There is one other consideration which has helped to excite our apprehension on occasion of this particular performance.  Many of the pieces are dedicated to persons of the first consideration in the country, both for rank and accomplishments; and the author appears to consider the greater part of them as his intimate friends, and undoubted patrons and admirers.  Now, this we will confess is to us a very alarming consideration.  By these channels, the book will easily pass into circulation in those classes of society, which it is of most consequence to keep free of contamination; and from which its reputation and its influence will descend with the greatest effect to the great body of the community.  In this reading and opulent country, there are no fashions which diffuse themselves so fast, as those of literature and immorality:  there is no palpable boundary between the noblesse and the bourgeoisie, as in old France, by which the corruption and intelligence of the former can be prevented from spreading to the latter.  All the parts of the mass, act and react upon each other with a powerful and unintermitted agency; and if the head be once infected, the corruption will spread irresistibly through the whole body.  It is doubly necessary, therefore, to put the law in force against this delinquent, since he has not only indicated a disposition to do mischief, but seems unfortunately to have found an opportunity.

ON WORDSWORTH’S “THE EXCURSION”

[From The Edinburgh Review, November, 1814]

The Excursion, being a portion of the Recluse, a Poem.  By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 4to. pp. 447.  London, 1814.

This will never do.  It bears no doubt the stamp of the author’s heart and fancy; but unfortunately not half so visibly as that of his peculiar system.  His former poems were intended to recommend that system, and to bespeak favour for it by their individual merit;—­but this, we suspect, must be recommended by the system—­and can only expect to succeed where it has been previously established.  It is longer, weaker, and tamer, than any of Mr. Wordsworth’s other productions; with less boldness of originality, and less even of that extreme simplicity and lowliness of tone which wavered so prettily, in the Lyrical Ballads, between silliness and pathos.  We have imitations of Cowper, and even of Milton here, engrafted on the natural drawl of the Lakers—­and all diluted into harmony by that profuse and irrepressible wordiness which deluges all the blank verse of this school of poetry, and lubricates and weakens the whole structure of their style.

Though it fairly fills four hundred and twenty good quarto pages, without note, vignette, or any sort of extraneous assistance, it is stated in the title—­with something of an imprudent candour—­to be but “a portion” of a larger work; and in the preface, where an attempt is rather unsuccessfully made to explain the whole design, it is still more rashly disclosed, that it is but “a part of the second part of a long and laborious work”—­which is to consist of three parts.