reception of the "The Excursion."
Meantime, we must look elsewhere for the virtual accomplishment of the
great design of "The Recluse." The purpose was not, after all,
betrayed; it was really fulfilled, though not in the form intended, in
his various occasional poems. In relation to the edifice that he
aspired to construct, he likened these poems to little cells,
oratories, and sepulchral recesses; they are really the completed
work, much more firmly united by their common purpose than by any
formal and visible nexus of words. Formally disconnected, they really,
as we read and feel them, range themselves to spiritual music, as the
component parts of a great poetic temple, finding a rendezvous amid
the scenery of the district where the poet had his local habitation.
The Lake District, as transfigured by Wordsworth's imagination, is the
fulfilment of his ambition after an enduring memorial. The Poems,
collected and published in 1807, compose in effect "a philosophical
poem on Man, Nature, and Society," the title of which might fitly have
been "The Recluse," "as having for its principal subject the
sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement." As a
realization of the idea of "The Recluse," these poems are, from every
poetical point of view, infinitely superior to the kind of thing that
he projected and failed to complete.

The derisive fury with which "The Excursion" was assailed upon its
first appearance has long been a stock example of critical blindness,
conceit, and malignity. And yet, if we look at the position now
claimed for "The Excursion" by competent authorities, the error of the
first critics is seen to be not in their indictment of faults, but in
the prominence they gave to the faults, and their generally
disrespectful tone toward a poet of Wordsworth's greatness. Jeffrey's
petulant "This will never do," uttered, professedly, at least, more in
sorrow than in anger, because the poet would persist, in spite of all
friendly counsel, in misapplying his powers, has become a byword of
ridiculous critical cocksureness. But the curious thing is that "The
Excursion" has not "done," and that the Wordsworthians who laugh at
Jeffrey are in the habit of repeating the substance of his criticism,
though in more temperate and becoming language.

There can be little doubt that adverse criticism had a depressing
influence on Wordsworth's poetical powers, notwithstanding his nobly
expressed defiance of it, and his d