The reviewers had
another laugh, and rival poets pillaged while they scoffed, particularly
Byron, among whose verses a bit of Wordsworth showed as incongruously as
a sacred vestment on the back of some buccaneering plunderer of an
abbey.[341]
There was a general combination to put him down, but on the other hand
there was a powerful party in his favor, consisting of William
Wordsworth. He not only continued in good heart himself, but, reversing
the order usual on such occasions, kept up the spirits of his
friends.[342]
Wordsworth passed the winter of 1806-7 in a house of Sir George
Beaumont's, at Coleorton in Leicestershire, the cottage at Grasmere
having become too small for his increased family. On his return to the
Vale of Grasmere he rented the house at Allan Bank, where he lived three
years. During this period he appears to have written very little poetry,
for which his biographer assigns as a primary reason the smokiness of the
Allan Bank chimneys. This will hardly account for the failure of the
summer crop, especially as Wordsworth composed chiefly in the open air.
It did not prevent him from writing a pamphlet upon the Convention of
Cintra, which was published too late to attract much attention, though
Lamb says that its effect upon him was like that which one of Milton's
tracts might have had upon a contemporary.
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