among children. A man must have done this habitually before
his judgment upon the 'Idiot Boy' would be in any way decisive with me.
I _know_ I have done this myself habitually; I wrote the poem with
exceeding delight and pleasure, and whenever I read it I read it with
pleasure. You have given me praise for having reflected faithfully in my
Poems the feelings of human nature. I would fain hope that I have done
so. But a great Poet ought to do more than this; he ought, to a certain
degree, to rectify men's feelings, to give them new compositions of
feeling, to render their feelings more sane, pure, and permanent, in
short, more consonant to Nature, that is, to eternal Nature, and the
great moving Spirit of things. He ought to travel before men
occasionally as well as at their sides. I may illustrate this by a
reference to natural objects. What false notions have prevailed from
generation to generation of the true character of the Nightingale. As
far as my Friend's Poem, in the 'Lyrical Ballads,' is read, it will
contribute greatly to rectify these. You will recollect a passage in
Cowper, where, speaking of rural sounds, he says,

And _even_ the boding Owl
That hails the rising moon has charms for me.

Cowper was passionately fond of natural objects, yet you see he mentions
it as a marvellous thing that he could connect pleasure with the cry of
the owl. In the same poem he speaks in the same manner of that beautiful
plant, the gorse; making in some degree an amiable boast of his loving
it _'unsightly'_ and unsmooth as it is. There are many aversions of this
kind, which, though they have some foundation in nature, have yet so
slight a one, that, though they may have prevailed hundreds of years, a
philosopher will look upon them as accidents. So with respect to many
moral feelings, either of love or dislike. What excessive admiration was
paid in former times to personal prowess and military success; it is so
with the latter even at the present day, but surely not nearly so much
as heretofore. So with regard to birth, and innumerable other modes of
sentiment, civil and religious. But you will be inclined to ask by this
time how all this applies to the 'Idiot Boy.' To this I can only say
that the loathing and disgust which many people have at the sight of an
idiot, is a feeling which, though having some foundation in human
nature, is not necessarily attached to it in any virtuous degree, but is
owing in a great