button to main menu  Gents Mag 1830 part 2 p.24

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Gentleman's Magazine 1830 part 2 p.24

  William Wordsworth
  Poor Susan

Poor Susan, Willliam Wordsworth

Scraps from a Notebook.
about London
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It may seem hypercritical, but I cannot help thinking that the effect of Wordsworth's affecting little piece, "Poor Susan," is injured, in the minds of Cockneys at least, by the making of "bright volumes of vapour down Lothbury glide," since it is impossible, from "the corner of Wood-street" (the scene of the ballad) to catch a glimpse of that place, especially if "a river" is to be seen "flowing through the vale of Cheapside" at the same time. Does not Lothbury too, sound in unaccustomed ears as something pleasant and countryfied? - I know nothing so exquisitely pathetic as the short piece in question in the whole range of British poetry, except a song in the "Life of Mausie Wauch," entitled "There's nae hame like our ain hame," I would rather be the author of that one little poem, than of all the fashionable novels that have followed one another into oblivion for the last fifty years.
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