For instance:--"The volumes
before us are by the author of Lyrical Ballads, a collection which has
not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public applause. The
characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth's muse are simple and flowing,
though occasionally inharmonious, verse,--strong and sometimes
irresistible appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments.
Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the
poems possess a native elegance," &c. &c. &c. If Mr. Wordsworth ever
chanced to cast his eye over this article, how little could he have
suspected that under that dull prosaic mask lurked one who, in five
short years from thence, would rival even _him_ in poetry.]
[Footnote 76: This plan (which he never put in practice) had been
talked of by him before he left Southwell, and is thus noticed in a
letter of his fair correspondent to her brother:--"How can you ask if
Lord B. is going to visit the Highlands in the summer? Why, don't
_you_ know that he never knows his own mind for ten minutes together?
I tell _him_ he is as fickle as the winds, and as uncertain as the
waves."]
[Footnote 77: We observe here, as in other parts of his early letters,
that sort of display and boast of rakishness which is but too common a
folly at this period of life, when the young aspirant to manhood
persuades himself that to be profligate is to be manly. Unluckily,
this boyish desire of being thought worse than he really was, remained
with Lord Byron, as did some other feelings and foibles of his
boyhood, long after the period when, with others, they are past and
forgotten; and his mind, indeed, was but beginning to outgrow them,
when he was snatched away.
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