...BobCumming Moodus, Connecticut o ite A poet is a man speaking to men, endowed with more sen' sibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater...soul than are supposed to be common among mankind, a man pleased with his own passions and volitions and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit...

...tells us that the poet, while an ordinary man, has yet, among his other distinguishing excellences, 'a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive...soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind' (WProse, I:138), and the implications of the phrase are ringingly Shakespearian: we have already seen...

...eighteenth-century theory, viewed the poet as a man "possessed of more than usual organic sensibility" with a "greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul" than that of the common man, so that even if Wordsworth is very much concerned to show the poet as a "man...

...unprecedented depths of feeling, that enabled her artistic genius. For Wordsworth the poet was one "endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm...soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind." Poetry was a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."28 Seventh, aesthetic experience was nevertheless...

...And what language is to be expected from him? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and...soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit...

...Wordsworth's sense, when he described the poet as a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with a more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness,...soul than are supposed to be common among mankind. I happen to know that many anthropologists, and a rather larger percentage than I suspect is to be...

...his self. We might remember here what Wordsworth went on to say clearly in the 1802 Preface. The poet "has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more...soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind." His poetry, whose "object is trudi," "is the image of man and nature," "man and the objects that surround...

...monumental ignorance; rather, it is his conception of the writer. Wordsworth's poet is "a man . . . endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm...soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind." Wordsworth goes on in this vein for several sentences, arrogating to the poet, and hence to himself,...

...organic sensibility" (735). And, famously, Wordsworth asks: "What is a Poet? ... A man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm...soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind" (737). In the light of these observations, we should think of Wordsworth's "spots of time" — those...

...In his Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth defined the poet as "a man . . . endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm...soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind." 11 Though the description only admits of a difference of degree between the genius and the average...