he mass, act and react upon each other with a
powerful and unintermitted agency; and if the head be once infected, the
corruption will spread irresistibly through the whole body. It is doubly
necessary, therefore, to put the law in force against this delinquent,
since he has not only indicated a disposition to do mischief, but seems
unfortunately to have found an opportunity.

ON WORDSWORTH'S "THE
EXCURSION"

[From _The Edinburgh Review_, November, 1814]

_The Excursion, being a portion of the Recluse, a Poem_. By WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH. 4to. pp. 447. London, 1814.

This will never do. It bears no doubt the stamp of the author's heart
and fancy; but unfortunately not half so visibly as that of his peculiar
system. His former poems were intended to recommend that system, and to
bespeak favour for it by their individual merit;--but this, we suspect,
must be recommended by the system--and can only expect to succeed where
it has been previously established. It is longer, weaker, and tamer,
than any of Mr. Wordsworth's other productions; with less boldness of
originality, and less even of that extreme simplicity and lowliness of
tone which wavered so prettily, in the Lyrical Ballads, between
silliness and pathos. We have imitations of Cowper, and even of Milton
here, engrafted on the natural drawl of the Lakers--and all diluted into
harmony by that profuse and irrepressible wordiness which deluges all
the blank verse of this school of poetry, and lubricates and weakens the
whole structure of their style.

Though it fairly fills four hundred and twenty good quarto pages,
without note, vignette, or any sort of extraneous assistance, it is
stated in the title--with something of an imprudent candour--to be but
"a portion" of a larger work; and in the preface, where an attempt is
rather unsuccessfully made to explain the whole design, it is still more
rashly disclosed, that it is but "a part of the second part of a _long_
and laborious work"--which is to consist of three parts.

What Mr. Wordsworth's ideas of length are, we have no means of
accurately judging; but we cannot help suspecting that they are liberal,
to a degree that will alarm the weakness of most modern readers. As far
as we can gather from the preface, the entire poem--or one of them, for
we really are not sure whether there is to be one or two--is of a
biographical nature; and is to contain the history of the author's mind,
and of the origin and progres