" Now, he went to
Racedown
in the autumn of 1795,
when he was twenty-five years old; and to Alfoxden, in the autumn of
1797, when twenty-seven.
when he was twenty-five years old; and to Alfoxden, in the autumn of
1797, when twenty-seven.
William Wordsworth
Many other letters of great interest have recently
reached me.
SIXTH, In addition to a new Bibliography, and a Chronological Table of
the Poems, and the Prose Works, a Bibliography of Wordsworth Criticism
is appended. It includes most of the articles on the Poet, and notices
of his Works, which have appeared in Great Britain, America, and the
Continent of Europe. Under this head I have specially to thank Mrs.
Henry A. St. John of Ithaca, N. Y. , a devoted Transatlantic
Wordsworthian, who has perhaps done more than any one--since Henry
Reed--to promote the study of her favourite poet in America. Mrs. St.
John's Wordsworth collection is unique, and her knowledge and enthusiasm
are as great as her industry has been. Professor E. Legouis of the
University of Lyons--who wrote an interesting book on Wordsworth's
friend, 'Le General Michel Beaupuy' (1891)--has sent me material from
France, which will be found in its proper place. Frau Professor Gothein
of Bonn, who has translated many of Wordsworth's poems into German, and
written his life, 'William Wordsworth: sein Leben, seine Werke, seine
Zeitgenossen', (1893), has similarly helped me in reference to German
criticism.
SEVENTH, As the Poet's Letters, and his sister's Journals, will appear
in earlier volumes, the new 'Life of Wordsworth' will be much shorter
than that which was published in 1889, in three volumes 8vo. It will not
exceed a single volume.
EIGHTH, In the edition of 1882-6, each volume contained an etching of a
locality associated with Wordsworth. The drawings were made by John
M'Whirter, R. A. , in water-colour; and they were afterwards etched by Mr.
C. O. Murray. One portrait by Haydon was prefixed to the first volume of
the 'Life'. In each volume of this edition--Poems, Prose Works,
Journals, Letters, and Life--there will be a new portrait, either of the
poet, or his wife, or sister, or daughter; and also a small vignette of
a place associated with, or memorialised by Wordsworth in some way. The
following will be the arrangement.
Vol. PORTRAITS / VIGNETTES
THE POEMS.
I. W. Wordsworth, by W. Shuter. Cockermouth.
II. " " by Robert Hancock. Dame Tyson's Cottage, Hawkshead.
III. " " by Edward Nash. Room in St. John's College, Cambridge.
IV. " " by Richard Carruthers. Racedown, Dorsetshire.
V. " " by William Boxall. Alfoxden, Somersetshire.
VI. " " by Henry William Pickersgill. Goslar.
VII. " " by Margaret Gillies. Dove Cottage.
VIII. " " by Benjamin R. Haydon. The Rock of Names, Thirlmere.
THE PROSE WORKS.
IX. " " by Henry Inman. Gallow Hill, Yorkshire.
X. " " by Margaret Gillies. Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire.
THE JOURNALS.
XI. Dorothy Wordsworth, (Artist unknown). Allan Bank, Grasmere.
XII. Mary Wordsworth, by Margaret Gillies. Rydal Mount.
CORRESPONDENCE.
XIII. Dora Wordsworth, by Margaret Gillies. Bolton Abbey.
XIV. W. Wordsworth, by Edward C. Wyon. Blea Tarn.
XV. " " by Thomas Woolner. Peele Castle.
THE LIFE.
XVI. " " by Frederick Thrupp. Grasmere Church and Churchyard.
" " by Samuel Laurence.
" " by Benjamin R. Haydon.
All the etchings will be prepared by H. Manesse. The portraits, with
many others, will be described in detail in a subsequent volume.
In all editorial notes the titles given by Wordsworth to his Poems are
invariably printed in italics, not with inverted commas before and
after, as Wordsworth himself so often printed them: and when he gave no
title to a poem, its first line will be invariably placed within
inverted commas. This plan of using Italics, and not Roman letters,
applies also to the title of any book referred to by Wordsworth, or by
his sister in her Journals. Whether they put the title in italics, or
within commas, it is always italicised in this edition.
A subsidiary matter such as this becomes important when one finds that
many editors of parts of the Works of Wordsworth, or of Selections from
them, have invented titles of their own; and have sent their volumes to
press without the slightest indication to their readers that the titles
were not Wordsworth's; mixing up their own notion of what best described
the contents of the Poem, or the Letter, with those of the writer. Some
have suppressed Wordsworth's, and put their own title in its place!
Others have contented themselves (more modestly) with inventing a title
when Wordsworth gave none. I do not object to these titles in
themselves. Several, such as those by Archbishop Trench, are suggestive
and valuable. What I object to is that any editor--no matter who--should
mingle his own titles with those of the Poet, and give no indication to
the reader as to which is which. Dr. Grosart has been so devoted a
student of Wordsworth, and we owe him so much, that one regrets to find
in "The Prose Works of Wordsworth" (1876) the following title given to
his letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, 'Apology for the French
Revolution'. It is interesting to know that Dr. Grosart thought this a
useful description of the letter: but a clear indication should have
been given that it was not Wordsworth's. It is true that, in the general
preface to his volumes, Dr. Grosart takes upon himself the
responsibility for this title; but it should not have been printed as
the title in chief, or as the headline to the text. Similarly, with the
titles of the second and third of the three 'Essays on Epitaphs'.
As students of Wordsworth know, he issued a volume in 1838 containing
all his sonnets then written; and, at the close of that edition, he
added, "The six Sonnets annexed were composed as this Volume was going
through the Press, but too late for insertion in the class of
miscellaneous ones to which they belong. " In 1884, Archbishop Trench
edited the sonnets, with an admirable introductory "Essay on the History
of the English Sonnet"; but, while Wordsworth gave no title to the 3rd
and the 4th of the six, "composed as the Volume was going through the
Press,"--either in his edition of 1838, 'or in any subsequent issue' of
his Poems--his editor did so. He gave what are really excellent titles,
but he does not tell us that they are his own! He calls them
respectively 'The Thrush at Twilight', and 'The Thrush at Dawn'.
Possibly Wordsworth would have approved of both of those titles: but,
that they are not his, should have been indicated.
I do not think it wise, from an editorial point of view, even to print
in a "Chronological Table"--as Professor Dowden has done, in his
admirable Aldine edition--titles which were not Wordsworth's, without
some indication to that effect. But, in the case of Selections from
Wordsworth--such as those of Mr. Hawes Turner, and Mr. A. J.
Symington,--every one must feel that the editor should have informed his
readers 'when' the title was Wordsworth's, and 'when' it was his own
coinage. In the case of a much greater man--and one of Wordsworth's most
illustrious successors in the great hierarchy of English poesy, Matthew
Arnold--it may be asked why should he have put 'Margaret, or the Ruined
Cottage', as the title of a poem written in 1795-7, when Wordsworth
never once published it under that name? It was an extract from the
first book of 'The Excursion'--written, it is true, in these early
years,--but only issued as part of the latter poem, first published in
1814.
The question of the number, the character, and the length of the Notes,
which a wise editor should append to the works of a great poet, (or to
any classic), is perhaps still 'sub judice'. My own opinion is that, in
all editorial work, the notes should be illustrative rather than
critical; and that they should only bring out those points, which the
ordinary reader of the text would not readily understand, if the poems
were not annotated. For this reason, topographical, historical, and
antiquarian notes are almost essential. The Notes which Wordsworth
himself wrote to his Poems, are of unequal length and merit. It was
perhaps necessary for him to write--at all events it is easy to
understand, and to sympathise with, his writing--the long note on the
revered parson of the Duddon Valley, the Rev. Robert Walker, who will be
remembered for many generations as the "Wonderful Walker. " The Poet's
editors have also been occasionally led to add digressive notes, to
clear up points which had been left by himself either dubious, or
obscure. I must plead guilty to the charge of doing so: e. g. the
identification of "The Muccawiss" (see 'The Excursion', book iii. l.
953) with the Whip-poor-Will involved a great deal of laborious
correspondence years ago. It was a question of real difficulty; and,
although the result reached could now be put into two or three lines, I
have thought it desirable that the opinions of those who wrote about it,
and helped toward the solution, should be recorded. What I print is only
a small part of the correspondence that took place.
On the other hand, it would be quite out of place, in a note to the
famous passage in the 4th book of 'The Excursion', beginning
. . . I have seen
A curious child applying to his ear
to enter on a discussion as to the extent of Wordsworth's debt--if
any--to the author of 'Gebir'. It is quite sufficient to print the
relative passage from Landor's poem at the foot of the page.
All the Notes written by Wordsworth himself in his numerous editions
will be found in this one, with the date of their first appearance
added. Slight textual changes, however, or casual 'addenda', are not
indicated, unless they are sufficiently important. Changes in the text
of notes have not the same importance to posterity, as changes in the
text of poems. In the preface to the Prose Works, reference will be made
to Wordsworth's alterations of his text. At present I refer only to his
own notes to his Poems. When they were written as footnotes to the page,
they remain footnotes still. When they were placed by him as prefaces to
his Poems, they retain that place in this edition; but when they were
appendix notes--as e. g. in the early editions of "Lyrical Ballads"--they
are now made footnotes to the Poems they illustrate. In such a case,
however, as the elaborate note to 'The Excursion', containing a reprint
of the 'Essay upon Epitaphs'--originally contributed to "The Friend"--it
is transferred to the Prose Works, to which it belongs by priority of
date; and, as it would be inexpedient to print it twice over, it is
omitted from the notes to 'The Excursion'.
As to the place which Notes to a poet's works should occupy, there is no
doubt that numerous and lengthy ones--however valuable, or even
necessary, by way of illustration,--disfigure the printed page; and some
prefer that they should be thrown all together at the end of each
volume, or at the close of a series; such as--in Wordsworth's case--"The
River Duddon," "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," 'The Prelude', 'The White Doe
of Rylstone', etc. I do not think, however, that many care to turn
repeatedly to the close of a series of poems, or the end of a volume, to
find an explanatory note, helped only by an index number, and when
perhaps even that does not meet his eye at the foot of the page. I do
not find that even ardent Wordsworth students like to search for notes
in "appendices"; and perhaps the more ardent they are the less desirable
is it for them thus "to hunt the waterfalls. "
I have the greatest admiration for the work which Professor Dowden has
done in his edition of Wordsworth; but the 'plan' which he has followed,
in his Aldine edition, of giving not only the Fenwick Notes, but all the
changes of text introduced by Wordsworth into his successive editions,
in additional editorial notes at the end of each volume--to understand
which the reader must turn the pages repeatedly, from text to note and
note to text, forwards and backwards, at times distractingly--is for
practical purposes almost unworkable. The reader who examines Notes
'critically' is ever "one among a thousand," even if they are printed at
the foot of the page, and meet the eye readily. If they are consigned to
the realm of 'addenda' they will be read by very few, and studied by
fewer.
