[18]
That this conjecture is not wide from the mark, I am induced to
believe from the noticeable fact, which I can state on my own
knowledge, that the same general censure has been grounded by almost
every different person on some different poem. Among those, whose
candour and judgment I estimate highly, I distinctly remember six who
expressed their objections to the Lyrical Ballads almost in the same
words, and altogether to the same purport, at the same time admitting,
that several of the poems had given them great pleasure; and, strange
as it might seem, the composition which one cited as execrable,
another quoted as his favourite. I am indeed convinced in my own mind,
that could the same experiment have been tried with these volumes, as
was made in the well known story of the picture, the result would have
been the same; the parts which had been covered by black spots on the
one day, would be found equally albo lapide notatae on the succeeding.
However this may be, it was assuredly hard and unjust to fix the
attention on a few separate and insulated poems with as much aversion,
as if they had been so many plague-spots on the whole work, instead of
passing them over in silence, as so much blank paper, or leaves of a
bookseller's catalogue; especially, as no one pretended to have found
in them any immorality or indelicacy; and the poems, therefore, at the
worst, could only be regarded as so many light or inferior coins in a
rouleau of gold, not as so much alloy in a weight of bullion.
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