riously
maintained. In our own 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 accident, 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. How
he has succeeded, the reader will be able to judge from the few
following extracts.

[Quotes fifty-six lines of _Lord Clifford_.]

All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton; and, in this way,
Mr Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets, escapes again from the trammels
of his own unfortunate system; and the consequence is, that his sonnets
are as much superior to the greater part of his other poems, as Milton's
sonnets are superior to his.

[Quotes the sonnets _On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic_,
_London_, and _I griev'd for Buonaparte_.]

When we look at these, and many still finer passages, in the writings of
this author, it is impossible not to feel a mixtures of indignation and
compassion, at that strange infatuation which has bound him up from the
fair exercise of his talents, and withheld from the public the many
excellent productions that would otherwise have taken the place of the
trash now before us. Even in the worst of these productions, there are,
no doubt, occasional little traits of delicate feeling and original
fancy; but these are quite lost and obscured in the mass of childishness
and insipidity with which they are incorporated; nor can any thing give
us a more melancholy view of the debasing effects of this miserable
theory, than that it has given ordinary men a right to wonder at the
folly and presumption of a