With this view I wrote the _Ancient Mariner,_ and was preparing, among
other poems, the _Dark Ladie,_ and the _Christabel,_ in which I should
have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt.
But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and
the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead
of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous
matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own
character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is
characteristic of his genius. In this form the _Lyrical Ballads_ were
published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether
subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and
extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed
in the language of ordinary life as to produce the pleasurable interest
which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart. To the second
edition he added a preface of considerable length; in which,
notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import, he was
understood to contend for the extension of this style to poetry of all
kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms
of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think,
adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of real life.
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