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With the revision of 1845 the textual history of Wordsworth's minor poems may be said virtually to close. The course of that history is pithily described by Professor Dowden: "boldness," he writes, "in these readings was followed by tameness [1827], by infelicity [1836-7], and, finally, by felicity" [1845; 1849-50]. .

To the chronology of his poems Wordsworth is anything but a trustworthy guide. In the editions of 1815 and 1820 he furnished the Contents Table with a double date-list, in which the dates of publication, and in some cases of composition also (the latter often erroneous) are set down against the several poems. In the edition of 1836-7 he affixed dates to the individual poems in the text: these occasionally differ from the dates of 1815-20, and are sometimes palpably incorrect. Wordsworth

also attempted to fix the dates of composition of several poems in the notes which he dictated to Miss

Fenwick in 1843. Where, in the editorial notes of these volumes," (W.-1836) " follows a compositiondate, it is intended to signify that the authority for the date is the poet himself in ed. 1836-7, and also that no date at all is given in edd. 1815-20. Wherever in these notes the day of the month is added to the year, it may be inferred that the source of the date is Dorothy's Grasmere Journal. Certain of the sonnets in Vol. I. have not been annotated. Of these, sonnets v.-ix., xvi. and xviii. of Part I., are of uncertain date; sonnets x.-xii. (translated from Michael Angelo) belong to 1805 (Memorials of Coleorton, i., pp. 79, 103); and sonnet xiv. (Composed upon Westminster Bridge) to July 31, 1802 (Knight's Life of Wordsworth, i., p. 347). Of the undated sonnets of Part II., Nos. xv. and xxi. are of uncertain date; vi. and vii. probably belong to August, 1802; and xii. belongs to the winter of 1806-7.

This reprint follows the copy (ed. 1807) page for page and line for line. Two errata in the text of Vol. I. which escaped the poet's eye are here untouched, but those unnoticed by him in the text of Vol. II. have been rectified (see Errata-lists). Quotes have been inserted at the close of line 14, p. 60, and an apostrophe supplied to mark the possessive in line 6, p. 110-both of Vol. I.; and a missing asterisk has been restored to the footnote on p. 47, Vol. II. Lastly, one or two stray italics, which had crept in where they had no business, have been replaced by roman type. With these exceptions, the text of 1807, it is hoped, has been faithfully reproduced in these volumes.

Advantage has been taken of certain blank pages in the copy to print thereon four sonnets which serve to illustrate Wordsworth's theory of that poetic form. The sonnet entitled Dedication, prefixed to the Miscellaneous Series of 1849-50, appears here on

page 104; Sonnet II., i. of the same series on page 100; Sonnet II., xxxvii. on page 153; and Sonnet II., xix. on the page facing the Contents Table-all of Vol. I. Sonnet II., ix. appears on the verso of the leaf bearing the sub-title: Moods of my own Mind, as a fitting prelude to the "quiet and tender delineations" that follow.

It is, perhaps, as well to observe here that the editor's note on the Wordsworthian sonnet owes nothing to Dr. Schiffer's Grundriss der Englischen Metrik (Wien, 1895), being simply an extract from a more detailed account of the matter put together many years ago.

It has been already pointed out in a footnote that the Latin motto of the title-page is borrowed from the Culex (11. 8, 9)—a poem to which Wordsworth's attention was probably drawn in the first instance by Spenser's Translation of it, dedicated to the Earl of Leicester. Of this translation Wordsworth intro

duces 11. 21, 22 in the sonnet beginning, "Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side," which was written out for insertion in ed. 1807, but was not published until 1815. (See Mr. Hale White's Description of the Wordsworth and Coleridge MSS., etc., p. 62.)

The motto facing the first title-page appears by the kind permission of Mr. T. Norton Longman. (See Mr. Hale White's Description, etc., p. 63.)

To the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, Prof. Dowden, the Rev. Thomas Hutchinson of Kimbolton, Prof. Emile Legouis, Mr. R. A. Potts, and Prof. W. W. Skeat my thanks are due for help kindly bestowed in various ways and degrees. To Mr. W. Hale White I owe a special debt of gratitude for numerous corrections, and much valuable advice.1

1 Wordsworth (see note, pp. x-xii) seems to have started writing the first poem to the Daisy in the metre of Drayton's Nymphidia: the Court of Fairy, in which The Green Linnet was afterwards written. Cf. the first overflow: "Most pleased when

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