What other distinction would we
hare? Whence is it to come? And where is it to exist?"
There is a definiteness and simplicity about this description
of poetry which may well make us wonder why this precious thing
(producible, apparently, as easily as Pope's imitators supposed,
although by means different from theirs) is not offered to us by
more persons, and of better quality. And it will not be hard to show
that a good poetical style must possess certain characteristics,
which, although something like them must exist in a good prose style,
are carried in poetry to a pitch so much higher as virtually to need
a specific faculty for their successful production.
To illustrate the inadequacy of Wordsworth's theory to explain the
merits of his own poetry, I select a stanza from one of his simplest
and most characteristic poems--_The Affliction of Margaret_:--
Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan,
Maimed, mangled by inhuman men,
Or thou upon a Desert thrown
Inheritest the lion's Den;
Or hast been summoned to the Deep,
Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep
An incommunicable sleep.
These lines, supposed to be uttered by "a poor widow at Penrith,"
afford a fair illustration of what Wordsworth calls "the language
really spoken by men," with "metre superadded.
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