n superstition if only
the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal malignity in the
tail," conveys a warning to writers that is not of an age but for all
time. Coleridge may have exaggerated the "manly hilarity" and "evenness
and sweetness of temper" of men of genius. But there is no denying that,
the smaller the genius, the greater is the spite of wounded self-love.
"Experience informs us," as Coleridge says, "that the first defence of
weak minds is to recriminate." As for Coleridge's great service to
Wordsworth's fame, it was that of a gold-washer. He cleansed it from all
that was false in Wordsworth's reaction both in theory and in practice
against "poetic diction." Coleridge pointed out that Wordsworth had
misunderstood the ultimate objections to eighteenth-century verse. The
valid objection to a great deal of eighteenth-century verse was not, he
showed, that it was written in language different from that of prose, but
that it consisted of "translations of prose thoughts into poetic
language." Coleridge put it still more strongly, indeed, when he said that
"the language from Pope's translation of Homer to Darwin's _Temple of
Nature_ may, notwithstanding some illustrious exceptions, be too
faithfully characterized as claiming to be poetical for no better reason
than that it would be intolerable in conversation or in prose."
Wordsworth, unfortunately, in protesting against the meretricious garb of
mean thoughts, wished to deny verse its more splendid clothing altogether.
If we accepted his theories we should have to condemn his _Ode_, the
greatest of his sonnets, and, as Coleridge put it, "two-thirds at least of
the marked beauties of his poetry." The truth is, Wordsworth created an
engine that was in danger of destroying not only Pope but himself.
Coleridge destroyed the engine and so helped to save Wordsworth. Coleridge
may, in his turn, have gone too far in dividing language into three
groups--language peculiar to poetry, language peculiar to prose, and
language common to both, though there is much to be said for the division;
but his jealousy for the great tradition in language was the jealousy of a
sound critic. "Language," he declared, "is the armoury of the human mind;
and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its
future conquests."

He, himself, wrote idly enough at times: he did not shrink from the
phrase, "literary man," abominated by Mr. Birrell. But he rises in
sentenc