William wordsworth the critical heritage, volume i 1793 1820

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE

Volume I

1793–1820


THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES
GENERAL EDITOR: B. C. SOU THAM, M.A., B.LITT. (OXON)

Formerly Department of English, Westfield College,
University of London

The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on
major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary
responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work and its place within a literary
tradition.
The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history
of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published
documentary material, such as letters and diaries.
Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in
order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s
death.
For a list of volumes in the series, see the end of the book.


WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH
THE CRIT IC AL HERITAGE
Volume I

1793–1820

Edited by

ROBERT WOOF

London and New York


First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
Compilation, introduction, notes © 2001 Robert Woof
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
William Wordsworth / [compiled by] Robert Woof.
p. cm. – (Critical heritage series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Wordsworth, William, 1770–1850 – Criticism and interpretation.
I. Woof, Robert. II. Series.
PR5888 .W44
2001
821′.7 – dc21
00–045941
ISBN 0-203-16902-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26436-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–03441–8 (Print Edition)


General Editor’s Preface
The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and nearcontemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On the one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at
large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes
towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in
letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and
literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind
helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his
immediate reading public, and his response to these pressures.
The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage series present a record
of this early criticism. In each volume the documents are headed by an
Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early
stages of the author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the
critical tradition. The volumes make available much material that would
otherwise be difficult of access and present-day readers will be in a
position to arrive at an informed understanding of the ways in which
literature has been read and judged.
Dr Woof ’s first Wordsworth volume, running from the earliest reviews

of 1793 to The River Duddon volume of 1820, treats a vast body of
criticism, including journal reviews, satires, parodies and imitations,
together with fugitive comments in private letters and journals, some
of which material has not been seen in print before.
The strict chronological arrangement of the material, together with
Dr Woof ’s illuminating Introduction and the extensive headnotes,
provide us with an invaluable perspective on Wordsworth’s towering
presence amongst his contemporaries and enable us to follow the stages
of his poetic growth and change over the years.
BCS



Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Note on References
Introduction with Select Bibliography

xix
xx
1

I EARLY NOTICES AND OPINIONS, 1793–1801

1
2
3
4
5
6

7
8
9
10
11
12
13

Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk

17

dorothy wordsworth, letter, 1793
Unsigned review, Analytical Review, 1793
Unsigned review, Critical Review, 1793
Unsigned review, Critical Review, 1793
Unsigned review, European Magazine, 1793
thomas holcroft, Monthly Review, 1793
christopher wordsworth, diary, 1793
Unsigned notice, English Review, 1793
Review signed ‘Peregrinator’, Gentleman’s Magazine, 1794
Unsigned notice, New Annual Register 1793, 1794
samuel taylor coleridge, note to poem, 1795/6
anna seward, letter, 1798
james plumptre, diary, 1799

17
18
20
21

22
23
26
27
28
30
31
32
33

‘The Birth of Love’

33

14 francis wrangham, letter, 1795
‘Salisbury Plain’

33
34

15 azariah pinney, letters, 1796
16 charles lamb, letter, 1796
17 samuel taylor coleridge, letters, 1796–1798
‘The Borderers’

34
36
36
38

18 samuel taylor coleridge, letters, 1797
19 robert southey, letter, 1797
vii

38
39


CONTENTS

20
21
22
23
24
25

26
27
28
29
30
31

edward ferguson, letter, 1798
elizabeth rawson (née threlkeld), letter, 1798
samuel taylor coleridge, letter, 1798
william hazlitt, reminiscences, 1798/1823
thomasina dennis, letter, 1798
charles lloyd, letter, 1798

39
40
41
41
44
46

‘Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree’

48

charles lamb, letter, 1797
thomas wedgwood, letter, 1797
elizabeth rawson (née threlkeld), letter, 1799
joanna hutchinson, letter, 1799
samuel taylor coleridge, letter, 1800
james losh, diary, 1798–1801

48
49
49
50
50
51

II LYRIC AL BALLADS: OPINIONS, NOVEMBER 1798–JULY 1800

32
33

34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43

Lyrical Ballads

55

christopher wordsworth, letter, 1798
charles lamb, letter, 1798
thomas denman, letter, 1798
robert southey, letter, 1798
hannah more, comments recalled by Joseph Cottle,
1798/1847
sara coleridge, letter, 1799
francis jeffrey, letter, 1799
robert southey, letter, 1799
mary spedding, letter, 1799
henry crabb robinson, résumé of 1799
robert southey, letter, 1800
samuel taylor coleridge, letter, 1800

55

55
56
57
57
58
58
58
59
60
60
60

‘There was a boy’

61

44 samuel taylor coleridge, letter, 1799
‘A slumber did my spirit seal’

61
62

45 samuel taylor coleridge, letter, 1799

viii

62


CONTENTS

III LYRIC AL BALLADS: REVIEWS, OCTOBER 1798–APRIL 1800

46 Unsigned review, Monthly Mirror, 1798
47 robert southey, unsigned review, Critical Review, 1798
48 Unsigned review, Analytical Review, 1798
49 Unsigned notice, Monthly Magazine, 1799
50 Unsigned notice, New Annual Register 1798, 1799
51 Unsigned review, New London Review, 1799
52 charles burney, unsigned review, Monthly Review, 1799
53 Unsigned review, British Critic, 1799
54 Unsigned review, Naval Chronicle, 1799
54a alexander thomson, The British Parnassus at the Close of
the Eighteenth Century, 1801
55 w. heath, unsigned notice, Anti-Jacobin Review, 1800
56 daniel stuart, reviews & comments, Morning Post &
Courier, 1800

65
65
68
69
70
70
74
78
82
83
84
84

IV LYRIC AL BALLADS: OPINIONS, AUGUST 1800–FEBRUARY 1801

57 samuel taylor coleridge, letters, 1800–1801
58 charles lloyd, letters, 1801
59 thomas clarkson and catherine clarkson, letters and
writings, 1800–1806
60 john wordsworth, letters, 1801
61 charles lamb, letters, 1801
62 christopher wordsworth, letters, 1801
63 thomas manning, letters, 1801
64 william wordsworth, letter, 1801
65 joanna hutchinson, letter, 1801
66 charles james fox, letter, 1801
67 george bellas greenough, diary, 1801
68 dorothy wordsworth, Journal, 1801
69 robert southey, letters, 1801–1802
70 john wilson (‘Christopher North’), letter, 1802
71 dr alexander carlyle, letter, c. 1802
72 richard warner, Tour through the Northern Counties of
England, 1802
73 samuel taylor coleridge, letters, 1802
74 thomas twining, letter, 1802
ix

89
91
92
95
99

102
103
104
105
106
106
107
107
108
114
115
116
119


CONTENTS

75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83

fanny allen, reminiscence by her niece, 1802
robert southey, letters, 1802–1803
thomas de quincey, letters, 1803–1804

samuel taylor coleridge, letters, 1803–1804
sir george beaumont, letters, 1803–1806
john rickman, letter, 1804
francis jeffrey and francis horner, exchange, 1804
anna seward, letter, 1806
joseph farington, diary, 1806

119
120
121
124
126
127
127
129
129

V LYRIC AL BALLADS: REVIEWS, FEBRUARY 1801–APRIL 1804

84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93

john stoddart, letter and unsigned review, 1801
Editorial notice, British Critic, 1801
Unsigned review, Monthly Mirror, 1801
Unsigned notice, Monthly Review, 1802
American notices, 1799–1810
francis jeffrey, unsigned review of Southey’s Thalaba,
Edinburgh Review, 1802
daniel stuart, notices, Morning Post, 1803
Unsigned review of Remarks on Scotland by John Stoddart,
Anti-Jacobin Review, 1803
‘T. N.’, essay, Edinburgh Magazine, 1803
robert southey (with wordsworth and coleridge),
unsigned review of Poems by Peter Bayley, Annual Review
1803, 1804

