mon-sense, however learned or refined he may be, except as far as the notions, which the rustic has to convey, are fewer and more indiscriminate. This will become still clearer, if we add the consideration (equally important 5 though less obvious) that the rustic, from the more imperfect developement of his faculties, and from the lower state of their cultivation, aims almost solely to convey insulated facts, either those of his scanty experience or his traditional belief; while the educated man chiefly seeks to discover and express 10 those connections of things, or those relative bearings of fact to fact, from which some more or less general law is deducible. For facts are valuable to a wise man, chiefly as they lead to the discovery of the indwelling law, which is the true being of things, the sole solution of their modes of existence, and 15 in the knowledge of which consists our dignity and our power.

As little can I agree with the assertion, that from the objects with which the rustic hourly communicates the best part of language is formed. For first, if to communicate with an object implies such an acquaintance with it, as 20 renders it capable of being discriminately reflected on; the distinct knowledge of an uneducated rustic would furnish a very scanty vocabulary. The few things, and modes of action, requisite for his bodily conveniences, would alone be individualized; while all the rest of nature would be ex25 pressed by a small number of confused general terms. Secondly, I deny that the words and combinations of words derived from the objects, with which the rustic is familiar, whether with distinct or confused knowledge, can be justly said to form the best part of language. It is more than 30 probable, that many classes of the brute creation possess discriminating sounds, by which they can convey to each other notices of such objects as concern their food, shelter, or safety. Yet we hesitate to call the aggregate of such sounds a language, otherwise than metaphorically. The 35 best part of human language, properly so called, is derived

Biographia Literaria

CH. XVII

from reflection on the acts of the mind itself. It is formed
by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbols to internal
acts, to processes and results of imagination, the greater part
of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated
man; though in civilized society, by imitation and passive 5
remembrance of what they hear from their religious instruc-
tors and other superiors, the most uneducated share in the
harvest which they neither sowed or reaped. If the history
of the phrases in hourly currency among our peasants were
traced, a person not previously aware of the fact would be 10
surprised at finding so large a number, which three or four
centuries ago were the exclusive property of the universities
and the schools; and, at the commencement of the Reforma-
tion, had been transferred from the school to the pulpit,
and thus gradually passed into common life. The extreme 15
difficulty, and often the impossibility, of finding words for the
simplest moral and intellectual processes of the languages of
uncivilized tribes has proved perhaps the weightiest obstacle
to the progress of our most zealous and adroit missionaries.
Yet these tribes are surrounded by the same nature as our 20
peasants are; but in still more impressive forms; and they
are, moreover, obliged to particularize many more of them.
When, therefore, Mr. Wordsworth adds, " accordingly, such
a language" (meaning, as before, the language of rustic life
purified from provincialism)" arising out of repeated expe- 25
rience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far
more philosophical language, than that which is frequently
substituted for it by poets, who think they are confer-
ring honor upon themselves and their art in proportion as
they indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expres- 30
sion" it may be answered, that the language, which he has
in view, can be attributed to rustics with no greater right,
than the style of Hooker or Bacon to Tom Brown or Sir
Roger L'Estrange. Doubtless, if what is peculiar to each
were omitted in each, the result must needs be the same. 35

Further, that the poet, who uses an illogical diction, or a style fitted to excite only the low and changeable pleasure of wonder by means of groundless novelty, substitutes a language of folly and vanity, not for that of the rustic, but 5 for that of good sense and natural feeling.

Here let me be permitted to remind the reader, that the positions, which I controvert, are contained in the sentences a selection of the REAL language of men ;"-" the language of these men" (i.e. men in low and rustic life) “I propose to 10 myself to imitate, and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men." "Between the language of prose and that of metrical composition, there neither is, nor can be any essential difference." It is against these exclusively that my opposition is directed.

15

I object, in the very first instance, to an equivocation in the use of the word "real." Every man's language varies, according to the extent of his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness of his feelings. Every man's language has, first, its individualities; secondly, the 20 common properties of the class to which he belongs; and thirdly, words and phrases of universal use. The language of Hooker, Bacon, Bishop Taylor, and Burke differs from the common language of the learned class only by the superior number and novelty of the thoughts and relations 25 which they had to convey. The language of Algernon Sidney differs not at all from that, which every well-educated gentleman would wish to write, and (with due allowances for the undeliberateness, and less connected train, of thinking natural and proper to conversation) such as he would wish 30 to talk. Neither one nor the other differ half so much from the general language of cultivated society, as the language of Mr. Wordsworth's homeliest composition differs from that of a common peasant. For "real" therefore, we must substitute ordinary, or lingua communis. And this, we have 35 proved, is no more to be found in the phraseology of low

and rustic life than in that of any other class. Omit the peculiarities of each, and the result of course must be common to all. And assuredly the omissions and changes to be made in the language of rustics, before it could be transferred to any species of poem, except the drama or 5 other professed imitation, are at least as numerous and weighty, as would be required in adapting to the same purpose the ordinary language of tradesmen and manufacturers. Not to mention, that the language so highly extolled by Mr. Wordsworth varies in every county, nay in 10 every village, according to the accidental character of the clergyman, the existence or non-existence of schools; or even, perhaps, as the exciseman, publican, or barber, happen to be, or not to be, zealous politicians, and readers of the weekly newspaper pro bono publico. Anterior to cultivation, 15 the lingua communis of every country, as Dante has well observed, exists every where in parts, and no where as a whole.

Neither is the case rendered at all more tenable by the addition of the words, in a state of excitement. For 20 the nature of a man's words, where he is strongly affected by joy, grief, or anger, must necessarily depend on the number and quality of the general truths, conceptions and images, and of the words expressing them, with which his mind had been previously stored. For the property of 25 passion is not to create; but to set in increased activity. At least, whatever new connections of thoughts or images, or (which is equally, if not more than equally, the appropriate effect of strong excitement) whatever generalizations of truth or experience, the heat of passion may produce; yet 30 the terms of their conveyance must have pre-existed in his former conversations, and are only collected and crowded together by the unusual stimulation. It is indeed very possible to adopt in a poem the unmeaning repetitions, habitual phrases, and other blank counters, which an un- 35

furnished or confused understanding interposes at short intervals, in order to keep hold of his subject, which is still slipping from him, and to give him time for recollection; or in mere aid of vacancy, as in the scanty companies of 5 a country stage the same player pops backwards and forwards, in order to prevent the appearance of empty spaces, in the procession of Macbeth, or Henry VIIIth. But what assistance to the poet, or ornament to the poem, these can supply, I am at a loss to conjecture. Nothing assuredly can 10 differ either in origin or in mode more widely from the apparent tautologies of intense and turbulent feeling, in which the passion is greater and of longer endurance than to be exhausted or satisfied by a single representation of the image or incident exciting it. Such repetitions I admit to be 15 a beauty of the highest kind; as illustrated by Mr. Wordsworth himself from the song of Deborah. "At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead."

CHAPTER XVIII

Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially different from that of prose-Origin and elements of metre-Its necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby imposed on the metrical writer in the choice of his diction.

I CONCLUDE, therefore, that the attempt is impracticable; 20 and that, were it not impracticable, it would still be useless. For the very power of making the selection implies the previous possession of the language selected. Or where can the poet have lived? And by what rules could he direct his choice, which would not have enabled him to select and 25 arrange his words by the light of his own judgement? We do not adopt the language of a class by the mere adoption of such words exclusively, as that class would use, or at