SOURCE: "Wordsworth and Hugh Blair," in Philological Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. 3, July, 1927, pp. 277-81.

In the essay below, Knowlton asserts that Wordsworth followed Blair's suggestions for revitalizing pastoral poetry as set forth in the latter's Lecture XXXIX of Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.

In earlier papers I have set forth suggestions concerning Wordsworth's relations to the type of literature which has been denominated "pastoral."¹ The term has narrow as well as broad meanings. It may be used to include any literature connected primarily with country life. It may refer to the sort of treatment which shepherds and other herdsmen received from Theocritus in his Idylls, from Virgil in his Eclogues, and from some of their imitators. The atmosphere herein is southern or Italian; the topic is often love; set amid rural scenery, the machinery is often amæbæan and employs nymphs and satyrs. Or the term...