William Wordsworth

F.R. Leavis on Wordsworth, by G. Singh, Modern Age, Summer 2001


For “Tintern Abbey” is like a manifesto of the worship of Nature. Now to worship Nature is not to keep the First Commandment, which requires of us to worship God. But Nature-worship does at least mean worshipping a creature of God, outside of man, which is much better than for man to be worshipping himself, which is what we see all around us today.. --Bishop Richard Williamson, Poetry Project IV: "Tintern Abbey", by William Wordsworth, posted by Stephen Heiner, True Restoration, June 26, 2009, 3:15 PM

Wordsworth’s Prudent Conservatism: Social Reform in the Lyrical Ballads, Kevin M. Saylor, Modern Age, Spring 2001

Wordsworth's poems, again, rarely strike us as genuine effusions of spontaneity. They seem, in a majority of cases, to be mere creations of reflection. They appear to have been first meditated and moulded in prose, and then done by laborious effort into verse. --Orestes Brownson, Wordsworth's Poems, The Boston Quarterly Review, April, 1839, review of The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth