‘The world has given judgment. Both Mr. Wordsworth and Lord Jeffrey have received their rewards. The one had his own generation—the laughter of men, the applause of drawing-rooms, the concurrence of the crowd; the other, a succeeding age, the fond enthusiasm of secret students, the lonely rapture of lonely minds. And each has received according to his kind. If all cultivated men speak differently because of the existence of Wordsworth and Coleridge; if not a thoughtful English book has appeared for years without some trace for good or for evil of their influence; if sermon-writers subsist upon their thoughts; if “sacred” poets thrive by translating their weaker portions into the speech of women; if, when all this is over, some sufficient part of their writing will ever be fitting food for wild musing and solitary meditation, surely this is because they possessed the inner nature—an “intense and glowing mind”—“the vision and the faculty divine.” But, if perchance in their weaker moments the great authors of the Lyrical ballads did ever imagine that the world was to pause because of their verses, that “Peter Bell” would be popular in drawing-rooms, that “Christabel” would be perused in the City, that people of fashion would make a hand-book of the “Excursion,” it was well for them to be told at once that it was not so. Nature ingeniously prepared a shrill artificial voice, which spoke in season and out of season, enough and more than enough, what will ever be the idea of the cities of the plain concerning those who live alone among the mountains; of the frivolous concerning the grave; of the gregarious concerning the recluse; of those who laugh concerning those who laugh not; of the common concerning the uncommon; of those who lend on usury concerning those who lend not; the notions of the world, of those whom it will not reckon among the righteous. It said, “This won’t do.” And so in all times will the lovers of polished Liberalism speak concerning the intense and lonely “prophet.”’[13]