W. W. 1820.
As an illustration of the extraordinary freaks of contemporary criticism—freaks which still tarnish much that issues from the press—an estimate of those Duddon Sonnets, which appeared in The Monthly Review in 1820, may be referred to. All that posterity now admires in this exquisite series of descriptive poems is decried; and those passages which posterity regards as blemishes, are held up to admiration; e.g. the lines with which the tenth sonnet, in "The Stepping-Stones," concludes, which are so frigid and affected, were hailed as "a complete return into the regions of antiquity," and as a sign that "Mr. Wordsworth is certainly improving"! They are the very feeble lines:—
The frolic Loves, who, from yon high rock, see
The struggle, clap their wings for victory!
while the
. . . unculled floweret of the glen,
Fearless of plough and scythe; or darkling wren
That tunes on Duddon's banks her slender voice,
is held up to ridicule!—Ed.