rks. 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 shew 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 the 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
marshall's truncheon, the ceremony that to great ones 'longs," are not
to be found here. The author tramples on the pride of art with greater
pride. The