To those who object to Notes being "thrust into view" (as it must be
admitted that they are in this edition)--because it disturbs the
pleasure of the reader who cares for the poetry of Wordsworth, and for
the poetry alone--I may ask how many persons have read the Fenwick
Notes, given together in a series, and mixed up heterogeneously with
Wordsworth's own Notes to his poems, in comparison with those who have
read and enjoyed them in the editions of 1857 and 1863? Professor Dowden
justifies his plan of relegating the Fenwick and other notes to the end
of each volume of his edition, on the ground that students of the Poet
'must' take the trouble of hunting to and fro for such things. I greatly
doubt if many who have read and profited--for they could not but
profit--by a perusal of Professor Dowden's work, 'have' taken that
trouble, or that future readers of the Aldine edition will take it.
To refer, somewhat more in detail, to the features of this edition.
FIRST. As to the 'Chronological Order' of the Poems.
The chief advantage of a chronological arrangement of the Works of any
author--and especially of a poet who himself adopted a different
plan--is that it shows us, as nothing else can do, the growth of his own
mind, the progressive development of his genius and imaginative power.
By such a redistribution of what he wrote we can trace the rise, the
culmination, and also--it may be--the decline and fall of his genius.
Wordsworth's own arrangement--first adopted in the edition of 1815--was
designed by him, with the view of bringing together, in separate
classes, those Poems which referred to the same (or similar) subjects,
or which were supposed to be the product of the same (or a similar)
faculty, irrespective of the date of composition. Thus one group was
entitled "Poems of the Fancy," another "Poems of the Imagination," a
third "Poems proceeding from Sentiment and Reflection," a fourth
"Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces," again "Poems on the Naming of Places,"
"Memorials of Tours," "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," "Miscellaneous Sonnets,"
etc. The principle which guided him in this was obvious enough. It was,
in some respects, a most natural arrangement; and, in now adopting a
chronological order, the groups, which he constructed with so much care,
are broken up. Probably every author would attach more importance to a
classification of his Works, which brought them together under
appropriate headings, irrespective of date, than to a method of
arrangement which exhibited the growth of his own mind; and it may be
taken for granted that posterity would not think highly of any author
who attached special value to this latter element. None the less
posterity may wish to trace the gradual development of genius, in the
imaginative writers of the past, by the help of such a subsequent
rearrangement of their Works.
There are difficulties, however, in the way of such a rearrangement,
some of which, in Wordsworth's case, cannot be entirely surmounted. In
the case of itinerary Sonnets, referring to the same subject, the
dismemberment of a series--carefully arranged by their author--seems to
be specially unnatural. But Wordsworth himself sanctioned the principle.
If there was a fitness in collecting all his sonnets in one volume in
the year 1838, out of deference to the wishes of his friends, in order
that these poems might be "brought under the eye at once"--thus removing
them from their original places, in his collected works--it seems
equally fitting now to rearrange them chronologically, as far as it is
possible to do so. It will be seen that it is not always possible.
Then, there is the case of two Poems following each other, in
Wordsworth's own arrangement, by natural affinity; such as the 'Epistle
to Sir George Beaumont', written in 1811, which in almost all existing
editions is followed by the Poem written in 1841, and entitled, 'Upon
perusing the foregoing Epistle thirty years after its composition'; or,
the dedication to 'The White Doe of Rylstone', written in April 1815,
while the Poem itself was written in 1807. To separate these Poems seems
unnatural; and, as it would be inadmissible to print the second of the
two twice over--once as a sequel to the first poem, and again in its
chronological place--adherence to the latter plan has its obvious
disadvantage in the case of these poems.
Mr. Aubrey de Vere is very desirous that I should arrange all the "Poems
dedicated to National Independence and Liberty" together in series, as
Wordsworth left them, "on the principle that, though the order of
publication should as a rule be the order of composition in poetry, all
rules require, as well as admit of, exceptions. " As I have the greatest
respect for the judgment of such an authority as Mr. de Vere, I may
explain that I only venture to differ from him because there are
seventy-four Poems--including the sonnets and odes--in this series, and
because they cover a period ranging from 1802 to 1815. I am glad,
however, that many of these sonnets can be printed together, especially
the earlier ones of 1802.
After carefully weighing every consideration, it has seemed to me
desirable to adopt the chronological arrangement in this particular
edition; in which an attempt is made to trace the growth of Wordsworth's
genius, as it is unfolded in his successive works. His own arrangement
of his Poems will always possess a special interest and value; and it is
not likely ever to be entirely superseded in subsequent issues of his
Works. The editors and publishers of the future may possibly prefer it
to the plan now adopted, and it will commend itself to many readers from
the mere fact that 'it was Wordsworth's own'; but in an edition such as
the present--which is meant to supply material for the study of the Poet
to those who may not possess, or have access to, the earlier and rarer
editions--no method of arrangement can be so good as the chronological
one. Its importance will be obvious after several volumes are published,
when the point referred to above--viz. the evolution of the poet's
genius--will be shown by the very sequence of the subjects chosen, and
their method of treatment from year to year.
The date of the composition of Wordsworth's Poems cannot always be
ascertained with accuracy: and to get at the chronological order, it is
not sufficient to take up his earlier volumes, and thereafter to note
the additions made in subsequent ones. We now know (approximately) when
each poem was first published; although, in some instances, they
appeared in newspapers and magazines, and in many cases publication was
long after the date of composition. For example, 'Guilt and Sorrow; or,
Incidents upon Salisbury Plain'--written in the years 1791-94--was not
published 'in extenso' till 1842. The tragedy of 'The Borderers',
composed in 1795-96, was also first published in 1842. 'The
Prelude'--"commenced in the beginning of the year 1799, and completed in
the summer of 1805"--was published posthumously in 1850: and some
unpublished poems--both "of early and late years"--were first issued in
1886. A poem was frequently kept back, from some doubt as to its worth,
or from a wish to alter and amend it. Of the five or six hundred sonnets
that he wrote, Wordsworth said "Most of them were frequently re-touched;
and, not a few, laboriously. " Some poems were almost entirely recast;
and occasionally fugitive verses were withheld from publication for a
time, because it was hoped that they would subsequently form part of a
larger whole.
In the case of many of the poems, we are left to conjecture the date of
composition, although we are seldom without some clue to it. The Fenwick
Notes are a great assistance in determining the chronology. These
notes--which will be afterwards more fully referred to--were dictated by
Wordsworth to Miss Fenwick in the year 1843; but, at that time, his
memory could not be absolutely trusted as to dates; and in some
instances we know it to have been at fault. For example, he said of 'The
Old Cumberland Beggar' that it was "written at Racedown and Alfoxden in
my twenty-third year.
" Now, he went to Racedown in the autumn of 1795,
when he was twenty-five years old; and to Alfoxden, in the autumn of
1797, when twenty-seven. Again, the poem 'Rural Architecture' is put
down in the Fenwick note as "written at Townend in 1801"; but it had
been published in 1800, in the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads. "
Similarly Wordsworth gave the dates "1801 or 1802" for 'The Reverie of
Poor Susan', which had also appeared in "Lyrical Ballads," 1800.
Wordsworth's memory was not always to be trusted even when he was
speaking of a group of his own Poems. For example, in the edition of
1807, there is a short series described thus, "Poems, composed during a
tour, chiefly on foot. " They are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now, one would
naturally suppose that all the poems, in this set of five, were composed
during the same pedestrian tour, and that they all referred to the same
time. But the series contains 'Alice Fell' (1802), 'Beggars' (1802), 'To
a Sky-Lark' (1805), and 'Resolution and Independence' (1802).
Much more valuable than the Fenwick notes--for a certain portion of
Wordsworth's life--is his sister Dorothy's Journal. The mistakes in the
former can frequently be corrected from the minutely kept diary of those
early years, when the brother and sister lived together at Grasmere. The
whole of that Journal, so far as it is desirable to print it for
posterity, will be given in a subsequent volume.
Long before the publication of the Fenwick notes, Wordsworth himself
supplied some data for a chronological arrangement of his Works. In the
table of contents, prefixed to the first collected edition of 1815, in
two volumes,--and also to the second collected edition of 1820, in four
volumes,--there are two parallel columns: one giving the date of
composition, and the other that of publication. There are numerous
blanks in the former column, which was the only important one; as the
year of publication could be ascertained from the editions themselves.
Sometimes the date is given vaguely; as in the case of the "Sonnets
dedicated to Liberty," where the note runs, "from the year 1807 to
1813. " At other times, the entry of the year of publication is
inaccurate; for example, the 'Inscription for the spot where the
Hermitage stood on St. Herbert's Island, Derwentwater', is put down as
belonging to the year 1807; but this poem does not occur in the volumes
of 1807, but in the second volume of "Lyrical Ballads" (1800). It will
thus be seen that it is only by comparing Wordsworth's own lists of the
years to which his Poems belong, with the contents of the several
editions of his Works, with the Fenwick Notes, and with his sister's
Journal, that we can approximately reconstruct the true chronology. To
these sources of information must be added the internal evidence of the
Poems themselves, incidental references in letters to friends, and stray
hints gathered from various quarters.
Many new sources of information as to the date of the composition of the
Poems became known to me during the publication of my previous edition,
and after its issue; the most important being the Journals of Dorothy
Wordsworth. These discoveries showed that my chronological table of
1882--although then, relatively, "up to date"--was incomplete. The
tables constructed by Mr. Tutin and by Professor Dowden are both more
accurate than it was. It is impossible to attain to finality in such a
matter; and several facts, afterwards discovered, and mentioned in the
later volumes of my previous edition, have been used against the
conclusions come to in the earlier ones. I have thus supplied the
feathers for a few subsequent critical arrows. The shots have not been
unkindly ones; and I am glad of the result, viz. that our knowledge of
the dates--both as to the composition and first publication of the poems
--is now much more exact than before. When a conjectural one is given in
this edition, the fact is always mentioned.
