ABSTRACT
I confess I was rather surprised by your remarks on the Excursion, but not disheartened – If by Wordsworth’s peculiar excellencies you mean a moral feeling at once correct, refined, and profound – Imagery beautiful, simple, & original – and above all a life-giving spirit which infuses soul into every object & makes the material face of Nature beam with intellect & sensibility, these I can discover and admire – for the elevated delight which they inspire I have been often indebted to Wordsworth, & have always felt that they placed him at an immeasurable height above Scott & the other Rhyming Romancers of the day – Still in reading him I am often vexed at what gives you no offence, or perhaps excites your admiration – I am not, as [Thomas] Madge says, initiated or fraternized – I am accustomed to be alternately scorned for admiring too little, & ridiculed for admiring too much – His prose is my delight – He ranks, in my opinion, with the best writers of the best age of English literature – His prose is a rich combination of the swelling majesty of Milton with the luxuriant imagery of Jeremy Taylor – If you read the Essay on Epitaphs to Mrs P[attisson], I think her pleasure could not be inferior even to yours1 – But you are probably wondering, all this time, what occasioned my surprise – It was, your almost identifying Wordsworth with the German poets – My ignorance must be my excuse for having supposed that there were so few points of resemblance that it was very possible to be an Infidel as to the one, and an Enthusiast as to the other – If their prose writers resemble him I wish nothing better – What I have seen of their translated poetry bears a nearer affinity to that of our elder Dramatists – with his it appeared almost in contrast – He is generally gentleness itself – his beings of this world are men – but they are men of simple, honest hearts & unaspiring minds – & even these he gladly leaves to commune with the benignant spirits of mildest influence who brood over his solitary haunts. – They delight in the strongest, darkest, wildest emotions which distract the soul – and their supernatural beings are called from hell’s deepest caverns to lower over the battle or guide the
