Having thus propounded his tenets, he wrote his earlier
poems as illustrations of his views, affecting a simplicity in subject and
diction that was sometimes simply ludicrous. It was an affected
simplicity: he was simple with a purpose; he wrote his poems to suit his
canons, and in that way his simplicity became artifice.
Jeffrey and other critics rose furiously against the poems which
inculcated such doctrines. "This will never do" were the opening words of
an article in the _Edinburgh Review_. One of the _Rejected Addresses_,
called _The Baby's Debut, by W. W._, (spoken in the character of Nancy
Lake, eight years old, who is drawn upon the stage in a go-cart,) parodies
the ballads thus:
What a large floor! 'tis like a town;
The carpet, when they lay it down,
Won't hide it, I'll be bound:
And there's a row of lamps, my eye!
How they do blaze: I wonder why
They keep them on the ground?
And this, Jeffrey declares, is a flattering imitation of Wordsworth's
style.
The day for depreciating Wordsworth has gone by; but calmer critics must
still object to his poetical views in their entireness.
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