It is proof of the rather prejudiced frame of mind in which Wordsworth wrote that, in some subsequent criticisms of particulars, he objects to Cowper’s “church-going bell” as “a strange abuse”—from which we must suppose that he himself never talked of a “dining-room,” for it is certain that the room no more dines than the bell goes to church. The later papers on “Poetry as a Study,” and “Poetry as Observation and Description,” are also full of interesting matter, though here, as before, their literary history leaves much to desire, and though they are full of examples of the characteristic stubbornness with which Wordsworth clings to his theory. The most remarkable example probably of this stubbornness is the astonishing note to the letter on the last-named subject (addressed to Sir George Beaumont), in which, after attributing to the poet Observation, Sensibility, Reflection, Information, Invention, and Judgment, he adds, with a glance at his enemy, Metre—“As sensibility to harmony of numbers _and the power of producing it_ are _invariably_ attendants on the faculties above specified, nothing has been said upon those requisites.” Perhaps there is no more colossal _petitio principii_, and at the same time no more sublime ignoring of facts, to be found in all literature, than that “invariably.” [Sidenote: _Coleridge’s examination of Wordsworth’s views._] Interesting, however, as the Preface and its satellites are in themselves, they are far more interesting as the occasion of the much longer examination of the main document which forms the centre, and as criticism the most valuable part, of the _Biographia Literaria_[352] of Coleridge, Wordsworth’s fellow-worker in these same _Lyrical Ballads_. That Wordsworth was himself not wholly pleased with this criticism of his criticism, we know: and it would have been strange if he had been— nay, if a much less arrogant and egotistical spirit than his had taken it quite kindly. But Coleridge was on this occasion entirely within his right. The examination, though in some parts unsparing enough, was conducted throughout in the most courteous, indeed in the most eulogistic, tone; the critic, especially after the lapse of so many years,[353] could not be denied the right of pointing out the limits of his agreement with a manifesto which, referring as it did to joint work of his and another’s, might excusably be supposed to represent his conclusions as well as those of his fellow-worker.