[In the following essay, Jones highlights Reynolds's years as a literary critic writing for Champion.]

Before beginning an account of his friendship with Keats, it will be well to consider what Reynolds's prose in the Champion reveals about his reading, critical views, and intellect. When he joined the staff of the weekly newspaper in December 1815, he could read Latin and Italian, and he had taught himself a little Greek. His wide reading in English literature in the five years after he left St. Paul's School, done in the evenings after work between dinner and midnight, was systematic and thorough enough to prepare him to be an informed critic.

His knowledge of English literature began with Chaucer, whose most striking achievement, he believed, was vividness in describing external nature: “A leaf is described by him so clearly, that its crispness and glossy greenness come directly before the sight.”¹ He valued especially Chaucer's ability to portray “internal feelings as connected with external nature”; instead of merely observing a landscape, the reader caught the mood and entered into the feelings of the author. Chaucer's most characteristic mood was happiness, and descriptions of the morning, colored by that mood, he found particularly appealing: “Chaucer is the clear and breathing Poet of the months of April and May—of morning—of meadows, and birds and their harbours. … Chaucer delights to be up and out, before the sun—while the stars are coldly light in the cold white sky—while the trees are still, and the waters are looking through the silent air to heaven, and the dew is twinkling, and all the world seems wrapt in cheerful and quiet thought.”

He praised Chaucer's subtlety in bringing characters to life; a veiled reference to the Friar's conduct, for example, struck off the essence of his character in two brief lines:

He had ymade ful many a marriage,
Of young women at his owen coste.

Although he found that Chaucer's low characters had more “pure bold strength” than those of any other writer, the tales of romance impressed him more than the fabliaux. He praised lavishly the magnificent vestments and the marvels of “The Squire's Tale.” He found Chaucer's versification harmonious and praised his ability to fit the sound to the sense. Far from taking Chaucer's apparent simplicity at face value, he saw both the humor and the artistry of it.

He was especially pleased, as was Keats, with “The Flower and the Leaf,” mistakenly attributed to Chaucer at the time. His favorite passage was the celebration of the nightingale, a subject which always made him “feel a kindness” toward any poet who treated it. Chaucer's two faults he judged to be grossness of language and a lack of selectivity.

He greatly admired all the major Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, but he literally worshiped Shakespeare. Reynolds frequently used religious terms to express the extent of his devotion, on one occasion describing Shakespeare as the “divinity of the world of imagination.”² In a review of a contemporary play, he carried the analogy further:

For our own parts, liberal and tolerant as we are in our sentiments on ordinary occasions, we must confess ourselves bigots of the right Spanish breed in matters of this kind.—Were we exalted to the Papal Chair of criticism (and critics possess the same attribute of infallibility with his holiness) we should certainly pronounce against these heresies in taste, the same sentence that our holy brother used in religious differences of opinion, only reversing the order of the punishment—we would have them damned here and trust their being burnt hereafter.—Since however we live in so tolerant an age, that it would be in vain for us to preach up persecution against the whole sect of these dissenters from the Shakespearian Orthodoxy, it would be unjust to attack one for the offences of the whole.³

He was joking in part, but the reference to “Shakespearian Orthodoxy” was revealing. Such an attitude virtually precluded adverse criticism. “We feel that criticism has no right to purse its little brow in the presence of Shakespeare. He has to our belief very few imperfections,—and perhaps these might vanish from our minds, if we had the perfection properly to scan them.” Consequently, the only value judgment he could make was to determine the degree of praise to be bestowed upon each of Shakespeare's works. After discussing the limitations of the historical plays, he declared: “We hate to say a word against a word of Shakespeare's,—and we can only do so by comparing himself with himself.”⁴

Like Coleridge, Schlegel, and Hazlitt, Reynolds concentrated on psychological analyses of the characters. Since he considered Shakespeare the foremost “anatomist of the human heart,” he felt that the critic's primary duty lay in interpreting personalities and motives. He insisted repeatedly that the characters in the plays were real people, and not merely “the idle coinage of the Poet's brain.”⁵ Although this device was a common Romantic method of paying tribute to Shakespeare's genius, few other critics approached the extreme to which Reynolds took it. Almost all his discussions of Shakespeare have some variation of his statement that “Macbeth, and Lear, and Othello are real beings.”⁶ Arguing from this premise, he eventually arrived at the strange conclusion that Shakespeare lost control over the characters after he created them.⁷

Since he was primarily interested in psychological interpretation of Shakespeare's characters, he had little use for most of the earlier critics, who “preyed only on the expressions of Shakespeare, and wholly disregarded his spirit and feeling” with their “little questionings of words and phrases … petty cavillings about black-letter books, or worn-out and worthless customs.”⁸ The only two critics whom he considered worthy of the subject were Schlegel and Hazlitt. He did not know Coleridge's similar criticism because none of Coleridge's lectures delivered before 1818 were published until 1849 and later. He regarded Schlegel's lectures, which he read in the translation of John Black, as the first significant criticism of Shakespeare.⁹

