must certainly be ranked. It would not be safe for any man to
believe that he had produced true poetry because he had fulfilled
the conditions which Wordsworth lays down. But the essays effected
what is perhaps as much as the writer on art can fairly hope to
accomplish. They placed in a striking light that side of the subject
which had been too long ignored; they aided in recalling an art
which had become conventional and fantastic into the normal current
of English thought and speech.

It may be added that both in doctrine and practice Wordsworth
exhibits a progressive reaction from the extreme views with which he
starts towards the common vein of good sense and sound judgment
which may be traced back to Horace, Longinus, and Aristotle. His
first preface is violently polemic. He attacks with reason that
conception of the sublime and beautiful which is represented by
Dryden's picture of "Cortes alone in his nightgown," remarking that
"the mountains seem to nod their drowsy heads." But the only example
of true poetry which he sees fit to adduce in contrast consists in a
stanza from the _Babes in the Wood_. In his preface of 1815 he is
not less severe on false sentiment and false observation. But his
views of the complexity and dignity of poetry have been much
developed, and he is willing now to draw his favourable instances
from Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil, and himself.

His own practice underwent a corresponding change. It is only to
a few poems of his earlier years that the famous parody of the
_Rejected Addresses_ fairly applies.

My father's walls are made of brick,
But not so tall and not so thick