This chronological method of arrangement, however, has its limits. It is
not possible always to adopt it: nor is it invariably 'necessary', even
in order to obtain a true view of the growth of Wordsworth's mind. In
this--as in so many other things--wisdom lies in the avoidance of
extremes; the extreme of rigid fidelity to the order of time on the one
hand, and the extreme of an irrational departure from it on the other.
While an effort has been made to discover the exact order of the
composition of the poems--and this is shown, not only in the
Chronological Table, but at the beginning of each separate poem--it has
been considered expedient to depart from that order in printing some of
the poems. In certain cases a poem was begun and laid aside, and again
resumed at intervals; and it is difficult to know to what year the
larger part of it should be assigned. When we know the date at which a
poem was commenced, and that it was finished "long afterwards," but have
no clue as to the year, it is assigned to the year in which it was
begun. For example, the 'Address to Kilchurn Castle' was begun in 1803,
but only the first three lines were written then. Wordsworth tells us
that "the rest was added many years after," but when we know not; and
the poem was not published till 1827. In such a case, it is placed in
this edition as if it belonged chronologically to 1803, and retains its
place in the series of Poems which memorialise the Tour in Scotland of
that year. On a similar principle, 'The Highland Girl' is placed in the
same series; although Dorothy Wordsworth tells us, in her Journal of the
Tour, that it was composed "not long after our return from Scotland";
and 'Glen Almain'--although written afterwards at Rydal--retains its
published place in the memorial group. Again the 'Departure from the
Vale of Grasmere, August 1803', is prefixed to the same series; although
it was not written till 1811, and first published in 1827. To give
symmetry to such a Series, it is necessary to depart from the exact
chronological order--the departure being duly indicated.
On the same principle I have followed the 'Address to the Scholars of
the Village School of----', by its natural sequel--'By the Side of the
Grave some Years after', the date of the composition of which is
unknown: and the 'Epistle to Sir George Beaumont' (1811) is followed by
the later Lines, to which Wordsworth gave the most prosaic title--he was
often infelicitous in his titles--'Upon perusing the foregoing Epistle
thirty years after its composition'. A like remark applies to the poem
'Beggars', which is followed by its own 'Sequel', although the order of
date is disturbed; while all the "Epitaphs," translated from Chiabrera,
are printed together.
It is manifestly appropriate that the poems belonging to a series--such
as the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," or those referring to the
"Duddon"--should be brought together, as Wordsworth finally arranged
them; even although we may be aware that some of them were written
subsequently, and placed in the middle of the series. The sonnets
referring to "Aspects of Christianity in America"--inserted in the 1845
and 1849-50 editions of the collected Works--are found in no previous
edition or version of the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets. " These, along with
some others on the Offices of the English Liturgy, were suggested to
Wordsworth by an American prelate, Bishop Doane, and by Professor Henry
Reed; [2] but we do not know in what year they were written. The
"Ecclesiastical Sonnets"--first called "Ecclesiastical Sketches"--were
written in the years 1820-22. The above additions to them appeared
twenty-five years afterwards; but they ought manifestly to retain their
place, as arranged by Wordsworth in the edition of 1845. The case is
much the same with regard to the "Duddon Sonnets. " They were first
published in 1820: but No. xiv. beginning:
O mountain Stream! the Shepherd and his Cot,
was written in the year 1806, and appears in the edition of 1807. This
sonnet will be printed in the series to which it belongs, and not in its
chronological place. I think it would be equally unjust to remove it
from the group--in which it helps to form a unity--and to print it twice
over. [3] On the other hand, the series of "Poems composed during a Tour
in Scotland, and on the English Border, in the Autumn of 1831"--and
first published in the year 1835, in the volume entitled "Yarrow
Revisited, and Other Poems"--contains two, which Wordsworth himself
tells us were composed earlier; and there is no reason why these poems
should not be restored to their chronological place. The series of
itinerary sonnets, published along with them in the Yarrow volume of
1835, is the record of another Scottish tour, taken in the year 1833;
and Wordsworth says of them that they were "composed 'or suggested'
during a tour in the summer of 1833. " We cannot now discover which of
them were written during the tour, and which at Rydal Mount after his
return; but it is obvious that they should be printed in the order in
which they were left by him, in 1835. It may be noted that almost all
the "Evening Voluntaries" belong to these years--1832 to 1835--when the
author was from sixty-two to sixty-five years of age.
Wordsworth's habit of revision may perhaps explain the mistakes into
which he occasionally fell as to the dates of his Poems, and the
difficulty of reconciling what he says, as to the year of composition,
with the date assigned by his sister in her Journal. When he says
"written in 1801, or 1802," he may be referring to the last revision
which he gave to his work. Certain it is, however, that he sometimes
gave a date for the composition, which was subsequent to the publication
of the poem in question.
In the case of those poems to which no date was attached, I have tried
to find a clue by which to fix an approximate one. Obviously, it would
not do to place all the undated poems in a class by themselves. Such an
arrangement would be thoroughly artificial; and, while we are in many
instances left to conjecture, we can always say that such and such a
poem was composed not later than a particular year. When the precise
date is undiscoverable, I have thought it best to place the poem in or
immediately before the year in which it was first published.
Poems which were several years in process of composition, having been
laid aside, and taken up repeatedly; 'e. g. The Prelude', which was
composed between the years 1799 and 1805--are placed in the year in
which they were finished. Disputable questions as to the date of any
poem are dealt with in the editorial note prefixed or appended to it.
There is one Poem which I have intentionally placed out of its
chronological place, viz. the 'Ode, Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood'. It was written at intervals from 1803
to 1806, and was first published in the edition of 1807, where it stood
at the end of the second volume. In every subsequent edition of the
collected Works--1815 to 1850--it closed the groups of poems; 'The
Excursion' only following it, in a volume of its own. This was an
arrangement made by Wordsworth, of set purpose, and steadily adhered
to--the 'Ode' forming as it were the High Altar of his poetic Cathedral.
As he wished it to retain that place in subsequent editions of his
Works, it retains it in this one.
Mr. Arnold's arrangement of the Poems, in his volume of Selections [4],
is extremely interesting and valuable; but, as to the method of grouping
adopted, I am not sure that it is better than Wordsworth's own. As a
descriptive title, "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection" is quite as good
as "Poems akin to the Antique," and "Poems of the Fancy" quite as
appropriate as "Poems of Ballad Form. "
Wordsworth's arrangement of his Poems in groups was psychologically very
interesting; but it is open to many objections. Unfortunately Wordsworth
was not himself consistent--in the various editions issued by
himself--either in the class into which he relegated each poem, or the
order in which he placed it there. There is tantalising topsy-turvyism
in this, so that an editor who adopts it is almost compelled to select
Wordsworth's latest grouping, which was not always his best.
Sir William Rowan Hamilton wrote to Mr. Aubrey de Vere in 1835 that Dora
Wordsworth told him that her father "was sometimes at a loss whether to
refer her to the 'Poems of the Imagination,' or the 'Poems of the
Fancy,' for some particular passage. " Aubrey de Vere himself considered
Wordsworth's arrangement as "a parade of system," and wrote of it, "I
cannot help thinking that in it, he mistakes classification for method. "
[5] I confess that it is often difficult to see why some of the poems
were assigned by their author to the realm of the "Fancy," the
"Imagination," and "Sentiment and Reflection" respectively. In a note to
'The Horn of Egremont Castle' (edition 1815) Wordsworth speaks of it as
"referring to the imagination," rather than as being "produced by it";
and says that he would not have placed it amongst his "Poems of the
Imagination," "but to avoid a needless multiplication of classes"; and
in the editions of 1827 and 1832 he actually included the great 'Ode' on
Immortality among his "Epitaphs and Elegiac Poems"! As late as 27th
September 1845, he wrote to Professor Henry Reed,
"Following your example" (i. e. the example set in Reed's American
edition of the Poems), "I have greatly extended the class entitled
'Poems of the Imagination,' thinking as you must have done that, if
Imagination were predominant in the class, it was not indispensable
that it should pervade every poem which it contained. Limiting the
class as I had done before, seemed to imply, and to the uncandid or
observing did so, that the faculty, which is the 'primum mobile' in
poetry, had little to do, in the estimation of the author, with pieces
not arranged under that head. I therefore feel much obliged to you for
suggesting by your practice the plan which I have adopted. "
Could anything show more explicitly than this that Wordsworth was not
perfectly satisfied with his own artificial groups? Professor Reed, in
his American edition of 1837, however, acted on Wordsworth's expressed
intention of distributing the contents of "Yarrow Revisited, and Other
Poems" amongst the classes. He tells us that he "interspersed the
contents of this volume among the Poems already arranged" by Wordsworth.
[6]
It may also be mentioned that not only members of his own household, but
many of Wordsworth's friends--notably Charles Lamb--expressed a
preference for a different arrangement of his Poems from that which he
had adopted.
SECOND The various Readings, or variations of text, made by Wordsworth
during his lifetime, or written by him on copies of his Poems, or
discovered in MS. letters, from himself, or his sister, or his wife, are
given in footnotes in this edition. Few English poets changed their text
more frequently, or with more fastidiousness, than Wordsworth did. He
did not always alter it for the better. Every alteration however, which
has been discovered by me, whether for the better or for the worse, is
here printed in full. We have thus a record of the fluctuations of his
own mind as to the form in which he wished his Poems to appear; and this
record casts considerable light on the development of his genius. [7]
A knowledge of these changes of text can only be obtained in one or
other of two ways. Either the reader must have access to all the
thirty-two editions of Poems, the publication of which Wordsworth
personally supervised; or, he must have all the changes in the
successive editions, exhibited in the form of footnotes, and appended to
the particular text that is selected and printed in the body of the
work. It is extremely difficult--in some cases quite impossible--to
obtain the early editions. The great public libraries of the country do
not possess them all. [8] It is therefore necessary to fall back upon the
latter plan, which seems the only one by which a knowledge of the
changes of the text can be made accessible, either to the general
reader, or to the special student of English Poetry.
