ABSTRACT
William Wordsworth is in open and self-confessed revolt against the eighteenth-century 'gothic', and he evolves a poetry which, while owing much to earlier nature poetry, is the record of his own unique experience. Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge found Sir Walter Scott's poetry distasteful for the very reason that it contained these eighteenth-century 'gothic' elements. Wordsworth's critical methods were unfortunate, for they helped to destroy continuity and tradition at a time when the most urgent need of poetry was their development. Neither Wordsworth nor George Gordon Byron seems aware of the long debate on poetry which has preceded them. Byron saw clearly that facile verse, such as he and Scott had written in their tales, would lead to a defection in taste, and signs are not wanting that ultimately Scott realized it himself. The criticism of Byron has been largely the criticism of his personality. Coleridge divided thus against himself expended in criticism a genius which seemed designed for creation.
