[396] The MS. has a second reading, “covetous hand.”—Ed.
[397] In MS. also “its herbs.”—Ed.
These lines were written for Miss Fanny Barlow of Middlethorpe Hall, York. She was first married to the Rev. E. Trafford Leigh, and afterwards to Dr. Eason Wilkinson of Manchester.—Ed.
Composed, and in part transcribed, for Fanny Barlow, by her affectionate Friend
Wm. Wordsworth.
Rydal Mount, Shortest Day, 1826.
By Dorothy Wordsworth
The following lines were written in Dora Wordsworth’s “Album,” in which Sir Walter Scott also wrote some verses.—Ed.
These lines were written by Wordsworth, after reading a sentence in the Stranger’s Book at “The Station,”—not a railway station!—on the western side of Windermere lake, opposite Bowness. Their poetic merit is slight, but they illustrate the honesty and directness of the writer’s mind. The Stranger’s Book at “The Station” contained the following:—
“Lord and Lady Darlington, Lady Vane, Miss Taylor, and Captain Stamp pronounce this Lake superior to Lac de Genève, Lago de Como, Lago Maggiore, L’Eau de Zurich, Loch Lomond, Loch Katerine, or the Lakes of Killarney.”-Ed.
These lines were written and sent in a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson, dated 5th May 1833.—Ed.
Wordsworth added, in the letter to Robinson, “Is the above intelligible? I fear not! I know, however, my own meaning, and that’s enough for Manuscripts.”—Ed.
These lines were placed by Wordsworth amongst the “Evening Voluntaries” in the two editions of Yarrow Revisited and other Poems (1835, 1836); but they were never afterwards reprinted in his life-time.—Ed.
For printing the following Piece, some reason should be given, as not a word of it is original: it is simply a fine stanza of Akenside,[401] connected with a still finer from Beattie[402]by a couplet of Thomson.[403] This practice, in which the author sometimes indulges, of linking together, in his own mind, favourite passages from different authors, seemed in itself unobjectionable; but, as the publishing such compilations might lead to confusion in literature, he should deem himself inexcusable in giving this specimen, were it not from a hope that it might open to others a harmless source of private gratification.—W. W. 1835.
[401] See his Ode V., Against Suspicion, stanza viii.—Ed.
[402] See his poem, Retirement, 1758.—Ed.
[403] See his Hymn on Solitude, which begins, “Hail, ever-pleasing Solitude!”—Ed.
The following ten lines were written by Wordsworth in a copy of his works, after the lines To the Moon (Rydal) 1835. They may have been intended as a possible sequel to them, or to the lines To the Moon, composed by the Seaside—on the coast of Cumberland (1835).—Ed.
On the 26th of March 1836, Wordsworth sent the following lines to Henry Crabb Robinson; written, he tells him, “immediately on reading Evans’s modest self-defence speech the other day.” George de Lacy Evans was radical member of Parliament for Westminster. “In 1835, he took command of the British Legion raised for the service of the Queen Regent of Spain against Don Carlos.” (Professor Dowden.)—Ed.
Mrs. Wordsworth sent this to Henry Crabb Robinson in 1837, “to show you that we can write an Epigram—we do not say a good one.” She then quoted it, and added, “The Producer thinks it not amiss, as being murmured between sleep and awake over the fire, while thinking of you last night!”—Ed.
The following lines were cut on the face of a rock at Rydal Mount in 1838. There, they still remain.—Ed.
Composed 1838.—Published 1838
[404] In his notes to the volume of Collected Sonnets (1838), Wordsworth writes:—“‘Protest against the Ballot.’ Having in this notice alluded only in general terms to the mischief which, in my opinion, the Ballot would bring along with it, without especially branding its immoral and antisocial tendency (for which no political advantages, were they a thousand times greater than those presumed upon, could be a compensation), I have been impelled to subjoin a reprobation of it upon that score. In no part of my writings have I mentioned the name of any contemporary, that of Buonaparte only excepted, but for the purpose of eulogy; and therefore, as in the concluding verse of what follows, there is a deviation from this rule (for the blank will be easily filled up) I have excluded the sonnet from the body of the collection, and placed it here as a public record of my detestation, both as a man and a citizen, of the proposed contrivance.”
