The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume I Part 4

If it be objected that several of the places which we try to identify--and which some would prefer to leave for ever undisturbed in the realm of imagination--were purposely left obscure, it may be replied that Death and Time have probably now removed all reasons for reticence, especially in the case of those poems referring to domestic life and friendly ties. While an author is alive, or while those are alive to whom he has made reference in the course of his allusions to place, it may even be right that works designed for posterity should not be dealt with after the fas.h.i.+on of the modern "interviewer." But greatness has its penalties; and a "fierce light" "beats around the throne" of Genius, as well as round that of Empire. Moreover, all experience shows that posterity takes a great and a growing interest in exact topographical ill.u.s.trations of the works of great authors. The labour recently bestowed upon the places connected with Shakespeare, Scott, and Burns sufficiently attests this.

The localities in Westmoreland, which are most permanently a.s.sociated with Wordsworth, are these: Grasmere, where he lived during the years of his "poetic prime," and where he is buried; Lower Easdale, where he pa.s.sed so many days with his sister by the side of the brook, and on the terraces at Lancrigg, and where 'The Prelude' was dictated; Rydal Mount, where he spent the latter half of his life, and where he found one of the most perfect retreats in England; Great Langdale, and Blea Tarn at the head of Little Langdale, immortalised in 'The Excursion'; the upper end of Ullswater, and Kirkstone Pa.s.s; and all the mountain tracks and paths round Grasmere and Rydal, especially the old upper road between them, under Nab Scar, his favourite walk during his later years, where he "composed hundreds of verses." There is scarcely a rock or mountain summit, a stream or tarn, or even a well, a grove, or forest-side in all that neighbourhood, which is not imperishably identified with this poet, who at once interpreted them as they had never been interpreted before, and added

the gleam, The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the Poet's dream.

It may be worthy of note that Wordsworth himself sanctioned the principle of tracing out local allusions both by dictating the Fenwick notes, and by republis.h.i.+ng his Essay on the topography of the Lakes, along with the Duddon Sonnets, in 1820--and also, by itself, in 1822--"from a belief that it would tend materially to ill.u.s.trate" his poems.

In this edition the topographical Notes usually follow the Poems to which they refer. But in the case of the longer Poems, such as 'The Prelude', 'The Excursion', and others, it seems more convenient to print them at the foot of the page, than to oblige the reader to turn to the end of the volume.

From the accident of my having tried long ago--at Princ.i.p.al Shairp's request--to do what he told me he wished to do, but had failed to carry out, I have been supposed, quite erroneously, to be an 'authority' on the subject of "The English Lake District, as interpreted in the Poems of Wordsworth." The latter, it is true, is the t.i.tle of one of the books which I have written about Wordsworth: but, although I visited the Lakes in 1860,--"as a pilgrim resolute"--and have re-visited the district nearly every year for more than a quarter of a century, I may say that I have only a partial knowledge of it. Others, such as Canon Rawnsley, Mr.

Harry Goodwin, and Mr. Rix, for example, know many parts of it much better than I do; but, as I have often had to compare my own judgment with that of such experts as the late Dr. Cradock, Princ.i.p.al of Brasenose College, Oxford, and others, I may add that, when I differ from them, it has been only after a re-examination of their evidence, at the localities themselves.

SIXTH. Several Poems, and fragments of poems, hitherto unpublished--or published in stray quarters, and in desultory fas.h.i.+on--will find a place in this edition; but I reserve these fragments, and place them all together, in an Appendix to the last volume of the "Poetical Works." If it is desirable to print these poems, in such an edition as this, it is equally desirable to separate them from those which Wordsworth himself sanctioned in his final edition of 1849-50.

Every great author in the Literature of the World--whether he lives to old age (when his judgment may possibly be less critical) or dies young (when it may be relatively more accurate)--should himself determine what portions of his work ought, and what ought not to survive. At the same time,--while I do not presume to judge in the case of writers whom I know less fully than I happen to know Wordsworth and his contemporaries,--it seems clear that the very greatest men have occasionally erred as to what parts of their writings might, with most advantage, survive; and that they have even more frequently erred as to what MS. letters, etc.,--casting light on their contemporaries--should, or should not, be preserved. I am convinced, for example, that if the Wordsworth household had not destroyed all the letters which Coleridge sent to them, in the first decade of this century, the world would now possess much important knowledge which is for ever lost. It may have been wise, for reasons now unknown, to burn those letters, written by Coleridge: but the students of the literature of the period would gladly have them now.

