public struggles can awaken. He contracted a habit of exaggerating the
importance of every-day incidents and emotions. He accustomed himself
to see in men and in social relations only what he was predetermined
to see there, and to impute to them a value and importance derived
mainly from his own self-will. Even his natural good taste contributed
to confirm him in his error. The two prevailing schools of literature
in England, at that time, were the trashy and mouthing writers who
adopted the sounding language of Johnson and Darwin, unenlivened
by the vigorous thought of either; and the "dead-sea apes" of
that inflated, sentimental, revolutionary style which Diderot had
unconsciously originated, and Kotzebue carried beyond the verge of
caricature. The right feeling and manly thought of Wordsworth were
disgusted by these shallow word-mongers, and he flew to the other
extreme. Under the influences--repulsive and attractive--we have thus
attempted to indicate, he adopted the theory that as much of grandeur
and profound emotion was to be found in mere domestic incidents and
feelings, as on the more conspicuous stage of public life; and that
a bald and naked simplicity of language was the perfection of style.
Singularly enough, he was confirmed in these notions by the very
writer of the day whose own natural genius, more than any of his
contemporaries, impelled him to revel in great, wild, supernatural
conceptions; and to give utterance to them in gorgeous language.
Coleridge was perhaps the only contemporary from whom Wordsworth ever
took an opinion; and that he did so from him, is mainly attributable
to the fact that Coleridge did little more than reproduce to him
his own notions, sometimes rectified by a subtler logic, but always
rendered more attractive by new and dazzling illustrations.

Fortunately it is out of the power of the most perverse theory to
spoil the true poet. The poems of Wordsworth must continue to charm