me
alienum puto_"--is the motto of his works. He thinks nothing low or
indifferent of which this can be affirmed: every thing that professes to
be more than this, that is not an absolute essence of truth and feeling,
he holds to be vitiated, false, and spurious. In a word, his poetry is
founded on setting up an opposition (and pushing it to the utmost length)
between the natural and the artificial: between the spirit of humanity,
and the spirit of fashion and of the world!

It is one of the innovations of the time. It partakes of, and is carried
along with, the revolutionary movement of our age: the political changes
of the day were the model on which he formed and conducted his poetical
experiments. His Muse (it cannot be denied, and without this we cannot
explain its character at all) is a levelling one. It proceeds on a
principle of equality, and strives to reduce all things to the same
standard. It is distinguished by a proud humility. It relies upon its own
resources, and disdains external show and relief. It takes the commonest
events and objects, as a test to prove that nature is always interesting
from its inherent truth and beauty, without any of the ornaments of dress
or pomp of circumstances to set it off. Hence the unaccountable mixture of
seeming simplicity and real abstruseness in the _Lyrical Ballads_. Fools
have laughed at, wise men scarcely understand them. He takes a subject or
a story merely as pegs or loops to hang thought and feeling on; the
incidents are trifling, in proportion to his contempt for imposing
appearances; the reflections are profound, according to the gravity and
aspiring pretensions of his mind.

His popular, inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of all the trappings
of verse, of all the high places of poetry: "the cloud-capt towers, the
solemn temples, the gorgeous palaces," are swept to the ground, and "like
the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind." All the
traditions of learning, all the superstitions of age, are obliterated and
effaced. We begin _de novo_, on a _tabula rasa_ of poetry. The purple
pall, the nodding plume of tragedy, are exploded as mere pantomime and
trick, to return to the simplicity of truth and nature. Kings, queens,
priests, nobles, the altar and the throne, the distinctions of rank,
birth, wealth, power, "the judge's robe, the marshal's truncheon, the
ceremony that to great ones 'longs," are not to be found here. The author
tramples on t