ABSTRACT
As to the principal poet alluded to, the Author does not scruple to confess, that his admiration of him has become greater and greater between every publication of ‘The Feast of the Poets.’ He has become a convert, not indeed to what he still considers as his faults, but, to use a favourite phrase of these times, to the ‘immense majority’ of his beauties; – and here, it seems to him, lies the great mistake, which certain intelligent critics persist in sharing with others of a very different description. It is to be observed, by the way, that the defects of Mr. Wordsworth are the result of theory, not incapacity; and it is with their particular effect on those most calculated to understand him that we quarrel, rather than with any thing else. But taking him as a mere author to be criticised, the writers in question seem to regard him as a stringer of puerilities, who has so many faults that you can only wonder now and then at his beauties; whereas the proper idea of him is that of a noble poet, who has so many beauties that you are only apt now and then, perhaps with no very great wisdom, to grow impatient at his faults.
