THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH VOL. VIII

[i] [ii]

William Wordsworth

after Thomas Woolner

Printed by Ch Wittmann Paris

[iii]

THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

EDITED BY WILLIAM KNIGHT

VOL. VIII

Gallow Hill

Yorkshire

London MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. New York: Macmillan & Co. 1896

All rights reserved.

[iv]

[v]

PREFATORY NOTE

The American Bibliography is almost entirely the work of Mrs. St. John of Ithaca, and is the result of laborious and careful critical research on her part. The French Bibliography is not so full. I have been assisted in it mainly by M. Legouis at Lyons, and by workers at the British Museum. I have also collected a German Bibliography, but it is in too incomplete a state for publication in its present form.

The English Bibliography is fuller than any of its predecessors; but there is no such thing as finality in such work, especially when an addition to the literature of the subject is made nearly every week. Many kind friends, and coadjutors, have assisted me in it, amongst whom I may mention Dr. Garnett of the British Museum, and very specially Mr. Tutin, of Hull, and also Mr. John J. Smith, St. Andrews, and Mr. Maclauchlan, Dundee. If I omit, either here or elsewhere, to record the assistance which I have received from any one, in my efforts to make this edition of Wordsworth as perfect as is possible at this stage of literary criticism and editorship, I sincerely regret it; but many of my correspondents have specially requested that no mention should be made of their names or their services.

[xviii]

In the Preface to the first volume of this edition there was an unfortunate omission. In returning the final proofs to press, I accidentally transmitted an uncorrected one, in which two names did not appear. They were those of Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, Dublin, and Mr. S. C. Hill, of Hughli College, Bengal. The former kindly revised most of the sheets of Volumes I. and II., and corrected errors, besides making other valuable suggestions and additions. When his own Clarendon Press edition of Wordsworth was being prepared for press, Mr. Hutchinson asked permission to incorporate in it materials which were not afterwards inserted. This I granted cordially, as a similar permission had been given to Professor Dowden for his Aldine edition. The unfortunate omission of Mr. Hutchinson’s name was not discovered by me till after the issue of volumes I. and II. (which appeared simultaneously), and it was first brought under my notice by Mr. Hutchinson’s own letters to the newspapers. My debt to Mr. Hutchinson is great; and, although I have already

thanked him for the services which he has rendered to the world in connection with Wordsworthian literature, I may perhaps be allowed to repeat the acknowledgment now. The revised sheets of Vols. I. and II. of this edition were, however, submitted to others at the same time that they were sent to Mr. Hutchinson; more especially to the late Mr. Dykes Campbell, and on his death to Mr. Belinfante, and then to the late Mr. Kinghorn, all of whom were engaged by my publishers to assist in the work entrusted to me. They “turned on the microscope” on my own work, and Mr. Hutchinson’s; and to them I have been indebted in many ways.

[xix]

Mr. Hill’s services, in tracing the sources of numerous quotations from other poets which occur in Wordsworth’s text, have been great. He sent me his discoveries, unsolicited, and I wish to express very cordially my indebtedness to him. To discover some of these quotations—there are several hundreds of them—cost me much labour, before I had the pleasure of hearing from, or knowing, Mr. Hill; and his assistance in this matter has been greater than that of any other person. It will be seen that I have failed—after much study and extensive correspondence—to discover them all.

In addition to actual quotations—indicated by Wordsworth by inverted commas in his poems—to trace parallel passages from other poets, or phrases which may have suggested to him what he recast and glorified, has seemed to me work not unworthy of accomplishment. At the same time, and in the same connection, to discover the somewhat similar debts of later poets to Wordsworth, and to indicate this here and there in footnotes, may not be wholly useless to posterity.

My obligations to my friend, Mr. Dykes Campbell, are greater than I can adequately express. He supplied me with much material, drawn from many quarters; and, although he did not always mention his sources, I had implicit confidence in him, both as a literary man and a friend. After his death, through the kindness of Mrs. Campbell, I examined some MS. volumes of Wordsworthiana written by him, which were of much use to me.

