Pater, in introducing his appreciation of Wordsworth, writes that
"an intimate consciousness of the expression of natural things, which
weighs, listens, penetrates, where the earlier mind passed roughly by,
is a large element in the complexion of modern poetry." We recognize at
once the truth of this characterization as applied to Wordsworth. But
there is something more distinguished about this poet's sensibility even
than its extreme fineness and delicacy; a quality that is suggested,
though not made explicit, by Shelley's allusion to Wordsworth's
experience as "a sort of thought in sense." Nature possessed for him not
merely enjoyable and describable characters of great variety and
minuteness, but an immediately apprehended unity and meaning. It would
be a great mistake to construe this meaning in sense as analogous to the
crude symbolism of the educator Froebel, to whom, as he said, "the world
of crystals proclaimed, in distinct and univocal terms, the laws of
human life." Wordsworth did not attach ideas to sense, but regarded
sense itself as a communication of truth. We readily call to mind his
unique capacity for apprehending the characteristic flavor of a certain
place in a certain moment of time, the individuality of a situation. Now
in such moments he felt that he was receiving intelligences, none the
less direct and significant for their inarticulate form. Like the boy
on Windermere, whom he himself describes,

"while he hung
Loitering, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."

For our purpose it is essential that we should recognize in this
appreciation of nature, expressed in almost every poem that Wordsworth
wrote, a consciousness respecting the fundamental nature of the world.
Conversation, as we know, denotes an interchange of commensurable
meanings. Whatever the code may be, whether words or the most subtle
form of suggestion, communication is impossible without community of
nature. Hence, in believing himself to be holding converse with the
so-called physical world, Wordsworth conceives that world as
fundamentally like himself. He finds the most profound thing in all the
world to be the universal spiritual life.