thers_, as displaying
the strength and permanence among a simple and rural population of
those domestic affections which were certain to decay gradually under
the influence of manufactories and poor-houses. Mr. Fox wrote a civil
acknowledgement, saying that his favourites among the poems were
_Harry Gill_, _We are Seven_, _The Mad Mother_, and _The Idiot_, but
that he was prepossessed against the use of blank verse for simple
subjects. Any political significance in the poems he was apparently
unable to see. To this second edition Wordsworth prefixed an
argumentative Preface, in which he nailed to the door of the cathedral
of English song the critical theses which he was to maintain against
all comers in his poetry and his life. It was a new thing for an
author to undertake to show the goodness of his verses by the logic
and learning of his prose; but Wordsworth carried to the reform of
poetry all that fervour and faith which had lost their political
object, and it is another proof of the sincerity and greatness of his
mind, and of that heroic simplicity which is their concomitant, that
he could do so calmly what was sure to seem ludicrous to the greater
number of his readers. Fifty years have since demonstrated that the
true judgement of one man outweighs any counterpoise of false
judgement, and that the faith of mankind is guided to a man only by a
well-founded faith in himself. To this _Defensio_ Wordsworth afterward
added a supplement, and the two form a treatise of permanent value for
philosophic statement and decorous English. Their only ill effect has
been, that they have encouraged many otherwise deserving young men to
set a Sibylline value on their verses in proportion as they were
unsaleable. The strength of an argument for self-reliance drawn from
the example of a great man depends wholly on the greatness of him who
uses it; such arguments being like coats of mail, which, though they
serve the strong against arrow-flights and lance-thrusts, may only
suffocate the weak or sink him the sooner in the waters of oblivion.

An advertisement prefixed to the _Lyrical Ballads_, as originally
published in one volume, warned the reader that 'they were written
chiefly with a view to ascertain how far _the language of conversation
in the middle and lower classes_ of society is adapted to the purposes
of poetic pleasure'. In his preface to the second edition, in two
volumes, Wordsworth already found himself forced to shift