An even greater influence on his Shakespearean criticism was Hazlitt, his idol as a periodical essayist, whom he knew personally at least by 2 June 1816, when he wrote of him, “We also know one writer of the present day, who delights his readers with the most able and ingenious speculations, and who is never so eloquent as when he speaks of his own feelings. He then seems to rise above this earth, and to float in an air and in a light of his own:—his youth comes back upon him. His heart lives in a vision. He talks the purest poetry.”¹⁰ Reynolds saw Hazlitt often and for long periods of time, as we know from his glowing account of Hazlitt in the letter to Mary Leigh of 28 April 1817.¹¹ The two had much in common. Both had spent their early years in Shropshire, Reynolds in Shrewsbury and Hazlitt in nearby Wem. Both were theatrical and literary reviewers and essayists, and both supported themselves by their journalism—Hazlitt, indeed, wrote occasionally for the Champion. Because of their shared interests and because of Reynolds's charming personality and lively conversation, they became fast friends, Hazlitt offering a sympathetic and very high appraisal of Reynolds's ability and Reynolds becoming Hazlitt's disciple in literary matters. From Hazlitt Reynolds derived many of his most cherished ideas; he imitated his style, quoted him often, repeated his quotations from the old poets, and adopted his critical terms and catch phrases.¹² He seldom called Hazlitt by name in the Champion, but the reader of his essays soon learns to identify Hazlitt with almost any anonymous reference to a gifted writer of prose. Hazlitt is “an able writer,” “a great authority in these matters,” and “the critic of the Times.”¹³

When Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays appeared in 1817, Reynolds reviewed it at length in two installments and paid Hazlitt the highest possible tribute: “This is the only work ever written on Shakespeare, that can be deemed worthy of Shakespeare;—some remarks in Schlegel's German lectures only excepted. Now this is a sweeping assertion,—and yet it is true.” He described his personal reaction to the book: “The work before us is one, of all others, which we longed to see written,—and now it is come we must make the most of it.” His description of it as “a sort of mental biography of Shakespeare's characters” would have been equally applicable to his own Shakespearean criticism. He included large extracts accompanied by praise, and in only one case did he express a reservation about Hazlitt's treatment of his subject. The essay on Hamlet did not quite live up to his expectations, but he absolved Hazlitt of any blame by declaring that the subject was too sublime for even the greatest of critics.¹⁴

Another contemporary critic who influenced Reynolds's Shakespearean criticism was Charles Lamb, whose “Theatralia, No. 1. On Garrick and Acting; and the Plays of Shakespeare, considered with reference to their fitness for Stage Representation” (the title as Reynolds read it instead of the more familiar one given it in Lamb's Works of 1818), Reynolds read in the fourth and last number of Hunt's Reflector of 1812. He studied that short-lived periodical carefully, sent Dovaston copies of it, patterned the Inquirer on it, and copied one article from it before sending Dovaston the issue.¹⁵ He did not say which one he copied, but it may well have been the most famous one in the magazine, in which Lamb argued that Shakespeare cannot be represented adequately on the stage. Reynolds never mentioned Lamb by name, perhaps because he did not know who wrote the anonymous article, but he echoed it clearly:

We wished the other evening, at the theatre, for the presence of three friends [Mary Leigh, Eliza Drewe, and probably James Rice], to whom we had been lately reading the first part of Henry the 4th—and to whom we had been also asserting that Shakespeare's plays suffered in the representation. They would, we feel assured, have been convinced of the truth of our assertion,—for the performance of this admirable play made wondrous havoc with the wit, and spirit, and poetry, which are so excellent and evident on a perusal. We do not much like to see Shakespeare tortured on the stage:—what has he done to deserve it?¹⁶

Although the review including this passage was Reynolds's fullest exposition of the argument that Shakespeare's plays cannot be represented satisfactorily on stage, the idea was almost always present in his mind when he reviewed the contemporary productions of Shakespeare. On 14 December 1817, for example, he began a review of Hamlet, “What has Hamlet done, that he should be held up to mockery on an unfeeling stage, and all his utmost and most passionate sensations turned into pageants and the shews of grief?”¹⁷

Less overawed than in his criticism of Shakespeare, Reynolds was a judicious critic of Ben Jonson. Examining the traditional charge that Jonson's pedantry had overpowered his imagination, he admitted that the criticism had an element of truth, but he argued that the old generalization required qualification: The Alchemist and Volpone showed “a richness of character, added to a conversational humour, that cannot be surpassed.”¹⁸ He quoted several richly imaginative passages from Jonson's plays and masques to substantiate his claim. One such passage from The Sad Shepherd, in which an old shepherd instructs Robin Hood's followers in the art of finding witches, shows his early love of the Robin Hood legend, which later led him to write the two fine sonnets that he sent to Keats. Another quotation from The Alchemist, Sir Epicure Mammon's extravagant description of the exotic foods on which he planned to feast after he discovered the secret of alchemy (II, ii, 72-87), is typical of the richly sensuous poetry that he found especially appealing. He quoted the same passage with similar praise in a later article for the Scots Magazine.¹⁹ Though he was never able to achieve a comparable richness in his own verse, his admiration of it prepared him to appreciate Keats.

