In 1805, writing to Walter Scott, he declared that Dryden's 'cannot be the language of imagination,' because 'there is not a single image from nature in the whole of his works; and in his translation from Virgil, wherever Virgil can be said to have his eye upon his object, Dryden always spoils the passage.'
Ten years later Wordsworth uses almost identical words in his Essay Supplementary to the Preface:
'Now it is remarkable that, excepting a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, and some delightful pictures in the Poems of Lady Winchelsea, the Poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost and the Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature; and scarcely presents a familiar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the Poet had been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination[1].'
Hence this collection has a value as showing Wordsworth's critical faculty at work, and thus affording fresh material for the estimate of his attitude towards poetry.
By displaying the poetical passages that most appealed to him, he unlocks his heart in a new and illuminating way.
The point of time at which the collection was completed is also noteworthy. In 1819 Byron was still near the zenith of his fame. It was something to convince a young lady of taste that the principles of true poetry were not the Byronian principles, but
- ↑ This is quoted from the 1815 edition of the Poems, vol. i, p. 358; in later editions it reads: 'Now it is remarkable that, excepting the Nocturnal Reverie of Lady Winchelsea and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope,' &c.
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