which moonlight or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape,
appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the
poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recol
lect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the
incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excel
lence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dra
matic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations,
supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human
being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself
under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen
from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be
found in every village and its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling
mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves. In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed
that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural,
or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human
interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of
imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which con
stitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to
himself as his object to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and
to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's
attention from the lethargy of custom and directing it to the loveliness and
5. Coleridge conceives God's creation to be a con-manipulate' 'fixities and definites' that, linked by tinuing process, which has an analogy in the cre-association, come to it ready-made from percep
ative perception ('primary imagination') of all tion.
human minds. The creative process is repeated, or 6. Additional remarks, after a philosophic dem
'echoed,' on still a third level, by the 'secondary onstration.
imagination' of the poet, which dissolves the prod-7. At Nether Stowey and Alfoxden, Somerset, in
ucts of primary perception to shape them into a 1797.
new and unified creation?the imaginative passage 8. Cf. Wordsworth's account in his Preface to Lyr
or poem. The 'fancy,' on the other hand, can only ical Ballads (p. 262).
.
BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA / 47 9
the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which,
in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes
yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.9
With this view I wrote The Ancient Mariner, and was preparing, among other
poems, The Dark Ladie, and the Christabel, in which I should have more nearly
realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's
industry had proved so much more successful and the number of his poems
so much greater, that my compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared
rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter.1 Mr. Wordsworth added two
or three poems written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and
sustained diction which is characteristic of his genius. In this form the Lyrical
Ballads were published; and were presented by him, as an experiment,2
whether subjects which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and
extra-colloquial style of poems in general might not be so managed in the
language of ordinary life as to produce the pleasurable interest which it is the
peculiar business of poetry to impart. To the second edition3 he added a pref
ace of considerable length; in which, notwithstanding some passages of appar
ently a contrary import, he was understood to contend for the extension of