In an essay devoted entirely to Jonson, he used as a point of departure a statement by John Aikin in Vocal Poetry that the exquisite gem from The Silent Woman, “Still to be neat, still to be drest,” was “one of the few productions of this once celebrated author, which by their singular elegance and neatness, form a striking contrast to the prevalent coarseness of his tedious effusions.”²⁰ Such an assertion, said Reynolds, could prove only one of two things: Dr. Aikin's ignorance of Jonson's works or a total lack of taste. He readily admitted that many passages in the comedies were indelicate, but he found it difficult to believe that a critic could find “singular elegance and neatness” a rare quality in Jonson. In his earlier essay he had discounted the customary charge that Jonson's pedantry and love of polish had stifled his imagination, but he considered that overstatement more tolerable than Dr. Aikin's general censure of coarseness. Quoting William Cartwright's remark that Jonson polished until “the file would not make smooth but wear,”²¹ he regretted that too often the bold and vigorous in Jonson was also bare and naked. Nevertheless, he felt that in an unusually large number of poems Jonson had struck the perfect balance between imagination and restraint to produce incomparable classic lyrics. Passing over “Drink to me only with thine eyes” and the lyrics in The Sad Shepherd, which he supposed were already well known to his readers, he selected for quotation several beautiful, but less familiar lyrics from The Gipsies Metamorphosed and The Forest and Underwoods. In conclusion he declared that any composer might bring honor to himself by setting Jonson's lyrics to music, though in most cases because of the excellent modulation of the verse, music would be superfluous.

Reynolds's analyses and judgments of the other Elizabethan dramatists, who he thought occasionally approached Shakespeare and Jonson, need not be particularized. Contemporary revivals of Massinger and Beaumont and Fletcher provided opportunities for thoughtful studies at some length. In his second theatrical review, he recommended that John Ford be revived,²² and, when his recommendation went unheeded, he devoted his greatest attention to his favorite Ford in the second essay “On the Early English Dramatists.”²³ Marlowe, Marston, and Dekker he discussed generally and briefly.

Reynolds was either indifferent to, or contemptuous of, the revivals of the tragedies of the Restoration and eighteenth century like those of Thomas Southerne and Nicholas Rowe, but he had a high regard for the comedy. Congreve and Farquhar, Goldsmith and Sheridan, he used frequently in his theatrical reviews as models of wit to contrast with the dull writers of his own day. John Gay's The Beggar's Opera was one of the first plays that he saw as a boy, and it remained a favorite throughout his life. He referred to it more often than to any other work except the plays of Shakespeare. Very much interested in boxing, he filled his essays with figures of speech based on the sport. Since boxing was illegal in his time, the participants and many of their followers were a part of the underworld. The lives of these people, which he later depicted in The Fancy, fascinated him, and the scenes in The Beggar's Opera often reminded him of them.

Dramatists received most of Reynolds's attention because of his position as theatrical critic, but he also criticized nondramatic poets in the literature section of the newspaper. During his connection with the Champion, he and Benjamin Bailey engaged in friendly rivalry over the relative merits of Spenser and Milton. Reynolds championed Spenser; Bailey, Milton. Each wrote a sonnet on his idol for the Champion,²⁴ and Reynolds addressed another sonnet to Bailey in which he said, “Milton hath your heart,—and Spenser mine.”²⁵ Though Reynolds did not write a separate essay on Spenser, he frequently praised Spenser's rich sensuousness. Reynolds's part in the argument, however, was more the exercise of ingenuity than the expression of firm conviction. Though partial to Spenser, he never failed to recognize the sublimity of Milton, often coupling Milton with Shakespeare and on one occasion paying Milton the highest tribute: he said that he had met with only three or four intelligent readers who did not think Milton as great a genius as Shakespeare.²⁶

On two occasions Reynolds published comprehensive essays evaluating many of the poets of the period. To the miscellanea department of 7 April 1816, he contributed “The Pilgrimage of Living Poets to the Stream of Castaly.”²⁷ Pretending to be apprehensive about his boldness in passing judgment on the successful poets of the day, Reynolds introduced the printed essay with an apology for his own limitations: “I am one of those unfortunate youths to whom the Muse has glanced a sparkling of her light,—one of those who pant for distinction, but have not within them that immortal power which alone can command it. There are many,—some, Sir, may be known to you,—who feel keenly and earnestly the eloquence of heart and mind in others, but who cannot, from some inability or unobtrusiveness, clearly express their own thoughts and feelings.” When he published this passage, the twenty-two-year-old Reynolds had written a large amount of verse, but was uncertain as to whether he was destined to become a genuine poet. The disclaimer of ability, however, must not be taken entirely at face value. He admired Chaucer, and there are several indications that he followed the pattern of Chaucer's dream visions in this essay. As we have seen, he admired Chaucer's irony in pretending to be a simple person; he was fond of “my wit is shorte, ye may well understand.”²⁸ A repetition of the pose later in the essay sounds even more Chaucerian than the introduction: “I have a great desire to attempt giving publicity to my dream, but I have before told you how limited are my powers of expression;—so I must rely upon your goodness, in receiving the crude description, or not.” The expression of modesty was largely a pleasant Chaucerian convention, for he knew perfectly well that the Champion would print the article. He had been a regular member of the staff for over four months.

