But both are
equally the affair of necessity. The man differs from the knife,
just as the iron candlestick differs from the brass one; he has one
more way of being acted upon. This additional way in man is motive,
in the candlestick is magnetism' (i. 309).
At first sight it is, as I have said, a wonder that Wordsworth
should have been much impressed by such doctrines as these, but the
evidence is strong that for a time they lay upon him like a
nightmare. I will not quote the Borderers for a reason which will
be seen presently, but the testimony of Hazlitt, Coleridge, the
Prelude, and the Excursion is decisive. "Throw aside your books of
chemistry," said Wordsworth to a young man, a student in the Temple,
"and read Godwin on Necessity"' (Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age, p. 49,
3rd edition). Now it is a question, important historically, but
more important to ourselves privately, whether Wordsworth's
temporary subjugation by Political Justice was due to pure
intellectual conviction. I think not. Coleridge noticed that
Wordsworth suffered much from hypochondria.
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