The question of language in itself, if it enters at all here,
enters only as the indifferent means by which a non-poetic end is
sought. The accidentality lies not in the words, but in the poet's
intention.
Coleridge's third and fourth points, 'an undue predilection for the
dramatic form,' and 'an eddying instead of a progression of thought,'
may be passed as quickly as he passes them himself, for in any case they
could only be the cause of a jejuneness of language. The fifth, more
interesting, is the appearance of 'thoughts and images too great for the
subject ... an approximation to what might be called _mental_ bombast.'
Coleridge brings forward as his first instance of this four lines which
have taken a deep hold on the affections of later generations:--
'They flash upon the inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude!
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.'
Coleridge found an almost burlesque bathos in the second couplet after
the first. It would be difficult for a modern critic to accept that
verdict altogether; nevertheless his objection to the first couplet as a
description of physical vision is surely sound.
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