137
143
144
145
146
153
159
160
160

161

VI POEMS, 1807: REVIEWS, 1807–1811

94

95
96
97

byron, unsigned review, Monthly Literary Recreations, 1807
Unsigned review, Critical Review, 1807
Unsigned review, Records of Literature, 1807
Unsigned review, Le Beau Monde, or Literary and Fashionable
Magazine, 1807
98 francis jeffrey, unsigned review, Edinburgh Review, 1807
99 Unsigned review, Satirist or Monthly Meteor, 1807
100 james montgomery, letter, unsigned review, memoir and
reminiscence, 1807–1812
x

169
170
176
177
185
201
205


CONTENTS

101 lucy aikin, unsigned review, Annual Review, 1807
102 Unsigned review, The Cabinet, or Monthly Review of Polite
Literature, 1808
103 francis jeffrey, unsigned review of Crabb’s Poems,

Edinburgh Review, 1808
104 Unsigned notice, British Critic, 1809
105 Unsigned notice, Poetical Register and Repository for Fugitive
Poetry, 1807, 1811

215
222
224
230
231

VII POEMS, 1807: OPINIONS, 1806–1814

106 walter scott, letters, 1806–1808
107 robert southey, letters, 1807
108 john taylor coleridge, letters, a review and
reminiscences, 1807–1846
109 Wordsworth answers his critics, letters, 1807–1808
110 mrs a. b. skepper, letter, 1807
111 anna seward, letters, 1807–1808
112 Some painters’ opinions. Diaries, letters and writings,
1807–1814
113 elizabeth vassal fox, lady holland, journal and letter,
1807
114 r. p. gillies, reminiscence, 1807
115 thomas wilkinson, letter, 1808
116 joanna baillie, letters, 1808–1820
117 robert morehead, Poetical Epistle, 1808/1813
118 ? richard mant, The Simpliciad, 1808
119 samuel taylor coleridge, The Friend, 1809–1810

120 john wilson and alexander blair, The Friend, 1809
121 byron, reviews, comments and correspondence,
1807–1814
122 Unsigned lampoon, Satirist or Monthly Meteor, 1809
123 walter scott, unsigned essay, Edinburgh Annual Register
for 1808, 1810
124 john rickman, letter, 1810
125 henry crabb robinson, diary, 1811
126 charles lamb, letter, 1810
127 james losh, diary, 1810–1821
xi

235
236
237
245
249
250
252
257
258
259
260
261
262
284
287
288
293
294

299
299
300
300


CONTENTS

128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136

henry crabb robinson, diary, 1811–1814
percy bysshe shelley, letter, 1811
Anon., Modern Poets. A Dialogue, in Verse, 1813
william godwin, letter, 1811
francis jeffrey, unsigned reviews, Edinburgh Review,
1811–1812
rev. francis hodgson, Leaves of Laurel, 1813
leigh hunt, writings, 1811–1815
thomas barnes, essay signed ‘Strada’, Champion, 1814
j. h. reynolds, letter and The Eden of Imagination, 1814

302

319
319
320
321
327
328
340
345

VIII CONVENTION OF CINTRA:
REVIEWS AND OPINIONS, 1809–1833

137
138
139
140
141

joseph farington, diary, 1809
james montgomery, unsigned review, Eclectic Review, 1809
Unsigned review, British Critic, 1809
samuel taylor coleridge, The Friend, 1809
henry crabb robinson, unsigned essay, London Review,
1809
142 robert southey, letter, 1810
143 george canning, remark, 1825
144 samuel taylor coleridge, Table Talk, 1833

351
353

355
357
358
360
360
361

IX THE EXCURSION: REVIEWS, 1814–1820

145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152

Unsigned notice, Variety, 1814
Unsigned notice, New Monthly Magazine, 1814
william hazlitt, unsigned review, Examinier, 1814
francis jeffrey, unsigned review, Edinburgh Review,
1814
charles lamb, unsigned review, Quarterly Review, 1814
james montgomery, unsigned review, Eclectic Magazine,
1815
Unsigned notice, Monthly Magazine, 1815
john herman merivale, unsigned review, Monthly
Review, 1815
xii