In the body of the essay, Reynolds pretended that he walked forth one evening to the side of a brook, where he sat down to read one of the old poets. Falling into a deep sleep, he dreamed that, while walking through a romantic valley, he met a beautiful female figure who was the guardian of the stream of Castaly. The Spirit explained that, because of Reynolds's love of her favorite Spenser, she would allow him to see the annual procession of living poets who came to obtain water from the Castalian stream. The treatment of a selection of them will show the nature of the satire. The first was a melancholy figure bearing a Grecian urn, whom Reynolds recognized from his look of nobility as Lord Byron. After shedding tears, which purified the water into which they fell, he declared that he would preserve his portion untouched for several years. He had hardly finished speaking, however, before he allowed several drops to fall carelessly to the ground. The second poet, whose breastplate and rough plaid contrasted strangely with his dress shoes and silk stockings, proved to be Walter Scott. Although the old helmet in which he collected his portion was very shallow, the water received a pleasant sparkle from the warlike metal shining through it. Scott announced that he had already arranged to dispose of his share on advantageous terms. Southey, whose brow was encircled by a wreath of faded laurel, appeared bewildered and could hardly find his way to the stream of inspiration. Though chanting the praises of kings and courts, he dropped several poems which were opposite in tone from those he was singing. After scooping up only a little of the water in his gold vessel, he mounted his horse and rode off at an uneven pace toward St. James's.

Walking toward the stream together, Coleridge, Lamb, and Lloyd (the close friend who had published with them) conversed about the beauties of nature, its peaceful associations, and the purity of the domestic affections. The conversation turning to poetry, Lamb and Lloyd spoke simply, but Coleridge soon became confused by the abstruseness of his own observations. When he mentioned his plan of writing a metaphysical poem in a hundred books, Lamb remarked that he would prefer one of Coleridge's fine sonnets to all the wanderings of his mind. Reynolds directed the most effective satire of the piece against Coleridge:

Lamb and Lloyd dipped in a bright but rather shallow part of the stream;—Coleridge went to the depths, where he might have caught the purest water, had he not unfortunately clouded it with the sand which he himself disturbed at bottom. Lamb and Lloyd stated that they should take their porrengers home and share their contents with the amiable and simple hearts dwelling there;—Coleridge was not positive as to the use to which he should apply his portion of the stream, till he had ascertained what were the physical reasons for the sand's propensity to mount and curl itself in water.

His praise of Leigh Hunt was warm and friendly: “Next came Hunt, with a rich fanciful goblet in his hand, finely enamelled with Italian landscapes; he held the cup to his breast as he approached, and his eyes sparkled with frank delight. After catching a wave, in which a sun-beam seemed freshly melted, he intimated that he should water hearts-ease and many favourite flowers with it. The sky appeared of a deep blue as he was retiring.” Though he found no fault with Hunt's work, he did not place him among the first order of poets, complimenting him for gracefulness and geniality rather than more serious qualities.

With the entrance of the last poet, the tone of familiarity with which he had treated the other contemporaries vanished. Wordsworth appeared almost like a god:

Last came a calm and majestic figure moving serenely towards the stream. … It was Wordsworth! In his hand he held a vase of pure chrystal,—and, when he had reached the brink of the stream, the wave proudly swelled itself into his cup:—at this moment the sunny air above his brow, became embodied,—and the glowing and lightsome Spirit shone into being, and dropt a garland on his forehead;—sounds etherial swelled, and trembled, and revelled in the air,—and forms of light played in and out of sight,—and all around seemed like a living world of breathing poetry. Wordsworth bent with reverence over the vase, and declared that the waters he had obtained should be the refreshment of his soul;—he then raised his countenance,—which had become illumined from the wave over which he had bowed,—and retired with a calm dignity.

Reynolds found some faults with Wordsworth later, but he never doubted that along with Keats he was the preeminent poet of the age.

After he had observed the procession of poets to the true Castalian stream, Reynolds noticed another brook nearby where the poetasters were splashing around like a flock of gabbling geese. William Hayley, John Wilson, and Amos Cottle were among the group who mistakenly believed that they were drawing the genuine water of inspiration from the false stream. Most foolish of all was William Lisle Bowles, who “laboriously engaged in filling fourteen nutshells.” Bowles improved the joke by taking umbrage and writing an indignant letter to the Champion proclaiming the merit of his sonnets.²⁹

Reynolds's second comprehensive appraisal of the contemporary poets appeared in “Boswell's Visit.”³⁰ He was well prepared for his work as a critic for the Champion by a close reading of the periodical essayists of the preceding century, including Johnson's Idler. His greatest interest in Johnson, however, was in the man and critic as seen in Boswell's Life of Johnson. In an essay on egotism in literature, he had written, “Dr. Johnson was a thorough egotist: his misgivings—his asperities—his downright, adamant assertions—his weighty reasonings—his charitable kindnesses—were all egotistical. He was, however, on the whole, a melon of human nature,—for under a rough outside he had the very kindliest feelings at heart.”³¹ In his second comprehensive article on contemporary poets, he devised a clever anachronism in which Dr. Johnson and other members of the Literary Club judged the poets of the early nineteenth century.

