“The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.” So wrote Coleridge in the great 17th chapter of Biographia Literaria that deals with his friend Wordsworth’s argument that the proper diction for poetry consisted in language taken from the mouths of men in real life, under the influence of natural feelings. The language, in Wordsworth’s own words, of men “in low and rustic life... because in that condition our feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity... are more easily comprehended and more durable”. Tosh, said Coleridge. If anything, a country life, where it is not buttressed by education or original sensibility or both, must suffer from insufficient stimulus and is more likely to lead to a hardening and contraction of the mind. The best parts of language are the product of philosophers, not of clowns or shepherds. Clowns or shepherds! – ah, those, reader, were the days.