221-223.

Before 1836:

As soon as he had gathered so much strength,
That he could look his trouble in the face,
It seemed that his sole refuge was to sell

Altered, perhaps, to vary the position of the pauses.

233. The sun himself in 1827 replaced "the Sun itself." A like change was often made as Wordsworth came to perceive the uses of poetic personification.

258.

Richard Bateman. In edd. 1802-5 Wordsworth gives a note: "The story alluded to is well known in the country. The chapel is called Ings Chapel; and it is on the right-hand side of the road leading from Kendal to Ambleside.” The date when Bateman rebuilt the chapel was 1743.

290.

Last two nights: corrected in 1836; previously, "two last." 299. Youth in 1815 replaced "lad." See note on "The Brothers,"

1. 320.

304. With daylight in 1820 replaced the less expressive "Next morning" of earlier texts.

324. Sheepfold. In edd. 1800-5 Wordsworth gives a note: "It may be proper to inform some readers that a sheepfold in these mountains is an unroofed building of stone walls, with different divisions. It is generally placed by a brook, for the convenience of washing the sheep; but it is also useful as a shelter for them, and as a place to drive them into, to enable the shepherds conveniently to single out one or more for any particular purpose."

338, 339. Touch on replaced in 1836 " speak of."

340. As oft befalls replaced in 1827 "as it befalls,” which was hardly true to fact.

373. Threescore replaced in 1827 "sixty."

390. Hale replaced in 1827 "stout," the meaning of which was ambiguous.

424, 425. An improvement of 1815; previously, one line: "Next morning, as had been resolv'd, the Boy."

450. Before 1820 this line was "Would break the heart:— Old Michael found it so."

456. From 1800 to 1827 the line closed with "up upon the sun "; in 1832 the fault was emended by the reading "up towards the sun.” But when making the revision for 1836, Wordsworth decided uniformly to treat towards as a monosyllable, and accordingly he substituted the present reading.

Several changes of text of a less interesting kind are here unrecorded. Of this poem Sir Henry Taylor says: "The poet writes in his confidence to impart interest to the realities of life, deriving both the confidence and the power from the deep interest which he feels in them. It is an attribute of unusual susceptibility of imagination to need no extraordinary provocatives; and when this is combined with intensity of observation and peculiarity of language, it is the high privilege of the poet so endowed to rest upon the common realities of life and to dispense with its anomalies."

FRAGMENT FROM THE RECLUSE.

BOOK I.

"The Recluse" was the general title given to a great philosophical poem designed by Wordsworth, which was never completed. It's principal subject was to be the sensations and opinions of a Poet living in retirement, and it was to express his views of Man, Nature, and Society. The autobiographical poem, "The Prelude," published after Wordsworth's death, was intended to be preparatory to the whole; "The Excursion" formed its second part. The third part, to consist, like the first, chiefly of meditations in the Author's own person, was never written. The date at which the first book of "The Recluse " was written is uncertain; perhaps it was written as early as 1800. Professor Knight dates it 1805, which may be right. An extract or an addition was published by Wordsworth with the title "Water-Fowl," and is dated by him 1812.

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The extract here given forms the conclusion of Book I. It was printed in 1814, in the Preface to The Excursion," and Wordsworth says "it may be acceptable as a kind of Prospectus of the design and scope of the whole Poem." In fact it may be called a prospectus of all his work as a poet. The first book of "The Recluse" was published in 1888. The text of the extract is identical in the volume of 1888 with that printed in 1814.

13. Numerous verse, verse consisting of poetical numbers; the expression occurs in " Paradise Lost," V, 150, and in P. Fletcher's "Piscatory Eclogues," 1633.

९९

23. Fit audience, etc. from Paradise Lost," VII, 31, where Milton invokes the muse Urania; see 1. 25.

48. Plato's Atlantis was an imaginary island in the Atlantic Ocean. Homer made the Atlanticas two, the Hesperides and the Elysian Fields.

86. Metropolitan, of the mother city. The word has special ecclesiastical associations, Metropolitan (noun) meaning bishop of a mother church.

THE SPARROW'S NEST.

Written in the orchard, Town-end, Grasmere, and dated by Wordsworth 1801; first published in 1807. At the end of the garden," says Wordsworth (Fenwick note on this poem), "of my father's house at Cockermouth was a high terrace that commanded a fine view of the river Derwent and Cockermouth Castle. This was our favourite playground. The terrace-wall, a low one, was covered with closely clipt privet and roses, which gave an almost impervious shelter to birds that built their nests there."

In 1807 (only) the following lines opened the poem :

Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there!

Few visions have I seen more fair,

Nor many prospects of delight

More pleasing than that simple sight!

which had an unpleasant air of self-consciousness, and were happily omitted.

Until 1845 11. 11, 12 stood thus:

She look'd at it as if she fear'd it;

Still wishing, dreading to be near it,

with a faulty rhyme.