In “Boswell's Visit,” Reynolds described himself returning home weary after the theater to prepare his review of the play, only to find that the printer's devil had called to warn him that copy was due the next morning. Worrying for some time about the deadline, he fell asleep and dreamed that James Boswell visited him and solved his problem. Boswell presented him with a record of the conversation of Dr. Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Sir Joshua Reynolds at the Literary Club, which had continued to meet in the shades after the death of the members, and Reynolds pretended that he transcribed the paper from memory after awakening. Those with strong interests in both the Johnson circle and Romantic poetry can hardly fail to be pleased by Reynolds's success in re-creating in an unexpected way minor disagreements between Johnson and Boswell, Johnson's lofty abstractions and balanced sentence structure, and his dogmatic assertion. The critical judgments of George Crabbe, Samuel Rogers, Robert Southey, and Walter Scott in the first installment follow logically and amusingly from Johnson's literary principles and tastes.

Reynolds devoted most of the second installment to Coleridge, Byron, and Wordsworth. The frame he had chosen proved most suitable for criticism of Coleridge: the common sense of the imaginary Dr. Johnson was ideal for satirizing metaphysics and mystification. Boswell began the discussion.

I stepped forward and asked the Doctor what he thought of Coleridge.

Johnson—“Why Sir, I think him a strange fellow.”

Boswell—“But do you think him a better metaphysician than a poet?”

Johnson—“Sir, it is impossible to separate his fancy from his ponderous logic. He has made negus of his poetry and his metaphysical prose. I have read some of his early poems with pleasure, because they were written before he had bewildered himself with the intricacies of philosophy. He is very rich in the good gold of feeling,—but he hoards it up. Two or three of his Odes are lofty.”

Boswell—“But have you read his Christabel, Sir?”

Johnson—“I have Sir—and it is a very dull enigma. He has put nonsense into fine words, and made her proud. I do not like to be puzzled to no purpose:—and it is a downright insolence in Mr. Coleridge to pester us with his two incomprehensible women. Sir, Geraldine is not to be made out:—she may be Joanna Southcote for all I know. Then what can be said of the dreams. They are arrant stuff. If Coleridge annoys us with more, the world will wish him a dreamless sleep. Sir, he might as well kick you.”

Burke—“His politics appear to be very changeable.”

Johnson—“Yes Sir, but he seems to be wise in his late opinion on that head.”

Sir Joshua—“I think his description of the shadow of pleasure's dome floating midway on the waves of a river, gives you a grand idea of the size of the structure. It seems to me very picturesque.”

Johnson—“But, Sir, I can make nothing of the dream. Any man may say an occasional good thing, but that will not embalm his eternal follies. He talks of a sunny dome, with caves of ice;—Sir, such a building could not exist. Fancy turns away with disgust from such an absurdity.”

Boswell—“Lord Byron has spoken well of the poems, Doctor.”

Johnson—“Sir, if he chuses to say a silly thing, I am not bound to abide by it. He may write an eulogy on Idiotcy, but I shall be bold to deem him mad, Sir, he may write ten yards of complimentary prose, or ten inches of insane poetry, if he likes; and I will neither read the first, nor admire the last. Let us hear no more of Coleridge.”

Despite his objection to Byron's praise of Coleridge, the imaginary Dr. Johnson's opinion of Byron was generally favorable. He preferred Childe Harold to his other work because of its serious tone and intellectual content, but he found its hero almost as objectionable morally as the leading characters of Byron's Eastern romances. He declared the Giaour, Lara, and the Corsair to be black villains. Though he considered the descriptions of the natural landscapes pleasing, he thought Byron unwise to devote so much attention to scenery, since men and the affairs of society were more interesting and valuable subjects.

Although Reynolds had the fictitious Johnson express great admiration for Wordsworth, the criticism is brief and general. Dr. Johnson wished that he might write the life of “the glorious poet,” and he compared the tone of his poetry to Milton's. In this case Reynolds probably saw that if Dr. Johnson's principles were applied to Wordsworth's poetry strictly, the resulting appraisal would have fallen short of his own high conception of the poet's genius. Consequently, he avoided the difficulty by treating Wordsworth briefly.

Except for the two general articles just discussed, Reynolds's criticism of the contemporary poets was scattered throughout the Champion in literary articles, reviews, and theatrical notices. His criticism there of Wordsworth is significant enough to merit detailed consideration.