Some of these were from unknown sources, which I should perhaps have traced out before making use of them, but, in all my Wordsworth work, I have acted from first to last on the legal opinion of a distinguished[xx] Judge, that the heir of the writer of literary work could alone authorise its subsequent publication; and, since the heirs of the Poet had kindly given me permission to collect and publish his works, I did so, with a view to the benefit of posterity.

Some of Mr. Campbell’s material was derived from MSS. now in the possession of Mr. T. Norton Longman, and I have to express my sincere regret that in the earlier volumes I copied from Mr. Campbell’s transcripts of these MSS.—which were lent to him on the condition that no public use should be made of them without Mr. Longman’s permission—some variations of the text, without mentioning the source whence they were derived.

I was unaware that these MSS. were lent to Mr. Campbell with the condition attached, and regret very much that I am unable to trust my memory to indicate now what variations of text I have quoted from them. But I may add that Mr. Longman is about to publish a work which will enable Wordsworth students to become practically acquainted with the contents of his MSS.

In reference to the poems not published by Wordsworth or his sister during their lifetime, I have included in this volume not only fugitive pieces printed in Magazines and elsewhere, but also those which have been since recovered from numerous manuscript sources. They are of varying merit. It would be interesting to know, and to record in every instance, where these manuscripts now are; but this is impossible. In many cases the manuscripts have recently changed ownership. I have obtained a sight of many of them, and have been granted permission to transcribe them, from[xxi] the fortunate possessors of large autograph collections, and also from dealers in autographs; but, after the sale of manuscripts at public auction-rooms, it is, as a rule, impossible to trace them.

In many cases the MS. variants which have been published in previous volumes occur in copies of the poems, transcribed by the Wordsworth household in private letters to friends. I have occasionally indicated this in footnotes; but, to have done so always would have disfigured the pages, and frequently the notes would have been longer than the text. To trace the present possessors of the MSS. would be well-nigh impossible. It is perhaps worth mentioning that in several cases Wordsworth entered as “misprints” in future editions, what some of his editors have considered “new readings.” E.g. in The Excursion, book ix. l. 679, “wild” demeanour, instead of “mild” demeanour.

On Nov. 4, 1893, Mr. Aubrey de Vere wrote to me—

“I earnestly hope that, in your ‘monumental edition,’ you will restore the Ode, Intimations of Immortality, to the place which Wordsworth always assigned to it, that of the High Altar of his poetic Cathedral; remitting Quillinan’s laureate Ode on an unworthy, because ‘occasional,’ subject to an Appendix, as a work that at the time of publication was attributed to Wordsworth, but was written by another, though it probably was seen by him, and had a line or two of his in it, and corrections by him.

“This is certainly the truth; and I should think that he probably himself told all that truth to the officials, when transmitting the Ode; but that they concealed the circumstance; and that Wordsworth, then profoundly depressed in spirits, gave no more thought to the subject, and soon forgot all about it.…

“Yours very sincerely,

“Aubrey de Vere.”

[xxii]

It was in compliance with Mr. Aubrey de Vere’s request that, in this edition, I departed, in a single instance, from the chronological arrangement of the poems.

It may not be too trivial a detail to mention that I gladly gave permission to other editors of Wordsworth to make use of any of the material which I discovered, and brought together, in former editions; e.g. to Mr. George, in Boston, for his edition of The Prelude (in which, if the reader, or critic, compares my original edition with his notes, he will see what Mr. George has done); and to Professor Dowden, Trinity College, Dublin, for his most admirable Aldine edition. For the latter—which will always hold a high place in Wordsworth literature—I placed everything asked from me at the disposal of Mr. Dowden.

While these sheets are passing through the press, Dr. Garnett, of the British Museum—one of the kindest and ablest of bibliographers—has forwarded to me a contribution, previously sent by him to The Academy, and printed in its issue of January 2, 1897.

I have no means of knowing—or of ultimately discovering—whether that sonnet, printed as Wordsworth’s, is really his. Dr. Garnett says, in his letter to me, “The verses were undoubtedly in Wordsworth’s hand”;[xxiii] and, he adds, “I think they should be preserved, because they are Wordsworth’s, and as an additional proof of his regard for Camoens, whom he enumerates elsewhere among great sonnet-writers. I have added a version of the quatrains, that the piece may be complete. From the character of the handwriting, the lines would seem to have been written down in old age; and I am not quite certain of the word which I have transcribed as ‘Austral.’”