Then follows the sonnet beginning—
Ed.
Composed, probably, in 1838.—Published 1838[405]
[405] This was first published in a note to the sonnet entitled Protest against the Ballot, in the volume of 1838. It was never republished by Wordsworth.
[406] See the note to the previous sonnet. George Grote was the person satirised. “Since that time,” adds Mr. Reed, in a note to his American edition, “Mr. Grote’s political notoriety, as an advocate of the ballot, has been merged in the high reputation he has acquired as probably the most eminent modern historian of ancient Greece”—Ed.
Published 1838
[407] “The foregoing” was the Sonnet named A Plea for Authors, May 1838.—Ed.
[408] 1836.
[409] The author of an animated article, printed in the Law Magazine, in favour of the principle of Serjeant Talfourd’s Copyright Bill, precedes me in the public expression of this feeling; which had been forced too often upon my own mind, by remembering how few descendants of men eminent in literature are even known to exist.—W.W. 1838.
This sonnet was not addressed to any grandson of the Poet’s.—Ed.
Composed 1840.—Published 1850
[410] See the note to the next sonnet.—Ed.
Composed 1840.—Published 1850
[411] This and the preceding sonnet, beginning “We gaze—nor grieve to think that we must die,” were addressed to Miss Fenwick, to whom we owe the invaluable “Fenwick Notes.” Were it not that the date is very minutely given, I would believe that they belong to 1841, as Miss Gillies told me she resided at Rydal Mount in that year, when she painted Mrs. Wordsworth’s portrait.—Ed.
[412] 1850.
In his copy of the edition of 1845 at the close of the poem, Animal Tranquillity and Decay (1798) (see the “Poem referring to the Period of Old Age,” vol. i. p. 307), Henry Crabb Robinson wrote the following lines, sent to him by Wordsworth.—Ed.
The following poem was contributed to, and printed in, a volume entitled “La Petite Chouannerie, ou Histoire d’un Collège Breton sous l’Empire. Par A. F. Rio. Londres: Moxon, Dover Street, 1842,” pp. 62, 63. The Hon. Mrs. Norton, Walter Savage Landor, and Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), were among the other English contributors to the volume, the bulk of which is in French. It was printed at Paris, and numbered 398 pages, including the title. It was a narrative of “the romantic revolt of the royalist students of the college of Vannes in 1815, and of their battles with the soldiers of the French Empire.” (H. Reed.)—Ed.
Composed (?).—Published 1842
[413] In the volume from which the above is copied, the original French lines (commencing at p. 106) are printed side by side with Wordsworth’s translation, which ends on p. 111, and closes the volume.—Ed.
Composed 1842.—Published 1845
Wordsworth’s lines on Grace Darling were printed privately, and anonymously, at Carlisle, before they were included in the 1845 edition of his works. A copy was sent to Mr. Dyce, and is preserved in the Dyce Library at South Kensington. Another was sent to Professor Reed (March 27, 1843), with a letter, in which the following occurs: “I threw it off two or three weeks ago, being in a great measure impelled to it by the desire I felt to do justice to the memory of a heroine, whose conduct presented, some time ago, a striking contrast to the inhumanity with which our countrymen, shipwrecked lately upon the French coast, have been treated.”
Edward Quillinan, writing on 25th March 1843, enclosed a copy, adding, “Mr. Wordsworth desires me to send you the enclosed eulogy on Grace Darling, recently composed. He begs me to say that he wishes it kept out of the newspapers, as he has printed it only for some of his friends, and his friends’ friends more peculiarly interested in the subject, for the present. Do not therefore give a copy to any one.”
“Almost immediately after I had composed my tribute to the memory of Grace Darling, I learnt that the Queen and Queen Dowager had both just subscribed towards the erection of a monument to record her heroism, upon the spot that witnessed it.” (Wordsworth to Sir W. Gomm, March 24, 1843.)—Ed.