Pa.s.sing from the question of the preservation of Letters, it is evident that Wordsworth was very careful in distinguis.h.i.+ng between the Verses which he sent to Newspapers and Magazines, and those Poems which he included in his published volumes. His anxiety on this point may be inferred from the way in which he more than once emphasised the fact of republication, e.g. in 'Peter Bell' (1819) he put the following prefatory note to four sonnets, which had previously appeared in 'Blackwood's Magazine', and which afterwards (1828) appeared in the 'Poetical Alb.u.m' of Alaric Watts, "The following Sonnets having lately appeared in Periodical Publications are here reprinted."

Some of the poems (or fragments of poems), included in the 'addenda' to Volume viii. of this edition, I would willingly have left out (especially the sonnet addressed to Miss Maria Williams); but, since they have appeared elsewhere, I feel justified in now reprinting even that trivial youthful effusion, signed "Axiologus." I rejoice, however, that there is no likelihood that the "Somersets.h.i.+re Tragedy" will ever see the light. When I told Wordsworth's successor in the Laureates.h.i.+p that I had burned a copy of that poem, sent to me by one to whom it had been confided, his delight was great. It is the chronicle of a revolting crime, with nothing in the verse to warrant its publication. The only 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. [16] '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 ent.i.tled 'The Eagle and the Dove', which was privately printed in a volume, consisting chiefly of French fragments, and called 'La pet.i.te 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 c.u.mberland 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 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 Taylor--himself a poet and critic of no mean order--remarked [17],

"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?

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."

[18]

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 'The Recluse', ent.i.tled "Home at Grasmere"--as well as the other canto published in 1886, and ent.i.tled (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 'repet.i.tions' 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 ill.u.s.trate 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. [19]

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." [20]

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.

In the 'errata' of the edition of 1836 this is corrected to "fresh sprigs." There are other 'errata', which remained in the edition of 1849-50, e.g., in 'Rob Roy's Grave', "Vools" for "Veols," and mistakes in quotations from other poets, such as "invention" for "instruction,"

in Wither's poem on the Daisy. These are corrected without mention.

I should perhaps add that, while I have included, amongst the ill.u.s.trative notes, extracts from Henry Crabb Robinson's 'Diary', etc., many of them are now published for the first time. These voluminous MSS.

of Robinson's have been re-examined with care; and the reader who compares the three volumes of the 'Diary', etc.--edited by Dr.

Sadler--with the extracts now printed from the original MS., will see where sentences omitted by the original editor have been included.

As this edition proceeds, my debt to many--who have been so kind as to put their Wordsworth MSS. and memoranda at my disposal--will be apparent.

It is difficult to acknowledge duly my obligation to collectors of autograph Letters--Mr. Morrison, the late Mr. Locker Lampson, the late Mr. Mackay, of the Grange, Trowbridge, and a score of others--but, I may say in general, that the kindness of those who possess Wordsworth MSS. in allowing me to examine them, has been a very genuine evidence of their interest in the Poet, and his work.

My special thanks are due to Mr. Gordon Wordsworth, who has, in the kindest manner and for many years, placed everything at my disposal, which could further my labour on his grandfather's Works.

Finally, I wish to express the great debt I owe to the late Mr. J. d.y.k.es Campbell, for many suggestions, and for his unwearied interest in this work,--which I think was second only to his interest in Coleridge--and also to Mr. W. B. Kinghorn for his valuable a.s.sistance in the revision of proof sheets.

If there are any desiderata, in reference to Wordsworth--in addition to a new Life, a critical Essay, and such a Bibliography of Criticism as will be adequate for posterity--a 'Concordance' to his works is one of them. A correspondent once offered to prepare this for me, if I found a publisher: and another has undertaken to compile a volume of 'parallel pa.s.sages' from the earlier poets of England, and of the world. A Concordance might very well form part of a volume of 'Wordsworthiana', and be a real service to future students of the poet.

William Knight.

[Footnote 1: In addition to my own detection of errors in the text and notes to the editions 1882-9, I acknowledge special obligation to the late Vice-Chancellor of the Victoria University, Princ.i.p.al Greenwood, who went over every volume with laborious care, and sent me the result.

To the late Mr. J. d.y.k.es Campbell, to Mr. J. R. Tutin, to the Rev.

Thomas Hutchinson of Kimbolton, and to many others, I am similarly indebted.]

[Footnote 2: See 'Memoirs of William Wordsworth', ii. pp. 113, 114.]

[Footnote 3: 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 boy" of Windermere. These are printed in their chronological place, and also in the posthumous poem.]

[Footnote 4: 'Poems of Wordsworth selected and arranged by Matthew Arnold'. London: Macmillan and Co.]