ted....

Afterwards come some stanzas about an echo repeating a cuckoo's
voice.... Then we have Elegiac stanzas "to the spade of a friend,"
beginning--

Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till'd his lands.

But too dull to be quoted any further.

After this there is a minstrel's song, on the Restoration of Lord
Clifford the Shepherd, which is in a very different strain of poetry;
and then the volume is wound up with an "Ode," with no other title but
the motto _Paulo majora canamus_. This is, beyond all doubt, the most
illegible and unintelligible part of the publication. We can pretend to
no analysis or explanation of it....

We have thus gone through this publication, with a view to enable our
readers to determine, whether the author of these verses which have now
been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or
restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or
new-model all our maxims on the subject. If we were to stop here, we do
not think that Mr. Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to
complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably the most peculiar
and characteristic part of his publication, and must be defended and
applauded if the merit or originality of his system is to be seriously
maintained. In our opinion, however, the demerit of that system cannot
be fairly appreciated, until it be shown, that the author of the bad
verses which we have already extracted, can write good verses when he
pleases; and that, in point of fact, he does always write good verses,
when, by any account, he is led to abandon his system, and to transgress
the laws of that school which he would fain establish on the ruin of all
existing authority.

The length to which our extracts and observations have already extended,
necessarily restrains us within more narrow limits in this part of our
citations; but it will not require much labour to find a pretty decided
contrast to some of the passages we have already detailed. The song on
the restoration of Lord Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient
minstrel of the family; and in composing it, the author was led,
therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner and phraseology that
is understood to be connected with that sort of composition, and to
throw aside his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities....

All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton; and, in this way,
Mr. Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets