curious thing about it is that Wordsworth wrote it. With this exception, there is no reason why the fragments which he did not himself republish, and others which he published but afterwards suppressed, should not now be printed. 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. Even the Cambridge Installation Ode, which is so feeble, will be reprinted. The Glowworm, which only appeared in the edition of 1807, will be republished in full. Andrew Jones, also suppressed after appearing in "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, 1802, and 1805,-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 in vol. viii. 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 Chouannerie, ou Historie d'un College Breton sous l'Empire-a 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-some stanzas written in the Visitors' Book at the Ferry, Windermere, and other fragments. Then, since Wordsworth published some verses by his sister Dorothy in his own volumes, other

1 How much of this poem was Wordsworth's own has not been definitely ascertained. I am of opinion that very little, if any of it, was his. It has been said that his nephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln, wrote most of it; but more recent evidence tends to show that it was the work of his son-in-law, Edward Quillinan.

unpublished fragments by Miss Wordsworth may find a place in this edition. I do not attach much importance, however, to the recovery of these unpublished poems.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 Taylorhimself a poet and critic of no mean order—remarked, "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." 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 Shakespeare-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 is certain to 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 have we any right to reproduce, from an antiquarian motive, what-in a literary sense-is either trivial, or feeble, or sterile?

1 In a letter to the writer in 1882.

We must, however, distinguish between what is suitable for an edition meant either to popularise an author, or to interpret him, and an edition intended to bring together all that is worthy of preservation for posterity. There is great truth in what Mr. Arnold has lately said of Byron: "I question whether by reading everything which he gives us, we are so likely to acquire an admiring sense, even of his variety and abundance, as by reading what he gives us at his happier moments. Receive him absolutely without omission and compromise, follow his whole outpouring, stanza by stanza, and line by line, from the very commencement to the very end, and he is capable of being tiresome." 1 This is quite true; nevertheless, English literature demands a complete edition of all the works of Byron: and it may be safely predicted that, for weightier reasons and with greater urgency, it will continue to call for the collected works of Wordsworth.

It should also be noted that the fact of Wordsworth's having dictated to Miss Fenwick (so late as 1843) a stanza from The Convict in his note to The Lament of Mary Queen of Scots (1817), justifies the inclusion of the whole of that (suppressed) poem in such an edition as this.

The fact that Wordsworth did not republish all his Poems, in his final edition of 1849-50, is not conclusive evidence that he thought them unworthy of preservation, and reproduction. It must be remembered that The Prelude itself was a posthumous publication; and also that the fragmentary canto of

1 The Poetry of Byron, chosen and arranged by Matthew Arnold. London: Macmillan and Co.

The Recluse, entitled "Home at Grasmere "-as well as the other canto published in 1886, and entitled (most prosaically) "Composed when a probability existed of our being obliged to quit Rydal Mount as a residence ❞—were not published by the poet himself. I am of opinion that his omission of the stanzas beginning

Among all lovely things my Love had been,

and of the sonnet on his Voyage down the Rhine, was due to sheer forgetfulness of their existence. Few poets remember all their past, fugitive, productions. At the same time, there are other fragments, written when he was experimenting with his theme, and when the inspiration of genius had forsaken him,-which it is unfortunate that he did not himself destroy.

Among the Poems which Wordsworth suppressed, in his final edition, is the Latin translation of The Somnambulist by his son. This will be republished, more especially as it was included by Wordsworth himself in the second edition of his "Yarrow Revisited."

It may be well to mention the repetitions which are inevitable in this edition. (1) As already explained, those fragments of The Recluse-which were issued in all the earlier volumes, and afterwards incorporated in The Prelude-are printed as they originally appeared. (2) Short Notes are extracted from Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland (1803), which illustrate the Poems composed during that Tour, while the whole text of that Tour will be printed in full in subsequent volumes. (3) Other fragments, including the lines beginning,

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe,

will be printed both by themselves in their chronological place, and in the longer poem of which they form a part, according to the original plan of their author.

A detail, perhaps not too trivial to mention, is that, in this edition-at the suggestion of several friends -I have followed the example of Professor Dowden in his Aldine edition, and numbered the lines of almost all the poems-even the sonnets. When I have not done so, the reason will be obvious; viz. either the structure, or the brevity, of the poem.1

In giving the date of each poem, I have used the word "composed," rather than "written," very much because Wordsworth himself, and his sister, in her Journals almost invariably use the word "composed"; although he criticised the term as applied to the creation of a poem, as if it were a manufactured article. In his Chronological Table, Mr. Dowden adopts the word "composed"; but, in his edition of the Poems, he has made use of the term "written." 2

No notice (or almost none) of misprints in Wordsworth's own text is taken, in the notes to this edition. Sometimes an error occurred, and was carried on through more than one edition, and corrected in the next e.g., in The Childless Father, the editions of 1827, 1832, and 1836 have the line

Fresh springs of green boxwood, not six months before.

1 It may not be too trivial a fact to mention that Wordsworth numbered the lines of his earliest publication, An Evening Walk, in 1793.—ED.

2 Another fact, not too trivial to mention, is that in the original MS. of the Lines composed at Grasmere, etc., Wordsworth sent it to the printer "Lines written," but changed it in proof to "Lines composed."-ED.