e practicability
of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested
itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might
be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to
be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to
consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of
such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing
them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being
who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself
under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be
chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such
as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a
meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when
they present themselves.

"In this idea originated the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed
that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters
supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our
inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to
procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of
disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr.
Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object,
to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a
feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention
from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the wonders and
loveliness of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for
which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude,
we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither
feel nor understand.

"With this view I wrote 'The Ancient Mariner,' and was preparing, among
other poems, 'The Dark Ladie,' and the 'Christabel,' in which I should
have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt.
But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and
the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead
of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous
matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own
character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is
characteristic of his genius [among them the "Lines composed a few miles
above Tintern