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As inheritors of a romantic individualism that elevates the unique above the typical, we areapt to forget that the categories within which Wordsworth understood his own life, in prospectand in retrospect, were bequeathed to him by his age, and that his greatest poems confrontmoral and psychological problems that he regarded as representative. In the Hawkesheadpoems we find the assumptions made about the growth of the individual mind that dominatehis career; that the normal course of human life involves a crisis of transition from naturalismto orthodox dualism; that the crisis threatens spiritual and psychological decay; and that thetask of man and poet is to survive it, to relinquish youthful vision without loss of hope.Virtually all the poets the young Wordsworth imitated make such assumptions, andthey do so in a particular form: the belief that the power of ‘fancy’ is dominant in youth, andthat maturation involves a transition to a mature reason and the truths it reveals. (32-3)In my own reading of Wordsworth I argue that Wordsworth did not appreciate the values of hisclassical education until some time after he left school and university. It was only later, when he wentthrough the ‘crisis of transition’ that Sheats outlines as something of a rite of passage, that he gainedhis mature and ‘manly’ appreciation of such values. I argue that the narrative of The Prelude was quitedeliberately structured to represent such a ‘crisis of transition’ – something that occurs in Book Xwhen Wordsworth ‘Yielded up moral questions in despair’ (Prelude X 901). In his revisions to thepoem Wordsworth later uses the word ‘crisis’ to make this turning point more explicit (Prelude 1850:XI 306). 24 I follow Sheats’ reading of Wordsworth closely in this study, finding his representation ofWordsworth to account for the evidence provided by Wordsworth in his personal and poetic writings,far more convincingly than the speculations of more influential critics. 25In following Bialostosky’s suggestions in Wordsworth, Dialogics and the Practice ofCriticism I soon discovered it was necessary to read far more extensively in Quintilian, since itseemed to me that that was what Wordsworth had done. (It was also something that Hugh Blair hadrecommended to his readers). 26 It was only through reading Quintilian that I began to realise the fullextent to which Wordsworth’s mind was shaped by classical concepts, and his poetry by classicalcommonplaces. He appears to have made a careful reading of Quintilian’s Institutes in the later 1790sas he made a conscious and determined effort to carry off his poetic work ‘with eloquence’ (EY 212).Having read Quintilian I made a more comprehensive study of classical rhetoric as I developed a moredetailed argument for recognising Quintilian’s influence. This led, in turn, to the growing realisationthat behind Quintilian’s classical voice there was another, even more significant influence on thegrowth of Wordsworth’s mind – the imposing voice of Marcus Tullius Cicero. As I read Cicero’sphilosophical works I began to trace the origins of distinctive concepts in Wordsworth’s writings that24 All references to The Prelude will be to the 1805 text unless otherwise stated.25 Sheats is quietly critical of both Meyer Abrams’ and Geoffrey Hartman’s readings of Wordsworth, as well asthe more psychologised readings provided by Herbert Read and, more controversially, by F.W. Bateson. Hegives the grounds for his differences with these critics in his Preface.26 See Lecture XXXIV ‘Means of Improving Eloquence’, in which Blair recommends the study of Cicero, andthen adds: ‘But of all the ancient writers on the subject of oratory, the most instructive and most useful isQuinctilian. I know few books which abound more with good sense, and discover a greater degree of just andaccurate taste, then Quinctilian's Institutions...he has digested into excellent order all the ancient ideasconcerning rhetoric, and is, at the same time an eloquent writer...I would not advise the omitting to read anypart of his Institutions...Seldom has any person, of more sound and distinct judgement than Quinctilian,applied himself to the study of the art of oratory’ (417).13