[xxiv]

[1]

WORDSWORTH’S POETICAL WORKS

1834

LINES Suggested by a Portrait from the Pencil of F. Stone

Composed 1834.—Published 1835

[This Portrait has hung for many years in our principal sitting-room, and represents J. Q.[1] as she was when a girl. The picture, though it is somewhat thinly painted, has much merit in tone and general effect: it is chiefly valuable, however, from the sentiment that pervades it. The anecdote of the saying of the monk in sight of Titian’s picture was told in this house by Mr. Wilkie, and was, I believe, first communicated to the public in this poem, the former portion of which I was composing at the time. Southey heard the story from Miss Hutchinson, and transferred it to the Doctor; but it is not easy to explain how my friend Mr. Rogers, in a note subsequently added to his Italy, was led to speak of the same remarkable words having many years before been spoken in his hearing by a monk or priest in front of a picture of the Last Supper, placed over a Refectory-table in a convent at Padua.—I.F.]

One of the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”—Ed.

[2]

[1] Jemima Quillinan, the eldest daughter of Edward Quillinan, Wordsworth’s future son-in-law. The portrait was taken when she was a school-girl, and while her father resided at Oporto.—Ed.

[2] Wilkie. See the Fenwick note.—Ed.

[3] 1837.

[4] “When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian’s famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronymite said to him: ‘I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one after another—all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one generation has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows!’

I wish I could record the name of the monk by whom that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed.

says the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose name also I could wish had been forthcoming; and the classical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles:

These are reflections which should make us think

(Southey, The Doctor, vol. iii. p. 235.)—Ed.

[5] 1837.

[6] The pile of buildings, composing the palace and convent of San Lorenzo, has, in common usage, lost its proper name in that of the Escurial, a village at the foot of the hill upon which the splendid edifice, built by Philip the Second, stands. It need scarcely be added, that Wilkie is the painter alluded to.—W.W. 1835.

THE FOREGOING SUBJECT RESUMED

Composed 1834.—Published 1835.

One of the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”—Ed.

[7] In the class entitled “Musings,” in Mr. Southey’s Minor Poems, is one upon his own miniature picture, taken in childhood, and another upon a landscape painted by Gaspar Poussin. It is possible that every word of the above verses, though similar in subject, might have been written had the author been unacquainted with those beautiful effusions of poetic sentiment. But, for his own satisfaction, he must be allowed thus publicly to acknowledge the pleasure those two poems of his Friend have given him, and the grateful influence they have upon his mind as often as he reads them, or thinks of them.—W.W. 1835.

TO A CHILD Written in her Album[8]

Composed 1834.—Published 1835

[This quatrain was extempore on observing this image, as I had often done, on the lawn of Rydal Mount. It was first written down in the Album of my God-daughter, Rotha Quillinan.—I.F.]

[8]

In 1837 this was one of the “Inscriptions.” In 1845 it was transferred to the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.

[8] The original title (1835) was “Written in an Album.” In 1837 it was “Written in the Album of a Child.” In 1845 the title was reconstructed as above.

[9] 1845.

[10] Compare the lines, written in 1845, beginning—

Ed.

LINES Written in the Album of the Countess of Lonsdale,[11] Nov. 5, 1834

Composed 1834.—Published 1835

[This is a faithful picture of that amiable Lady, as she then was. The youthfulness of figure and demeanour and habits, which she retained in almost unprecedented degree, departed a very few years after, and she died without violent disease by gradual decay before she reached the period of old age.—I.F.]

This was placed, in 1845, among the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.

[11] 1837.

[12] The Lowther stream passes the Castle, and joins the Eamont below Brougham Hall, near Penrith.—Ed.

[13] 1837.

[14]

[15] Compare September, 1819, and Upon the Same Occasion, vol. vi. pp. 201, 202, especially the lines in the latter—

Ed.

[16] 1837.

[12]

1835

Two Evening Voluntaries, two Elegies (on the deaths of Charles Lamb and James Hogg), the lines on the Bird of Paradise, and a few sonnets, make up the poems belonging to the year 1835.—Ed.

