ABSTRACT
[Wordsworth and Coleridge] Lyrical Ballads (1798); review by Dr. Charles Burney, Monthly Review, 2nd Series, XXIX (June 1799), 202–210. Dr. Burney (1726–1814), famed musicologist and father of Fanny Burney, misses the point of almost every poem in the volume (though he describes most of them). For example, he misses all the humor and shrewd, kindly observation of human nature in “The Idiot Boy.” Burney’s criticisms reflect a rather naive acceptance of the English Augustan verities of his youth.
