during a passing fit of depression in the Poet's prematrimonial days) indicate an earlier periodprobably the springtide of 1802, the birth-date of at least three of the five pieces here grouped together. Coleridge habitually disparaged this 66 effusion," and the author himself became indifferent to it after he had achieved the magnificent success of the stanzas: "Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky," etc. (1825). Accordingly in 1827 he discarded the body (11. 8-25) of the poem, retaining only the exordium (11. 1-7) and the peroration, and getting rid of the abrupt precipitance of the latter (already partially relieved in 1820) by substituting the following six "respectably-tame " decasyllables for the tumbling trochæo-dactylics: "Hearing thee, or else some other, As merry a Brother,” etc.: "Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, As full of gladness and as free of heaven,

I, with my fate contented, will plod on,

And hope for higher raptures, when Life's day is

done."

Observe that the line: "As merry a Brother" (cf. note on The Redbreast and the Butterfly) is here silently dropped. Note, too, that Wordsworth, when he restored ll. 8-25 to the text in 1832, took pains to recast 1. 14 (“Up with me, up with me, high and high"), which had been pilloried in Benjamin the Waggoner, a clever skit on Peter Bell published in 1819. The offending line became : "Lift me, guide me, high and high." In 1815 wings of a Faery" (1. 10) was substituted for 66 soul," etc.

66

"With how sad steps, O Moon," etc. (page 83).— Professor Knight assigns this undated quinzain to 1806, for no other reason, apparently, than because it was first printed in 1807! There can be little doubt that it should be placed under 1802, to which year (as we have seen) three of this group undoubtedly, and the fourth probably, belong. A quinzain beginning: "O Moon! if e'er I joyed when thy soft light," and having a rhyme-arrangement similar to that of this piece, appeared in the Morning Post of February 9, 1802. It bears no

1 On January 27, 1802 (Dorothy notes in her Diary)

signature, but certain notes of style seem to indicate its Wordsworthian origin (see Oxford Wordsworth, p. 629). Both quinzains appear to be metrical exercises made at the period (1802) when, after an interval of ten years, the poet resumed his essays in sonnet-form. They each number fifteen lines arranged (like the Sonnet) on a system of four rhyme-sounds, and exhibit a two-rhymed octave, in which the rhyme-sequence of the normal sonnet-octave (ABBA.ABBA) is variously modified (ABAB.ABBA or ABAB.BABA). The experiment failed, and was not repeated. The quinzain of the Morning Post was never reprinted by the poet, and its fellow, the quinzain of ed. 1807, after appearing unaltered among the Poems of the Fancy of 1815, was, in 1820, docked of a line and placed amongst the Miscellaneous Sonnets. From 1820 onwards the textual variations are numerous

William wrote to Dan. Stuart, enclosing "Sonnets" for publication in the Morning Post; and, in consequence, on February 9, 12, and 13, respectively, the quinzain: “O Moon! if e'er I joyed," the stanzas: "Dear Child of Nature," and the sonnet: "Calm is all Nature," appeared in that journal.

and perplexing. In 1837 1. 10 becomes: "And all the Stars, fast as the clouds were riven," and in 1840 l. 12, 13, become: "Hurrying and sparkling through the clear blue heaven;" and the sonnet concludes with 11. 14 and 15 of the original quinzain. Thus was reached the final text of this poem, of which, it may be added, no fewer than six distinct versions (1807, 1820, 1832, 1837, 1838, 1840) are extant.

Alice Fell (page 84).-Composed March 12-13, 1802. It was, for the most part, during the seedtime of the year that Wordsworth gathered in his "harvest of sweet lays." The wonderfully prolific season of 1802-when at least forty of the Poems of 1807 were garnered-worthily opens with triad of remarkable ballads poured forth, so to speak, at a single gush or outflow, and coloured at least, if not absolutely evoked, by their author's recent reperusal of the Preface of 1800. These ballads are The Sailor's Mother (March 11-12), Alice Fell, and Beggars (March 13-14). We learn from Dorothy's Journal that on March 5 and 7 brother and sister were engaged on the revisal of the

Lyrical Ballads of 1800, of which a new edition with revised text and expanded Preface appeared in the early summer of 1802. Now the three ballads of March 11-14 read almost like specimenverses, composed expressly to illustrate the working of their author's principles of poetic style. In all three alike the subject is an incident of actual occurrence, and this is in each instance related with strict fidelity to matter of fact, and in language of a daring homeliness. "Wordsworth "" -notes Coleridge in October, 1803, with reference to the poetical output of the year before-" wrote, at times, too much with a sectarian spirit, in a sort of bravado. Difference of opinion with his best friends, irritated him, and his own corrections, coming of necessity so often in those little poems, wore him out."-Anima Poeta, p. 30. With what laborious difficulty such things were produced we learn from Dorothy's Journal for 1802. On the evening of March 12, after finishing The Sailor's Mother, and writing the first draft of Alice Fell, William goes to bed, "tired, with a wakeful mind and a weary body." On the following evening he