... of each man the result of a whole history of all his life, of what he is and what makes him so, of all his fore-fathers, of what they were and of what made them so. Each nerve has a sort of ... of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Metcher, and that of Donne and Cowley, or Pope.' And then, in a kind of vexed way, Wordsworth goes on to explain that he himself can't and won't ... character of ages, as well as of nations; and as we have full histories of many such periods, we can examine exactly when and how the mental peculiarity of each began, and also exactly when and how...