SOURCE: Davie, Donald. “Dionysus in Lyrical Ballads.” In Wordsworth's Mind and Art, edited by A. W. Thomson, pp. 110-39. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1969.

In the following essay, Davie discusses Wordsworth's emphasis on the pleasure of perception as the hallmark of his poetry, placing the poet's ideas in the context of classical and Romantic theories of composition.

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“I am myself,” said Wordsworth, “one of the happiest of men; and no man who does not partake of that happiness, who lives a life of constant bustle, and whose felicity depends on the opinions of others, can possibly comprehend the best of my poems.” It was thus that he delivered himself on 8 May, 1812, to Henry Crabb Robinson: and it is a good example of the frightening and repellent self-assurance with which Wordsworth contemplated the fact and the nature of his own genius, and communicated his sense of these to others. But...