e, which such emotion, so
tempered and mastered by the will, is found capable of communicating.
It not only dictates, but of itself tends to produce, a more frequent
employment of picturesque and vivifying language, than would be
natural in any other case, in which there did not exist, as there does
in the present, a previous and well understood, though tacit,
_compact_ between the poet and his reader, that the latter is entitled
to expect, and the former bound to supply, this species and degree of
pleasurable excitement. We may in some measure apply to this union the
answer of POLIXENES, in the _Winter's Tale_, to PERDITA'S neglect of
the streaked gilly-flowers, because she had heard it said:

There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
_Pol._ Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so, ev'n that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art,
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
_A gentler scion to the wildest stock;_
And make conceive a bark of ruder kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art,
Which does mend nature--change it rather; but
The art itself is nature.

Secondly, I argue from the EFFECTS of metre. As far as metre acts in
and for itself, it tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility
both of the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it
produces by the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick
reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited,
which are too slight indeed to be at any one moment objects of
distinct consciousness, yet become considerable in their aggregate
influence. As a medicated atmosphere, or as wine during animated
conversation, they act powerfully, though themselves unnoticed. Where,
therefore, correspondent food and appropriate matter are not provided
for the attention and feelings thus roused, there must needs be a
disappointment felt; like that of leaping in the dark from the last
step of a staircase, when we had prepared our muscles for a leap of
three or four.

The discussion on the powers of metre in the preface is highly
ingenious and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any
statement of its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the
contrary Mr. Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers
which it exerts during (and, as I think, in consequence