..and are incorporated with
the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." Wordsworth discarded, in
theory, the poetic diction of his predecessors, and professed to use "a
selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation." He
adopted, he said, the language of men in rustic life, "because such men
hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of
language is originally derived."
In the matter of poetic diction Wordsworth did not, in his practice,
adhere to the doctrine of this preface. Many of his most admired poems,
such as the _Lines written near Tintern Abbey_, the great _Ode on the
Intimations of Immortality_, the _Sonnets_, and many parts of his
longest poems, _The Excursion_ and _The Prelude_, deal with philosophic
thought and highly intellectualized emotions. In all of these and in
many others the language is rich, stately, involved, and as remote from
the "real language" of Westmoreland shepherds as is the epic blank verse
of Milton. On the other hand, in those of his poems which were
consciously written in illustration of his theory, the affectation of
simplicity, coupled with a defective sense of humor, sometimes led him
to the selection of vulgar and trivial themes, and the use of language
which is bald, childish, or even ludicrous.
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