After their dramatic failures,[1] Wordsworth, his sister and Coleridge took a short tour on the banks of the Wye, and afterwards left England for Germany, in September, 1798. At Hamburg they visited Klopstock, and he and Wordsworth had much conversation on literary subjects. They argued on the merits of Wieland's "Oberon." Wordsworth expressed his belief in the superiority of Dryden to Pope, and Klopstock condemned Kant as utterly incomprehensible. They differed as to the difficulty of exciting tears by the pathetic in tragedy. Wordsworth very confidently records, "I said nothing was more easy than to deluge an audience, that it was done every day by the meanest writers." "The Borderers," however, never set pit or gallery weeping, and will not in the perusal excite any violent emotion. At Hamburg the poets separated; and Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg, while Wordsworth and his sister proceeded to Goslar. They severally employed themselves very diligently in acquiring the German language, and after a sojourn of some months at Goslar they reached England early in the spring of 1799. Wordsworth had, while abroad, written a few of his shorter poems. He now settled in the beautiful neighbourhood of Grasmere, visited and described twenty years before by the poet Gray. Here he commenced his autobiographical poem, "The Prelude," and published his second volume of the "Lyrical Ballads." A copy of the latter he sent to Mr. Fox, who after some months delay replied to him, and expressed his admiration of several of them. During his residence at Grasmere he made a short tour in France, and soon after his return took a step which
- ↑ In an able and interesting article, which appeared in "The Quarterly Review" in December last, the writer gives a severe, but correct criticism on the Wordsworthian drama. "The plot has neither probability nor ingenuity. We can discover nothing individual in the personages, and no traits or manners in the least distinctive of their age or nation. As to the diction of the piece, a mawkish monotony pervades it, and a beggar woman is the single character who utters a line or two of worthy verse."
