and fancies which were often injurious to himself and causes of severe
regrets to his friends, without really benefiting the object of his
misapplied kindness."

Nor was this attitude of Johnny Head-in-Air the mark only of his later
years. It appeared in the days when he and Coleridge collaborated in
bringing out _Lyrical Ballads._ There is something sublimely egotistical
in the way in which he shook his head over _The Ancient Mariner_ as a
drag upon that miraculous volume. In the course of a letter to his
publisher, he wrote:--

From what I can gather it seems that _The Ancyent Marinere_ has, on
the whole, been an injury to the volume; I mean that the old words
and the strangeness of it have deterred readers from going on. If
the volume should come to a second edition, I would put in its
place some little things which would be more likely to suit the
common taste.

It is when one reads sentences like these that one begins to take a
mischievous delight in the later onslaught of a Scottish reviewer who,
indignant that Wordsworth should dare to pretend to be able to
appreciate Burns, denounced him as "a retired, pensive, egotistical,
_collector of stamps_," and as--

a melancholy, sighing, half-parson sort of gentleman, who lives in
a small circle of old maids and sonneteers, and drinks tea now and
then with the solemn Laureate.

One feels at times that no ridicule or abuse of this stiff-necked old
fraud could be excessive; for, if he were not Wordsworth, as what but a