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enthymemes, rather than syllogisms, to convey his meaning. 7 Wordsworth expresses a rhetoric that isclassical and opposes the ‘rhetoric of Romanticism’, as set out by Abrams and other High Romanticcritics.In contrast to these High Romantic readings of Wordsworth there have always been otherreaders of The Prelude who report a sense of confusion when Wordsworth appears to place his faith in‘Imagination’, defined in such abstract terms, in the final Book. They find that this apparentidealisation of ‘the Imagination’ contradicts the thrust of his earlier argument, one that seemed tofavour a more empirical understanding of imagination connected with nature. To describe‘Imagination’ as a transcendental power of the mind itself, in the final book of the poem, negates anyneed for the mind to be in relationship with nature. And to suggest a Kantian reading of ‘Imagination’– as Einbildungskraft – denies nature any power; the mind itself is creative in its activities and naturemerely provides the necessary forms on which it acts. There is no possibility for a ‘marriage’ of equalpowers, but rather a recognition of the sovereignty of Imagination, a master–slave relationship inwhich human ‘Fancy’ plays an inferior role, its powers limited to the ‘reproduction’ rather than the‘production’ of ‘images’, according to Kantian theory. 8Critics who believed Wordsworth’s understanding of ‘imagination’ was based on an empiricalconcept rather than a transcendental one, found it contradictory to interpret the poem as thecelebration of a prophetic vocation in the tradition of the peoples of the Book. The traditional HebrewProphet speaks the mind of God; he does not speak with his own mind – his own identity is displacedat such times of vatic utterance – and the speaker is acknowledged not to be in his ‘right’ mind; he is‘mad’. As I am arguing here, Wordsworth wrote The Prelude specifically to describe the growth of his‘own’ mind, and distance himself from his youthful identity as a vatic poet. The poem sets out hisreasons for having to cast off of his ‘priestly robes’ in order that he might become a poet of the humanimagination; ‘a man speaking to men’. It would therefore be extremely paradoxical for him toconclude the poem by declaring that he was a great poet by virtue of some divine inspiration.Coleridge expressed a belief in truth being a ‘divine ventriloquist’, but Wordsworth recognised theimportance of owning his own thoughts and arriving at truth statements that were defined by reason,rather than inspiration. As has already been stressed, the ‘Prophet of Nature’ in the original text of ThePrelude is a conscious speaker, speaking a ‘lasting inspiration, sanctified / By reason and by truth’(XIII 443-4 my emphasis), not by any divine sanction. 9 The term ‘prophet’ is being used to describe apoet, as was common in Wordsworth’s time.The debate as to whether Wordsworth intended to represent an ‘empirical’ or ‘transcendental’concept of Imagination has engaged critics and scholars in dialogue for over a century. The generalconsensus appears to be that Wordsworth began thinking about ‘imagination’ in empirical terms and7 Wordsworth could also have been alluding to Sir Francis Bacon’s dismissal of syllogistic reasoning in TheAdvancement of Knowledge - a text that Wordsworth echoes quietly and consistently.8 Kant’s psychology distinguishes between two types of imagination, one of which is associative and subjectentirely to empirical laws (the reproductive imagination = Fancy), while the other is spontaneous anddeterminative not, like sense, merely determinable (the productive imagination = Imagination).9 The passage was later revised to: ‘A lasting inspiration, sanctified / By reason, blest by faith’ (1850 XIV 445–6).117