The text which--after much consideration--I have resolved to place
throughout, in the body of the work, is Wordsworth's own final 'textus
receptus', i. e. the text of 1849-50, reproduced in the posthumous
edition of 1857; [9] and since opinion will doubtless differ as to the
wisdom of this selection, it may be desirable to state at some length
the reasons which have led me to adopt it.
There are only three possible courses open to an editor, who wishes to
give--along with the text selected--all the various readings
chronologically arranged as footnotes. Either, 1st, the earliest text
may be taken, or 2nd, the latest may be chosen, or 3rd, the text may be
selected from different editions, so as to present each poem in its best
state (according to the judgment of the editor), in whatever edition it
is found. A composite text, made up from two or more editions, would be
inadmissible.
Now, most persons who have studied the subject know that Wordsworth's
best text is to be found, in one poem in its earliest edition, in
another in its latest, and in a third in some intermediate edition. I
cannot agree either with the statement that he always altered for the
worse, or that he always altered for the better. His critical judgment
was not nearly so unerring in this respect as Coleridge's was, or as
Tennyson's has been. It may be difficult, therefore, to assign an
altogether satisfactory reason for adopting either the earliest or the
latest text; and at first sight, the remaining alternative plan may seem
the wisest of the three. There are indeed difficulties in the way of the
adoption of any one of the methods suggested; and as I adopt the latest
text--not because it is always intrinsically the best, but on other
grounds to be immediately stated--it may clear the way, if reference be
made in the first instance to the others, and to the reasons for
abandoning them.
As to a selection of the text from various editions, this would
doubtless be the best plan, were it a practicable one; and perhaps it
may be attainable some day. But Wordsworth is as yet too near us for
such an editorial treatment of his Works to be successful. The
fundamental objection to it is that scarcely two minds--even among the
most competent of contemporary judges--will agree as to what the best
text is. An edition arranged on this principle could not possibly be
acceptable to more than a few persons. Of course no arrangement of any
kind can escape adverse criticism: it would be most unfortunate if it
did. But this particular edition would fail in its main purpose, if
questions of individual taste were made primary, and not secondary; and
an arrangement, which gave scope for the arbitrary selection of
particular texts,--according to the wisdom, or the want of wisdom, of
the editor,--would deservedly meet with severe criticism in many
quarters. Besides, such a method of arrangement would not indicate the
growth of the Poet's mind, and the development of his genius. If an
editor wished to indicate his own opinion of the best text for each
poem--under the idea that his judgment might be of some use to other
people--it would be wiser to do so by means of some mark or marginal
note, than by printing his selected text in the main body of the work.
He could thus at once preserve the chronological order of the readings,
indicate his own preference, and leave it to others to select what they
preferred. Besides, the compiler of such an edition would often find
himself in doubt as to what the best text really was, the merit of the
different readings being sometimes almost equal, or very nearly
balanced; and, were he to endeavour to get out of the difficulty by
obtaining the judgments of literary men, or even of contemporary poets,
he would find that their opinions would in most cases be dissimilar, if
they did not openly conflict. Those who cannot come to a final decision
as to their own text would not be likely to agree as to the merits of
particular readings in the poems of their predecessors. Unanimity of
opinion on this point is indeed quite unattainable.
Nevertheless, it would be easy for an editor to show the unfortunate
result of keeping rigorously either to the latest or to the earliest
text of Wordsworth. If, on the one hand, the latest were taken, it could
be shown that many of the changes introduced into it were for the worse,
and some of them very decidedly so. For example, in the poem 'To a
Skylark'--composed in 1825--the second verse, retained in the
editions of 1827, 1832, 1836, and 1843, was unaccountably dropped out in
the editions of 1845 and 1849. The following is the complete poem of
1825, as published in 1827.
Ethereal Minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!
To the last point of vision, and beyond,
Mount, daring Warbler! that love-prompted strain,
('Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond)
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain:
Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege! to sing
All independent of the leafy spring.
Leave to the Nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with rapture more divine;
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!
There is no doubt that the first and third stanzas are the finest, and
some may respect the judgment that cut down the Poem by the removal of
its second verse: but others will say, if it was right that such a verse
should be removed, why were many others of questionable merit allowed to
remain? Why was such a poem as 'The Glowworm', of the edition of 1807,
never republished; while 'The Waterfall and the Eglantine', and 'To the
Spade of a Friend', were retained? To give one other illustration, where
a score are possible. In the sonnet, belonging to the year 1807,
beginning:
"Beloved Vale! " I said, "when I shall con,"
we find, in the latest text, the lines--first adopted in 1827:
I stood, of simple shame the blushing Thrall;
So narrow seemed the brooks, the fields so small,
while the early edition of 1807 contains the far happier lines:
To see the Trees, which I had thought so tall,
Mere dwarfs; the Brooks so narrow, Fields so small.
On the other hand, if the earliest text be invariably retained, some of
the best poems will be spoiled (or the improvements lost), since
Wordsworth did usually alter for the better. For example, few persons
will doubt that the form in which the second stanza of the poem 'To the
Cuckoo' (written in 1802) appeared in 1845, is an improvement on all its
predecessors. I give the readings of 1807, 1815, 1820, 1827, and 1845.
While I am lying on the grass,
I hear thy restless shout:
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
About, and all about! 1807.
While I am lying on the grass,
Thy loud note smites my ear! --
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near! 1815.
While I am lying on the grass,
Thy loud note smites my ear!
It seems to fill the whole air's space,
At once far off and near. 1820.
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
That seems to fill the whole air's space,
As loud far off as near. 1827.
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near. 1845.
Similarly, in each of the three poems 'To the Daisy', composed in 1802,
and in the 'Afterthought, to the Duddon', the alterations introduced
into the latest editions were all improvements upon the early version.
It might be urged that these considerations would warrant the
interference of an editor, and justify him in selecting the text which
he thought the best upon the whole; but this must be left to posterity.
When editors can escape the bias of contemporary thought and feeling,
when their judgments are refined by distance and mellowed by the new
literary standards of the intervening years,--when in fact Wordsworth is
as far away from his critics as Shakespeare now is--it may be possible
to adjust a final text. But the task is beyond the power of the present
generation.
It may farther be urged that if this reasoning be valid,--and if, for
the present, one text must be retained uniformly throughout,--the
natural plan is to take the earliest, and not the latest; and this has
some recommendations. It seems more simple, more natural, and certainly
the easiest. We have a natural sequence, if we begin with the earliest
and go on to the latest readings. Then, all the readers of Wordsworth,
who care to possess or to consult the present edition, will doubtless
possess one or other of the complete copies of his works, which contain
his final text; while probably not one in twenty have ever seen the
first edition of any of his poems, with the exception of 'The Prelude'.
It is true that if the reader turns to a footnote to compare the
versions of different years, while he is reading for the sake of the
poetry, he will be so distracted that the effect of the poem as a whole
will be entirely lost; because the critical spirit, which judges of the
text, works apart from the spirit of sympathetic appreciation, in which
all poetry should be read. But it is not necessary to turn to the
footnotes, and to mark what may be called the literary growth of a poem,
while it is being read for its own sake: and these notes are printed in
smaller type, so as not to obtrude themselves on the eye of the reader.
Against the adoption of the earlier text, there is this fatal objection,
that if it is to be done at all, it must be done throughout; and, in the
earliest poems Wordsworth wrote--viz. 'An Evening Walk' and 'Descriptive
Sketches',--the subsequent alterations almost amounted to a cancelling
of the earlier version. His changes were all, or almost all,
unmistakably for the better. Indeed, there was little in these works--in
the form in which they first appeared--to lead to the belief that an
original poet had arisen in England. It is true that Coleridge saw in
them the signs of the dawn of a new era, and wrote thus of 'Descriptive
Sketches', before he knew its author, "Seldom, if ever, was the
emergence of a great and original poetic genius above the literary
horizon more evidently announced. " Nevertheless the earliest text of
these 'Sketches' is, in many places, so artificial, prosaic, and dull,
that its reproduction (except as an appendix, or in the form of
footnotes) would be an injustice to Wordsworth. [10] On the other hand,
the passages subsequently cancelled are so numerous, and so long, that
if placed in footnotes the latter would in some instances be more
extensive than the text. The quarto of 1793 will therefore be reprinted
in full as an Appendix to the first volume of this edition. The 'School
Exercise written at Hawkshead' in the poet's fourteenth year, will be
found in vol. viii. Passing over these juvenile efforts, there are
poems--such as 'Guilt and Sorrow', 'Peter Bell', and many others--in
which the earlier text is an inferior one, which was either corrected or
abandoned by Wordsworth in his maturer years. It would be a conspicuous
blunder to print--in the place of honour,--the crude original which was
afterwards repudiated by its author.
It may be remembered, in connection with Wordsworth's text, that he
himself said, "I am for the most part uncertain about my success in
altering poems; but, in this case" (he is speaking of an insertion) "I
am sure I have produced a great improvement. " ('Memoirs of Wordsworth',
vol. i. p. 174. ) [11] Again, in writing to Mr. Dyce in 1830, "You know
what importance I attach to following strictly the last copy of the text
of an author. "
It is also worthy of note that the study of their chronology casts some
light on the changes which the poems underwent. The second edition of
"Lyrical Ballads" appeared in 1800. In that edition the text of 1798 is
scarcely altered: but, in the year in which it was published, Wordsworth
was engrossed with his settlement at Grasmere; and, in the springtime of
creative work, he probably never thought of revising his earlier pieces.
In the year 1800, he composed at least twenty-five new poems. The third
edition of "Lyrical Ballads" appeared in 1802; and during that year he
wrote forty-three new poems, many of them amongst the most perfect of
his Lyrics. His critical instinct had become much more delicate since
1800: and it is not surprising to find--as we do find--that between the
text of the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, and that of 1802, there are many
important variations. This is seen, for example, in the way in which he
dealt with 'The Female Vagrant', which is altered throughout. Its early
redundance is pruned away; and, in many instances, the final text,
sanctioned in 1845, had been adopted in 1803. Without going into further
detail, it is sufficient to remark that in the year 1803 Wordsworth's
critical faculty, the faculty of censorship, had developed almost step
for step with the creative originality of his genius. In that prolific
year, when week by week, almost day by day, fresh poems were thrown off
with marvellous facility--as we see from his sister's Journal--he had
become a severe, if not a fastidious, critic of his own earlier work.
reached me.
