ABSTRACT
Wordsworth, River Duddon (1820); review by ?John Wilson, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, VII (May 1820), 206–213. Here we find sentiments exactly paralleling statements that Shelley included a few months earlier in his Philosophical View of Reform: “In spite of that low-thoughted envy which would undervalue … the eminence of contemporary merit, … ours is in intellectual achievements a memorable age, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared in our nation since its last struggle for liberty.” Here in much-maligned Blackwood’s is as thoughtful and far-sighted a review as Wordsworth’s poetry had yet received.
