William himself is sure that the
_White Doe_ will not sell or be admired, except by a very few,
at first; and only yields to Mary's entreaties and mine. We are
determined, however, if we are deceived this time, to let him
have his own way in future."
These passages must be taken, no doubt, as representing one aspect
only of the poet's impulses in the matter. With his deep conviction
of the world's real, though unrecognized, need of a pure vein of
poetry, we can hardly imagine him as permanently satisfied to defer
his own contribution till after his death. Yet we may certainly
believe that the need of money helped him to overcome much
diffidence as to publication; and we may discern something dignified
in his frank avowal of this when it is taken in connexion with his
scrupulous abstinence from any attempt to win the suffrages of the
multitude by means unworthy of his high vocation. He could never,
indeed, have written poems which could have vied in immediate
popularity with those of Byron or Scott. But the criticisms on the
first edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_ must have shown him that a
slight alteration of method,--nay even the excision of a few pages
in each volume, pages certain to be loudly objected to,--would have
made a marked difference in the sale and its proceeds.
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