365
365
366
381
404
416
437
437


CONTENTS

153 john taylor coleridge, unsigned review, British Critic,
1815
154 Unsigned notice, La Belle Assemblée; or, Bell’s Court and
Fashionable Magazine, 1815
155 charles abraham elton, unsigned review, British Review
and London Critical Jourrnal, 1815
156 Unsigned review, The Philanthropist or Repository for Hints and
Suggestions Calculated to Promote the Happiness of Man, 1815
157 Unsigned notice, Literary Gazette, 1820

443
457
458
469
484

X THE EXCURSION: SOME OPINIONS, 1812–1818

158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175

henry crabb robinson, diary, 1812
robert southey, letters, 1814–1816
thomas poole, letter, 1814
charles lamb, letter, 1814
henry crabb robinson, diary, 1814–1815
william cookson, letter, 1814
william taylor, letters, 1814–1815
mary shelley and percy bysshe shelley, journal, sonnet
and reminiscence, 1814–1816
catherine clarkson, letter, 1814

francis horner, letter, 1815
thomas babington macaulay, letter, 1815
william johnson fox, letter, 1815
sir george and lady beaumont, letters, 1814–1818
r. p. gillies, letters, 1815–1816
dorothy wordsworth, letter, 1815
samuel taylor coleridge, letters, 1815
john edwards, letters, 1814–1817
priscilla wordsworth, letter, 1815

489
490
492
492
493
497
498
499
501
502
503
504
505
509
510
511
514
516

XI POEMS, 1815 and THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE:

REVIEWS AND OPINIONS, 1808–1820

176 samuel taylor coleridge, letter, 1808
177 Unsigned review, Theatrical Inquisitor, 1815
178 john scott, review signed ‘S*’, Champion, 1815
xiii

519
521
522


CONTENTS

179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189

Unsigned review, British Lady’s Magazine, 1815
528
Unsigned notice, New Monthly Magazine, 1815
531

Unsigned review, Augustan Review, 1815
531
francis jeffrey, unsigned review, Edinburgh Review, 1815 539
bernard barton, letter and poem, 1815
548
Unsigned review, British Review, 1815
551
Unsigned review, Monthly Review, 1815
557
Unsigned review, Monthly Review, 1815
567
Unsigned review, Gentleman’s Magazine, 1815
568
josiah conder, unsigned review, Eclectic Review, 1816
569
rev. william rowe lyall, unsigned review, Quarterly Review,
1815
577
190 henry crabb robinson, diary, 1816
591
191 Unsigned review, European Magazine, 1816
592
192 mrs basil montagu, letters, 1819–1820
593

XII LET TER TO A FRIEND OF ROBERT BURNS:
REVIEWS AND OPINIONS, 1816–1817

193
194

195
196
197

james gray, letter, 1815
charles lamb, letter, 1816
r. p. gillies, letter, 1816
Unsigned review, Critical Review, 1816
Unsigned review, Scots Magazine and Edinburgh Literary
Miscellany, 1816
198 john wilson, letters, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine,
1817
198a william hazlitt

597
599
600
600
603
607
614

XIII ‘THANKSGIVING ODE’: REVIEWS AND OPINIONS, 1816–1817

199
200
201
202
203
204

205

henry crabb robinson, diary, 1816
john scott, letter, 1816
josiah conder, unsigned review, Eclectic Review, 1816
Unsigned review, British Critic, 1816
john scott, unsigned review, Champion, 1816
Unsigned review, Dublin Examiner, 1816
Unsigned review, Monthly Review, 1817
xiv

617
617
619
623
623
630
636


CONTENTS

XIV ‘PETER BELL’ AND ‘THE WAGGONER’:
REVIEWS AND OPINIONS, 1819

206
207
208
209
210

211
212
213
214
215
216
217

‘Peter Bell’

