In the issue for November,
1814, we read with relish what the _Review_ had to say about
Wordsworth's "Excursion." These are a few excerpts:
This will never do.... The case of Mr. Wordsworth, we perceive,
is now manifestly hopeless; and we give him up as altogether
incurable, and beyond the power of criticism ... making up our
minds, though with the most sincere pain and reluctance, to
consider him as finally lost to the good cause of poetry....
The volume before us, if we were to describe it very shortly,
we should characterize as a tissue of moral and devotional
ravings, in which innumerable changes are rung upon a few very
simple and familiar ideas.
The world of readers has not ratified Jeffrey's savage comments on
"The Excursion," for (to reckon only by the purse) any frequenter of
old bookshops can pick up that original issue of the _Edinburgh
Review_ for a few cents, while the other day we saw a first edition
of the maligned "Excursion" sold for thirty dollars. A hundred years
ago it was the critic's pleasure to drub authors with cruel and
unnecessary vigour. But we think that almost equal harm can be done
by the modern method of hailing a new "genius" every three weeks.
For example, there is something subtly troublesome to us in the
remark that Sinclair Lewis made about Evelyn Scott's novel, "The
Narrow House.
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