SOURCE: Review of The Naiad: A Tale. With Other Poems. British Critic 8 (October 1817): 415-20.

In the following essay, the reviewer admires the story, imagination, and versification of The Naiad, but suggests that Reynolds falters by adopting Wordsworth as his model.

This is really a pleasing little poem; the story of it is tastefully chosen, and told with lightness; the descriptions which it contains are given in a wild and fanciful manner, and in a versification which, though unequal, is upon the whole agreeably tuned. We could indeed wish that these merits were not so often thrown into the shade, by prettynesses, and simplenesses, and sillinesses, and all those other childish affectations, which the imitators of Mr. Wordsworth are so apt to suppose inseparable from the other qualities of his poetry; and, but that the present is, we imagine, our poet's first appearance before our tribunal, we should perhaps...