ABSTRACT
I saw him [Wordsworth] more & more benetted in hypochondriacal Fancies, living wholly among Devotees – having every the minutest Thing, almost his very Eating & Drinking, done for him by his Sister, or Wife – & I trembled, lest a Film should rise, and thicken on his moral Eye. – The habit too of writing such a multitude of small Poems was in this instance hurtful to him – such Things as that Sonnet of his in Monday’s Morning Post, about Simonides & the Ghost2 – / I rejoice therefore with a deep & true Joy, that he has at length yielded to my urgent & repeated – almost unremitting – requests & remonstrances – & will go on with the Recluse exclusively. – A Great Work, in which he will sail; on an open Ocean, & a steady wind; unfretted by short tacks, reefing, & hawling & disentangling the ropes – great work necessarily comprehending his attention & Feelings within the circle of great objects & elevated Conceptions – this is his natural Element – the having been out of it has been his Disease – to return into it is the specific Remedy, both Remedy & Health. It is what Food is to Famine. I have seen enough, positively to give me feelings of hostility towards the plan of several of the Poems in the L. Ballads: & I really consider it as a misfortune, that Wordsworth ever deserted his former mountain Track to wander in
Lanes & allies; tho’in the event it may prove to have been a great Benefit to him. He will steer, I trust, the middle course. – But he found himself to be, or rather to be called, the Head & founder of a Sect in Poetry: & assuredly he has written – & published in the M. Post, as W. L. D. & sometimes with no signature – poems written with a sectarian spirit, & in a sort of Bravado. – I know, my dear Poole, that you are in the habit of keeping my Letters; but I must request of you, & do rely on it, that you will be so good as to destroy this Letter –
c. To Richard Sharp, 15 January 1804
Wordsworth is a Poet, a most original Poet – he no more resembles Milton than Milton resembles Shakespere – no more resembles Shakespere than Shakespere resembles Milton – he is himself: and I dare affirm that he will hereafter be admitted as the first & greatest philosophical Poet – the only man who has effected a compleat and constant synthesis of Thought & Feeling and combined them with Poetic Forms, with the music of pleasurable passion and with Imagination or the modifying Power in that highest sense of the word in which I have ventured to oppose it to Fancy, or the aggregating power – in that sense in which it is a dim Analogue of Creation, not all that we can believe but all that we can conceive of creation. Wordsworth is a Poet, and I feel myself a better Poet, in knowing how to honour him, than in all my own poetic Compositions, all I have done or hope to do – and I prophesy immortality to his Recluse, as the first & finest philosophical Poem, if only it be (as it undoubtedly will be) a Faithful Transcript of his own most august & innocent Life, of his own habitual Feelings & Modes of seeing and hearing.
