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The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (3); Critical and Ethical
The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Critical and Ethical - 3 Author:Alexander Balloch Grosart Volume: 3 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1876 Original Publisher: E. Moxon Subjects: Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the o... more »riginal. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 87. The Idle Shepherd Boys; or Dungeon-Ghyll Force : a Pastoral, [xi.] Grasmere, Town-End, 1800. I will only add a little monitory aneedote concerning this subject. When Coleridge and Southey were walking together upon the Fells, Southey observed that, if I wished to be considered a faithful painter of rural manners, I ought not to have said that my shepherd boys trimmed their rustic hats as described in the poem. Just as the words had past his lips, two boys appeared with the very plant entwined round their hats. I have often wondered that Southey, who rambled so much about the mountains, should have fallen into this mistake ; and I record it as a warning for others who, with far less opportunity than my dear friend had of knowing what things are, and with far less sagacity, give way to presumptuous criticism, from which he was free, though in this matter mistaken. In describing a tarn under Helvellyn, I say, ' There sometimes doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer.' This was branded by a critic of those days, in a review ascribed to Mrs. Barbauld, as unnatural and absurd. I admire the genius of Mrs. Barbauld, and am certain that, had her education been favourable to imaginative influences, no female of her day would have been more likely to sympathise with that image, and to acknowledge the truth of the sentiment. 88. Foot-note. Heading: ' Dungeon-ghyll Force.' Ghy...« less