As we have seen, Reynolds early in life recognized Wordsworth as the greatest poet of the age. His friendship with Haydon and contact with John Scott, editor of the Champion, confirmed his commitment. Haydon had been a friend of Wordsworth's for years, and Scott knew him personally and corresponded with him regularly from 14 May 1815 through 19 June 1816. Reynolds looked forward to The Excursion as a great philosophical poem in which Wordsworth would put behind him the simplicities that limited some of his earlier work,³² and he valued the work so highly when it appeared that he wrote a guide to assist readers in their progress through its loosely arranged and uneven attractions.³³

His earliest prose contribution to the Champion was an epistolary essay entitled “Mr. Wordsworth's Poetry.”³⁴ The subject, he wrote, was of the utmost importance to the literary world, for the very character of the age would depend to a large extent on its reception of Wordsworth's poetry. In intellectual content he found Wordsworth's work comparable to that of Milton and Jeremy Taylor. He admitted that Wordsworth lacked the popular appeal of many of his contemporaries, having neither the haughty melancholy and troubled spirit of Byron, the melodious fancy of Moore, nor the “gentlemanly prettinesses” and touches of antiquity of Walter Scott. Nevertheless, Reynolds believed, his descriptions of nature mingled with philosophy would continue to live after the fame of the others had receded. In discussing genre, Reynolds distinguished between the true and artificial pastoral. He considered the pastorals of the eighteenth century coldly conventional with little intellectual and no emotional appeal. As an example, he cited Shenstone, who in his opinion deserved the sharp criticism of Gray and Johnson, since he “would make us believe that the fields are for ever green, the sheep for ever feeding, and that the shepherds have nothing to do but to make love and play on a pipe.” With the publication of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth had begun a revolution against the artificial system. Though strongly opposed by many, his innovations had been welcomed from the first by a few intelligent readers, and they had gained further support through the years. Pleased to find that Wordsworth was aware of the extent of his own powers, Reynolds closed with a quotation from the “Essay Supplementary” to the preface of Poems of 1815, in which Wordsworth declared his conviction that his work was destined to endure.

In the issue of 18 February 1816, Reynolds continued his praise with his sonnet “To Wordsworth,” a graceful but conventional and undistinguished poetic tribute. He mentioned the solace and gratification which he had received from Wordsworth's poetry and wished that the beauties of nature might continue to inspire him. Wordsworth was mildly pleased by the poem, though he showed no curiosity about the author. After mentioning the Champion in a letter to John Scott dated four days after the issue in which Reynolds's sonnet appeared, Wordsworth wrote, “Thank you for the verses—I have the satisfaction of not infrequently receiving tributes of the same kind. What numbers must find their way to your namesake! and to the ‘bold bad bard Baron B.’”³⁵

In subsequent articles, Reynolds referred to Wordsworth's poetry frequently. In a theatrical review, for instance, a discussion of stage pastorals led to a comment on Wordsworth's descriptions of nature.³⁶ The affected simplicity of the actors and the obvious artificiality of the scenery made “a rural opera” ridiculous. The beauties of nature, he contended, could be portrayed most successfully in poetry. The two authors who had been best able to describe the woods and the fields were Chaucer and Wordsworth: Chaucer delighted the reader with his freshness and spontaneity, while Wordsworth cast a different kind of charm over his descriptions by introducing reflections and moral philosophy.

After his return from Exeter in early October 1816, Reynolds wrote two essays in which he included his most extensive appraisal of Wordsworth's genius. Wordsworth published his Thanksgiving Ode on the victory at Waterloo earlier in the year, and the Champion was late in reviewing it. In the first article, “Popular Poetry—Periodical Criticism, & c” on 13 October 1816, Reynolds explained that he would have noticed the poem earlier except for “personal circumstances of interruption,” a reference to his six-weeks vacation in Devonshire.³⁷ He devoted the first article to a discussion of general principles that were to serve as an introduction to the specific criticism of the second essay. For his major thesis he returned to “Essay Supplementary” to the preface to Poems of 1815, quoted in his first article on Wordsworth, and selected a passage in which Wordsworth maintained that new poetry should not be judged by its popularity. Reynolds agreed that inferior poets were likely to have a wider appeal because their work required very little of the reader. In developing the idea, he pointed out that the general advance in education had altered conditions for the poet. During earlier periods, the number of readers had been small, but those who could read were well prepared to appreciate poetry of the highest order. The number of readers had increased greatly in his own day, but their learning was so superficial that they were incapable of judging properly. Progress was also a mixed blessing in other respects: “Modern improvements are excellent things,—as every one who has lately bought stoves or dining tables must know: but we have the convenient in lieu of the romantic.” Country houses, shooting-boxes, curricles, and gigs had been acquired at the expense of old moated castles and coaches and six.

Another unfortunate concomitant of the advance of society, Reynolds maintained, was that the proper relation between poetry and criticism had been reversed. In earlier times the poet had preceded the critic, and the critic had derived his principles from great poetry. In his own age the reviewers were violating the natural order by attempting to prescribe for poets. The rules might be applied correctly to minor poets, but they could not possibly have any bearing on the productions of an original genius, whose work must be, by definition, an exception to the general rule. Yet Reynolds did not attack all contemporary criticism indiscriminately; he admitted that the Edinburgh Review had done much toward developing the public taste, and he showed considerable respect for its editor Francis Jeffrey's judgment. Despite his attack on Wordsworth, Reynolds believed that Jeffrey himself appreciated the true nature of Wordsworth's genius.

