18. The hostility of Wordsworth to the "poetic diction" of his
time rested on principles of which he scarcely seems himself to
have been conscious.[15] The poets of the last century had lost the
genuine sense of their high calling. Their productions for the most part
were, at best, practical philosophy in verse. They observed the outer
aspect of things, and to make their observations poetry they clothed
them in "poetic diction," which thus became offensive, because
artificial--because a superadded ornament, and not the natural
expression of exalted passion or the emotion which accompanies our
passage "behind the veil." Repugnance to this artificiality misled
Wordsworth into the celebrated assertion that "between the language of
prose and that of metrical composition, there neither is, nor can be,
any essential difference:" an assertion which, as prompted by a feeling
of the incompatibility of poetic language with prosaic thought, is
really a witness to the essential antithesis between poetry and prose.
Verse is simple, harmonious, and unfamiliar. It is thus the fitting
organ for that energy of thought which simplifies the phenomena of life
by referring them to a spiritual principle; which blends its shifting
colours in the light of a master-passion, and passes from the
contradictory data of the common understanding to the unity of a deeper
consciousness. Even the spiritualist philosopher, no less than the poet,
would have to speak in verse, if, instead of making statements, he
portrayed: if, besides asserting that "all things are to be seen in
God," he sought to excite in the reader the emotion appropriate to the
sight. Prose is the "oratio soluta." It is complex, irregular,
inharmonious. It thus corresponds to the natural or phenomenal view of
life; the view of it, that is, in its diversity, as qualified in
innumerable modes by animal wants and apparent accident, and not
harmonised by the action of the spirit.[16] The novelist must express
himself in prose, because this is his view of life: and this must be his
view of life, because he thus expresses himself. It is indeed a view
which may vary according to the circumstances of the case, but only
within definite limits. There is an "earnestness" about some of our
modern novelists, Miss Brontë for instance, which would have seemed out
of place to those of fifty years ago; but this is merely because the
life they see around them is more "earnest." It presents to them scenes
of sterner significance than were to be found among the coquetry and
dissipation of the fashionable world or the dull courtesies of a country
house. But that they do not transcend this outward life we have one
crucial proof. Just in so far as each of us learns to regard his own
individual being from within, and not from without, does he discard
dependence on happiness as arising from external circumstances, and
becomes already in idea, as he tends to become in reality, his own world
and his own law. No novelist attains to the assertion of this spiritual
prerogative. As we follow in sympathy the story of his hero, we find
ourselves lifted up and cast down as fortune changes, our life
brightening as the clouds break above, and darkening as they close
again. If the author chooses to disappoint us with "a bad ending," he
leaves us, not as we are left at the conclusion of a tragedy, purified
from personal desires, but vexed and sorrowful, sadder but not wiser
men.