accompany such situations, supposing them real.... For the second
class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters
and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its
vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after
them, or to notice them when they present themselves. In this idea
originated the plan of the _Lyrical Ballads_, in which it was
agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters
supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our
inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to
procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of
disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. Mr.
Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself, as his
object, to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday, and to
excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's
attention from the lethargy of custom and directing it to the
loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible
treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and
selfish solicitude, we have eyes which see not, ears that hear not, and
hearts which neither feel nor understand."

We may measure the extent to which the poetic teaching and practice of
Wordsworth have influenced subsequent taste and criticism by noting how
completely the latter of these two functions of poetry has overshadowed
the former. To lend the charm of imagination to the real will appear to
many people to be not one function of poetry merely but its very
essence. To them it is poetry, and the only thing worthy of the name;
while the correlative function of lending the force of reality to the
imaginary will appear at best but a superior kind of metrical
romancing, or clever telling of fairy tales. Nor of course can there,
from the point of view of the highest conception of the poet's office,