ABSTRACT
After all that the public has known of the productions of Mr. Wordsworth, and all that we have said concerning them, it is scarcely necessary for us now to observe that the sum and substance of his poetical character may be comprehensively described under one quality; viz. a strong admiration of the beauties of external nature. Accustomed to visit rocks and mountains rather than cities or market-towns, and cherishing a strict intimacy with the plants and flowers of his neighbourhood while he has maintained, comparatively, but little converse with men and women, he has contracted such habits of composition as were the natural consequence of so recluse and peculiar a mode of life. This simple explanation of a series of phænomena intitled Poems, and scientifically distributed by the author into classes of ‘Imagination,’ ‘Fancy,’ ‘Affections,’ ‘Sentiment and Reflection,’ &c., &c. will probably give little satisfaction to that author himself, or to his few though ardent votaries: but the ‘raison suffisante’ for all Mr. Wordsworth’s writings is nevertheless to be found in his ‘local habitation;’ where he has long been giving ‘a name to airy nothings,’ and, with much, very much indeed, of the real genius of a poet, has been wasting that genius on unworthy though innocent subjects, and displaying every variety of a whimsical and inveterately perverted taste which it is possible to conceive.
