...wwclinical terrain of poetry, and at a time when in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth warns against "frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies,...deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse" (WP 735) or Shelley, somewhat later in A Defence of Poetry, refers to poets as the "wwacknowledged...

..."leveling," Wordsworth is sure to maintain the difference between "good" poetry and the "amusements" of "frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies,...deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse" (William Wordsworth, "Preface to Lyrical Ballads," in The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, ed. WJ...

...The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakspeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and...deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse. 15 "The rapid communication of intelligence": meaning newspapers, as today it would mean television...

...The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and...deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse. — When I think upon this degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation, I am almost ashamed to have...

...related to them. The gore in these descriptions calls to mind Wordsworth's contemporary denunciation of 'frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies,...deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse'. The verses that fascinated Cooke's illustrators featured dungeons, ghosts, howling tigers, phantoms,...