William Wordsworth

the poet as prophet

pp. 38-63

in: Patrick Parrinder, Authors and authority, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Abstract

But why are Originals so few? not because the writer’s harvest is over, the great reapers of antiquity having left nothing to be gleaned after them; not because the human mind’s teeming time is past, or because it is incapable of putting forth unprecedented births; but because illustrious examples engross, prejudice, and intimidate. They engross our attention, and so prevent a due inspection of ourselves; they prejudice our judgment in favour of their abilities, and so lessen the sense of our own; and they intimidate us with the splendour of their renown, and thus under diffidence bury our strength.