No More Learning

Mr. Aubrey de Vere is very desirous that I should arrange all the "Poems
dedicated to National Independence and Liberty" together in series, as
Wordsworth left them, "on the principle that, though the order of
publication should as a rule be the order of composition in poetry, all
rules require, as well as admit of, exceptions. " As I have the greatest
respect for the judgment of such an authority as Mr. de Vere, I may
explain that I only venture to differ from him because there are
seventy-four Poems--including the sonnets and odes--in this series, and
because they cover a period ranging from 1802 to 1815. I am glad,
however, that many of these sonnets can be printed together, especially
the earlier ones of 1802.

After carefully weighing every consideration, it has seemed to me
desirable to adopt the chronological arrangement in this particular
edition; in which an attempt is made to trace the growth of Wordsworth's
genius, as it is unfolded in his successive works. His own arrangement
of his Poems will always possess a special interest and value; and it is
not likely ever to be entirely superseded in subsequent issues of his
Works. The editors and publishers of the future may possibly prefer it
to the plan now adopted, and it will commend itself to many readers from
the mere fact that 'it was Wordsworth's own'; but in an edition such as
the present--which is meant to supply material for the study of the Poet
to those who may not possess, or have access to, the earlier and rarer
editions--no method of arrangement can be so good as the chronological
one. Its importance will be obvious after several volumes are published,
when the point referred to above--viz. the evolution of the poet's
genius--will be shown by the very sequence of the subjects chosen, and
their method of treatment from year to year.

The date of the composition of Wordsworth's Poems cannot always be
ascertained with accuracy: and to get at the chronological order, it is
not sufficient to take up his earlier volumes, and thereafter to note
the additions made in subsequent ones. We now know (approximately) when
each poem was first published; although, in some instances, they
appeared in newspapers and magazines, and in many cases publication was
long after the date of composition. For example, 'Guilt and Sorrow; or,
Incidents upon Salisbury Plain'--written in the years 1791-94--was not
published 'in extenso' till 1842. The tragedy of 'The Borderers',
composed in 1795-96, was also first published in 1842. 'The
Prelude'--"commenced in the beginning of the year 1799, and completed in
the summer of 1805"--was published posthumously in 1850: and some
unpublished poems--both "of early and late years"--were first issued in
1886.
A poem was frequently kept back, from some doubt as to its worth,
or from a wish to alter and amend it. Of the five or six hundred sonnets
that he wrote, Wordsworth said "Most of them were frequently re-touched;
and, not a few, laboriously. " Some poems were almost entirely recast;
and occasionally fugitive verses were withheld from publication for a
time, because it was hoped that they would subsequently form part of a
larger whole.

In the case of many of the poems, we are left to conjecture the date of
composition, although we are seldom without some clue to it. The Fenwick
Notes are a great assistance in determining the chronology. These
notes--which will be afterwards more fully referred to--were dictated by
Wordsworth to Miss Fenwick in the year 1843; but, at that time, his
memory could not be absolutely trusted as to dates; and in some
instances we know it to have been at fault. For example, he said of 'The
Old Cumberland Beggar' that it was "written at Racedown and Alfoxden in
my twenty-third year. " Now, he went to Racedown in the autumn of 1795,
when he was twenty-five years old; and to Alfoxden, in the autumn of
1797, when twenty-seven. Again, the poem 'Rural Architecture' is put
down in the Fenwick note as "written at Townend in 1801"; but it had
been published in 1800, in the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads. "
Similarly Wordsworth gave the dates "1801 or 1802" for 'The Reverie of
Poor Susan', which had also appeared in "Lyrical Ballads," 1800.

Wordsworth's memory was not always to be trusted even when he was
speaking of a group of his own Poems. For example, in the edition of
1807, there is a short series described thus, "Poems, composed during a
tour, chiefly on foot. " They are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now, one would
naturally suppose that all the poems, in this set of five, were composed
during the same pedestrian tour, and that they all referred to the same
time. But the series contains 'Alice Fell' (1802), 'Beggars' (1802), 'To
a Sky-Lark' (1805), and 'Resolution and Independence' (1802).

Much more valuable than the Fenwick notes--for a certain portion of
Wordsworth's life--is his sister Dorothy's Journal.