a note to object to the opposition of Poetry and Prose at all, and to the regarding of the former as synonymous with metrical composition. Then he asks what a poet _is_: and answers himself at great length, dwelling on the poet’s philosophical mission, but admitting that it is his business to give pleasure. He anticipates the objection, “Why, then, do you not write in Prose?” with the rather weak retort, “Why should I not add the charm of metrical language to what I have to say?” A little later comes the other famous definition of poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquillity,” with a long and exceedingly unsuccessful attempt to vindicate some work of his own from the charge of being ludicrous. And the Preface ends with two candid but singularly damaging admissions, that there _is_ a pleasure confessedly produced by metrical compositions very different from his own, and that, in order entirely to enjoy the poetry which he is undertaking, it would be necessary to give up much of what is ordinarily enjoyed. [Sidenote: _The appendix: Poetic Diction again._] There is an appendix specially devoted to “Poetic Diction” in which Wordsworth develops his objection to this. His argument is curious, and from his own point of view rather risky. Early poets wrote from passion, yet naturally, and so used figurative language: later ones, without feeling passion, imitated them in the use of Figures, and so a purely artificial diction was formed. So also metre was early added, and came to be regarded as a symbol or promise of poetic diction itself. To which of course it is only necessary to register the almost fatal demurrer, “Why, if the early poets used figurative language different from ordinary, may not later ones do so? or do you mean that Greek shoemakers of Homer’s time said _koruthaiolos_ and _dolichoskion_?” Again, “How about this curious early ‘superadding’ of metre? Where is your evidence? and supposing you could produce any, what have you to say to the further query, ‘If the metre was superadded, what could have been the reason, except that some superaddition was felt to be wanted?’” [Sidenote: _The Minor Critical Papers._]