PREFACE. THE place which Wordsworth occupies in English literature, and in the literature of the world, cannot be discussed in the course of a prefatory note to a new edition of his works. An essay on the characteristics of his genius will be published in the last volume of this series, in which a Life of the poet will also be included. Some explanation, however, of the principle on which this edition is based, and of its distinctive features, may be desirable at the outset. The published prospectus of the work mentions what these are, and as a similar principle may be followed with advantage in corresponding editions of other English poets, it may be as well to refer seriatim to each of the points alluded to in that prospectus. They are as follows: First. The Poems will be arranged in chronological order of composition, not of publication. [In all collective editions published during Wordsworth's lifetime, the arrangement-first adopted by him in 1815, and based upon the distinctive character of the poems themselves-was more or less adhered to. They will now, for the first time, be published in the order in which they were composed.] Second. All the changes of text, adopted by the poet in the successive editions of his Works, will be given in footnotes, with the precise dates of these changes. Third. Several new Readings or suggested changes of text, which exist in MS., and were written by Wordsworth on the margin of a copy of the edition of 1836-37, kept at Rydal Mount, and now in the possession of Lord Coleridge, will be added. Fourth. The Notes dictated by Wordsworth to Miss Fenwick (and known as the I. F. MS.), which give the Author's own account of the circumstances under which his poems were composed, will be printed in full, and inserted in each case as a preface to the particular poem thus explained. Fifth. Topographical Notes, explanatory of the allusions made to localities in the English Lake District and elsewhere, will be given at the end of the poems thus illustrated. Sixth. Several Poems and Fragments, hitherto unpublished, will be printed. Seventh. A Bibliography of the Works and the successive Editions, issued in England and America from 1793 to 1850, will be added, together with a Bibliography of Criticism, or literary estimates of Wordsworth. Eighth. A Life of the Poet, a Critical Essay, and a General Index will conclude the last volume. Ninth. Etchings of localities associated with the poet, after drawings by John M'Whirter, A.R.A., etched by C. O. Murray, will be frontispieces to the volumes, and a Portrait of Wordsworth will be given in the last volume. The chief advantage of a chronological arrangement of the works of any author-and especially of a poet-is that it shows us, as nothing else can do, the growth of his mind, the progressive development of his imaginative power. By such a redistribution of the poems we can trace the rise, the culmination, and also it may be the decline of his genius. Wordsworth's own arrangement-first adopted by him in 1815 was designed to bring together, in separate groups, those poems which referred to the same or similar subjects, or which were supposed by him to be the product of the same or a similar faculty, irrespective of the date of composition. Thus we had one group entitled "Poems of the Fancy;" another, "Poems of the Imagination;" a third, "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection;" a fourth, "Elegiac Poems;" again, "Poems on the Naming of Places," "Memorials of Tours," "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," &c., &c. The principle which guided him in this was obvious enough. It was in some respects, a most natural arrangement; and, in adopting (as we now do) the chronological order, we must break up the groups, which he constructed with much care. Almost 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. Posterity would not think highly of an Author who attached any value to this latter element; but 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 re-arrangement of their works. There are difficulties, however, in the way, some of which cannot be entirely surmounted. In the case of the Sonnets, the dismemberment of a Series carefully arranged by their author seems specially unnatural; and some persons would dislike it, much as they would dislike a rearrangement of the Hebrew Psalter in the light of recent critical discovery. But if there was a fitness in Wordsworth's collecting all his sonnets in one volume, in the year 1838, out of deference to the wish of his friends, 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, so far as it is possible to do so. It will be immediately 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 all existing editions is followed by the poem written in 1841, and entitled Upon perusing the foregoing epistle thirty years after its composition. 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 disadvantages in the case of these poems. With such considerations duly weighed, it seems desirable to adopt the chronological arrangement in this particular edition, in which an attempt is made to trace the growth of Wordsworth's mind as unfolded in his 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 prefer it to the plan now adopted, and it will commend itself to many from the mere fact that it was his. 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. Its full importance may not be obvious until several volumes are published, when the point referred to above-viz., the progressive development of Wordsworth's genius-will be shown by the very sequence of the subjects chosen, and by their method of treatment from year to year. ones. The date of composition cannot, however, be always ascertained with perfect accuracy: and to get at the chronological order, it is not sufficient to take up the earlier volumes, and then to note the additions made in subsequent We know when each poem was first published; but the publication was often long after the date of composition. For example, the poem entitled Guilt and Sorrow; or, Incidents upon Salisbury Plain, written in the years 1793-94, was not published 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 pub lished posthumously in 1850:1 and there are still some unpublished poems, both "of early and late years." Frequently a poem was kept back, from some doubt as to its worth, or from a wish to alter and improve it. Of the five or six hundred Sonnets that he wrote, he said "most of them were frequently re-touched, and not a few laboriously." Some poems were almost entirely recast; and occasionally one was withheld from publication for a time, because it was intended to form part of a larger whole. In the case of several of the poems, we are left to conjecture the date, although we are seldom without some clue. The Fenwick notes are a special 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, "written at Racedown and Alfoxden, in my twenty-third year." Now, he went to Racedown in the autumn of 1795, when twentyfive years old; and to Alfoxden, in the autumn of 1797, when twenty-seven years old. Again, the poem Rural Architecture, is put down in the Fenwick notes as "composed at Townend, Grasmere, in 1801." But it had been Lyrical Ballads. published in 1800, in the second edition of 1 The Prelude was commenced on leaving Goslar, in the year 1799, and written at intervals. The first six books were finished in 1805, in the spring of which year the seventh was begun; and it, with the rest of the poem (seven additional books) was finished before the end of June 1805. The work received some final corrections in the year 1832. |