To a Butterfly (page 39).-Composed at the breakfast-table, Sunday morning, March 14, 1802 (D. W.) a foretoken of the year's plenteous "harvest of sweet lays." See notes on Alice Fell and Beggars, vol. i. Just before, Dorothy had been telling of her childish tenderness for the butterflies, and William had confessed how, when he went to school (i.e. at Cockermouth and Penrith), he used to kill all the white butterflies "because they were Frenchmen" (Knight's Life of W. W., i., p. 300). See the conclusion to this poem, p. 60. Text never altered.

"The Sun has long been set" (page 41).-Composed June 8, 1802 (D. W.). These Moods of my own Mind proved, as the Poet foresaw, a stone of stumb. ling to all and sundry. The critic of the Eclectic Review (Jan., 1808) refers to them in the following terms: "Mr. Wordsworth has attempted many little things in these volumes (of 1807), and few indeed have rewarded him for his trouble. Perhaps the best of these is A Complaint ('There is a change—and I am poor'). It would not be easy to select the worst, as a contrast to the best, of these trifles: the follow

ing is probably as bad as any, and almost as bad as can be written by a man of superior talents." "The Sun has long been set" follows. Wordsworth withdrew the Impromptu until 1835, when, at Dorothy's instance, he reprinted it in Yarrow Revisited and other Poems. The words within quotes (11. 10, 11) are from Burns, The Twa Dogs, ll. 124-5:

"At operas and plays parading,
Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading."

"O Nightingale! thou surely art," etc. (page 42).— In 1836 Wordsworth assigned this poem to 1806; and he told Miss Fenwick (1843) that it was written "at Townend (ie. Dove Cottage), Grasmere." His wife, however, corrected the Poet's statement, adding to Miss Fenwick's MS. note the words: "at Coleorton." The Wordsworths lived in Coleorton farmhouse from November, 1806, to June or July, 1807. The Poems in Two Volumes appeared some time between March 25 and May 21, 1807-probably on or about May 1. Even if, as seems almost certain, the poem was written at Coleorton, Wordsworth, who was in London during the month of April,

cannot have written it after hearing the nightingale, which does not sing in England between November and mid-April. (The nightingale is never heard at the Lakes.) But though the Poet here addresses the nightingale, it is the stock-dove which, he says, he has heard sing on 66 that very day." The poem was probably written in the early spring of 1807, after hearing the "homely tale" of the stock-dove. In like manner Wordsworth addresses the cuckoo in stanzas written March 23-26, 1802; nearly a month before the time at which the bird begins to be heard (April 17). "The nightingale arrives in this country about, or rather before, the middle of April, the male, the song-bird, coming first, and being followed in ten days by the female" (Mark Pattison, Sonnets of Milton, p. 91). The author of The Simpliciad (1808) made merry over the Poet's 'drunken larks' and 'fiery nightingales,' and Wordsworth was complaisant enough to alter the epithet 'fiery' here (1. 2) to 'ebullient,' in 1815; but in 1820 the original word (as Crabb Robinson had foretold) was restored, and in 1845 quotes were added to indicate that there was authority for the phrase

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fiery heart," which occurs in Henry VI., Part III., 87.

I., iv.,

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My heart leaps up," etc. (page 44).-Composed March 26, 1802 (D. W.). "On the same day Wordsworth worked at The Cuckoo (p. 57), which in idea may be said to be a companion-piece to this little poem, both being occupied with the carrying-on of the feelings of boyhood into mature years" (Dowden, Aldine Wordsworth, i., p. 365).

Written in March (page 45).—This trifle was not "written in March," but on April 16 (Good Friday), 1802, in the course of a walk taken by William and Dorothy from Ullswater over Kirkstone Pass to Ambleside. Cf. Dorothy's Journal (Knight's Life of W. W., i., p. 306).

The Small Celandine (page 47).-Composed 1804 (W.-1837). In a note on this poem dictated to Miss Fenwick (1843), Wordsworth expresses his wonder that a flower "so bright and beautiful " as the small Celandine should not have been noticed in English verse before his day. On the opposite page to this MS. note there is written in pencil : "Has not Chaucer noticed it ?-W. W." Neither

Chaucer nor any of his imitators mentions the small Celandine (Pilewort or Figwort). Chaucer mentions 'goldes,' i.e. Marigolds (Knightes Tale, 1. 1071), and the greater Celandine is named in Wright's Specimens of Lyric Poetry, etc. (c. 1300), and in Gower's Confessio Amantis (1393). The earliest reference to the small Celandine is in Lyte's Translation of Dodoens (1578), I., xx., 32. Before 1802 (see vol. i., pp. 22, 27) its praises were, so far as we know,

unsung.

"I wandered lonely as a cloud" (page 49).-Composed 1804 (W.-1836). For the occasion on which the daffodils were seen (April 15, 1802), see Dorothy's Journal under that date. One exquisite detail, given by her, is omitted by the Poet: “I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and above them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow, for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced,' and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake." This poem, like Beggars (i., p. 77), the Sonnet composed after crossing the Hamilton Hills (i., p. 107), etc., is