In Reynolds's opinion, however, the Edinburgh was an exception to the poor quality of the contemporary periodicals, which had reduced criticism to “giving rules by the observance of which Mr. Higgins may write well to his correspondents, and his wife may deliver her opinion like a sensible woman at a tea table.” With cant phrases and pert remarks the journalists were attacking works of real genius because they were incapable of understanding them. Unable to comprehend larger meanings, they selected petty faults in lines and phrases and applied “dictionary interpretations to the imagination's abstractions.” Furthermore, they were inconsistent in their condemnation of lowly details, for they ridiculed Wordsworth's Wanderer as a Scotch pedlar, while they overlooked the fact that Spenser had made his “lovely ladie” ride upon a “lowly asse.” According to Reynolds, one of the greatest offenders was the Quarterly Review, which he admonished, “To him, for instance, who favoured the public with the egregious criticism of The Tale of Rimini that appeared in the Quarterly! What would they say to the phrase in the second line that follows?

‘The noble hart, that harbours vertuous thought,
And is with child of glorious great intent.’”(38)

How dare small-minded critics object to what they call lowly details when Spenser had used the simple bodily image of pregnancy for his powerful line.

The danger of such criticism as that in the Quarterly, Reynolds believed, was its tendency to draw poets down to the level of critics. Since the great majority of readers in fashionable society were only superficially educated, they relied upon the periodicals for their critical opinions. Hence, there was strong pressure upon any poet who wanted monetary or social success to conform to the standard of the critics.

In the second article, entitled “Wordsworth's Thanksgiving Ode,” Reynolds returned to his principal theme of the preceding week: “Mr. Wordsworth … is not a popular poet:—we are very sure he is an admired one; and as to popularity, though it is a desirable thing for any weekly newspaper, yet we do not know that it is absolutely necessary for the Cartoons or the Samson Agonistes.”³⁹ That Wordsworth's poem was occasional seemed of little importance to Reynolds, for he maintained that Wordsworth was never dependent on his subject. The chief reason for Wordsworth's success lay in his depiction of his own imagination, no matter what the subject. After quoting the opening stanza of Wordsworth's ode, Reynolds indulged in transparent mystification: without mentioning the author or title, he included a long passage from Samson Agonistes and declared it was by an earlier author who had been just as unpopular as Wordsworth. He apologized with mock seriousness for inserting such “tedious” lines and pretended to fear that the publisher of the paper would object when he found that they had been included. Then, shifting his ground, he promised that if any reader could admit the sublimity of the extract by the unnamed author, and at the same time deny any merit to Wordsworth's ode, he would renounce all pretensions to criticism.

By praising Wordsworth, Reynolds was running counter to a strong current of literary opinion even as late as 1816. He reported that a lady had written from Edinburgh to ask whether he really believed that Wordsworth had ever written anything as fine as Campbell's The Pleasures of Hope. He admitted, moreover, that some of his friends did not agree with him. One had been puzzled about Wordsworth's meaning, and another had asked sarcastically whether Harry Gill's teeth were still chattering. Despite these objections, Reynolds was firmly convinced that Wordsworth was the great poet of the age—he had barely met Keats. The only reservation in his praise of the Thanksgiving Ode was to its reactionary political tone. Although he joined Wordsworth in rejoicing over the victory at Waterloo, he was not nearly so satisfied with conditions in England. He took exception, though somewhat cautiously, to Wordsworth's “excess of saintly rapture” in having the angels welcome the hideous defeat of the French and declared that his own political opinion was closer to that which Wordsworth had held earlier in life than to that which he professed in the Thanksgiving Ode.

Reynolds's error of judgment in overvaluing the Thanksgiving Ode, which posterity has forgotten, undercuts these two essays for the twentieth-century reader. But despite the serious error, much that is valuable remains in the two critiques, for though he was wrong about the particular poem, he was right about Wordsworth.

Notes

1. The Reader, No. IV, Champion, 26 May 1816, p. 160. Selected Prose, p. 53. [Leonidas M. Jones, ed., Selected Prose of John Hamilton Reynolds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966).]

2. Review of Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, Champion, 20 July 1817, p. 230. Selected Prose, p. 114.

3. “The Broken Sword,” Champion, 13 October 1816, p. 326. Selected Prose, pp. 157-58.

4. “Richard Duke of York,” Champion, 28 December 1817, p. 413. Selected Prose, p. 207.

5. “Hamlet,” Champion, 14 December 1817, p. 397. Selected Prose, p. 204. He borrowed the phrase from Hazlitt's Characters, P. P. Howe, ed., The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, 21 vols. (London: J. M. Dent, 1930-34), IV, 232.

6. “Manuel,” Champion, 16 March 1817, p. 85. Selected Prose, p. 178.

7. Review of Hazlitt's Characters, Champion, 20 July 1817, p. 230. Selected Prose, p. 114.

8. Review of Hazlitt's Characters, p. 230. Selected Prose, p. 113.

9. A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, by Augustus Wilhelm Schlegel, Translated from the Original German by John Black, 2 vols. (London: no publisher, 1815).

10. The Reader, No. V, Champion, 2 June 1816, p. 174. Selected Prose, p. 62.

11. Letters of R, p. 9. [Leonidas M. Jones, ed., The Letters of John Hamilton Reynolds (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973).]

