...force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The...rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies . . . When I think upon this degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation, I am almost ashamed to...

...causes, unknown to former times, are now acting to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind. . . . The most effective of these causes are the great national...uniformity of their occupations produces a craving or extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. William...

...force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The...which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies.4 A few years later, in 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who contributed to the momentous collection...

...exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor": predominant among such causes, he names "the great national events which are daily taking...rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies." 4 As Dana Brand has argued, Wordsworth is offering an early critique of a modern urban culture here,...

...Wordsworth, in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, denounced the corruption of sensibility produced by "the great national events which are daily taking...rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies." This process of overstimulation acts "to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind" and "reduce it...

...combined force to blunt the discriminating power of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor ....national events which are daily taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving...

...combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The...most effective of these causes are the great national events8 which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity...

...exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage 16 Bewell, Wordsworth and the Enlightenment, 117. torpor . . . The most effective of these causes are...national events which are daily taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving...

...daily taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of theit occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident...rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies'. Serting the tone for a subsequent (high Romantic) dissociation of genius from urban conditions, Wordsworth...

...nothing other than the crime of originality. We are sick, and shall become sicker. Our "savage torpor" produces a craving for "extraordinary incident, which...rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies." Craving for stimulation of the "gross and violent" sort stems, it is thought, Wordsworth to the Unabomber,...