641

charles lamb, letter, 1819
Unsigned review, Literary Gazette, 1819
leigh hunt, unsigned review, Examiner, 1819
henry crabb robinson, diary, 1819
Unsigned notice, Gentleman’s Magazine, 1819
Review signed ‘J. B.’, European Magazine, 1819
Unsigned reviews, Theatrical Inquisitor and Monthly Mirror,
1819
Unsigned review, Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review,
1819
Unsigned notice, Monthly Magazine, 1819
john taylor coleridge, unsigned review, British Critic,
1819
Unsigned review, Monthly Review, 1819
Review signed ‘H. St. John’, Kaleidoscope, or Literary and
Scientific Mirror, 1821

641

641
651
655
655
656

‘Peter Bell’ and ‘The Waggoner’

695

218 josiah conder, unsigned review, Eclectic Review, 1819
219 Unsigned review, Literary and Statistical Magazine for
Scotland, 1819
220 juliet smith, letter, 1819
221 Unsigned review, Edinburgh Monthly Review, 1819
‘The Waggoner’

661
668
669
669
687
689

695
705
708
708
713

222
223
224
225
226

charles lamb, letter, 1819
Unsigned review, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1819
Unsigned review, Literary Gazette, 1819
Unsigned review, European Magazine, 1819
Unsigned review, General Review or Weekly Literary
Epitome, 1819
227 Unsigned review, Theatrical Inquisitor and Monthly Mirror,
1819
228 Unsigned notice, Monthly Magazine, 1819
229 Unsigned notice, Gentleman’s Magazine, 1819
xv

713
714
715
722
726
728
730
730


CONTENTS

230 Unsigned review, Monthly Review, 1819
231 john taylor coleridge, unsigned review, British Critic,
1819

731
734

XV ‘THE RIVER DUDDON’: REVIEWS AND OPINIONS, 1820–1821

232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244

charles lamb, letter, 1820
Unsigned review, Literary Gazette, 1820
Unsigned review, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1820
Unsigned review, London Magazine, 1820
Unsigned review, European Magazine, 1820
Unsigned review, Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review,
1820

Unsigned notice, Ladies Monthly Museum, 1820
Unsigned review, Eclectic Review,1820
Unsigned review, Literary and Statistical Magazine for
Scotland, 1820
Unsigned review, British Review, 1820
Unsigned notice, Gentleman’s Magazine, 1820
Unsigned review, Monthly Review, 1820
john taylor coleridge, unsigned review, British Critic,
1821

751
751
755
759
764
767
769
770
776
777
787
788
794

XVI LATER OPINIONS, 1815–1820

245
246
247
248

249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257

charles lamb, letters, 1815
henry crabb robinson, diary, 1815
robert southey, letter, 1815
william lisle bowles, ‘The Two Sailors’, 1815
thomas wilkinson, letter, 1815
walter savage landor, letters, 1815–1822
mary barker, Lines Addressed to a Noble Lord, 1815
mary bryan, a Dedication to Wordsworth, 1815
john gibson lockhart, letters and essays, 1815–1821
mary russell mitford, letters, 1815–1819
thomas noon talfourd, writings, 1815–1835
william hazlitt, writings, 1815–1818
byron, letters and writings, 1815–1821
xvi

815
819
822
822
823

824
828
829
832
842
844
879
896


CONTENTS

258 benjamin robert haydon, letters and diary, 1815–1817
259 leigh hunt, letters and writings, 1814–1818
260 john hamilton reynolds, letters and writings,
1815–1816
261 samuel rogers, letter, 1816
262 james hogg, Poetic Mirror, 1816
263 john keats, letters and writings 1817–1819
264 sarah wedgwood, letter, 1817
265 william whewell, letters, 1817–1822
266 percy bysshe shelley, letters and writings, 1817–1822
267 j. w. croker, letter, 1818
268 peter george patmore, writings, 1818–1823
269 john wilson, writings, 1818–1819
270 william howison, writings, 1818
271 robert morehead, ‘Observations on the Poetical
Character of Dante’, 1818
272 c. h. terrot, Common Sense, 1819
273 robert southey, letters, 1819