SIXTH, In addition to a new Bibliography, and a Chronological Table of
the Poems, and the Prose Works, a Bibliography of Wordsworth Criticism
is appended. It includes most of the articles on the Poet, and notices
of his Works, which have appeared in Great Britain, America, and the
Continent of Europe. Under this head I have specially to thank Mrs.
Henry A. St. John of Ithaca, N. Y. , a devoted Transatlantic
Wordsworthian, who has perhaps done more than any one--since Henry
Reed--to promote the study of her favourite poet in America. Mrs. St.
John's Wordsworth collection is unique, and her knowledge and enthusiasm
are as great as her industry has been. Professor E. Legouis of the
University of Lyons--who wrote an interesting book on Wordsworth's
friend, 'Le General Michel Beaupuy' (1891)--has sent me material from
France, which will be found in its proper place. Frau Professor Gothein
of Bonn, who has translated many of Wordsworth's poems into German, and
written his life, 'William Wordsworth: sein Leben, seine Werke, seine
Zeitgenossen', (1893), has similarly helped me in reference to German
criticism.
SEVENTH, As the Poet's Letters, and his sister's Journals, will appear
in earlier volumes, the new 'Life of Wordsworth' will be much shorter
than that which was published in 1889, in three volumes 8vo. It will not
exceed a single volume.
EIGHTH, In the edition of 1882-6, each volume contained an etching of a
locality associated with Wordsworth. The drawings were made by John
M'Whirter, R. A. , in water-colour; and they were afterwards etched by Mr.
C. O. Murray. One portrait by Haydon was prefixed to the first volume of
the 'Life'. In each volume of this edition--Poems, Prose Works,
Journals, Letters, and Life--there will be a new portrait, either of the
poet, or his wife, or sister, or daughter; and also a small vignette of
a place associated with, or memorialised by Wordsworth in some way. The
following will be the arrangement.
Vol. PORTRAITS / VIGNETTES
THE POEMS.
I. W. Wordsworth, by W. Shuter. Cockermouth.
II. " " by Robert Hancock. Dame Tyson's Cottage, Hawkshead.
III. " " by Edward Nash. Room in St. John's College, Cambridge.
IV. " " by Richard Carruthers. Racedown, Dorsetshire.
V. " " by William Boxall. Alfoxden, Somersetshire.
VI. " " by Henry William Pickersgill. Goslar.
VII. " " by Margaret Gillies. Dove Cottage.
VIII. " " by Benjamin R. Haydon. The Rock of Names, Thirlmere.
THE PROSE WORKS.
IX. " " by Henry Inman. Gallow Hill, Yorkshire.
X. " " by Margaret Gillies. Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire.
THE JOURNALS.
XI. Dorothy Wordsworth, (Artist unknown). Allan Bank, Grasmere.
XII. Mary Wordsworth, by Margaret Gillies. Rydal Mount.
CORRESPONDENCE.
XIII. Dora Wordsworth, by Margaret Gillies. Bolton Abbey.
XIV. W. Wordsworth, by Edward C. Wyon. Blea Tarn.
XV. " " by Thomas Woolner. Peele Castle.
THE LIFE.
XVI. " " by Frederick Thrupp. Grasmere Church and Churchyard.
" " by Samuel Laurence.
" " by Benjamin R. Haydon.
All the etchings will be prepared by H. Manesse. The portraits, with
many others, will be described in detail in a subsequent volume.
In all editorial notes the titles given by Wordsworth to his Poems are
invariably printed in italics, not with inverted commas before and
after, as Wordsworth himself so often printed them: and when he gave no
title to a poem, its first line will be invariably placed within
inverted commas. This plan of using Italics, and not Roman letters,
applies also to the title of any book referred to by Wordsworth, or by
his sister in her Journals. Whether they put the title in italics, or
within commas, it is always italicised in this edition.
A subsidiary matter such as this becomes important when one finds that
many editors of parts of the Works of Wordsworth, or of Selections from
them, have invented titles of their own; and have sent their volumes to
press without the slightest indication to their readers that the titles
were not Wordsworth's; mixing up their own notion of what best described
the contents of the Poem, or the Letter, with those of the writer. Some
have suppressed Wordsworth's, and put their own title in its place!
Others have contented themselves (more modestly) with inventing a title
when Wordsworth gave none. I do not object to these titles in
themselves. Several, such as those by Archbishop Trench, are suggestive
and valuable. What I object to is that any editor--no matter who--should
mingle his own titles with those of the Poet, and give no indication to
the reader as to which is which. Dr. Grosart has been so devoted a
student of Wordsworth, and we owe him so much, that one regrets to find
in "The Prose Works of Wordsworth" (1876) the following title given to
his letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, 'Apology for the French
Revolution'. It is interesting to know that Dr. Grosart thought this a
useful description of the letter: but a clear indication should have
been given that it was not Wordsworth's. It is true that, in the general
preface to his volumes, Dr. Grosart takes upon himself the
responsibility for this title; but it should not have been printed as
the title in chief, or as the headline to the text. Similarly, with the
titles of the second and third of the three 'Essays on Epitaphs'.
As students of Wordsworth know, he issued a volume in 1838 containing
all his sonnets then written; and, at the close of that edition, he
added, "The six Sonnets annexed were composed as this Volume was going
through the Press, but too late for insertion in the class of
miscellaneous ones to which they belong. " In 1884, Archbishop Trench
edited the sonnets, with an admirable introductory "Essay on the History
of the English Sonnet"; but, while Wordsworth gave no title to the 3rd
and the 4th of the six, "composed as the Volume was going through the
Press,"--either in his edition of 1838, 'or in any subsequent issue' of
his Poems--his editor did so. He gave what are really excellent titles,
but he does not tell us that they are his own! He calls them
respectively 'The Thrush at Twilight', and 'The Thrush at Dawn'.
Possibly Wordsworth would have approved of both of those titles: but,
that they are not his, should have been indicated.
I do not think it wise, from an editorial point of view, even to print
in a "Chronological Table"--as Professor Dowden has done, in his
admirable Aldine edition--titles which were not Wordsworth's, without
some indication to that effect. But, in the case of Selections from
Wordsworth--such as those of Mr. Hawes Turner, and Mr. A. J.
Symington,--every one must feel that the editor should have informed his
readers 'when' the title was Wordsworth's, and 'when' it was his own
coinage. In the case of a much greater man--and one of Wordsworth's most
illustrious successors in the great hierarchy of English poesy, Matthew
Arnold--it may be asked why should he have put 'Margaret, or the Ruined
Cottage', as the title of a poem written in 1795-7, when Wordsworth
never once published it under that name? It was an extract from the
first book of 'The Excursion'--written, it is true, in these early
years,--but only issued as part of the latter poem, first published in
1814.
The question of the number, the character, and the length of the Notes,
which a wise editor should append to the works of a great poet, (or to
any classic), is perhaps still 'sub judice'. My own opinion is that, in
all editorial work, the notes should be illustrative rather than
critical; and that they should only bring out those points, which the
ordinary reader of the text would not readily understand, if the poems
were not annotated. For this reason, topographical, historical, and
antiquarian notes are almost essential. The Notes which Wordsworth
himself wrote to his Poems, are of unequal length and merit. It was
perhaps necessary for him to write--at all events it is easy to
understand, and to sympathise with, his writing--the long note on the
revered parson of the Duddon Valley, the Rev. Robert Walker, who will be
remembered for many generations as the "Wonderful Walker. " The Poet's
editors have also been occasionally led to add digressive notes, to
clear up points which had been left by himself either dubious, or
obscure. I must plead guilty to the charge of doing so: e. g. the
identification of "The Muccawiss" (see 'The Excursion', book iii. l.
953) with the Whip-poor-Will involved a great deal of laborious
correspondence years ago. It was a question of real difficulty; and,
although the result reached could now be put into two or three lines, I
have thought it desirable that the opinions of those who wrote about it,
and helped toward the solution, should be recorded. What I print is only
a small part of the correspondence that took place.
On the other hand, it would be quite out of place, in a note to the
famous passage in the 4th book of 'The Excursion', beginning
. . . I have seen
A curious child applying to his ear
to enter on a discussion as to the extent of Wordsworth's debt--if
any--to the author of 'Gebir'. It is quite sufficient to print the
relative passage from Landor's poem at the foot of the page.
All the Notes written by Wordsworth himself in his numerous editions
will be found in this one, with the date of their first appearance
added. Slight textual changes, however, or casual 'addenda', are not
indicated, unless they are sufficiently important. Changes in the text
of notes have not the same importance to posterity, as changes in the
text of poems. In the preface to the Prose Works, reference will be made
to Wordsworth's alterations of his text. At present I refer only to his
own notes to his Poems. When they were written as footnotes to the page,
they remain footnotes still. When they were placed by him as prefaces to
his Poems, they retain that place in this edition; but when they were
appendix notes--as e. g. in the early editions of "Lyrical Ballads"--they
are now made footnotes to the Poems they illustrate. In such a case,
however, as the elaborate note to 'The Excursion', containing a reprint
of the 'Essay upon Epitaphs'--originally contributed to "The Friend"--it
is transferred to the Prose Works, to which it belongs by priority of
date; and, as it would be inexpedient to print it twice over, it is
omitted from the notes to 'The Excursion'.
As to the place which Notes to a poet's works should occupy, there is no
doubt that numerous and lengthy ones--however valuable, or even
necessary, by way of illustration,--disfigure the printed page; and some
prefer that they should be thrown all together at the end of each
volume, or at the close of a series; such as--in Wordsworth's case--"The
River Duddon," "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," 'The Prelude', 'The White Doe
of Rylstone', etc. I do not think, however, that many care to turn
repeatedly to the close of a series of poems, or the end of a volume, to
find an explanatory note, helped only by an index number, and when
perhaps even that does not meet his eye at the foot of the page. I do
not find that even ardent Wordsworth students like to search for notes
in "appendices"; and perhaps the more ardent they are the less desirable
is it for them thus "to hunt the waterfalls. "
I have the greatest admiration for the work which Professor Dowden has
done in his edition of Wordsworth; but the 'plan' which he has followed,
in his Aldine edition, of giving not only the Fenwick Notes, but all the
changes of text introduced by Wordsworth into his successive editions,
in additional editorial notes at the end of each volume--to understand
which the reader must turn the pages repeatedly, from text to note and
note to text, forwards and backwards, at times distractingly--is for
practical purposes almost unworkable. The reader who examines Notes
'critically' is ever "one among a thousand," even if they are printed at
the foot of the page, and meet the eye readily. If they are consigned to
the realm of 'addenda' they will be read by very few, and studied by
fewer.
