noted." In the Fenwick notes, we constantly find him. saying, "the fact occurred strictly as recorded," "the fact was, as mentioned in the poem ;" and the fact very often involved the accessories of place.

Anyone who has tried to trace out the allusions in the "Poems on the naming of places," or to discover the site of Michael's Sheepfold, to identify Ghimmer Crag, or ThurstonMere, not to speak of the individual "rocks" and "recesses near Blea Tarn at the head of Little Langdale so minutely described in The Excursion,-will admit that local commentary is an important aid to the understanding of Wordsworth. If to read the Yew Trees in Borrowdale itself,

in mute repose

To lie, and listen to the mountain flood

Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves,

to read The Brothers in Ennerdale, or The Daffodils by the shore of Ullswater, gives a new significance to these "poems of the imagination," a discovery of the obscurer allusions to place or scene will deepen our appreciation of those passages in which his idealism is most pronounced. Every one knows Kirkstone Pass, Aira Force, Dungeon Ghyll, the Wishing Gate, and Helm Crag: many persons know the Glowworm Rock, and the Rock of Names; but where is Emma's Dell? or the meeting point of two highways," so characteristically described in the twelfth book of The Prelude? and who will fix the site of the pool in Rydal Upper Park, immortalised in the poem to M. H.? or identify Joanna's Rock? Many of the places in that Lake District of England are undergoing change, and every year the local allusions will be more difficult to trace. Such a memorial as the "Rock of Names," on the shore of Thirlmere, is threatened with immersion under the waters of a Manchester reservoir. Others are perishing by the wear and tear of time, the decay of old buildings, the alteration of roads, the cutting down of trees,

!

of

and the modernising or "improving" of the district generally. All this is inevitable. But it is well that many the natural objects, over and around which the light of Wordsworth's genius lingers, are out of the reach of “improvements," and are indestructible even by machinery.

If it be objected that several of the places which we try to identify-and which some would prefer to leave for ever undisturbed in the realm of imagination—were purposely left obscure, it may be replied that Death and Time have probably now removed all reasons for reticence, especially in the case of those poems referring to domestic life and friendly ties. While an author is alive, or while those are alive to whom he has made reference in the course of his allusions to place, it may even be right that works designed for posterity should not be dealt with after the fashion of the modern interviewer.' But greatness has its penalties; and a "fierce light" "beats around the throne" of genius, as well as round that of empire. Moreover, all experience shows that posterity takes a great and a growing interest in exact topographical illustrations of the works of great authors. The labour recently bestowed upon the localities connected with Shakespere and Burns amply attests this.

The localities in Westmoreland, which are most permanently associated with Wordsworth, are these: Grasmere, where he lived during the years of his "poetic prime,” and where he is buried; Lower Easdale, where he passed so many days with his sister by the side of the brook, and on the terraces at Lancrigg,-where The Prelude was written ; Rydal Mount, where he spent the latter half of his life, and where he found one of the most perfect retreats in England; Great Langdale, and Blea Tarn at the head of Little Langdale, immortalised in The Excursion; the upper end of Ullswater, and Kirkstone Pass; and all the mountain tracks

and paths round Grasmere and Rydal, especially the old upper road between them, under Nab Scar, his favourite walk during his later years, where he "composed hundreds of verses." There is scarcely a rock or mountain summit, a stream or tarn, or even a well, a grove, or a forest-side in all that neighbourhood, which is not imperishably identified with this poet, who at once interpreted them as they had never been interpreted before, and added

the gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration, and the poet's dream.

It may be added that, while we are now able to localise the poems in which Wordsworth idealized the localities, he himself sanctioned the principle of doing so, both by dictating the Fenwick notes, and by republishing his Essay on the topography of the Lakes, along with the Duddon Sonnets, in 1820-and also, by itself, in 1822-" from a belief that it would tend materially to illustrate" his poems.

The topographical notes will, in this edition, usually follow the poems to which they refer. But in the case of the longer poems, such as The Prelude, The Excursion, and others, it will be more convenient to print them at the foot of the page, than to oblige the reader to turn to the end of the volume, guided by an index letter.

A sixth feature of the edition will be the publication of several poems, and fragments of poems, hitherto unpublished. In addition to those of which the copyright has expired, and The Prelude-of which the copyright still exists—a few poems which have been discovered, and which cast some light on the characteristics of Wordsworth's genius, will be printed in full. There are only two fragments known to me which it seems undesirable to reproduce. One of these appeared in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads-the now scarce edition of 1798-and is entitled The Convict. The

reproduction of that poem is neither necessary nor expedient. The other has never been published. It was written during the Alfoxden days, and is called "A Somersetshire Tragedy." It is the chronicle of a revolting crime, with nothing in the poem to merit its being rescued from oblivion. The only curious thing about it is that Wordsworth could have written it. With these exceptions, there is no reason why the fragments which he did not himself republish, and others which he published but afterwards suppressed, should not find a place in this edition. The suppression of some of these by the poet himself is as unaccountable as is his omission of certain stanzas in the earlier poems from their later versions; while the Cambridge "Installation Ode," which is so feeble, was retained.1 Such a fragment as The Glowworm, for example, which only appeared in the edition of 1807, must be republished in full. Andrew Jones, also suppressed after appearing in Lyrical Ballads of 1798, 1800, 1802, and 1804, will be replaced in like manner. The youthful School Exercise written at Hawkshead, the translation from the Georgics of Virgil, the Poem addressed to the Queen in 1846, will appear in their chronological place. There are also a translation of some French stanzas by Francis Wrangham on The Birth of Love-a poem entitled The Eagle and the Dove, which was privately printed in a volume, consisting chiefly of French fragments, and called La petite Chounannerie, ou Histoire d'un College Breton sous l'Empirea Sonnet on the rebuilding of a church at Cardiff—an Election Squib written during the Lowther and Brougham contest for the representation of the county of Cumberland in 1818-and some stanzas written in the Visitors' Book at the Ferry, Windermere. Then, as Wordsworth published some verses by his sister Dorothy in his own volumes, some other

1How much of this poem was Wordsworth's own has not been definitely ascertained.

fragments by Miss Wordsworth may find a place in this edition. I do not attach much importance, however, to the recovery of these unpublished poems. The truth is, as Sir Henry Taylor-himself a poet and critic of no mean order —has remarked,1 "In these days, when a great man's path to posterity is likely to be more and more crowded, there is a tendency to create an obstruction in the desire to give an impulse. To gather about a man's work all the details that can be found out about it is, in my opinion, to put a drag upon it; and, as of the Works, so of the Life, &c." The industrious labour of some editors in disinterring the trivial works of great men is not a commendable industry. All great writers have occasionally written trifles-this is true even of Shakespere-and if they wished them to perish, why should we seek to resuscitate them? Besides, this labour-whether due to the industry of admiring friends, or to the ambition of the literary resurrectionist-is futile; because the verdict of Time is sure, and posterity will doubtless soon consign the recovered trivialities to kindly oblivion. The question which should invariably present itself to the editor of the fragments of a great writer is, "Can these bones live?" If they cannot, they had better never see the light. Indeed the only good reason for reprinting the fragments which have been lost (because the author himself attached no value to them), is that, in a complete collection of the works of a great man, some of them may have a biographic or psychological value. But we have no right to reproduce, from an antiquarian motive, what, in a literary sense, is either trivial, or feeble, or sterile.

Here also, however, we ought to distinguish between what is suitable in an edition meant either to popularise an author or to interpret him, and an edition intended to bring

1 In a letter to the editor.