granted that the reader judged aright) an atonement for the few
exceptions, gave wind and fuel to the animosity against both the poems
and the poet. In all perplexity there is a portion of fear, which
predisposes the mind to anger. Not able to deny that the author
possessed both genius and a powerful intellect, they felt very
positive,--but yet were not quite certain that he might not be in the
right, and they themselves in the wrong; an unquiet state of mind,
which seeks alleviation by quarrelling with the occasion of it, and by
wondering at the perverseness of the man, who had written a long and
argumentative essay to persuade them, that

Fair is foul, and foul is fair;

in other words, that they had been all their lives admiring without
judgment, and were now about to censure without reason. [18]

That this conjecture is not wide from the mark, I am induced to
believe from the noticeable fact, which I can state on my own
knowledge, that the same general censure has been grounded by almost
every different person on some different poem. Among those, whose
candour and judgment I estimate highly, I distinctly remember six who
expressed their objections to the Lyrical Ballads almost in the same
words, and altogether to the same purport, at the same time admitting,
that several of the poems had given them great pleasure; and, strange
as it might seem, the composition which one cited as execrable,
another quoted as his favourite. I am indeed convinced in my own mind,
that could the same experiment have been tried with these volumes, as
was made in the well known story of the picture, the result would have
been the same; the parts which had been covered by black spots on the
one day, would be found equally albo lapide notatae on the succeeding.