Other volumes were brought out by the un dismayed poet in 1815 ('The White Doe of Rylstone), in 1819, 1820 and 1822, and all were condemned by the Edinburgh Review, as they appeared; but the reaction had now begun among the critical authorities, and henceforth Wordsworth had powerful defenders in literary circles. 'War was no longer waged against his but rather concerning them.' It was, ever, a long fight yet before their rightful position was accorded them by the general con sent of the contending parties. De Quincey has well summed up the matter thus: 'From 1800 to 1820 the poetry of \Vordsworth was trodden under foot; from 1820 to 1830 it was militant; from 1830 and onward it has been triumphant." And the triumph was complete. There were still those who could see little to admire in the meditative measures of the Cumberland recluse, but the general verdict was in his favor, and his place among the great poets of our literature was secure beyond dispute. Honors, too, were conferred upon him. In 1839 he received the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford University; and the enthusiasm of the audience on the occasion was such as had never been known except upon the visits of the Duke of Wellingmn. One who was present says: *Scarcely had his name been pronounced than from 3,000 voices at once there broke forth a burst of applause, echoed and taken up again when it seemed about to die away, and that thrice repeated.' The poet no doubt went through the ceremony with his wonted calmness and composure; but it was none the less significant as a tribute.to the man and a testimonial that he had fairly won the laurel crown. A few years later, as we have seen, he received the further honors of a gov ernment pension and the laureateship.
Wordsworth's famous theory of poetic art was first set forth in the preface to the second edition of the 'Lyrical Ballads' (1800), and more at length subsequently in prefaces and appendixes. He took the ground that not only might the poet draw his subjects from common life, but he might treat of them in the lan guage of common hie. 'I have proposed to myself,' he says, 'to imitate and, as far as is possit.le, to adopt the very language of men. . . I have taken as much pains to avoid what is usually called poetic diction as others ordinarily take to produce it.* And again he asserts that 'there neither is, nor can be, any difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.' But his thrill.) was the result of his rebellion against the Int‘Thly artificial st)le of Pope and his school.
m.lio reformers, he was at first in clirrt1 tt. go too f.ir in the opposite direction. He 111M•vii Atirut•rd !hi, later by giving up the purnIr ?? hi, h m.iny of his earlier poems • II 411.1 Adopting a more de ...fed .1 too ' ch.olg-ng some the most . III those early porno. Tii •, .•..• t cx.i.rople ti:
these emciiii.stioi,s, .1. the Thorn.' one act 'Lyrical Ballads,' as printed in 1798 and 1815. we have this arithmetical statement: And to the laft, three yards barns& You ate a link noddy pond Of water never dry.
I've measured rt from side to side. 'Ti three feet long and two feet wins Crabbe Robinson told Wordsworth that 'he dared not read these lines aloud in company' "They ought to be liked,' was the poet's rep!): but he nevertheless modified the last two lines in 1820, so that now they read: Thotsch but of cosnpasa snag and bane To thirsty suns and parching an.
Wordsworth was much gratified at the com paratively early appreciation of his works in America. The 'Lyrical Ballads' were re printed at Philadelphia in 1802, and an edition of his poems in four volumes appeared in Bos ton in 1824. A complete edition was brought out (Philadelphia 1837) by Prof. Henry Reed. with whom the poet interchanged many letters. In one of these he nys. 'The acknowledg ments which I receive from the vast continent of America are among the most grateful that reach me.' Reed's edition was revised and enlarged in 1851. In 1854, a Boston edition in seven volumes was published, with a biographi cal introduction (though without his name) by James Russell Lowell. Thirty (1884) when Lowell was Minister to England, he was made president of the Wordsworth Society, and in the closing words of an address on that occa sion he thus aptly and admirably expressed what we may call the 'true mission' of the poet: •As in Catholic countries men go for a time into retreat from the importunate dissonances of life to collect their better selves again by communion with things that are heavenly and therefore eternal, so this Chartreuse of Words worth, dedicated to the Genius of Solitude will allure to its imperturbable cairn the finer na tures and the more highly tempered intellects of every generation, so long as man has any intuition of what is most sacred in his own emotions and sympathies, or of whatever in outward nature is the most capable of awaken ing them and making them operative, whether to console or strengthen. And over the en trance gate to that purifying seclusion shall le inscribed: Hindi innocent and (Met tan This foe • Bibliography.— Adaod. A. H (ed.) 'The Patriotic Poetry of am Words worth' (Oxford 1915); Cambridge Edition of %Vordsworth's 'Complete Poetical orbs' (Boston 1904) ; Dowden, Edward (ed.). Tlae Akiine Edition of Word.worth's 'Complete Poetical Works' (7 vols., Loudon I892-43). Globe Edition of Vs'ordsworth's 'C Poetical Works,' edited by John York Grosart, A. B. (ed.). 'Pram 1\urlss of illiam (6 volt_ Las don 18761; Hutchinson. Thomas, 'Complew Poetical Works' (Oxford ed., 1904); Kock. \‘ (-di, 'Poetical Works' (8 rots. Eden I iirgh 1..g.l2-...q.); id., 'Poetical and Pron.