his ground a
little (perhaps in deference to the wider view and finer sense of
Coleridge), and now says of the former volume that 'it was published
as an experiment which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain how
far, by fitting to metrical arrangement, _a selection of the real
language of men in a state of vivid sensation_, that sort of pleasure
and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted which a poet may
_rationally endeavour_ to impart'. Here is evidence of a retreat
towards a safer position, though Wordsworth seems to have remained
unconvinced at heart, and for many years longer clung obstinately to
the passages of bald prose into which his original theory had betrayed
him. In 1815 his opinions had undergone a still further change, and an
assiduous study of the qualities of his own mind and of his own poetic
method (the two subjects in which alone he was ever a thorough
scholar) had convinced him that poetry was in no sense that appeal to
the understanding which is implied by the words 'rationally endeavour
to impart'. In the preface of that year he says, 'The observations
prefixed to that portion of these volumes which was published many
years ago under the title of _Lyrical Ballads_ have so little of
special application to the greater part of the present enlarged and
diversified collection, that they could not with propriety stand as an
introduction to it.' It is a pity that he could not have become an
earlier convert to Coleridge's pithy definition, that 'prose was words
in their best order, and poetry the _best_ words in the best order'.
But idealization was something that Wordsworth was obliged to learn
painfully. It did not come to him naturally as to Spenser and Shelley
and to Coleridge in his higher moods. Moreover, it was in the too
frequent choice of subjects incapable of being idealized without a
manifest jar between theme and treatment that Wordsworth's great
mistake lay. For example, in _The Blind Highland Boy_ he had
originally the following stanzas:

Strong is the current, but be mild,
Ye waves, and spare the helpless child!
If ye in anger fret or chafe,
A bee-hive would be ship as safe
As that in which he sails.

But say, what was it? Thought of fear!
Well may ye tremble when ye hear!
--A household tub like one of those
Which women use to wash their clothes,
This carried the blind boy.

In endeavouring to get rid of the downright vulgarity of