12. The manner in which he echoed Hazlitt, perhaps unconsciously, can be seen from a comparison of two passages. Hazlitt wrote in The Round Table: “A journeyman sign-painter, whose lungs have imbibed too great a quantity of white-lead, will be seized with a fantastic passion for the stage” (Complete Works of Hazlitt, IV, 59). In describing a similar situation, Reynolds used many of the same words and phrases: “We remember seeing a Mr. Edwards, a journeyman sign-painter we believe … his voice fainted from his lips, overcome with turpentine and white lead” (“King Richard. Mr. Fisher,” Champion, 7 December 1817, p. 389).

13. Champion, 16 February, 14 December 1817, pp. 53, 397. For the latter, Selected Prose, pp. 204, 205.

14. Review of Hazlitt's Characters, Champion, 20, 27 July 1817, pp. 230-31, 237. Selected Prose, pp. 113-19.

15. R to Dov, 30 September 1813. Richardson, p. 107. [Joanna Richardson, Letters from Lambeth (London: Boydell Press, 1981)]

16. “The First Part of Henry the Fourth. Mr. Stephen Kemble in Falstaff,” Champion, 13 October 1816, p. 325. Selected Prose, p. 153.

17. Champion, 14 December 1817, p. 397. Selected Prose, p. 203.

18. “Essay on the Early Dramatic Poets,” Champion, 7 January 1816, p. 6. Selected Prose, p. 34.

19. “Mr. Hazlitt's Lectures,” Scots Magazine, December 1818, p. 548. Selected Prose, p. 243.

20. John Aikin, Vocal Poetry (London: J. Johnson, 1810), p. 166n., quoted in R's “Ben Jonson,” Champion, 4 May 1817, p. 14. Selected Prose, p. 108.

21. William Cartwright, “In the Memory of the Most Worthy Benjamin Jonson,” l. 104, included in Jonsonus Virbius (1638).

22. Champion, 17 December 1815, p. 405.

23. Champion, 3 March 1816, p. 70. Selected Prose, pp. 42-44.

24. Reynolds's “To Spenser,” Champion, 10 March 1816, p. 78. Bailey's “To Milton,” Champion, 30 June 1816, p. 206.

25. “Sonnet to a Friend,” first published in the Athenaeum, 7 July 1832, p. 432, but dated 1817.

26. “Mr. Kemble,” Champion, 29 June 1817, p. 206.

27. Champion, 7 April 1816, p. 110. Selected Prose, pp. 45-50. He had evidently written a first version of the article several years earlier, for a letter of Thomas Winstanley of Liverpool to Dovaston on 20 April 1816 contains on a separate sheet in a different hand an extract from another version of the article containing lavish praise of Dovaston not in the Champion version (Dovaston Collection, Shropshire County Record Office). Winstanley was a close friend of William Roscoe, Ralph Rylance's mentor and close friend since boyhood. Rylance regularly sent Roscoe a large volume of his own poetry and prose. Apparently when Rylance and Reynolds were warm friends, Rylance sent Roscoe a manuscript copy of the Reynolds essay sometime before the spring of 1814 when the Reynoldses broke all communication with Rylance. When Winstanley became acquainted with Dovaston in 1816, he sought to please him by sending the lavish praise from the manuscript essay in the Roscoe family papers. After his friendship with Dovaston faded, Reynolds deleted the passage in praise of Dovaston.

28. R's quotation from the General Prologue, l. 748 in Champion, 26 May 1816, p. 166. Selected Prose, p. 58.

29. Champion, 12 May 1816, p. 151. Selected Prose, pp. 51-52.

30. Champion, 1, 15 December 1816, pp. 381-82, 397-98. Selected Prose, pp. 84-96.

31. The Reader, No. V, Champion, 2 June 1816, pp. 173-74. Selected Prose, p. 62.

32. R to Dov, 30 July 1814. Richardson, p. 120.

33. Hudnall, p. 21.

34. Champion, 9 December 1815, p. 398. Selected Prose, pp. 25-27.

35. Ernest de Selincourt, ed., 2nd ed. revised by Mary Moorman and Alan G. Hill, The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, the Middle Years (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 283.

36. Champion, 21 April 1816, p. 125.

37. Champion, 13 October 1816, pp. 326-27. Selected Prose, pp. 70-76. John Scott wrote Wordsworth on 29 May 1816 that he planned to review the Thanksgiving Ode himself (MS in Dove Cottage), but the review five months after his statement could not be his because its author wrote that “our publisher will see it [a long quotation] with grief of soul” (p. 79), and Scott was the publisher, who was in Paris and would not see it until after publication. Mr. Patrick O'Leary, who is preparing a biography of John Scott, notes that in a number of cases Scott's stated intentions to write pieces went unfulfilled. I am grateful to Mrs. Winifred F. Courtney and Professor Robert Woof of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne for helpful correspondence in this matter.

38. The Faerie Queene, I, v, 1-2. R supplied the italics. Keats quoted the same lines, Letters of Keats, I, 134.

39. Champion, 20 October 1816, pp. 334-35. Selected Prose, pp. 76-84. The cartoons were paintings by Raphael.