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 texts 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.

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 strings 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 say, if it was right that such a verse should be removed,

will say,

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; and such poems as The Waterfall and the Eglantine, and To the Spade of a Friend, 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 shall I con,

we find, in the latest text, the lines-first adopted in 1836

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.

But then, on the other hand, if the earliest text be invariably followed, 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 1804) appeared in the year 1849the year before the poet died-is an improvement on all its predecessors. I give the readings of 1807, 1815, 1820, 1827, and 1849.

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.

These considerations might seem to warrant the interference of an editor, and to justify him in selecting the text which he thought the best upon the whole. But, for the reasons already stated, 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 Shakespere or even Burns is from us now,—it may be possible for the men of that time to adjust a final text out of all the competing ones. But the task seems beyond the power of the present generation.

It

may be thought that if this reasoning is valid,—and if, for the present, one text must be retained uniformly throughout, the natural plan is to take the earliest, and not This has many recommendations. It seems simpler, more orderly, more natural, and more available than any other; and it would certainly be the easiest plan for an editor to follow. By adopting it, there is a distinct his

the latest.

torical consistency. 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 this new 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. If they turn to this edition for the original version of any poem, it would certainly be pleasanter for them to read it in a continuous form in the main text, than to have the trouble and distraction of a constant reference to footnotes. Some, indeed, will prefer that all the various readings, with their respective dates, should be printed at the end of the work, or at least at the end of each volume, and not at the foot of every page. 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 if these notes are printed in smaller type, they will not 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 amounted almost to a cancelling of the earlier version. His changes were all, or almost all, unmistakeably 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 the Descriptive Sketches, before he had met its author, "Seldom, if ever, was the emergence of a great and original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." The earliest text of these Sketches is, however, in many places, so artificial, prosaic, and dull, that its reproduction (except in the form of footnotes) would be an injustice to Wordsworth. 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 printed as a whole, in an Appendix to the first volume of this edition, along with the School Exercise written at Hawkshead in the poet's fourteenth year.1 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 this edition, in the place of honour, the crude original which was afterwards repudiated by its author.

Prima facie, it seems fair that every great writer, and especially every poet, should have the right of saying to posterity in what form he wishes to be finally known. It may seem an impertinence in any one else to interfere with

1 Let the indiscriminate admirer of "first editions" turn to this quarto, and even he may perhaps wonder why it has been rescued from oblivion. I am only aware of the existence of a single copy of the edition of 1793; and although it has a certain biographic value, and may therefore be fitly reproduced in this edition, I can scarcely think that many who read it once will return to it again, except as a literary curiosity. Here -and not in Lyrical Ballads or The Excursion-was the quarry where Jeffrey or Gifford might have found abundant material for criticism.