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supernatural. The distinction is important, and marks the beginning of the period when Wordsworthchose not to pursue supernatural topics for his poetry. Not only does the narrative of ‘The RuinedCottage’ mark a turn from Pastoral to Georgic – from a poetics of inspiration to one of labour – it alsomarks Wordsworth’s rejection of a bardic vocation, with its reliance on supernatural inspiration. Hisearlier idealisation of the poet as bard, druid, or prophet of some god, is replaced by a new conceptionof the poet as an eloquent orator. The earlier reliance on unconscious, supernatural, inspiration isabandoned in favour of an art of poetry in which the poet consciously constructs his meanings andcontrols his language. This ‘new’ understanding provided the rationale for the division of labour inthe production of the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, in which Wordsworth chose to write on ‘natural’topics, and did not want to engage in the supernatural, while Coleridge preferred to exploit thepossibilities it offered. The grounds for the later ‘radical difference’ in the two men’s beliefs aboutpoetic theory can be traced back to Wordsworth’s concern to treat ‘natural’ rather than ‘supernatural’topics, and is revealed in work completed in the spring of 1798. 9The Pedlar’s eloquent narrative demonstrates particular oratorical skills as he succeeds inmaking Margaret’s story come alive and be experienced as a heart-felt reality. The feelings involvedare not produced by any dramatic ‘moving accident’ or representation of sublime terror, but by amilder form of pathos and a sense also of lacrimae rerum, the tears in things – as the Pedlar’sexample again demonstrates. He has been touched by his own eloquence, despite his stoic character,and he is quick to dismiss such sentimentality. But Wordsworth allows him this minor demonstrationof weakness in order to reveal that he is not actually the hard-hearted moralist that some readers havediscerned, in their less than close reading of the text. In ‘The Ruined Cottage’, Wordsworth is doing anumber of remarkable things – one of which is to distance himself from his earlier sympathy withThomsonian reveries and the poetics of the pastoral dreaming poet. Where Thomson had brought thedead to life through recourse to superstition and supernatural agency, the Pedlar achieves the sameeffect by a natural one – his use of eloquent or ‘poetic’ language.In bringing his narrative to a conclusion, for the moment, the Pedlar poses a couple ofrhetorical questions. His tale is sad, but why should he and Wordsworth feel grief at a time of ‘reposeand peace’ when nature is cheerful. Why should human feelings cloud the natural happiness to befound in nature?Why should a tear be in an old man’s eye?Why should we thus with an untoward mind,And in the weakness of humanity,From natural wisdom turn our hearts away,To natural comforts shut our eyes and ears.And feeding on disquiet, thus disturb[The calm] of Nature with our restless thoughts? (446-452)9 Coleridge set out his version of a distinction between his ‘supernatural’ concerns and Wordsworth’s ‘natural’ones in 1798 at the beginning of Chapter 14 of Biographia Literaria. His influential and widely discussedcommentary needs to be re-examined in the light of the reading I present here in order to appreciateWordsworth’s understanding of distinctions that Coleridge wrote about from memory some eighteen yearslater.254