274 Unsigned biographical account, New Monthly Magazine,
1819
275 george ticknor, journals, 1819–1837
276 richard henry dana, sr., review of Hazlitt’s Lectures on
the English Poets, North-American Review, 1819
277 hans busk, letters, 1819–1820
278 sir george beaumont, letter, 1819
279 john scott, unsigned review, London Magazine, 1820
280 thomas samuel mulock, report of a meeting, 1820
281 the etonians: W. M. Praed and H. N. Coleridge,
Etonian, 1820

Index

911
922
931
948
950
972
982
983
986
995
995
997
1010
1019
1022
1023

1025
1031
1033
1037
1041
1042
1057
1060

1068

xvii



Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the many librarians over many years who have
given me access to their collections, both of periodicals and of archives.
The biggest debts are to the British Library and to the Wordsworth
Library, but, as will be evident from the sources cited, private owners
were always generous. I would like to acknowledge the assistance
I received from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the
Leverhulme Trust in making research possible over the years.
I would like to thank Sally Woodhead for her accurate and thoughtful
typing of the text; Peter Regan for encouraging me to think that the
book might be a finishable project; Alan Beale for translating and
identifying foreign quotations; and my wife, Pamela, who, thirty years
ago, thought the project an excellent idea. It is, and always was, her book.

xix

Abbreviations and Note on References
Abbreviations have been kept to a minimum. Whenever possible, full
references are given with each of the extracts.
Wordsworth’s texts are difficult to cite. There has been no complete
edition of his poems since the work of Ernest de Selincourt and Helen
Darbishire in the mid-twentieth century. The admirable Cornell’s
Wordsworth, general editor Stephen Parrish, will be the basis of a future
edition.
After the name of the poem, the reader is referred to the de
Selincourt/Darbishire text. Because the revisions are particularly radical
in Wordsworth’s early work, such as Lyrical Ballads, 1798 and 1800, and
Poems 1807, additional references are given to those volumes.
LB (1798) &
LB (1800)

Poems 1807
PW

PW, I
PW, II
PW, III
PW, IV
PW, V

Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth and Coleridge. The text of
the 1798 edition with the additional 1800 poems and the
Prefaces edited with introduction, notes and appendices,
R. L. Brett and A. R. Jones (London, Methuen and Co.

Ltd, 1963).
Wordsworth: Poems in Two Volumes, 1807, ed. Helen
Darbishire (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1914).
The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de
Selincourt, volumes I–V, 1940–9. Second edition (of
Vols. I–III), ed. Helen Darbishire, 1952–4).
Volume I, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 1940, revised by
Helen Darbishire, 1952.
Volume II, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 1944, revised by
Helen Darbishire, 1952.
Volume III, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 1946, revised by
Helen Darbishire, 1954.
Volume IV, ed. Ernest de Selincourt and Helen
Darbishire, 1947.
Volume V, ed. Ernest de Selincourt and Helen
Darbishire, 1949.

xx


Introduction with Select Bibliography

‘He strides on so far before you he dwindles in the distance.’

This was Coleridge’s explanation for the failure of intelligent men, in
this case his patron, Tom Wedgwood, and the Whig and one-time
radical, James Mackintosh, to recognise Wordsworth’s power. It was
Coleridge who enunciated the principle (one also shared by Wordsworth) which later defended Wordsworth from the attacks of his
earliest critics: ‘every great and original writer, in proportion as he is
great or original, must create the taste by which he is to be relished;

he must teach the art by which he is to be seen.’ Much of our
understanding of Wordsworth springs from Coleridge, but, perhaps to
a surprising extent, it depends also on what Wordsworth himself has
told us about his art. His prefaces and essays, his letters, his dictated
notes, records of his conversation, his sister Dorothy’s Journals, have
all been potent in elucidating the nature of his poetry: of course,
intentions are no substitute for great poetry, but if the poet is indeed
as great as Wordsworth was, his insights about his own work cannot
be ignored.
Yet it is still a valid question whether or not Wordsworth’s published
writings about his verse were a help or a hindrance to the growth of his
reputation during his lifetime. The seminal Preface to Lyrical Ballads,
1800, has insights which scholars and poets still delight to debate, and
Wordsworth himself came to see that it was sometimes difficult for his
contemporaries to understand his new emphasis on a poetry that was
true to the very nuance of human feelings. About Coleridge’s remark in
the Biographia Literaria, 1817, that the theory had been the first object of
the critics’ attack and had got in the way of the poetry, he commented
wryly:
In [the Biographia] there is frequent reference to what is called Mr. W’s theory
& his Preface. I will mention that I never cared a straw about the theory –
& the Preface was written at the request of Mr. Coleridge out of sheer good
nature. I recollect the very spot, a deserted Quarry in the Vale of Grasmere

