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Cicero’s works on late eighteenth-century classically educated gentlemen, especially those with OldWhig, classical republican sympathies. This would have squared more readily with the opinions ofsuch respected and established authorities on Wordsworth as Meyer Abrams and W.J.B. Owen whoboth argued for Wordsworth’s debt to eighteenth-century thinkers. My reading of Wordsworth has hadthe advantage of the historical detail to be found in the more recent historical studies that haverecognised Wordsworth’s engagement with history in the 1790s, rather than his evasion of it. Myconcern has been to place Wordsworth and his poetry within that history, in order to discover thesources of his political concerns, his philosophical principles and his poetic eloquence.Somewhat reductively, my research led me to consider the significance of one particularprimary source because, in my reading of Wordsworth and Cicero I discovered that Cicero’s Academicscepticism; his classical humanist principles; his particular representation of philosophy and his idiomare all reproduced in Wordsworth’s writings. I argue that the proofs of Cicero’s influence can bediscovered by reading carefully in his philosophical works and discovering passages that soundfamiliar to a Wordsworth scholar because Wordsworth later echoes them. He does so eitherdeliberately, in an allusive manner intended to reveal the extent of his ‘wisdom’, or unconsciouslybecause his acceptance of Cicero’s Stoic frame of mind had become habitual – something ‘secondnature’ to him. 17 My discovery of this Ciceronian influence was a direct result of my earlierappreciation of Quintilian’s influence, something that has already been established. My reading of theworks of both these Roman moralists provided me with a better understanding of the origins ofWordsworth’s political, philosophical and poetic interests than the works of any other possibleinfluence, including Coleridge.As novel as my proposal about the significance of Cicero’s influence might at first appear, ithas a great deal of merit in helping explain the enigmatic nature of Wordsworth’s personality and theoften noted paradoxical nature of his thinking. The course of his actual poetic career; his focus on thenatural rather than supernatural; his particularly ironic stance towards making judgements; his noteddiscrimination in discussing both sides of a question; his so-called egotism; and his later reputation asthe (Stoic) sage of Rydal Mt can all be accounted for if Cicero’s influence is accepted. It also makesmuch clearer the significance, at least to him, of his masterpiece, The Excursion, and helps to explainwhy he never could have written The Recluse in the form that Coleridge urged on him in 1798. Byturning my focus from Coleridge to Cicero I am building a case for displacing Coleridge’s authority asthe necessary influence on Wordsworth’s poetic development in 1798, and arguing instead for a moreimportant and enduring ‘classical undersong’ that provided a solid support for Wordsworth’s theory,and underpinned his poetic career as it actually developed, with difficulty, in the early 1800s. This isnot to deny that Coleridge played a crucial role in Wordsworth’s life in the late 1790s both as a friend,and as a fellow poet. Coleridge drew Wordsworth out of his reclusive retreat at Racedown at a timewhen Wordsworth was also in need of friendship. But instead of playing the role of necessary17 Wordsworth studied Cicero’s actual works closely, judging by the concepts that he reproduces in his ownwriting. He often sticks closely to Cicero’s Latin when he reproduces key passages, and the number ofdistinct echoes from Cicero suggests a direct transmission.284