Of these lines Crabb Robinson said to Wordsworth that "he dared not read them aloud in company." "They ought to be liked," rejoined the poet. Well, we may not like them; but they are interesting, for they present a really instructive specimen of bad art. Clearly enough, here is a poet in difficulties. The "little muddy pond" was not a pond in nature, but a pool; and a pool it would have been in verse, but for the particular exigency--the necessity of rhyming with the word _beyond_. Note now the honesty of our poet. For rhyme's sake he has temporarily sacrificed accuracy; he has called a pool a pond; but to show what the piece of water actually was, that actually it was a pool, though the exigencies of rhyme had forced him to call it provisionally by another name, he goes on to give us its accurate measurement, not only from "side to side," but from end to end as well. "'Tis three feet long and two feet wide," he tells us; and now his northern conscience is satisfied; he seems to say, "I was unfortunately compelled to use the wrong word in this passage, but I make amends at once; these are the precise dimensions of the object, and you can give it the right name yourself." This devotion to the topographical truth of the matter was abated, however, in later editions, perhaps by the derision of the critics. Wordsworth rewrote the passage, one would say, to please the graces rather than the mathematical verities; and the lines now read thus: You see a little muddy pond Of water, never dry, Though but of compass small, and bare To thirsty suns and parching air. Another considerable improvement was made, a little further on, in the same poem. These are the lines as they ran in the "Lyrical Ballads": Poor Martha! on that woful day A cruel, cruel fire, they say, Into her bones was sent; It dried her body like a cinder, And almost turned her brain to tinder. --1798. Certainly there was room for improvement here; and in the edition of 1815 we find the lines recast as follows: A pang of pitiless dismay Into her soul was sent; A Fire was kindled in her breast, Which might not burn itself to rest. Or see again this prosaic passage from "The Brothers," as first published in the "Lyrical Ballads." The lines describe the parting of James from his companions at a certain rock: ----By our shepherds it is call'd the Pillar. James, pointing to its summit, over which They all had purposed to return together, Inform'd them that he there would wait for them; They parted, and his comrades pass'd that way Some two hours after, but they did not find him At the appointed place, a circumstance Of which they took no heed. --1800. It would occur to few readers to call this poetry were it not visibly divided into verse; and Wordsworth himself seems to have thought as much, for after many years he rewrote the passage, condensing and poetizing it as follows: