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degenerated, his behaviour started to affect that of his children. It is important to recognise that – aswas the case with the girl in ‘The Baker’s Cart’ passage – it is the mental rather than the materialsituation that is the presenting problem. This again reflects the stoic attitude pervading the poem;Wordsworth places more importance on the character’s attitude of mind rather than their materialcircumstances. De Quincey’s critique, and those voiced by other materialist-orientated critics havemissed the point. Matters of consciousness here are more significant than the material situation.Though this is not to deny that the situations of all the suffering women in Wordsworth’s poems ofthis period were caused by very obvious material circumstances that were caused, in part, by actionsof a government that ‘does not’ care for the poor.At this point in the narrative, the oratorical Pedlar becomes far more engaged in the ‘manner’than the ‘matter’ of his tale and, in a dazzling display of rhetoric, he momentarily brings the dead tolife as he gives voice to Margaret’s response to her husband’s state of mind:‘Every smile’Said Margaret to me, here beneath these trees,‘Made my heart bleed’ (437-9)Her presence ‘here beneath these trees’ (we can imagine the Pedlar gesturing), brings the narrative toan emotional climax and:At this the old man paused.Then, in a magnificent subversion of Thomson’s sublime ‘haunts of meditation passage’ in Summer –the climax to the section beginning ‘Tis raging noon’ (line 423) – the Pedlar notes the time: ‘the hourof deepest noon’, and the place: ‘here beneath these... enormous elms’. The moment of noon, like themoment of midnight, was the bewitching hour when spirits were believed to come closest to theearth, and might be visible or audible to mortals. At this moment in time it was thought possible tomomentarily escape the temporal world and hear the voices of the dead, just as they spoke to the poetin Thomson’s ‘druidical’ grove and invited him to join in their supernatural song. But in ‘The RuinedCottage’ it is the human speaker who has just given voice to the dead – Margaret has not, in fact,spoken. And then, to continue this deconstruction of Thomson’s sublime, supernatural, middaymoment,the Pedlar goes on to describe the other voices he can hear:At this still season of repose and peace,This hour when all things which are not at restAre chearful, while this multitude of fliesFills the air with happy melody,Why should a tear be in an old man’s eye? (442-446)Natural voices sing in the Pedlar’s grove, not supernatural ones, and the insects that hadpreviously disturbed Wordsworth’s attempts at rest are seen here, to fill the air ‘with happy melody’.Wordsworth demonstrates a new poetic voice here; one that engages with the human world, andreveals a new appreciation of the role of language. The oratorical Pedlar has assumed the status oncegiven by Wordsworth to the Druid or Bard – but the powers the Pedlar draws on are natural, not253