“WHY ART THOU SILENT? IS THY LOVE A PLANT”

Composed 1835 (or earlier).—Published 1835

[In the month of January,—when Dora and I were walking from Town-end, Grasmere, across the Vale, snow being on the ground, she espied, in the thick though leafless hedge, a bird’s nest half-filled with snow. Out of this comfortless appearance arose this Sonnet, which was, in fact, written without the least reference to any individual object, but merely to prove to myself that I could, if I thought fit, write in a strain that Poets have been fond of. On the 14th of February in the same year, my daughter, in a sportive mood, sent it as a Valentine, under a fictitious name, to her cousin C.W.—I.F.]

One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.

[17] 1845.

TO THE MOON (COMPOSED BY THE SEA-SIDE,—ON THE COAST OF CUMBERLAND)

Composed 1835.—Published 1837

One of the “Evening Voluntaries.”—Ed.

[18] Compare—

in the lines Written in a Grotto, p. 235.—Ed.

TO THE MOON (RYDAL)

Composed 1835.—Published 1837

One of the “Evening Voluntaries.”—Ed.

[19] Compare The Triad, vol. vii. p. 181.—Ed.

[20] Compare l. 6 of Shakespeare’s sonnet, beginning—

Ed.

[21] See a fragment of ten lines, which was written by Wordsworth in MS. after the above, in a copy of his poems. They are printed in the Appendix to this volume.—Ed.

WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES LAMB

[Light will be thrown upon the tragic circumstance alluded to in this poem when, after the death of Charles Lamb’s Sister, his biographer, Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, shall be at liberty to relate particulars which could not, at the time his Memoir was written, be given to the public. Mary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as long a time. Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under most trying circumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother’s friends; and others, some of them strange characters, whom his philanthropic peculiarities induced him to[18] countenance. The death of C. Lamb himself was doubtless hastened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge, to whom he had been attached from the time of their being school-fellows at Christ’s Hospital. Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and probably would have gone to college upon one of the school foundations but for the impediment in his speech. Had such

been his lot, he would most likely have been preserved from the indulgences of social humours and fancies which were often injurious to himself, and causes of severe regret to his friends, without really benefiting the object of his misapplied kindness.—I.F.]

In the edition of 1837, these lines had no title. They were printed privately,—before their first appearance in that edition,—as a small pamphlet of seven pages without title or heading. A copy will be found in the fifth volume of the collection of pamphlets, forming part of the library bequeathed by the late Mr. John Forster to the South Kensington Museum. There are several readings to be found only in this privately-printed edition. The poem was placed among the “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—Ed.

Composed November 19, 1835.—Published 1837

[22] 1837.

[23] Charles Lamb died December 27, 1834, and was buried in Edmonton Churchyard, in a spot selected by himself.—Ed.

[24] This way of indicating the name of my lamented friend has been found fault with, perhaps rightly so; but I may say in justification of the double sense of the word, that similar allusions are not uncommon in epitaphs. One of the best in our language in verse, I ever read, was upon a person who bore the name of Palmer†; and the course of the thought, throughout, turned upon the Life of the Departed, considered as a pilgrimage. Nor can I think that the objection in the present case will have much force with any one who remembers Charles Lamb’s beautiful sonnet addressed to his own name, and ending—

W. W. 1837.

† 1840. Pilgrim; 1837.

Professor Henry Reed, in his edition of 1837, added the following note to Wordsworth’s. “In Hierologus, a Church Tour through England and Wales, I have met with an epitaph which is probably the one alluded to above … a Kentish epitaph on one Palmer:

The above is Professor Reed’s note. The following is an exact copy of the epitaph:—

Ed.

[25] Compare Talfourd’s Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, passim.—Ed.

[26] 1837.

[27] 1837.

Professor Dowden quotes, from “a slip of MS. in the poet’s hand-writing,” the following variation of these lines—

Ed.

[28] Lamb’s indifference to the country “was a sort of ‘mock apparel,’ in which it was his humour at times to invest himself.” (H. N. Coleridge, Supplement to the Biographia Literaria, p. 333.)—Ed.

[29] 1837.

[30] 1837.

[31] 1837.

[32] 1837.

[33] 1837.

[34] Compare the testimony borne to Mary Lamb by Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall), and by Henry Crabb Robinson.—Ed.