[21] Reprinted from The National Review, November, 1864, in the Essays in Criticism, Macmillan & Co., 1865.
[22] In On Translating Homer, ed. 1903, pp. 216-17.
[23] An essay called Wordsworth: The Man and the Poet, published in The North British Review for August, 1864, vol. 41. John Campbell Shairp (1819-85), Scottish critic and man of letters, was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1877 to 1884. The best of his lectures from this chair were published in 1881 as Aspects of Poetry.
[24] I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England during the last century, and still followed in France, of printing a notice of this kind,—a notice by a competent critic,—to serve as an introduction to an eminent author’s works, might be revived among us with advantage. To introduce all succeeding editions of Wordsworth, Mr. Shairp’s notice might, it seems to me, excellently serve; it is written from the point of view of an admirer, nay, of a disciple, and that is right; but then the disciple must be also, as in this case he is, a critic, a man of letters, not, as too often happens, some relation or friend with no qualification for his task except affection for his author.[Arnold.]
[25] See Memoirs of William Wordsworth, ed. 1851, II, 151, letter to Bernard Barton.
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[26] Irene. An unsuccessful play of Dr. Johnson’s.
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[27] Preface. Prefixed to the second edition (1800) of the Lyrical Ballads.
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[28] The old woman. At the first attempt to read the newly prescribed liturgy in St. Giles’s Church, Edinburgh, on July 23, 1637, a riot took place, in which the “fauld-stools,” or folding stools, of the congregation were hurled as missiles. An untrustworthy tradition attributes the flinging of the first stool to a certain Jenny or Janet Geddes.
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[29] Pensees de J. Joubert, ed. 1850, I, 355, titre 15, 2.
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[30] French Revolution. The latter part of Burke’s life was largely devoted to a conflict with the upholders of the French Revolution. Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790, and Letters on a Regicide Peace, 1796, are his most famous writings in this cause.
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[31] Richard Price, D.D. (1723-91), was strongly opposed to the war with America and in sympathy with the French revolutionists.
[32] From Goldsmith’s epitaph on Burke in the Retaliation.