In "The Prelude," XI, 335-370, Wordsworth tells how at a later time his sister led him back, after the downfall of his hopes for France, to "sweet counsels between head and heart," and preserved him still a Poet. On the name Emmeline," see note on "To a Butterfly." In the original manuscript "Dorothy" is written.

TO A YOUNG LADY ("Dear Child," etc.).

This poem - which may have been written in 1801 originally appeared in The Morning Post for Feb. 11, 1802, with the title "To a beautiful Young Lady who had been harshly spoken of on account of her fondness for taking long walks in the country." It was included among the "Poems," 1807. Wordsworth afterwards dated it 1803, and said in the Fenwick note that it was "composed at the same time and on the same view as I met Louisa in the shade'; indeed they were

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designed to make one piece." Louisa he dated 1805. Evidently his memory deceived him. There is a MS. copy written out for the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1802. Professor Knight and I supposed that the young lady was idealised from Wordsworth's sister Dorothy. Mr. T. Hutchinson conjectures that Joanna, Wordsworth's sister-in-law, was meant. Mr. Ernest H. Coleridge (The Athenæum, Sept. 16, 1893) argues that Mary Hutchinson, whom Wordsworth married on Oct. 4, 1802, was meant. She was at Dove Cottage, Grasmere (Wordsworth's home), in the late autumn of 1801, and on December 28 she accompanied the Wordsworths on foot to Keswick. A second visit to Grasmere was paid in January, 1802. The poem Louisa,"" says Mr. Coleridge, "is evidently addressed by a lover to his betrothed," and here the young lady is promised heart-stirring days as a wife (to Wordsworth) and friend (to Dorothy). The reproaches, Mr. Coleridge supposes, may have come from Mrs. Coleridge, then at Greta Hall, to which Mary Hutchinson walked from Grasmere; Mrs. Coleridge "did not appreciate long walks." Dorothy Wordsworth was, however, a noted pedestrian, and was reproached for her long walks. "The Glowworm " of Wordsworth, in which Lucy is spoken of as my Love," was suggested, in fact, by an incident in which his sister was Lucy's original. In "Yarrow Unvisited" Wordsworth's sister is, for poetical purposes, transformed to his " true love" and "winsome Marrow." Miss Quillinan stated that the lines were addressed to Dorothy, and I still believe this to be the truth. The poem should be read with "Louisa."

In 1. 5 "heart-stirring" replaced in 1837 the earlier "delightful"; altered, probably, to avoid the clash of "delightful" with "light" in the next line.

Lines 8, 9 previous to 1827 were :

As if thy heritage were joy,

And pleasure were thy trade.

In 1. 16" serene" in 1815 replaced the earlier "alive."

ALICE FELL.

Written Mar. 12 and 13, 1802; published 1807. The incident happened to Mr. Graham of Glasgow (brother of the author of "The Sabbath ") who urged Wordsworth, for humanity's sake, to put it into verse. In Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal of Feb. 16, 1802, she records the incident as told on that day by Graham; the poem closely agrees with the entry in the Journal. On its appearance the critics ridiculed

402

the poem, and out of policy Wordsworth for a time excluded it from his "Poetical Works"; it was restored at the request of friends, in particular of Edward Quillinan, the poet's son-in-law.

The text was retouched in many lines in 1836, and assumed its final form in 1845.

3, 4.

Before 1845 thus:

When suddenly I seem'd to hear

A moan, a lamentable sound.

Altered to render the sound, as first heard, more vague, and to avoid the repeated "seemed " in l. 3 and 1. 7.

21. In 1807 : 'My cloak!' the word was last and first," rhyming with 1. 23, "As if her very heart would burst" word used in Dorothy's Journal). When in 1836 1. 21 became *** My ("burst" being also the cloak!' no other word she spoke," l. 23 did not rhyme, "As if her innocent heart would burst." There was an objection to rhyming with "spoke," the word "spoke" in another sense rhyming in the next stanza but one. The present text is of 1840.

29-31. In 1807:

'T was twisted between nave and spoke;
Her help she lent, and with good heed
Together we released the Cloak;

A wretched, wretched rag indeed!

Other variations of text, less important, remain unnoticed.

The poem

may be contrasted with "Lucy Gray," the one being literal and realistic, while "Lucy Gray" is an ideal treatment of the actual incident.

BEGGARS.

Written at Town-end, Grasmere, on Mar. 13 and 14, 1802; published in 1807. Dorothy Wordsworth writes in her Journal of March 13: "William finished 'Alice Fell' [like this, a poem of poverty] and then wrote the poem of The Beggar Woman,' taken from a woman whom I had seen in May (now nearly two years ago), when John and he were at Gallow Hill [with the Hutchinson's]. to William [from the Journal] that account of the little boy belonging After tea I read to the tall woman, and an unlucky thing it was, for he could not escape from those very words, and so he could not write the poem. it unfinished, and went tired to bed.

He left

In our walk from Rydal he had