We have thus gone through this publication, with a view to enable our
readers to determine, whether the author of the verses which have now
been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or
restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or
new-model all our maxims on this subject. If we were to stop here, we do
not think that Mr Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to
complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably the most peculiar
and characteristic part of his publication, and must be defended and
applauded if the merit or originality of his system is to be seriously
maintained. In our own opinion, however, the demerit of that system
cannot be fairly appreciated, until it be shown, that the author of the
bad verses which we have already extracted, can write good verses when
he pleases; and that, in point of fact, he does always write good
verses, when, by any accident, he is led to abandon his system, and to
transgress the laws of that school which he would fain establish on the
ruin of all existing authority.
The length to which our extracts and observations have already extended,
necessarily restrains us within more narrow limits in this part of our
citations; but it will not require much labour to find a pretty decided
contrast to some of the passages we have already detailed. The song on
the restoration of Lord Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient
minstrel of the family; and in composing it, the author was led,
therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner and phraseology that
is understood to be connected with that sort of composition, and to
throw aside his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities. How
he has succeeded, the reader will be able to judge from the few
following extracts.
[Quotes fifty-six lines of _Lord Clifford_.]
All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton; and, in this way,
Mr Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets, escapes again from the trammels
of his own unfortunate system; and the consequence is, that his sonnets
are as much superior to the greater part of his other poems, as Milton's
sonnets are superior to his.
[Quotes the sonnets _On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic_,
_London_, and _I griev'd for Buonaparte_.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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