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INTRODUCTION WITH SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

where he pressed the thing upon me, & but for that it would never have been

thought of.
(Marginalia in Barron Field’s Memoirs of Wordsworth, 1839,
ed. Geoffrey Little, Sidney, 1975, 62)

There is truth in the notion that some critics did see the Preface as a stick
with which to beat the poet – not, one notes, immediately after publication but over the next few years, when it had settled, after revisions in
1802 and 1805, upon its revolutionary foundations. Indeed, there were
few immediate reviews of Lyrical Ballads with its Preface (1800); the
edition was generally regarded as a re-issue of the 1798 volume, an old
publication.
In these early years there was a special vital audience which nurtured
Wordsworth – a fit audience but few – which consisted of his family –
Dorothy and Christopher in particular, but also his sailor-brother John
with his future wife Mary and her sister Sara Hutchinson adding their
voices. There was also Elizabeth Threlkeld, later Elizabeth Rawson,
whose letters through fragmentary comments show how the Wordsworth cousins were taking a warm interest. And then, outside the
immediate family, was the acquired ‘family’ – friends such as the young
Pinneys, sons of a Bristol sugar merchant; Francis Wrangham, Wordsworth’s co-author in an imitation of Juvenal’s Eighth Satire; Basil
Montagu, whose child Wordsworth and Dorothy looked after. By 1797/
8, the Bristol circle had enlarged to include some who were better known
to Coleridge than to Wordsworth – Joseph Cottle, Thomas Poole, James
Tobin, John Estlin and James Losh and his clerical friend, Richard
Warner, who were settled at Bath, the former suffering from ill health.
Losh in 1798 lent his fellow Cumbrian his cottage at Shirehampton and
not only sent Wordsworth new books but was one of the earliest to listen
to Wordsworth reading his new poems aloud. John Thelwall was a more
notorious figure, whose retirement to the Wye Valley, by way of a visit to
Alfoxden in 1797, simply reminds us of the network of support Wordsworth and Coleridge possessed. Thelwall was a weakish poet, and only
with exaggeration could he be called a fellow writer: still, his letters
written from the Wye Valley in 1798 – (see Towards Tintern Abbey,

Grasmere, 1998, 80–2), express sympathies for the teaching power of
nature some four months before Wordsworth wrote ‘Tintern Abbey’.
Even William Godwin, the radical philosopher in London, thought in
1797 of recommending the two poets to the Wedgwoods as possible
researchers for a proposed education project. There were other lively
figures – such as Dr Thomas Beddoes and his brilliant young assistant,
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INTRODUCTION WITH SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Humphry Davy; Davies Giddy, Cornish MP and patron to both Davy
and Thomasina Dennis, the latter a young writer who became governess to the family of the second Josiah Wedgwood; Thomas, Josiah’s
philosophically-minded brother; and the Allen family who linked the
Wedgwoods and Sir James Mackintosh, since the second Josiah and
Mackintosh married sisters. A key London friend was Charles Lamb
who, from 1797, became one of those lifetime presences, attentive to
Wordsworth’s authorship through the years. A year later the young
Hazlitt was to journey to Alfoxden and Nether Stowey from Shropshire: he was to brood for seventeen years before publishing the first of
his commentaries and a further eight before he published the scintillating On My First Acquaintance with Poets in Leigh Hunt’s The Liberal,
1823. Hazlitt’s future brother-in-law, John Stoddart (the future editor
of The Times, ruthlessly satirised as Doctor Slop by William Hone),
was a cold-hearted Godwinian rationalist (according to Lamb) who
typified one group of reviewers – lawyers who took time off their legal
studies to appraise and often roast a poet. Denman, Lockhart, John
Taylor Coleridge and the redoubtable Francis Jeffrey were all practising
lawyers.
It was one of those lucky/unlucky chances that Wordsworth persuaded his London friend, John Stoddart, staying at Grasmere on his
way to Scotland (where he was courting Isabella Moncrieff), to review
Lyrical Ballads for the British Critic (1802). Stoddart had become (after

