ABSTRACT
Wordsworth, Poems (1807); review by Lord Byron, Monthly Literary Recreations, III (July 1807), 65–66. From Byron’s letters we can determine that this issue of Monthly Literary Recreations, which contained besides this review by Byron his “Stanzas to Jessy” and a review of Byron’s Hours of Idleness (q.v.), appeared in the last few days of July or August 1–2, 1807. Byron’s review is notable for its enthusiasm for Wordsworth’s patriotic sonnets and its dislike of the short-line Skeltonic verses in which Wordsworth broke most sharply with false eighteenth-century decorum. The motto “Paulo majors canamus” (from Virgil) is used by Wordsworth himself in the volumes reviewed to introduce “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” which Byron ignores.
