We think there is every reason to hope that the lamentable consequences which have resulted from Mr. Wordsworth's open violation of the established laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome warning to those who might otherwise have been seduced by his example, and be the means of restoring to that ancient and venerable code its honor and authority.
[Footnote F: "Edinburgh Review," October, 1807.]
But the critic cannot always tell what the new "song is destined to, and what the stars intend to do." It is now evident enough where the early assailants of Wordsworth were mistaken; and yet which critic of to-day would be sure of his ground in a similar case? For the faults of genius are old, familiar, and easily to be discerned; while, on the other hand, genius itself is always novel, and therefore may be easily mistaken. It takes genius to recognize genius; and most of Wordsworth's critics were not men of genius. Landor, who was one, made a wise remark upon this point. He said, "To compositions of a new kind, like Wordsworth's, we come without scales and weights, and without the means of making an assay."
But by pointing out his faults, his critics did him and us a service; and it was one by which the poet profited, as we have seen, in spite of his independence.
Let us now look at some of Wordsworth's multiple readings, if we may call them so--passages, namely, in which he has returned, year after year, to certain peccant verses, changing them again and again in the quest of adequate expression. After repeated experiments he sometimes finds a reading to please himself; sometimes, having allowed a provisional text to stand throughout many years, he discards it and returns to the original form; and sometimes, again, he abandons a passage entirely, after scarring it with a lifetime's emendations. Of the first sort I will cite three readings of a stanza in "A Poet's Epitaph." As first published in the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, the poem contained this adjuration to the philosopher "wrapped in his sensual fleece":
O turn aside, and take, I pray, That he below may rest in peace, Thy pin-point of a soul away!
Lamb did not like this; and he wrote to Wordsworth: "The 'Poet's Epitaph' is disfigured, to my taste, by the coarse epithet of 'pin-point' in the sixth stanza." In the edition of 1815 the "coarse epithet" disappears, and the passage is modified as follows: