Fifty years have since demonstrated
that the true judgment of one man outweighs any counterpoise of false
judgment, and that the faith of mankind is guided to a man only by a
well-founded faith in himself. To this _Defensio_ Wordsworth afterward
added a supplement, and the two form a treatise of permanent value for
philosophic statement and decorous English. Their only ill effect has
been, that they have encouraged many otherwise deserving young men to set
a Sibylline value on their verses in proportion as they were unsalable.
The strength of an argument for self reliance drawn from the example of a
great man depends wholly on the greatness of him who uses it; such
arguments being like coats of mail, which, though they serve the strong
against arrow-flights and lance-thrusts, may only suffocate the weak or
sink him the sooner in the waters of oblivion.
An advertisement prefixed to the "Lyrical Ballads," as originally
published in one volume, warned the reader that "they were written
chiefly with a view to ascertain how far _the language of conversation in
the middle and lower classes_ of society is adapted to the purposes of
poetic pleasure." In his preface to the second edition, in two volumes,
Wordsworth already found himself forced to shift his ground a little
(perhaps in deference to the wider view and finer sense of Coleridge),
and now says of the former volume that "it was published as an experiment
which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain how far, by fitting to
metrical arrangement, _a selection of the real language of men in a state
of vivid sensation_, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure
may be imparted which a poet may _rationally endeavor_ to impart.
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