTOL:

PRINTED BY BIGGS AND COTTLE,

OR T. N. LONGMAN, PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON

1708.

Title-page of First Edition of "Lyrical Ballads"

Burns had introduced "a natural delineation of human passions; " Cowper had rebelled against "the gaudiness and inane phraseology" of the eighteenth century in its decay; Crabbe had felt that "the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure." These phrases, from the original preface of 1798, did not clearly enough define the objects of Wordsworth and Coleridge. To the enlarged second edition, therefore, of 1800, the former prefixed a more careful and lucid statement of their distinguishing principles. This preface, extending to nearly fifty pages, is the earliest of those disquisitions on the art of verse which would give Wordsworth high rank among critics if the lustre of his prose were not lost in the blaze of his poetry.

During these last two years of the century the absolute necessity for a radical reform of literature had impressed itself upon many minds. Wordsworth found himself the centre of a group of persons, known to him or unknown, who were anxious that "a class of poetry should be produced " on the lines indicated in "Tintern Abbey," and who believed that it would

be "well adapted to interest mankind permanently," which the poetry of the older school had manifestly ceased to do. It was to these observers, these serious disciples, that the important manifesto of 1800 was addressed. This was no case of genius working without consciousness of its own aim; there was neither self-delusion nor mock-modesty about Wordsworth. He considered his mission to be one of extreme solemnity. He had determined that no "indolence" should "prevent him from endeavouring to ascertain what was his duty," and he was convinced that that duty was called to redeem poetry in England from a state of "depravity," and to start the composition of "poems materially different from those upon which general

approbation is [in 1800] at present bestowed." He was determined to build up a new art on precept and example, and this is what he did achieve with astonishing completeness.

In the neighbourhood of the Quantocks, where he arrived at the very moment that his powers were at their ripest and his genius eager to expand, Wordsworth found himself surrounded by rustic types of a pathetic order, the conditions of whose life were singularly picturesque. He was in the state of transition between the ignorance of youth and that hardness and density of apprehension which invaded his early middle life. His observation was keen and yet still tender and ductile. He was accompanied and stimulated in his investigations by his incomparable sister. To them came Coleridge, swimming in a lunar radiance of sympathy and sentimental passion, casting over the more elementary instincts of the Wordsworths the distinction of his elaborate intellectual experience. Together on the ferny hills, in the deep coombes, by "Kilve's sounding shore," the wonderful trio discussed, conjectured, planned, and from the spindles of their talk there was swiftly spun the magic web of modern romantic poetry. They determined, as Wordsworth says, that "the passions of men should be incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." All elements were there-the pathetic peasants, the pure solitudes of hill and wood and sky, the enthusiastic perception of each of these, the moment in the history of the country, the companionship and confraternity which circulate the tongues of fire-and accordingly the process of combination and creation was rapid and conclusive.

There are, perhaps, no two other English poets of anything like the

same importance who resemble one another so closely as do Wordsworth and Coleridge at the outset of their career. They were engaged together to a degree which it is difficult for us to estimate to-day, in breaking down the false canons of criticism which rhetorical writers had set up, and in recurring to a proper and beautiful use of common English. In so doing and writing in close companionship, interested in the same phenomena, immersed in the same scenery, it is not extraordinary that the style that each adopted strictly resembled the style of the other. This is especially true of their blank verse, a form which both sedulously cultivated, in which both enshrined some of their most characteristic thoughts, and in which both were equally engaged in destroying that wooden uniformity of pause and cadence with which Akenside had corrupted the cold but stately verse of Thomson. Who was to decide by whom the "Nightingale" and by whom the "Night-Piece" of 1798 were written? The accent, the attitude, were almost precisely identical.

Yet distinctions there were, and as we become familiar with the two poets these predominate more and more over the superficial likeness. Coleridge is conspicuous, to a degree beyond any other writer between Spenser and Rossetti, for a delicate, voluptuous languor, a rich melancholy, and a pitying absorption without vanity in his own conditions and frailties, carried so far that the natural objects of his verse take the qualities of the human Coleridge upon themselves. In Wordsworth we find a purer, loftier note, a species of philosophical severity which is almost stoic, a freshness of atmosphere which contrasts with Coleridge's opaline dream-haze, magnifying and distorting common things. Truth, sometimes pursued to the confines or past the confines of triviality, is Wordsworth's first object, and he never stoops to self-pity, rarely to self-study. Each of these marvellous poets is pre-eminently master of the phrase that charms and intoxicates, the sequence of simple words so perfect that it seems at once inevitable and miraculous. Yet here also a very distinct difference may be defined between the charm of Wordsworth and the magic of Coleridge. The former is held more under the author's control than the latter, and is less impulsive. It owes its impressiveness to a species of lofty candour which kindles at the discovery of some beautiful truth not seen before, and gives the full intensity of passion to its expression. The latter is a sort of Eolian harp (such as that with which he enlivened the street of Nether Stowey) over which the winds of emotion play, leaving the instrument often without a sound or with none but broken murmurs, yet sometimes dashing from its chords a melody, vague and transitory indeed, but of a most unearthly sweetness. Wordsworth was not a great metrist; he essayed comparatively few and easy forms, and succeeded best when he was at his simplest. Coleridge, on the other hand, was an innovator; his Christabel revolutionised English prosody and opened the door to a thousand experiments; in Kubla Khan and in some of the lyrics, Coleridge attained a splendour of verbal melody which places him near the summit of the English Parnassus.