Unsigned review, The Cabinet, or Monthly Review of Polite Literature, 1808

Mr. Wordsworth possesses several of the most essential qualities of the poet. He has a lively fancy, strong feelings, an imagination bold, and sometimes even sublime, an originallity of expression, and has contemplated the scenery of nature for himself: but in taste he is deficient, and has still to learn ‘the last and greatest art, the art to blot.’1