Hence, as early as 1800, Wordsworth was already outgrowing the Advertisement to the Lyrical Ballads, and with it the experimental period of his career. Some traces of the original theory of course remain, both in the hard bits of literal, matter-of-fact statement in poems like Alice Fell, and in his occasional defense of so-called 'prosaic' language. Certainly the original theory continued to interest him until about 1805, the last reprinting of the Lyrical Ballads of 1800 with their preface. But for the real source of his poetic diction henceforth we must look mainly to his reading. In the volumes of 1807 the influence of Spenser and of the Elizabethan library furnished by Lamb is everywhere evident, especially the pure and quiet cadences of the later Elizabethans, Daniel, Drayton, and Beaumont. The sonnets, which form so numerous and so beautiful a part of his poetry after 1800, were written under the immediate influence of Milton. The noble and unique language of the Prelude is created out of the apparently unpromising terminology of the philosophers, Hartley and Darwin. No doubt the eloquent discourses of Coleridge served as an intermediary step in this alchemic transmutation. The poetry of 1814-1816 was influenced by the re-reading of Virgil and other Latin authors. There is a pensive Virgilian graciousness of language in some of his too much neglected later poems, such as the Egyptian Maid. The language of the later poems also reflects the stiff, but often deeply pathetic, Latin of early ecclesiastical literature. From sources like these, not from the speech of the * dalesmen, was the greater part of Wordsworth's phraseology ultimately derived. But, after all, it was the theory suggested in the Advertisement which taught Wordsworth to make this use of books. Through his apparent repudiation of the language of books he entered into his literary inheritance. His theory of poetic diction served as a test by which he might seek out the genuine metal of poetry, and appropriate it to himself. He had already shown a disposition to test and appropriate in his use of borrowed phrases in the Descriptive Sketches. But the touchstone, while good as far as it went, had not been sufficient. He had learned to judge natural imagery used in poetry in accordance with his own experience, and to include in his own work the expressions which satisfied him. But he had not learned to judge of language and the psychology of human expression. He merely took what pleased him, and what pleased him was the strange, the original, the fantastic. He had no social consciousness-no knowledge of the way in which others might react to the words that he used. The theory of the Lyrical Ballads awakened in him this social consciousness. He wished to learn how living men spoke, how they had always spoken. He learned to test his language in accordance both with general usage and with actual psychology. This gave him a control over the resources of his own tongue such as only the scholarly poets may have. After 1798 it is almost impossible to catch Wordsworth in a questionable use of a word or a slip of grammar. His vocabulary has a purity and precision which neither Milton nor Tennyson, the self-conscious artists in language, can equal-however they may surpass him in splendor and sonorous music. His sentence-structure is remarkable alike for its peculiar flexibility and for its strict observance of grammar and idiom. He continues to read more and more in the field of English literature, but with discrimination; at any moment he is ready to give an account of the literary faith that is in him. He had rediscovered the principles of English poetry, and in so doing had discovered himself. It is in this discovery, not in any experimental imitation of the speech of Tom, Dick, or Harry, that the true significance of Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction lies. BIBLIOGRAPHY The following bibliography contains only the titles of books to which a specific reference is made in the text: ADDISON, JOSEPH. Criticisms of Paradise Lost (ed. Cook). Boston, 1892. BAGEHOT, WALTER. Literary Studies. London, 1879. BLAIR, HUGH. Essays on Rhetoric. London, 1787. BOWLES, WILLIAM L. Sonnets, written chiefly on Picturesque Spots, during a Tour. Bath, 1789. CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS. De Oratore (ed. Wilkins). Oxford, 1879-92. CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS. Oratory and Orators (tr. Watson). London, 1889. COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR. London, 1911. Oxford, 1907. COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR. COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR. 1895. Biographia Epistolaris (ed. Turnbull). Biographia Literaria (ed. Shawcross). Complete Poetical Works (ed. E. H. Letters (ed. E. H. Coleridge). Boston, COLERIDGE, Sara. Memoir and Letters (ed. by her daughter). New York, 1874. COOK, ALBERT S. The Art of Poetry. Boston, 1892. COOPER, LANE. A Concordance to the Poems of William Wordsworth. London, 1911. COWPER, WILLIAM. Works (ed. Southey). London, 1836-37. DARWIN, ERASMUS. Zoönomia. London, 1801. DARWIN, ERASMUS. The Botanic Garden. London, 1791. DENNIS, JOHN. The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry. London, 1704. DE VERE, AUBREY. Essays, chiefly on Poetry. London, 1887. DE VERE, AUBREY. Essays, chiefly Literary and Ethical. London, 1889. DRYDEN, JOHN. Essays (ed. Ker). Oxford, 1900. DRYDEN, JOHN. Works (ed. Scott-Saintsbury). Edinburgh, 1882-93. GOLDSMITH, OLIVER. Works (ed. Gibbs). London, 1885. GRAY, THOMAS. Letters (ed. Tovey). London, 1900. HAMELIUS, PAUL. Die Kritik in der Englischen Literatur des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1897. HARPER, GEORGE MACLEAN. William Wordsworth. New York, 1916. HARTLEY, DAVID. Observations on Man. London, 1810. HAZLITT, WILLIAM. Literary Remains. London, 1836. HORACE QUINTUS FLACCUS. Ars Poetica. (Art of Poetry, ed. Cook.) Boston, 1892. HUTTON, RICHARD HOLT. Essays, Theological and Literary. London, 1888. JOHNSON, SAMUEL. Lives of the English Poets (ed. Hill). Oxford, 1905. JONSON, BEN. Timber (ed. Shelling). Boston, 1892. KELLNER, LEON. Historical Outlines of English Syntax. London and New York, 1892. PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Française des Origines a 1900. Paris, 1897. LAMB, CHARLES. Works (ed. Lucas). London, 1903-1905. LAMB, CHARLES. Letters (ed. Macdonald). London, 1903. LEGOUIS, EMILE. The Early Life of William Wordsworth. New York, 1897. LIENEMAN, KURT. Die Belesenheit von William Wordsworth. Weimar, 1908. LUCAS, E. V. The Life of Charles Lamb. New York and London, 1905. MOORE, J. L. Tudor-Stuart Views on the Growth, Status, and Destiny of the English Language. Halle, 1910. POPE, ALEXANDER. Works (ed. Courthope and Elwin). London, 1871-89. PRATT, ALICE E. The Use of Color in the Verse of the English Romantic Poets. Chicago, 1898. QUINTILIAN, MARCUS FABIUS. Institutes of Oratory (tr. Watson). London, 1891-92. REYNOLDS, MYRA. The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth. Chicago, 1896. ROBINSON, HENRY CRABB. Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence (ed. Sadler). Boston, 1869. SCOTT, JOHN. Critical Essays on Some of the Poems of Several English SHAIRP, JOHN C. Aspects of Poetry. Boston and New York, 1892. SPENCE, JOSEPH. Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and SPINGARN, JOEL E. Critical Essays of the Sevententh Century. Oxford, 1908. WARTON, JOSEPH. An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope. Lon don, 1782. WORDSWORTH, CHRISTOPHER. Reed). Boston, 1851. Memoirs of William Wordsworth (ed. WORDSWORTH, CHRISTOPHER. Social Life at the English Universities in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, 1874. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Lyrical Ballads. Bristol, 1798. (In the possession of Mrs. Cynthia Morgan St. John.) WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Lyrical Ballads. London, 1798. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. 1798. Lyrical Ballads (ed. Hutchinson). London, WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Lyrical Ballads, with other Poems. London, 1800. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poems. London, 1802. Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Lyrical Ballads. Philadelphia, 1802. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poems. London, 1805. Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poems. London, 1807. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poems including Lyrical Ballads and the Miscellaneous Pieces of the Author, with additional Poems, a new Preface and a Supplementary Essay. London, 1815. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Miscellaneous Poems. London, 1820. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poetical Works. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poetical Works. London, 1827. London, 1836. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poetical Works. London, 1840-1. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poems. London, 1845. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poetical Works (ed. Knight), including a Life of Wordsworth. Edinburgh, 1882-89. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poetical Works (ed. Dowden) with Memoir. London, 1892-93. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poetical Works (ed. Hutchinson). London, New York, 1907. Prose Writings of Wordsworth (ed. Knight). London, 1893. Letters of the Wordsworth Family from 1787 to 1855 (ed. Knight). Boston and London, 1907. Wordsworth's Prefaces and Essays on Poetry (ed. A. J. George). Boston, 1892. Wordsworth's Literary Criticism (ed. Nowell C. Smith). London, 1905. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Poems and Extracts Chosen by William Wordsworth for an Album presented to Lady Mary Lowther, Christmas, 1819. London, 1905. A Description of the Wordsworth and Coleridge Manuscripts in the possession of Mr. T. Norton Longman (ed. W. Hale White). London and New York, 1897. Transactions of the Wordsworth Society. Edinburgh, 1882-87. |