His finest passages are always monologues. He had a
fondness for particulars, and there are parts of his poems which remind
us of local histories in the undue relative importance given to trivial
matters. He was the historian of Wordsworthshire. This power of
particularization (for it is as truly a power as generalization) is what
gives such vigor and greatness to single lines and sentiments of
Wordsworth, and to poems developing a single thought or sentiment. It was
this that made him so fond of the sonnet. That sequestered nook forced
upon him the limits which his fecundity (if I may not say his garrulity)
was never self-denying enough to impose on itself. It suits his solitary
and meditative temper, and it was there that Lamb (an admirable judge of
what was permanent in literature) liked him best. Its narrow bounds, but
fourteen paces from end to end, turn into a virtue his too common fault
of giving undue prominence to every passing emotion. He excels in
monologue, and the law of the sonnet tempers monologue with mercy. In
"The Excursion" we are driven to the subterfuge of a French verdict of
extenuating circumstances. His mind had not that reach and elemental
movement of Milton's, which, like the tradewind, gathered to itself
thoughts and images like stately fleets from every quarter; some deep
with silks and spicery, some brooding over the silent thunders of their
battailous armaments, but all swept forward in their destined track, over
the long billows of his verse, every inch of canvas strained by the
unifying breath of their common epic impulse.
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