ABSTRACT
I spent some time in their society [that of Wordsworth and Southey] very pleasantly and Southey repaid me by visiting my farm. They are certainly men of very extraordinary powers, Wordsworth in particular is such a character as only exists in romance virtuous, simple, and unaffectedly restricting every want & wish to the bounds of a very narrow income in order to enjoy the literary and poetical leisure which his happiness consists in – Were it not for the unfortunate idea of forming a New School of Poetry these men are calculated to give it a new impulse, but I think they sometimes lose their energy in trying to find not a better but a different path from what has been travelld by their predecessors –
b. To Southey, November 1807
Wordsworth is harshly treated in the Edinburgh Review, but Jeffrey gives the sonnets as much praise as he usually does to anybody. I made him admire the song of Lord Clifford’s minstrel, which I like exceedingly myself. But many of Wordsworth’s lesser poems are caviare, not only to the multitude, but to all who judge of poetry by the established rules of criticism. Some of them, I can safely say, I like the better for these aberrations; in others they get beyond me – at any rate they ought to have been more cautiously hazarded.
