No More Learning

Others have contented themselves (more modestly) with inventing a title
when Wordsworth gave none. I do not object to these titles in
themselves. Several, such as those by Archbishop Trench, are suggestive
and valuable. What I object to is that any editor--no matter who--should
mingle his own titles with those of the Poet, and give no indication to
the reader as to which is which. Dr. Grosart has been so devoted a
student of Wordsworth, and we owe him so much, that one regrets to find
in "The Prose Works of Wordsworth" (1876) the following title given to
his letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, 'Apology for the French
Revolution'. It is interesting to know that Dr. Grosart thought this a
useful description of the letter: but a clear indication should have
been given that it was not Wordsworth's. It is true that, in the general
preface to his volumes, Dr. Grosart takes upon himself the
responsibility for this title; but it should not have been printed as
the title in chief, or as the headline to the text. Similarly, with the
titles of the second and third of the three 'Essays on Epitaphs'.

As students of Wordsworth know, he issued a volume in 1838 containing
all his sonnets then written; and, at the close of that edition, he
added, "The six Sonnets annexed were composed as this Volume was going
through the Press, but too late for insertion in the class of
miscellaneous ones to which they belong. " In 1884, Archbishop Trench
edited the sonnets, with an admirable introductory "Essay on the History
of the English Sonnet"; but, while Wordsworth gave no title to the 3rd
and the 4th of the six, "composed as the Volume was going through the
Press,"--either in his edition of 1838, 'or in any subsequent issue' of
his Poems--his editor did so. He gave what are really excellent titles,
but he does not tell us that they are his own! He calls them
respectively 'The Thrush at Twilight', and 'The Thrush at Dawn'.
Possibly Wordsworth would have approved of both of those titles: but,
that they are not his, should have been indicated.

I do not think it wise, from an editorial point of view, even to print
in a "Chronological Table"--as Professor Dowden has done, in his
admirable Aldine edition--titles which were not Wordsworth's, without
some indication to that effect. But, in the case of Selections from
Wordsworth--such as those of Mr. Hawes Turner, and Mr. A. J.
Symington,--every one must feel that the editor should have informed his
readers 'when' the title was Wordsworth's, and 'when' it was his own
coinage. In the case of a much greater man--and one of Wordsworth's most
illustrious successors in the great hierarchy of English poesy, Matthew
Arnold--it may be asked why should he have put 'Margaret, or the Ruined
Cottage', as the title of a poem written in 1795-7, when Wordsworth
never once published it under that name? It was an extract from the
first book of 'The Excursion'--written, it is true, in these early
years,--but only issued as part of the latter poem, first published in
1814.

The question of the number, the character, and the length of the Notes,
which a wise editor should append to the works of a great poet, (or to
any classic), is perhaps still 'sub judice'. My own opinion is that, in
all editorial work, the notes should be illustrative rather than
critical; and that they should only bring out those points, which the
ordinary reader of the text would not readily understand, if the poems
were not annotated. For this reason, topographical, historical, and
antiquarian notes are almost essential. The Notes which Wordsworth
himself wrote to his Poems, are of unequal length and merit. It was
perhaps necessary for him to write--at all events it is easy to
understand, and to sympathise with, his writing--the long note on the
revered parson of the Duddon Valley, the Rev. Robert Walker, who will be
remembered for many generations as the "Wonderful Walker. " The Poet's
editors have also been occasionally led to add digressive notes, to
clear up points which had been left by himself either dubious, or
obscure.