The Age Reviewed A Satire: In two parts: Second edition, revised and corrected [by Robert Montgomery] |
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 | The Age Reviewed |  |
135
As if he moaned it all behind a hearse,
Soft Betty Wordsworth twaddles through her line,
Most beautiful,—most pulingly divine;—
A flagging Jeremy, without his sense,
The Lakist bard in native impotence:—
Who, wakeful reads th' Excursion's sleepy page
Of whining dullness and old preachments sage?
There, view, drawled forth the metaphysic scheme,
Where trash devoutly lends the Muse a theme;
And pedlar, pauper, bard, and weaver's wife,
With tuneful logic hum the poet's life:
Dear William! thou for ever on the nod,
Receive my praises for the drowsy god:—
136
How do I bless thee for their anodyne!
No one can deny Wordsworth the possession of great, very great genius; but it is miserably clogged with twaddle. Mr. Southey, who is also a great man, thinks most of the poets since the time of Elizabeth, scarcely worthy a comparison with the “Lakists.” He, and the whole “Nampy Pamby” family, can find sublimity in “Peter Bell,” and “Betty Foy”!! There is no accounting for tastes;—trite, but true.
| The Age Reviewed | |