this style to poetry of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all
phrases and forms of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately,
I think, adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of real life. From
this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny the presence
of original genius, however mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the
whole long-continued controversy.4 For from the conjunction of perceived
power with supposed heresy I explain the inveteracy5 and in some instances,
I grieve to say, the acrimonious passions with which the controversy has been
conducted by the assailants. Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things which they
were for a long time described as being; had they been really distinguished
from the compositions of other poets merely by meanness6 of language and
inanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing more than what is found
in the parodies and pretended imitations of them; they must have sunk at
once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the preface
along with them. But year after year increased the number of Mr. Words
worth's admirers. They were found too not in the lower classes of the reading
public, but chiefly among young men of strong sensibility and meditative
minds; and their admiration (inflamed perhaps in some degree by opposition)
was distinguished by its intensity, I might almost say, by its religious fervor.
These facts, and the intellectual energy of the author, which was more or less
consciously felt where it was outwardly and even boisterously denied, meeting
with sentiments of aversion to his opinions and of alarm at their consequences,
produced an eddy of criticism which would of itself have borne up the poems
by the violence with which it whirled them round and round. With many parts
of this preface, in the sense attributed to them and which the words undoubt
edly seem to authorize, I never concurred; but, on the contrary objected to
them as erroneous in principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at least)
9. Cf. Isaiah 6.9-10. 3. Published in 1800. 1. The first edition of Lyrical Ballads, published 4. The controversy over Wordsworth's theory and anonymously in 1798, contained nineteen poems poetical practice in the literary journals of the day.
by Wordsworth, four by Coleridge. 5. Deep-rooted prejudice.
2. Experiments was the word used by Wordsworth 6. Vulgarity. in his Advertisement to the first edition.
.
48 0 / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
both to other parts of the same preface and to the author's own practice in
the greater number of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth in his recent
collection7 has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of his
second volume, to be read or not at the reader's choice. But he has not, as far
as I can discover, announced any change in his poetic creed. At all events,
considering it as the source of a controversy in which I have been honored
more than I deserve by the frequent conjunction of my name with his, I think
it expedient to declare once for all in what points I coincide with his opinions,
and in what points I altogether differ. But in order to render myself intelligible
I must previously, in as few words as possible, explain my ideas, first, of a POEM; and secondly, of POETRY itself, in kind, and in essence. The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinction; while it
is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself constantly aware that
distinction is not division. In order to obtain adequate notions of any truth,
we must intellectually separate its distinguishable parts; and this is the tech
nical of philosophy. But having so done, we must then restore them in our
conceptions to the unity in which they actually coexist; and this is the result
of philosophy. A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition;
