Despite moments of high argument which insist that the inspired poet transcends normal economic and cultural arrangements, Wordsworth's vocational theorizing, publicly articulated in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, aligns the poet with the new model of professionalism described in the introductory section of this book. In this chapter, I will first reconsider the vocational trajectory that leads Wordsworth to the full-time pursuit of poetry and also underwrites his insistence that poetry be treated as new, progressive professional labor. Aware of the growing possibilities of specialization, Wordsworth is also aware of its potential burdens, and he finds it necessary to describe a course of training that is particular to the poet while also being natural and spontaneous. In turn, this democratic ethic poses difficulty for the specificity of poetic practice that Wordsworth also wants to maintain. In the Preface, he makes his strongest statement about the special identity of the poet, an identity that he bases on the relationship between the poet and his informed but lay “client” audience. In the end, he cannot propose a new professionalism without taking into account the perseverance of traditional, landed values, and so he attempts to figure professional expertise in terms that will allow it to serve the same authorizing and status-generating function as landed property.

In 1805, retrospectively considering the attractions of the French Revolution, Wordsworth remarks that chief among these was the resemblance of certain revolutionary ideals to the dominant criteria of social advancement that he remembered from his own childhood: