It is perhaps an anti-climax, though a very Coleridgean one, when he proceeds to criticise (very justly) Wordsworth’s criticism of Gray, and some passages both of his own and others: but we can have no quarrel with him when he ends the chapter, too verbosely indeed, but unanswerably, with the following conclusion of the whole matter: “When a poem, or part of a poem, shall be adduced, which is evidently vicious in the figures and contexture of its style, yet for the condemnation of which no reason can be assigned, except that it differs from the style in which men actually converse,—then and not till then can I hold this theory to be either plausible or practicable, or capable of furnishing either such guidance, or precaution, that might not, more easily and more safely, as well as more naturally, have been deduced in the author’s own mind from considerations of grammar, logic, and the truth and nature of things, confirmed by the authority of works whose fame is not of one country and of one age.” [Sidenote: _The_ Argumentum ad Gulielmum.] He has now (chaps. xix., xx.) argued himself into more confidence than he had shown earlier, and seems disposed to retract his concession that W. W.'s limitations were _not_ intended to apply to all poetry. He sees, indeed, from the criticism on Gray, and from Wordsworth’s references to Milton, that this concession was excessive, but still he thinks the general notion too monstrous for Wordsworth to have held. And he swerves, once more, to point out the especial beauty of beautiful diction and beautiful metre _added_ to fine or just thought, and introduces interesting but rather superfluous examples of this from all manner of poets down to Wordsworth himself. These last lead him to the very just conclusion, “Were there excluded from Mr W.'s poetic compositions all that a literal adherence to the theory of his Preface would exclude, two-thirds at least of the marked beauties of his poetry must be erased.”[361] Which indeed is once more a conclusion of the whole matter.[362] [Sidenote: _The study of his poetry._]