With this insolence it is satisfactory to contrast the verdict of the _Edinburgh_: "We have been exceedingly struck with the genius these poems--_Endymion_, _Lamia_, _Isabella_, _The Eve of St. Agnes_, &c.--display, and the spirit of poetry which breathes through all their extravagance. . . . They are at least as full of genius as absurdity." Of _Hyperion_ the Reviewer says: "An original character and distinct individuality is bestowed upon the poet's mythological persons. . . . We cannot advise its completion. For, though there are passages of some force and grandeur, it is sufficiently obvious that the subject is too far removed from all the sources of human interest to be successfully treated by any modern author". [Footnote: Edinburgh Review, xxxiv. 203.] A blundering criticism, which, however, may be pardoned in virtue of the discernment, not to say the generosity, of the foregoing estimate. It would have been well had the _Edinburgh_ always written in this vein. But Wordsworth was a sure stumbling-block to the sagacity of his critics, and he certainly never failed to call forth the insolence and flippancy of Jeffrey. Two articles upon him remain as monuments to the incompetence of the _Edinburgh_; the first prompted by the Poems of 1807, the second by the _Excursion_. The former pronounces sentence roundly at the very start: "Mr. Wordsworth's diction has nowhere any pretence to elegance or dignity, and he has scarcely ever condescended to give the grace of correctness or dignity to his versification". From this sweeping condemnation four poems--_Brougham Castle_, and the sonnets on Venice, Milton, and Bonaparte--are generously excepted. But, as though astonished at his own moderation, the reviewer quickly proceeds to deal slaughter among the rest. Of the closing lines of _Resolution and Independence_ he writes: "We defy Mr. Wordsworth's bitterest enemy to produce anything at all parallel to this from any collection of English poetry, or even from the specimens of his friend, Mr. Southey". Of the stanzas to the sons of Burns, "never was anything more miserable". _Alice Fell_ is "trash"; _Yarrow Unvisited_, "tedious and affected". The lines from the _Ode to Duty_. "Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong," are "utterly without meaning". The poem on the _Cuckoo_ is "absurd". The _Ode on Immortality_ is "the most illegible and unintelligible part of the whole publication". "We venture to hope that there is now an end of this folly." [Footnote: _Edinburgh Review_, xi. 217, &c.]