As an illustration of the extraordinary freaks of contemporary criticism--freaks which still tarnish much that issues from the press--an estimate of those Duddon Sonnets, which appeared in _The Monthly Review_ in 1820, may be referred to. All that posterity now admires in this exquisite series of descriptive poems is decried; and those passages which posterity regards as blemishes, are held up to admiration; _e.g._ the lines with which the tenth sonnet, in "The Stepping-Stones," concludes, which are so frigid and affected, were hailed as "a complete return into the regions of antiquity," and as a sign that "Mr. Wordsworth is certainly improving"! They are the very feeble lines:-- The frolic Loves, who, from yon high rock, see The struggle, clap their wings for victory! while the ... unculled floweret of the glen, Fearless of plough and scythe; or darkling wren That tunes on Duddon's banks her slender voice, is held up to ridicule!--ED. VARIANTS: [Footnote 466: _Paradise Lost_, book viii. l. 282.--ED.] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote GN: John Dyer. _The Ruins of Rome_, 4to, London, 1740. Compare Wordsworth's lines _To the Poet, John Dyer_, vol. iv. p. 273.--ED.] [Footnote GO: Compare p. 302, "Why is the Harp of Quantock silent?"--ED.] [Footnote GP: See _Georgics_ II. 486.--ED.] [Footnote GQ: Armstrong's "apostrophe to the great rivers of the earth" is in his _Art of Preserving Health_ (book ii. ll. 355-364)-- ... I hear the din Of waters thund'ring o'er the ruined cliffs. With holy reverence I approach the rocks Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song. Here from the desert down the rumbling steep First springs the Nile; here vents the sounding Po In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves A mighty flood to water half the East; And there, in Gothic solitude reclined, The cheerless Tanais pours his hoary urn. ED. ] [Footnote GR: From his _Epistle to William Simpson, Ochiltree_; stanza 15.--ED.] NOTE TO SONNETS XVII AND XVIII