The position he offers in opposition to the one he draws from the Preface closely resembles the one Wordsworth actually put forward there. Although intelligible meanings can be discovered for Wordsworth’s remarks about “the real language of men” and the lack of “ essential difference” between the languages of verse and prose, Coleridge’s exegesis reduces them to absurdity. It distorts Wordsworth’s account of his choice of subjects and his comments on poetic language. His discussion of the Preface repeatedly shifts the positions to which it objects and misleadingly distinguishes between what the Preface can legitimately be taken to mean and what it probably does mean. Although Coleridge’s interpretation of Wordsworth’s Preface has shaped subsequent understanding of Wordsworth’s meaning, Coleridge was out not to clarify but to refute Wordsworth.
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