He purposely chose his incidents and situations from common life,
because in it our elementary feelings coexist in a state of simplicity.
II. He adopts the _language_ of common life, because men hourly
communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is
originally derived; and because, being less under the influence of social
vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated
expressions.
III. He asserts that the language of poetry is in no way different, except
in respect to metre, from that of good prose. Poetry can boast of no
celestial _ichor_ that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose:
the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both. In works
of imagination and sentiment, in proportion as ideas and feelings are
valuable, whether the composition be in prose or verse, they require and
exact one and the same language.
Such are the principal changes proposed by Wordsworth; and we find Herder,
the German poet and metaphysician, agreeing with him in his estimate of
poetic language.
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