severe initial doubts) somewhat intemperate in his advocacy of his Lake
friends, both in print and in conversation, and seems to have irritated a
group of young Edinburgh Whigs about to begin a new quarterly, the
Edinburgh Review: Francis Jeffrey became their leader, but the circle
included Mackintosh, Sydney Smith and Francis Horner.
Wordsworth and Coleridge put on the title-page of the 1800 Lyrical
Ballads the Latin motto, ‘Quam nihil ad genium, Papiniane, tuum!’,
which means ‘not exactly to your taste, o lawyers’, and this carried an
implicit challenge to the reviewers who were indeed lawyers hoping to
gain an extra penny to their often scanty purses. They took on a review of
books, often in bulk, rather as if they were taking on a brief. They were
cutting, scathing and entertaining. Francis Jeffrey, whose first reaction to
the anonymous 1798 Lyrical Ballads was favourable, was, from 1802, to
make Wordsworth’s poetry the subject of some powerful attacks. There
is a spurious reasonableness and liveliness about Jeffrey’s essays that
sweep a reader on, and yet, when Jeffrey was faced with the ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’, he can only dismiss it in 1807 as ‘the most
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INTRODUCTION WITH SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

illegible and unintelligible part of the publication’. And The Excursion in
1814 was received by Jeffrey with a contempt of celebrated proportions:
‘This will never do’; in this way Jeffrey buried in his ironic manner even
the small vestiges of praise that he allowed the poem. Two years later his
review of The White Doe of Rylstone began,
This we think has the merit of being the very worst poem we ever saw imprinted
in a quarto volume.

Jeffrey fought his way against Wordsworth by means of these essays, and

such opening sentences declared the tone. Robert Southey observed that
Jeffrey could not spoil the laurels of Wordsworth and Coleridge and
himself, though he might mildew their corn. Whatever the effect on
Southey’s corn, Wordsworth’s sales were slow, and undoubtedly Jeffrey
was in some measure responsible. Southey, the weakest of the three
poets, was himself perhaps one whose presence among the Lake poets
veiled Wordsworth’s excellence and originality from his readers. Francis
Jeffrey found that by attacking the Lake poets as a school, he could
sweep all their separate faults together and so tar and ridicule their
reputations. Wordsworth and Coleridge in fact were different enough,
and Southey was never a serious party to their collaborations. Arguably,
Wordsworth never accepted Southey as a major poet, though he did
admire him as a good man and as a neighbour. Coleridge thought of
Southey as a prose writer, and his late comment in Table-Talk (in manuscript but never published by him) that Southey’s poetry had as much
relation to poetry as dumb-bells do to music echoes that undercurrent of
distress that both Wordsworth and Coleridge always felt about Southey’s poetry: even as early as March 1796 Wordsworth declares Southey’s
poetry to be the work of a coxcomb.
But it is not just that Stoddart, by his extravagant praise, poisoned the
water between the Lake poets and the Scottish reviewers – he probably
had a positive effect and laid the basis for the more favourable appreciation that Wordsworth received from Walter Scott. Wordsworth’s
friendship with Scott was established by William and Dorothy’s tour to
Scotland in the late summer of 1803. Scott is one example of an
individual reaction. Much of the commentary that follows comes
from domestic or private views and these complement those in the
public magazines. Unpublished letters and journals have been searched
out; commentary often comes from writers who might, in the first
instance, have seen Wordsworth and Coleridge as possible rivals: most
of them became admirers. Indeed, most of the truly great writers of
4