or I should have referred to that as an expression, not altogether unintelligible, of the discrepancy which must ever exist between those minds which are commonly styled rational, (as the received definition of common sense is insensibility to uncommon sense,) and that of Coleridge. As to myself, if I understand nothing beyond the execution of those “singularly wild and original poems,” I could not tell my gratitude for the degree of refinement which Taste has received from them. To those who cannot understand the voice of Nature or Poetry, unless it speak in apothegms, and tag each story with a moral, I have nothing to say. My own greatest obligation to Coleridge I have already mentioned. It is for his suggestive power that I thank him.
Wordsworth! beloved friend and venerated teacher; it is more easy and perhaps as profitable to speak of thee. It is less difficult to interpret thee, since no acquired nature, but merely a theory, severs thee from my mind.
Classification on such a subject is rarely satisfactory, yet I will attempt to define in that way the impressions produced by Wordsworth on myself. I esteem his characteristics to be—of Spirit,
- Perfect simplicity,
- Perfect truth,
- Perfect love.
Of mind or talent,
- Calmness,
- Penetration,
- Power of Analysis.
Of manner,
- Energetic greatness,
- Pathetic tenderness
s, - Mild, persuasive eloquence.
The time has gone by when groundlings could laugh with impunity at “Peter Bell” and the “Idiot Mother.” Almost every
