ABSTRACT
Wordsworth came to think of all his poetry as contributing to his description of mind and there is evidence to show that the idea was in his thoughts from almost the beginning of his poetic career. The purpose of the poems in Lyrical Ballads is, he declares, ‘to follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections’ and to trace ‘the primary laws of our nature.’ 1 Dictating a note to Isabella Fen wick in 1843, he suddenly breaks out: ‘Archimedes said that he could move the world if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his own mind?’ 2 This is a simple statement of the complex motive that caused Wordsworth to regard all his poetry as a single work, the external point that enabled him to know himself, the fulcrum that he hoped would allow him to command his mental world.
