harass him any longer with nauseous remedies,--but rather to throw in
cordials and lenitives, and wait in patience for the natural termination
of the disorder. In order to justify this desertion of our patient,
however, it is proper to state why we despair of the success of a more
active practice.

A man who has been for twenty years at work on such matter as is now
before us, and who comes complacently forward with a whole quarto of it
after all the admonitions he has received, cannot reasonably be expected
to "change his hand, or check his pride," upon the suggestion of far
weightier monitors than we can pretend to be. Inveterate habit must now
have given a kind of sanctity to the errors of early taste; and the very
powers of which we lament the perversion, have probably become incapable
of any other application. The very quantity, too, that he has written,
and is at this moment working up for publication upon the old pattern,
makes it almost hopeless to look for any change of it. All this is so
much capital already sunk in the concern; which must be sacrificed if it
be abandoned: and no man likes to give up for lost the time and talent
and labour which he has embodied in any permanent production. We were
not previously aware of these obstacles to Mr. Wordsworth's conversion;
and, considering the peculiarities of his former writings merely as the
result of certain wanton and capricious experiments on public taste and
indulgence, conceived it to be our duty to discourage their repetition
by all the means in our power. We now see clearly, however, how the case
stands;--and, making up our minds, though with the most sincere pain and
reluctance, to consider him as finally lost to the good cause of poetry,
shall endeavour to be thankful for the occasional gleams of tenderness
and beauty which the natural force of his imagination and affections
must still shed over all his productions,--and to which we shall ever
turn with delight, in spite of the affectation and mysticism and