To those who object to Notes being "thrust into view" (as it must be
admitted that they are in this edition)--because it disturbs the
pleasure of the reader who cares for the poetry of Wordsworth, and for
the poetry alone--I may ask how many persons have read the Fenwick
Notes, given together in a series, and mixed up heterogeneously with
Wordsworth's own Notes to his poems, in comparison with those who have
read and enjoyed them in the editions of 1857 and 1863? Professor Dowden
justifies his plan of relegating the Fenwick and other notes to the end
of each volume of his edition, on the ground that students of the Poet
'must' take the trouble of hunting to and fro for such things. I greatly
doubt if many who have read and profited--for they could not but
profit--by a perusal of Professor Dowden's work, 'have' taken that
trouble, or that future readers of the Aldine edition will take it.
To refer, somewhat more in detail, to the features of this edition.
FIRST. As to the 'Chronological Order' of the Poems.
The chief advantage of a chronological arrangement of the Works of any
author--and especially of a poet who himself adopted a different
plan--is that it shows us, as nothing else can do, the growth of his own
mind, the progressive development of his genius and imaginative power.
By such a redistribution of what he wrote we can trace the rise, the
culmination, and also--it may be--the decline and fall of his genius.
Wordsworth's own arrangement--first adopted in the edition of 1815--was
designed by him, with the view of bringing together, in separate
classes, those Poems which referred to the same (or similar) subjects,
or which were supposed to be the product of the same (or a similar)
faculty, irrespective of the date of composition. Thus one group was
entitled "Poems of the Fancy," another "Poems of the Imagination," a
third "Poems proceeding from Sentiment and Reflection," a fourth
"Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces," again "Poems on the Naming of Places,"
"Memorials of Tours," "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," "Miscellaneous Sonnets,"
etc. The principle which guided him in this was obvious enough. It was,
in some respects, a most natural arrangement; and, in now adopting a
chronological order, the groups, which he constructed with so much care,
are broken up. Probably every author would attach more importance to a
classification of his Works, which brought them together under
appropriate headings, irrespective of date, than to a method of
arrangement which exhibited the growth of his own mind; and it may be
taken for granted that posterity would not think highly of any author
who attached special value to this latter element. None the less
posterity may wish to trace the gradual development of genius, in the
imaginative writers of the past, by the help of such a subsequent
rearrangement of their Works.
There are difficulties, however, in the way of such a rearrangement,
some of which, in Wordsworth's case, cannot be entirely surmounted. In
the case of itinerary Sonnets, referring to the same subject, the
dismemberment of a series--carefully arranged by their author--seems to
be specially unnatural. But Wordsworth himself sanctioned the principle.
If there was a fitness in collecting all his sonnets in one volume in
the year 1838, out of deference to the wishes of his friends, in order
that these poems might be "brought under the eye at once"--thus removing
them from their original places, in his collected works--it seems
equally fitting now to rearrange them chronologically, as far as it is
possible to do so. It will be seen that it is not always possible.
Then, there is the case of two Poems following each other, in
Wordsworth's own arrangement, by natural affinity; such as the 'Epistle
to Sir George Beaumont', written in 1811, which in almost all existing
editions is followed by the Poem written in 1841, and entitled, 'Upon
perusing the foregoing Epistle thirty years after its composition'; or,
the dedication to 'The White Doe of Rylstone', written in April 1815,
while the Poem itself was written in 1807. To separate these Poems seems
unnatural; and, as it would be inadmissible to print the second of the
two twice over--once as a sequel to the first poem, and again in its
chronological place--adherence to the latter plan has its obvious
disadvantage in the case of these poems.
Mr. Aubrey de Vere is very desirous that I should arrange all the "Poems
dedicated to National Independence and Liberty" together in series, as
Wordsworth left them, "on the principle that, though the order of
publication should as a rule be the order of composition in poetry, all
rules require, as well as admit of, exceptions. " As I have the greatest
respect for the judgment of such an authority as Mr. de Vere, I may
explain that I only venture to differ from him because there are
seventy-four Poems--including the sonnets and odes--in this series, and
because they cover a period ranging from 1802 to 1815. I am glad,
however, that many of these sonnets can be printed together, especially
the earlier ones of 1802.
After carefully weighing every consideration, it has seemed to me
desirable to adopt the chronological arrangement in this particular
edition; in which an attempt is made to trace the growth of Wordsworth's
genius, as it is unfolded in his successive works. His own arrangement
of his Poems will always possess a special interest and value; and it is
not likely ever to be entirely superseded in subsequent issues of his
Works. The editors and publishers of the future may possibly prefer it
to the plan now adopted, and it will commend itself to many readers from
the mere fact that 'it was Wordsworth's own'; but in an edition such as
the present--which is meant to supply material for the study of the Poet
to those who may not possess, or have access to, the earlier and rarer
editions--no method of arrangement can be so good as the chronological
one. Its importance will be obvious after several volumes are published,
when the point referred to above--viz. the evolution of the poet's
genius--will be shown by the very sequence of the subjects chosen, and
their method of treatment from year to year.
The date of the composition of Wordsworth's Poems cannot always be
ascertained with accuracy: and to get at the chronological order, it is
not sufficient to take up his earlier volumes, and thereafter to note
the additions made in subsequent ones. We now know (approximately) when
each poem was first published; although, in some instances, they
appeared in newspapers and magazines, and in many cases publication was
long after the date of composition. For example, 'Guilt and Sorrow; or,
Incidents upon Salisbury Plain'--written in the years 1791-94--was not
published 'in extenso' till 1842. The tragedy of 'The Borderers',
composed in 1795-96, was also first published in 1842. 'The
Prelude'--"commenced in the beginning of the year 1799, and completed in
the summer of 1805"--was published posthumously in 1850: and some
unpublished poems--both "of early and late years"--were first issued in
1886. A poem was frequently kept back, from some doubt as to its worth,
or from a wish to alter and amend it. Of the five or six hundred sonnets
that he wrote, Wordsworth said "Most of them were frequently re-touched;
and, not a few, laboriously. " Some poems were almost entirely recast;
and occasionally fugitive verses were withheld from publication for a
time, because it was hoped that they would subsequently form part of a
larger whole.
In the case of many of the poems, we are left to conjecture the date of
composition, although we are seldom without some clue to it. The Fenwick
Notes are a great assistance in determining the chronology. These
notes--which will be afterwards more fully referred to--were dictated by
Wordsworth to Miss Fenwick in the year 1843; but, at that time, his
memory could not be absolutely trusted as to dates; and in some
instances we know it to have been at fault. For example, he said of 'The
Old Cumberland Beggar' that it was "written at Racedown and Alfoxden in
my twenty-third year.
" Now, he went to Racedown in the autumn of 1795,
when he was twenty-five years old; and to Alfoxden, in the autumn of
1797, when twenty-seven. Again, the poem 'Rural Architecture' is put
down in the Fenwick note as "written at Townend in 1801"; but it had
been published in 1800, in the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads. "
Similarly Wordsworth gave the dates "1801 or 1802" for 'The Reverie of
Poor Susan', which had also appeared in "Lyrical Ballads," 1800.
Wordsworth's memory was not always to be trusted even when he was
speaking of a group of his own Poems. For example, in the edition of
1807, there is a short series described thus, "Poems, composed during a
tour, chiefly on foot. " They are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now, one would
naturally suppose that all the poems, in this set of five, were composed
during the same pedestrian tour, and that they all referred to the same
time. But the series contains 'Alice Fell' (1802), 'Beggars' (1802), 'To
a Sky-Lark' (1805), and 'Resolution and Independence' (1802).
Much more valuable than the Fenwick notes--for a certain portion of
Wordsworth's life--is his sister Dorothy's Journal. The mistakes in the
former can frequently be corrected from the minutely kept diary of those
early years, when the brother and sister lived together at Grasmere. The
whole of that Journal, so far as it is desirable to print it for
posterity, will be given in a subsequent volume.
Long before the publication of the Fenwick notes, Wordsworth himself
supplied some data for a chronological arrangement of his Works. In the
table of contents, prefixed to the first collected edition of 1815, in
two volumes,--and also to the second collected edition of 1820, in four
volumes,--there are two parallel columns: one giving the date of
composition, and the other that of publication. There are numerous
blanks in the former column, which was the only important one; as the
year of publication could be ascertained from the editions themselves.
Sometimes the date is given vaguely; as in the case of the "Sonnets
dedicated to Liberty," where the note runs, "from the year 1807 to
1813. " At other times, the entry of the year of publication is
inaccurate; for example, the 'Inscription for the spot where the
Hermitage stood on St. Herbert's Island, Derwentwater', is put down as
belonging to the year 1807; but this poem does not occur in the volumes
of 1807, but in the second volume of "Lyrical Ballads" (1800). It will
thus be seen that it is only by comparing Wordsworth's own lists of the
years to which his Poems belong, with the contents of the several
editions of his Works, with the Fenwick Notes, and with his sister's
Journal, that we can approximately reconstruct the true chronology. To
these sources of information must be added the internal evidence of the
Poems themselves, incidental references in letters to friends, and stray
hints gathered from various quarters.
Many new sources of information as to the date of the composition of the
Poems became known to me during the publication of my previous edition,
and after its issue; the most important being the Journals of Dorothy
Wordsworth. These discoveries showed that my chronological table of
1882--although then, relatively, "up to date"--was incomplete. The
tables constructed by Mr. Tutin and by Professor Dowden are both more
accurate than it was. It is impossible to attain to finality in such a
matter; and several facts, afterwards discovered, and mentioned in the
later volumes of my previous edition, have been used against the
conclusions come to in the earlier ones. I have thus supplied the
feathers for a few subsequent critical arrows. The shots have not been
unkindly ones; and I am glad of the result, viz. that our knowledge of
the dates--both as to the composition and first publication of the poems
--is now much more exact than before. When a conjectural one is given in
this edition, the fact is always mentioned.
