Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . phrase, or sen-tence which is of legitimateuse in prose is equally suitedto poetry): and (2) that, for anumber of reasons, of whichColeridge successively demon-strates the futility, the language of rustic life is better suited than any other to serve this words-twofold purpose. In other words. Poetry and Prose, accord- Theory ofing to this theory, speak but one tongue, and that the of the peasa
Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . phrase, or sen-tence which is of legitimateuse in prose is equally suitedto poetry): and (2) that, for anumber of reasons, of whichColeridge successively demon-strates the futility, the language of rustic life is better suited than any other to serve this words-twofold purpose. In other words. Poetry and Prose, accord- Theory ofing to this theory, speak but one tongue, and that the of the peasant. This is in elfect the counterpartand supplement of the famous discovery of Monsieur Jour-dain. Indeed, the country bumpkin had even greater causefor complacency than the worthy bourgeois: since, howeveragreeable it may have been to the latter to discover thatfor more than forty years he had been without knowing it talking prose, it should have been a source of still highergratification to the former to learn that poetry had been theunsuspected language of his whole life. Even to the plain man, however, unassisted by anycritical acumen or special study of the subject, the theory. Ih,:lo: <{• TAYLOR COLERIDGE, BYPETER VANDYKE. (Xational Portrait (kdhry.) His 792 EXGLANDS STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. [1802 must have suggested one obvious question: If prose does notPractice. essentially difter from ])oetry, why be at the trouble of writingpoetry instead of prose ? Wordsworth, to do him justice, antici-pates this inquiry in his preface, and his answer is exquisitelycharacteristic of his humourless attitude of mind. Why, heasks, am I to be condemned if to such description —that is, tothe description of rustic things and persons, expressed in whathe holds to be the true poetic tongue— I have endeavouredto superadd the charm which by the consent of all nations isacknowledged to exist in metrical language? One thinks ofthe lines— ? In clistaut couutr
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