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turned to science for a cure’ (224-229). His sickness, his ‘fever of the heart’ is then described in termsthat make it sound a blessing rather than a curse:From Nature and her overflowing soulHe had received so much, that all his thoughtsWere steeped in feeling. He was only thenContented, when, with bliss ineffableHe felt the sentiment of being, spreadO’er all that moves, and all that seemeth stillO’er all which, lost beyond the reach of human thought,And human knowledge, to the human eyeInvisible, yet liveth to the heart,O’er all that leaps, and runs, and shouts and sings,Or beats the gladsome air, o’er all that glidesBeneath the wave yea in the wave itselfAnd mighty depth of waters. Wonder notIf such his transports were; for in all thingsHe saw one life, and felt that it was joy. (238-252)Many readers of Wordsworth’s poetry first come across these lines in Book II of The Preludein both the 1799 and 1805 texts, where they describe a state of mind that appears to be, quite literally,wonderful. And Wordsworth plays with language here in the expression ‘Wonder not’, in his briefturn to the reader, as he describes a state of mind that appears ‘most wonderful’. Here again, as in somuch of Wordsworth, the finer points of his vocabulary require an appreciation of his Latin mind.The feeling of wonder, in Latin, is conveyed by the word miratio, which, with the prefix ad formsadmiratio, a feeling of wonder towards someone or something. The superlative form is mirabilis –most wonderful. The terms ‘admiration’ and ‘astonishment’, are used by Wordsworth to describe astrong state of emotion. A sense of astonishment, of absolute wonder, is ‘a sense sublime’ – one inwhich the mind is overcome, and can no longer function. Longinus’ treatment of the experience iswell known, but here Wordsworth is also defining ‘wonder’ as a state of emotion that is not ‘a good’.In Stoic terms it is an ‘evil’ state of mind because it is experienced as a loss of control over the mind.When this passage is later used in The Prelude to describe Wordsworth’s youthful experience, hishope is the one repeated in the Simplon Pass passage, and on Salisbury Plain – the hope that he, as apoet dedicated to the Muse and a priest of nature, might be ‘received’ by the god(s) and granted avision of the true nature of things, as Virgil had hoped.The Pedlar’s experience of such transports of delight is described as a vision of the ‘one-life’:‘He saw one life, and felt that it was joy’. But neither the Pedlar, nor the youthful Wordsworth in ThePrelude, is capable of withstanding, or understanding, such an overwhelmingly sublime, sense of‘joy’ when it was experienced as a divine influx in youth. For the Pedlar, such intense feelings areoverpowering rather than empowering; they are too intense for his mortal mind to bear and, as aresult:his bodily strength began to yieldBeneath their weight. The mind within him burnt268