The parallel with Wordsworth is indeed not exact, for the best of Wordsworth's poetry neither requires nor admits of condensation.

_The Excursion_ might benefit by omission and compression, but not _The Solitary Reaper_, nor _The Daffodils_.

But the example of Richardson is fairly in point.

Abridgments of _Clarissa Harlowe_ have been attempted, but probably without any effect on the number of its readers.

The power of Richardson's method does actually lie in the "soaking process" to which FitzGerald refers.