ABSTRACT
Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814); British Critic, 2nd Series, III (May 1815), 449–467. Here begins an important sequence of reviews of Wordsworth’s poems by a single, as yet unidentified reviewer. In a letter to Catherine Clarkson (June 28, 1815), Dorothy Wordsworth calls him a friend of the Coleridges but speaks slightingly of the review. Wordsworth’s brother Christopher is reputed to have been a contributor to the British Critic (see Hazlitt, Complete Works, ed. P. P. Howe, IX, 4), and a clergyman friend of his might well quote the conventional series of poets and divines that the reviewer introduces on pages 451–455. Cleric or layman, the reviewer has a professed desire to assure readers that Wordsworth’s poem is perfectly orthodox.
