al Ballads_ with a new
volume, both of which passed to another edition in 1802. With this
edition, Wordsworth ran up his revolutionary flag and nailed it to the
mast.

POETICAL CANONS.--It would be impossible as well as unnecessary to attempt
an analysis of even the principal poems of so voluminous a writer; but it
is important to state in substance the poetical canons he laid down. They
may be found in the prefaces to the various editions of his _Ballads_, and
may be thus epitomized:

I. He purposely chose his incidents and situations from common life,
because in it our elementary feelings coexist in a state of simplicity.

II. He adopts the _language_ of common life, because men hourly
communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is
originally derived; and because, being less under the influence of social
vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated
expressions.

III. He asserts that the language of poetry is in no way different, except
in respect to metre, from that of good prose. Poetry can boast of no
celestial _ichor_ that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose:
the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both. In works
of imagination and sentiment, in proportion as ideas and feelings are
valuable, whether the composition be in prose or verse, they require and
exact one and the same language.

Such are the principal changes proposed by Wordsworth; and we find Herder,
the German poet and metaphysician, agreeing with him in his estimate of
poetic language. Having thus propounded his tenets, he wrote his earlier
poems as illustrations of his views, affecting a simplicity in subject and
diction that was sometimes simply ludicrous. It was an affected
simplicity: he was simple with a purpose; he wrote his poems to suit his
canons, and in that way his simplicity became artifice.

Jeffrey and other critics rose furiously against the poems which
inculcated such doctrines. "This will never do" were the opening words of
an article in the _Edinburgh Review_. One of the _Rejected Addresses_,
called _The Baby's Debut, by W. W._, (spoken in the character of Nancy
Lake, eight years old, who is drawn upon the stage in a go-cart,) parodies
the ballads thus:

What a large floor! 'tis like a town;
The carpet, when they lay it down,
Won't hide it, I'll be bound:
And there's a row of lamps, my eye!
How they do blaze: I won