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.

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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. I, 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 Scot

land 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;1 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. 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,

The

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.2 On the other hand, the

1 See Memoirs of William Wordsworth, ii. pp. 113, 114. 2 It is however different with the fragments which were published in all the editions issued in the poet's lifetime, and afterwards in The Prelude, such as the lines on "the immortal