This chronological method of arrangement, however, has its limits. It is
not possible always to adopt it: nor is it invariably 'necessary', even
in order to obtain a true view of the growth of Wordsworth's mind. In
this--as in so many other things--wisdom lies in the avoidance of
extremes; the extreme of rigid fidelity to the order of time on the one
hand, and the extreme of an irrational departure from it on the other.
While an effort has been made to discover the exact order of the
composition of the poems--and this is shown, not only in the
Chronological Table, but at the beginning of each separate poem--it has
been considered expedient to depart from that order in printing some of
the poems. In certain cases a poem was begun and laid aside, and again
resumed at intervals; and it is difficult to know to what year the
larger part of it should be assigned. When we know the date at which a
poem was commenced, and that it was finished "long afterwards," but have
no clue as to the year, it is assigned to the year in which it was
begun. For example, the 'Address to Kilchurn Castle' was begun in 1803,
but only the first three lines were written then. Wordsworth tells us
that "the rest was added many years after," but when we know not; and
the poem was not published till 1827. In such a case, it is placed in
this edition as if it belonged chronologically to 1803, and retains its
place in the series of Poems which memorialise the Tour in Scotland of
that year. On a similar principle, 'The Highland Girl' is placed in the
same series; although Dorothy Wordsworth tells us, in her Journal of the
Tour, that it was composed "not long after our return from Scotland";
and 'Glen Almain'--although written afterwards at Rydal--retains its
published place in the memorial group. Again the 'Departure from the
Vale of Grasmere, August 1803', is prefixed to the same series; although
it was not written till 1811, and first published in 1827. To give
symmetry to such a Series, it is necessary to depart from the exact
chronological order--the departure being duly indicated.
On the same principle I have followed the 'Address to the Scholars of
the Village School of----', by its natural sequel--'By the Side of the
Grave some Years after', the date of the composition of which is
unknown: and the 'Epistle to Sir George Beaumont' (1811) is followed by
the later Lines, to which Wordsworth gave the most prosaic title--he was
often infelicitous in his titles--'Upon perusing the foregoing Epistle
thirty years after its composition'. A like remark applies to the poem
'Beggars', which is followed by its own 'Sequel', although the order of
date is disturbed; while all the "Epitaphs," translated from Chiabrera,
are printed together.
It is manifestly appropriate that the poems belonging to a series--such
as the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," or those referring to the
"Duddon"--should be brought together, as Wordsworth finally arranged
them; even although we may be aware that some of them were written
subsequently, and placed in the middle of the series. The sonnets
referring to "Aspects of Christianity in America"--inserted in the 1845
and 1849-50 editions of the collected Works--are found in no previous
edition or version of the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets. " These, along with
some others on the Offices of the English Liturgy, were suggested to
Wordsworth by an American prelate, Bishop Doane, and by Professor Henry
Reed; [2] but we do not know in what year they were written. The
"Ecclesiastical Sonnets"--first called "Ecclesiastical Sketches"--were
written in the years 1820-22. The above additions to them appeared
twenty-five years afterwards; but they ought manifestly to retain their
place, as arranged by Wordsworth in the edition of 1845. The case is
much the same with regard to the "Duddon Sonnets. " They were first
published in 1820: but No. xiv. beginning:
O mountain Stream! the Shepherd and his Cot,
was written in the year 1806, and appears in the edition of 1807. This
sonnet will be printed in the series to which it belongs, and not in its
chronological place. I think it would be equally unjust to remove it
from the group--in which it helps to form a unity--and to print it twice
over. [3] On the other hand, the series of "Poems composed during a Tour
in Scotland, and on the English Border, in the Autumn of 1831"--and
first published in the year 1835, in the volume entitled "Yarrow
Revisited, and Other Poems"--contains two, which Wordsworth himself
tells us were composed earlier; and there is no reason why these poems
should not be restored to their chronological place. The series of
itinerary sonnets, published along with them in the Yarrow volume of
1835, is the record of another Scottish tour, taken in the year 1833;
and Wordsworth says of them that they were "composed 'or suggested'
during a tour in the summer of 1833. " We cannot now discover which of
them were written during the tour, and which at Rydal Mount after his
return; but it is obvious that they should be printed in the order in
which they were left by him, in 1835. It may be noted that almost all
the "Evening Voluntaries" belong to these years--1832 to 1835--when the
author was from sixty-two to sixty-five years of age.
Wordsworth's habit of revision may perhaps explain the mistakes into
which he occasionally fell as to the dates of his Poems, and the
difficulty of reconciling what he says, as to the year of composition,
with the date assigned by his sister in her Journal. When he says
"written in 1801, or 1802," he may be referring to the last revision
which he gave to his work. Certain it is, however, that he sometimes
gave a date for the composition, which was subsequent to the publication
of the poem in question.
In the case of those poems to which no date was attached, I have tried
to find a clue by which to fix an approximate one. Obviously, it would
not do to place all the undated poems in a class by themselves. Such an
arrangement would be thoroughly artificial; and, while we are in many
instances left to conjecture, we can always say that such and such a
poem was composed not later than a particular year. When the precise
date is undiscoverable, I have thought it best to place the poem in or
immediately before the year in which it was first published.
Poems which were several years in process of composition, having been
laid aside, and taken up repeatedly; 'e. g. The Prelude', which was
composed between the years 1799 and 1805--are placed in the year in
which they were finished. Disputable questions as to the date of any
poem are dealt with in the editorial note prefixed or appended to it.
There is one Poem which I have intentionally placed out of its
chronological place, viz. the 'Ode, Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood'. It was written at intervals from 1803
to 1806, and was first published in the edition of 1807, where it stood
at the end of the second volume. In every subsequent edition of the
collected Works--1815 to 1850--it closed the groups of poems; 'The
Excursion' only following it, in a volume of its own. This was an
arrangement made by Wordsworth, of set purpose, and steadily adhered
to--the 'Ode' forming as it were the High Altar of his poetic Cathedral.
As he wished it to retain that place in subsequent editions of his
Works, it retains it in this one.
Mr. Arnold's arrangement of the Poems, in his volume of Selections [4],
is extremely interesting and valuable; but, as to the method of grouping
adopted, I am not sure that it is better than Wordsworth's own. As a
descriptive title, "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection" is quite as good
as "Poems akin to the Antique," and "Poems of the Fancy" quite as
appropriate as "Poems of Ballad Form. "
Wordsworth's arrangement of his Poems in groups was psychologically very
interesting; but it is open to many objections. Unfortunately Wordsworth
was not himself consistent--in the various editions issued by
himself--either in the class into which he relegated each poem, or the
order in which he placed it there. There is tantalising topsy-turvyism
in this, so that an editor who adopts it is almost compelled to select
Wordsworth's latest grouping, which was not always his best.
Sir William Rowan Hamilton wrote to Mr. Aubrey de Vere in 1835 that Dora
Wordsworth told him that her father "was sometimes at a loss whether to
refer her to the 'Poems of the Imagination,' or the 'Poems of the
Fancy,' for some particular passage. " Aubrey de Vere himself considered
Wordsworth's arrangement as "a parade of system," and wrote of it, "I
cannot help thinking that in it, he mistakes classification for method. "
[5] I confess that it is often difficult to see why some of the poems
were assigned by their author to the realm of the "Fancy," the
"Imagination," and "Sentiment and Reflection" respectively. In a note to
'The Horn of Egremont Castle' (edition 1815) Wordsworth speaks of it as
"referring to the imagination," rather than as being "produced by it";
and says that he would not have placed it amongst his "Poems of the
Imagination," "but to avoid a needless multiplication of classes"; and
in the editions of 1827 and 1832 he actually included the great 'Ode' on
Immortality among his "Epitaphs and Elegiac Poems"! As late as 27th
September 1845, he wrote to Professor Henry Reed,
"Following your example" (i. e. the example set in Reed's American
edition of the Poems), "I have greatly extended the class entitled
'Poems of the Imagination,' thinking as you must have done that, if
Imagination were predominant in the class, it was not indispensable
that it should pervade every poem which it contained. Limiting the
class as I had done before, seemed to imply, and to the uncandid or
observing did so, that the faculty, which is the 'primum mobile' in
poetry, had little to do, in the estimation of the author, with pieces
not arranged under that head. I therefore feel much obliged to you for
suggesting by your practice the plan which I have adopted. "
Could anything show more explicitly than this that Wordsworth was not
perfectly satisfied with his own artificial groups? Professor Reed, in
his American edition of 1837, however, acted on Wordsworth's expressed
intention of distributing the contents of "Yarrow Revisited, and Other
Poems" amongst the classes. He tells us that he "interspersed the
contents of this volume among the Poems already arranged" by Wordsworth.
[6]
It may also be mentioned that not only members of his own household, but
many of Wordsworth's friends--notably Charles Lamb--expressed a
preference for a different arrangement of his Poems from that which he
had adopted.
SECOND The various Readings, or variations of text, made by Wordsworth
during his lifetime, or written by him on copies of his Poems, or
discovered in MS. letters, from himself, or his sister, or his wife, are
given in footnotes in this edition. Few English poets changed their text
more frequently, or with more fastidiousness, than Wordsworth did. He
did not always alter it for the better. Every alteration however, which
has been discovered by me, whether for the better or for the worse, is
here printed in full. We have thus a record of the fluctuations of his
own mind as to the form in which he wished his Poems to appear; and this
record casts considerable light on the development of his genius. [7]
A knowledge of these changes of text can only be obtained in one or
other of two ways. Either the reader must have access to all the
thirty-two editions of Poems, the publication of which Wordsworth
personally supervised; or, he must have all the changes in the
successive editions, exhibited in the form of footnotes, and appended to
the particular text that is selected and printed in the body of the
work. It is extremely difficult--in some cases quite impossible--to
obtain the early editions. The great public libraries of the country do
not possess them all. [8] It is therefore necessary to fall back upon the
latter plan, which seems the only one by which a knowledge of the
changes of the text can be made accessible, either to the general
reader, or to the special student of English Poetry.
