ABSTRACT
With regard to that part of the review2 which relates to Wordsworth, it has obviously no relation whatever to ‘Thalaba,’ nor can there be a stronger proof of want of discernment, or want of candour, than in grouping together three men so different in style as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and myself, under one head. The fault of Coleridge has been a too-swelling diction; you who know his poems know whether they ought to be abused for mean language. Of ‘Thalaba,’ the language rises and falls with the subject, and is always in a high key. I wish you would read the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth; some of them are very faulty; but, indeed, I would risk my whole future fame on the assertion that they will one day be regarded as the finest poems in our language. I refer you particularly to ‘The Brothers,’ a poem on ‘Tintern Abbey,’ and ‘Michael.’ Now, with Wordsworth I have no intimacy; scarcely any acquaintance. In whatever we resemble each other, the resemblance has sprung, not, I believe, from chance, but because we have both studied poetry – and indeed it is no light or easy study – in the same school, – in the works of nature, and in the heart of man.
