...of mind, was that they expressed . . . states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling. . . . They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. ... From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater...

...one well-noted discussion, he tells how he found a solution in Wordsworth's poetry, which presented 'not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling'. It was 'the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them [Wordsworth's poems] I seemed...

...poets now supplied that "culture of feelings" which Mill had been seeking, by presenting him not with "mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of...thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty."8 He reached out for aesthetic satisfactions of which he had been hitherto deprived; for many...

...a meliorist poet writing of the shared stuff of physical sensations: "In them [Wordsworth's poems] I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would...