The poet must not only
converse with pure thought, but he must demonstrate it almost to the
senses. His words must be pictures, his verses must be spheres and
cubes, to be seen, and smelled and handled. His fable must be a good
story, and its meaning must hold as pure truth. In the debates on
the Copyright Bill, in the English Parliament, Mr. Sergeant Wakley,
the coroner, quoted Wordsworth's poetry in derision, and asked the
roaring House of Commons, what that meant, and whether a man should
have a public reward for writing such stuff. Homer, Horace, Milton,
and Chaucer would defy the coroner. Whilst they have wisdom to the
wise, he would see, that to the external, they have external meaning.
Coleridge excellently said of poetry, that poetry must first be good
sense, as a palace might well be magnificent, but first it must be a
house.
Wordsworth is open to ridicule of this kind. And yet
Wordsworth, though satisfied if he can suggest to a sympathetic mind
his own mood, and though setting a private and exaggerated value on
his compositions, though confounding his accidental with the
universal consciousness, and taking the public to task for not
admiring his poetry, -- is really a superior master of the English
language, and his poems evince a power of diction that is no more
rivalled by his contemporaries, than is his poetic insight.
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