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. . .
We cannot advise its completion. For, though there are passages of
some force and grandeur, it is sufficiently obvious that the subject
is too far removed from all the sources of human interest to be
successfully treated by any modern author". [Footnote: Edinburgh Review,
xxxiv. 203.] A blundering criticism, which, however, may be pardoned
in virtue of the discernment, not to say the generosity, of the
foregoing estimate.
It would have been well had the _Edinburgh_ always written in this
vein. But Wordsworth was a sure stumbling-block to the sagacity of his
critics, and he certainly never failed to call forth the insolence and
flippancy of Jeffrey. Two articles upon him remain as monuments to the
incompetence of the _Edinburgh_; the first prompted by the Poems of
1807, the second by the _Excursion_.
The former pronounces sentence roundly at the very start: "Mr.
Wordsworth's diction has nowhere any pretence to elegance or dignity,
and he has scarcely ever condescended to give the grace of correctness
or dignity to his versification".


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