ABSTRACT

Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814); review by William Hazlitt, Examiner, August 21, 1814, pp. 541-542; August 28, 1814, pp. 555-558; October 2, 1814, pp. 636-638. Hazlitt praises Wordsworth as a philosopher and moralist but finds him unable to deal with specific scenes because his egotism absorbs all (pp. 555-556), a view of Wordsworth that Hazlitt would convey to Keats and other younger writers, but one strangely inappropriate to the author of Lyrical Ballads and “Michael.” Hazlitt defends Voltaire from Wordsworth’s slurs (p. 556) and quotes from the “Immortality Ode” against Wordsworth’s notion that the English victory over Napoleon will assure the triumph of virtue over evil (pp. 557-558). Hazlitt, once an aspiring painter, almost always compares poets to graphic artists; here he finds resemblances between Rembrandt and Wordsworth (p. 636). Characteristic also are Hazlitt’s remarks on the limitations of rural life and country people (pp. 637-638). Andrew Bell (1753-1832) and Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), to whom Hazlitt alludes on page 637, were the founders of two systems of educational reform that aroused much interest.