No More Learning

"I have been long intending to write you as to the manuscript notes
and alterations in Wordsworth's poems, which you have had the
opportunity of seeing, and, so far as you thought fit, of using for
your edition. They came into my possession in this way. I saw them
advertised in a catalogue which was sent me, and at my request the
book was very courteously forwarded to me for my inspection. It
appeared to me of sufficient interest and value to induce me to buy
it; and I accordingly became the purchaser.

"It is a copy of the edition in six volumes, the publication of which
began in the year 1836; and of the volume containing the collected
sonnets, which was afterwards printed uniformly with that edition. It
appears to have been the copy which Wordsworth himself used for
correcting, altering, and adding to the poems contained in it. As you
have seen, in some of the poems the Alterations are very large,
amounting sometimes to a complete rewriting of considerable passages.
Many of these alterations have been printed in subsequent editions;
some have not; two or three small poems, as far as I know, have not
been hitherto published. Much of the writing is Wordsworth's own; but
perhaps the larger portion is the hand-writing of others, one or more,
not familiar to me as Wordsworth's is.

"How the volumes came to be sold I do not know. . . . Such as they are,
and whatever be their interest or value, you are, as far as I am
concerned, heartily welcome to them; and I shall be glad indeed if
they add in the least degree to make your edition more worthy of the
great man for whom my admiration grows every day I live, and my deep
gratitude to whom will cease only with my life, and my reason. "


This precious copy of the edition of 1836-7 is now the property of Lady
Coleridge.
I re-examined it in 1894, and added several readings, which I
had omitted to note twelve years ago, when Lord Coleridge first showed
it to me. I should add that, since the issue of the volumes of 1882-6,
many other MS. copies of individual Poems have come under my notice; and
that every important variation of text in them is incorporated in this
edition.

As it is impossible to discover the precise year in which the suggested
alterations of text were written by Wordsworth, on the margin of the
edition of 1836, they will be indicated, wherever they occur, by the
initial letter C. Comparatively few changes occur in the poems of early
years.

A copy of the 1814 (quarto) edition of 'The Excursion', now in the
possession of a grandson of the poet, the Rev. John Wordsworth, Gosforth
Rectory, Cumberland--which was the copy Wordsworth kept at Rydal Mount
for annotation and correction, much in the same way as he kept the
edition of 1836-7--has also been kindly sent to me by its present owner,
for examination and use in this edition; and, in it, I have found some
additional readings.


FOURTH. In the present edition all the Notes and Memoranda, explanatory
of the Poems, which Wordsworth dictated to Miss Fenwick, are given in
full. Miss Fenwick lived much at Rydal Mount, during the later years of
the Poet's life; and it is to their friendship, and to her inducing
Wordsworth to dictate these Notes, that we owe most of the information
we possess, as to the occasions and circumstances under which his poems
were composed. These notes were first made use of--although only in a
fragmentary manner--by the late Bishop of Lincoln, in the 'Memoirs' of
his uncle. They were afterwards incorporated in full in the edition of
1857, issued by Mr. Moxon, under the direction of Mr. Carter; and in the
centenary edition. They were subsequently printed in 'The Prose Works of
Wordsworth', edited by Dr. Grosart; and in my edition of 1882-6.