The text which--after much consideration--I have resolved to place
throughout, in the body of the work, is Wordsworth's own final 'textus
receptus', i. e. the text of 1849-50, reproduced in the posthumous
edition of 1857; [9] and since opinion will doubtless differ as to the
wisdom of this selection, it may be desirable to state at some length
the reasons which have led me to adopt it.
There are only three possible courses open to an editor, who wishes to
give--along with the text selected--all the various readings
chronologically arranged as footnotes. Either, 1st, the earliest text
may be taken, or 2nd, the latest may be chosen, or 3rd, the text may be
selected from different editions, so as to present each poem in its best
state (according to the judgment of the editor), in whatever edition it
is found. A composite text, made up from two or more editions, would be
inadmissible.
Now, most persons who have studied the subject know that Wordsworth's
best text is to be found, in one poem in its earliest edition, in
another in its latest, and in a third in some intermediate edition. I
cannot agree either with the statement that he always altered for the
worse, or that he always altered for the better. His critical judgment
was not nearly so unerring in this respect as Coleridge's was, or as
Tennyson's has been. It may be difficult, therefore, to assign an
altogether satisfactory reason for adopting either the earliest or the
latest text; and at first sight, the remaining alternative plan may seem
the wisest of the three. There are indeed difficulties in the way of the
adoption of any one of the methods suggested; and as I adopt the latest
text--not because it is always intrinsically the best, but on other
grounds to be immediately stated--it may clear the way, if reference be
made in the first instance to the others, and to the reasons for
abandoning them.
As to a selection of the text from various editions, this would
doubtless be the best plan, were it a practicable one; and perhaps it
may be attainable some day. But Wordsworth is as yet too near us for
such an editorial treatment of his Works to be successful. The
fundamental objection to it is that scarcely two minds--even among the
most competent of contemporary judges--will agree as to what the best
text is. An edition arranged on this principle could not possibly be
acceptable to more than a few persons. Of course no arrangement of any
kind can escape adverse criticism: it would be most unfortunate if it
did. But this particular edition would fail in its main purpose, if
questions of individual taste were made primary, and not secondary; and
an arrangement, which gave scope for the arbitrary selection of
particular texts,--according to the wisdom, or the want of wisdom, of
the editor,--would deservedly meet with severe criticism in many
quarters. Besides, such a method of arrangement would not indicate the
growth of the Poet's mind, and the development of his genius. If an
editor wished to indicate his own opinion of the best text for each
poem--under the idea that his judgment might be of some use to other
people--it would be wiser to do so by means of some mark or marginal
note, than by printing his selected text in the main body of the work.
He could thus at once preserve the chronological order of the readings,
indicate his own preference, and leave it to others to select what they
preferred. Besides, the compiler of such an edition would often find
himself in doubt as to what the best text really was, the merit of the
different readings being sometimes almost equal, or very nearly
balanced; and, were he to endeavour to get out of the difficulty by
obtaining the judgments of literary men, or even of contemporary poets,
he would find that their opinions would in most cases be dissimilar, if
they did not openly conflict. Those who cannot come to a final decision
as to their own text would not be likely to agree as to the merits of
particular readings in the poems of their predecessors. Unanimity of
opinion on this point is indeed quite unattainable.
Nevertheless, it would be easy for an editor to show the unfortunate
result of keeping rigorously either to the latest or to the earliest
text of Wordsworth. If, on the one hand, the latest were taken, it could
be shown that many of the changes introduced into it were for the worse,
and some of them very decidedly so. For example, in the poem 'To a
Skylark'--composed in 1825--the second verse, retained in the
editions of 1827, 1832, 1836, and 1843, was unaccountably dropped out in
the editions of 1845 and 1849. The following is the complete poem of
1825, as published in 1827.
Ethereal Minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!
To the last point of vision, and beyond,
Mount, daring Warbler! that love-prompted strain,
('Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond)
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain:
Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege! to sing
All independent of the leafy spring.
Leave to the Nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with rapture more divine;
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!
There is no doubt that the first and third stanzas are the finest, and
some may respect the judgment that cut down the Poem by the removal of
its second verse: but others will say, if it was right that such a verse
should be removed, why were many others of questionable merit allowed to
remain? Why was such a poem as 'The Glowworm', of the edition of 1807,
never republished; while 'The Waterfall and the Eglantine', and 'To the
Spade of a Friend', were retained? To give one other illustration, where
a score are possible. In the sonnet, belonging to the year 1807,
beginning:
"Beloved Vale! " I said, "when I shall con,"
we find, in the latest text, the lines--first adopted in 1827:
I stood, of simple shame the blushing Thrall;
So narrow seemed the brooks, the fields so small,
while the early edition of 1807 contains the far happier lines:
To see the Trees, which I had thought so tall,
Mere dwarfs; the Brooks so narrow, Fields so small.
On the other hand, if the earliest text be invariably retained, some of
the best poems will be spoiled (or the improvements lost), since
Wordsworth did usually alter for the better. For example, few persons
will doubt that the form in which the second stanza of the poem 'To the
Cuckoo' (written in 1802) appeared in 1845, is an improvement on all its
predecessors. I give the readings of 1807, 1815, 1820, 1827, and 1845.
While I am lying on the grass,
I hear thy restless shout:
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
About, and all about! 1807.
While I am lying on the grass,
Thy loud note smites my ear! --
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near! 1815.
While I am lying on the grass,
Thy loud note smites my ear!
It seems to fill the whole air's space,
At once far off and near. 1820.
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
That seems to fill the whole air's space,
As loud far off as near. 1827.
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near. 1845.
Similarly, in each of the three poems 'To the Daisy', composed in 1802,
and in the 'Afterthought, to the Duddon', the alterations introduced
into the latest editions were all improvements upon the early version.
It might be urged that these considerations would warrant the
interference of an editor, and justify him in selecting the text which
he thought the best upon the whole; but this must be left to posterity.
When editors can escape the bias of contemporary thought and feeling,
when their judgments are refined by distance and mellowed by the new
literary standards of the intervening years,--when in fact Wordsworth is
as far away from his critics as Shakespeare now is--it may be possible
to adjust a final text. But the task is beyond the power of the present
generation.
It may farther be urged that if this reasoning be valid,--and if, for
the present, one text must be retained uniformly throughout,--the
natural plan is to take the earliest, and not the latest; and this has
some recommendations. It seems more simple, more natural, and certainly
the easiest. We have a natural sequence, if we begin with the earliest
and go on to the latest readings. Then, all the readers of Wordsworth,
who care to possess or to consult the present edition, will doubtless
possess one or other of the complete copies of his works, which contain
his final text; while probably not one in twenty have ever seen the
first edition of any of his poems, with the exception of 'The Prelude'.
It is true that if the reader turns to a footnote to compare the
versions of different years, while he is reading for the sake of the
poetry, he will be so distracted that the effect of the poem as a whole
will be entirely lost; because the critical spirit, which judges of the
text, works apart from the spirit of sympathetic appreciation, in which
all poetry should be read. But it is not necessary to turn to the
footnotes, and to mark what may be called the literary growth of a poem,
while it is being read for its own sake: and these notes are printed in
smaller type, so as not to obtrude themselves on the eye of the reader.
Against the adoption of the earlier text, there is this fatal objection,
that if it is to be done at all, it must be done throughout; and, in the
earliest poems Wordsworth wrote--viz. 'An Evening Walk' and 'Descriptive
Sketches',--the subsequent alterations almost amounted to a cancelling
of the earlier version. His changes were all, or almost all,
unmistakably for the better. Indeed, there was little in these works--in
the form in which they first appeared--to lead to the belief that an
original poet had arisen in England. It is true that Coleridge saw in
them the signs of the dawn of a new era, and wrote thus of 'Descriptive
Sketches', before he knew its author, "Seldom, if ever, was the
emergence of a great and original poetic genius above the literary
horizon more evidently announced. " Nevertheless the earliest text of
these 'Sketches' is, in many places, so artificial, prosaic, and dull,
that its reproduction (except as an appendix, or in the form of
footnotes) would be an injustice to Wordsworth. [10] On the other hand,
the passages subsequently cancelled are so numerous, and so long, that
if placed in footnotes the latter would in some instances be more
extensive than the text. The quarto of 1793 will therefore be reprinted
in full as an Appendix to the first volume of this edition. The 'School
Exercise written at Hawkshead' in the poet's fourteenth year, will be
found in vol. viii. Passing over these juvenile efforts, there are
poems--such as 'Guilt and Sorrow', 'Peter Bell', and many others--in
which the earlier text is an inferior one, which was either corrected or
abandoned by Wordsworth in his maturer years. It would be a conspicuous
blunder to print--in the place of honour,--the crude original which was
afterwards repudiated by its author.
It may be remembered, in connection with Wordsworth's text, that he
himself said, "I am for the most part uncertain about my success in
altering poems; but, in this case" (he is speaking of an insertion) "I
am sure I have produced a great improvement. " ('Memoirs of Wordsworth',
vol. i. p. 174. ) [11] Again, in writing to Mr. Dyce in 1830, "You know
what importance I attach to following strictly the last copy of the text
of an author. "
It is also worthy of note that the study of their chronology casts some
light on the changes which the poems underwent. The second edition of
"Lyrical Ballads" appeared in 1800. In that edition the text of 1798 is
scarcely altered: but, in the year in which it was published, Wordsworth
was engrossed with his settlement at Grasmere; and, in the springtime of
creative work, he probably never thought of revising his earlier pieces.
In the year 1800, he composed at least twenty-five new poems. The third
edition of "Lyrical Ballads" appeared in 1802; and during that year he
wrote forty-three new poems, many of them amongst the most perfect of
his Lyrics. His critical instinct had become much more delicate since
1800: and it is not surprising to find--as we do find--that between the
text of the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, and that of 1802, there are many
important variations. This is seen, for example, in the way in which he
dealt with 'The Female Vagrant', which is altered throughout. Its early
redundance is pruned away; and, in many instances, the final text,
sanctioned in 1845, had been adopted in 1803. Without going into further
detail, it is sufficient to remark that in the year 1803 Wordsworth's
critical faculty, the faculty of censorship, had developed almost step
for step with the creative originality of his genius. In that prolific
year, when week by week, almost day by day, fresh poems were thrown off
with marvellous facility--as we see from his sister's Journal--he had
become a severe, if not a fastidious, critic of his own earlier work.
