Poems Composed during a Tour, chiefly on Foot (page 75). This title is merely a literary expedient, devised for the purpose of grouping together the five pieces included under it. Three of these, viz., Beggars, Alice Fell, and Resolution and Independence, were certainly written in the earlier half of 1802 at the Cottage, Townend, Grasmere (see Dorothy's Journal). There is good reason for believing that the quinzain, "With how sad steps," etc., belongs to the same year; but the lines To a Skylark, though undated in ed. 1815, were, in ed. 1836, assigned by Wordsworth to the year 1805.

This last date may be, and probably is,

an error; still the fact remains that Beggars, Alice Fell, and Resolution and Independence were comduring a Tour," but within the precincts of the poet's Grasmere homestead.

posed

-

not "

Beggars (page 77).-Composed March 13-14, 1802. Of this piece Jeffrey shrewdly observes (Ed. Rev., Oct., 1807), that it “ may be taken as a touchstone of Mr. Wordsworth's merit," i.e., of the value of the Wordsworthian maxims of poetic diction. Indeed, so daringly humble is the

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language, so naked and unraised the style, that the poem might have been expressly written to illustrate the cardinal doctrine of the Preface of 1800, that "there is no essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition." The truth is that in its original shape, as here reprinted, Beggars is simply a transcript from a page of Dorothy's Journal; the words being rearranged in metrical sequence, but no attempt being made—if we except the reference in stanza ii. to an 'Amazonian Queen' or 'Grecian Bandit's wife,' and the phrase in stanza iii., a weed of glorious feature,' borrowed from Spenser's Muiopotmosto dignify the homeliness of the manner, or to relieve its bare simplicity with poetic colour. The subsequent history of the text shows the unsoundness of Wordsworth's main position. Beggars, indeed, appears unchanged in 1815, and in 1820 is retouched in one place only; but in 1827 the text is rehandled throughout, and the version thus obtained is, in its turn, revised and altered afresh in 1832, 1836, and 1845. Stanza i. is recast four times over; stanzas iii. and vii. thrice; stanzas ii.

and v. twice. In 1827 Wordsworth aimed, he tells us, at imparting "more eloquence and dignity" to the style; with the unfortunate result, however, that what was rude and flat before, now too often became stilted and artificial. This necessitated further changes in the direction of sincerity, which were not all effected until 1845. For a full list of the textual variations the reader Aldine and Eversley editions. salient particulars can be noted. "What other dress she had I could not know'

is referred to the Here only a few

Line 5, stanza i.:

probably (as he himself observes) the very worst line Wordsworth ever wrote-was got rid of in 1827, though at the heavy cost of the following frigid exordium:

"Before me as the Wanderer stood,

No bonnet screen'd her from the heat;
Nor claimed she service from the hood

Of a blue mantle, to her feet

Depending with a graceful flow;"

These formal lines disappeared in 1832; but the standard text was not reached until 1845:

"She had a tall man's height or more;

Her face from summer's noontide heat
No bonnet shaded, but she wore

A mantle, to her very feet

Descending with a graceful flow,

And on her head a cap as white as new-fallen snow."

Stanza ii., ll. 1-4, were happily recast in 1827:

"Her skin was of Egyptian brown;

Haughty as if her eye had seen

Its own light to a distance thrown,

She towered-fit person for a Queen," etc.

In 1820, stanza v., ll. 5-6, became :

"In their fraternal features I could trace Unquestionable lines of that wild Suppliant's face."

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-a manifest improvement; as were the lines:

They dart across my path—but lo!"

-and

"I looked reproof-they saw-but neither hung his

head."

-respectively substituted in 1827 for 11. 1 and 6, stanza vi. In the same year, stanza vii., 1. 2, became: "Sweet Boys! Heaven hears that rash reply!"- -an absurdly inflated line. Here the text of 1807 was restored in 1836, "Hush," being substituted for "Sweet" in 1845. In 1827 stanza vii., 1. 6, became: "Off to some other play the joyous Vagrants flew!" Finally to close this necessarily incomplete account the following stanza was inserted after stanza v. in 1827:

"Yet they, so blithe of heart, seemed fit For finest tasks of earth or air:

Wings let them have, and they might flit

Precursors of Aurora's car,

Scattering fresh flowers; though happier far, I ween, To hunt their fluttering game o'er rock and level green."

To a Skylark (page 80).—In 1836 Wordsworth assigned this poem to 1805; but his memory for dates, at the best of times inexact, had by 1836 grown confused, and both the tone and the style of these verses (which seem to have been written