No More Learning

Changes in the text
of notes have not the same importance to posterity, as changes in the
text of poems. In the preface to the Prose Works, reference will be made
to Wordsworth's alterations of his text. At present I refer only to his
own notes to his Poems. When they were written as footnotes to the page,
they remain footnotes still. When they were placed by him as prefaces to
his Poems, they retain that place in this edition; but when they were
appendix notes--as e. g. in the early editions of "Lyrical Ballads"--they
are now made footnotes to the Poems they illustrate. In such a case,
however, as the elaborate note to 'The Excursion', containing a reprint
of the 'Essay upon Epitaphs'--originally contributed to "The Friend"--it
is transferred to the Prose Works, to which it belongs by priority of
date; and, as it would be inexpedient to print it twice over, it is
omitted from the notes to 'The Excursion'.

As to the place which Notes to a poet's works should occupy, there is no
doubt that numerous and lengthy ones--however valuable, or even
necessary, by way of illustration,--disfigure the printed page; and some
prefer that they should be thrown all together at the end of each
volume, or at the close of a series; such as--in Wordsworth's case--"The
River Duddon," "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," 'The Prelude', 'The White Doe
of Rylstone', etc. I do not think, however, that many care to turn
repeatedly to the close of a series of poems, or the end of a volume, to
find an explanatory note, helped only by an index number, and when
perhaps even that does not meet his eye at the foot of the page. I do
not find that even ardent Wordsworth students like to search for notes
in "appendices"; and perhaps the more ardent they are the less desirable
is it for them thus "to hunt the waterfalls. "

I have the greatest admiration for the work which Professor Dowden has
done in his edition of Wordsworth; but the 'plan' which he has followed,
in his Aldine edition, of giving not only the Fenwick Notes, but all the
changes of text introduced by Wordsworth into his successive editions,
in additional editorial notes at the end of each volume--to understand
which the reader must turn the pages repeatedly, from text to note and
note to text, forwards and backwards, at times distractingly--is for
practical purposes almost unworkable. The reader who examines Notes
'critically' is ever "one among a thousand," even if they are printed at
the foot of the page, and meet the eye readily. If they are consigned to
the realm of 'addenda' they will be read by very few, and studied by
fewer.

To those who object to Notes being "thrust into view" (as it must be
admitted that they are in this edition)--because it disturbs the
pleasure of the reader who cares for the poetry of Wordsworth, and for
the poetry alone--I may ask how many persons have read the Fenwick
Notes, given together in a series, and mixed up heterogeneously with
Wordsworth's own Notes to his poems, in comparison with those who have
read and enjoyed them in the editions of 1857 and 1863?
Professor Dowden
justifies his plan of relegating the Fenwick and other notes to the end
of each volume of his edition, on the ground that students of the Poet
'must' take the trouble of hunting to and fro for such things. I greatly
doubt if many who have read and profited--for they could not but
profit--by a perusal of Professor Dowden's work, 'have' taken that
trouble, or that future readers of the Aldine edition will take it.

To refer, somewhat more in detail, to the features of this edition.


FIRST. As to the 'Chronological Order' of the Poems.

The chief advantage of a chronological arrangement of the Works of any
author--and especially of a poet who himself adopted a different
plan--is that it shows us, as nothing else can do, the growth of his own
mind, the progressive development of his genius and imaginative power.
By such a redistribution of what he wrote we can trace the rise, the
culmination, and also--it may be--the decline and fall of his genius.
Wordsworth's own arrangement--first adopted in the edition of 1815--was
designed by him, with the view of bringing together, in separate
classes, those Poems which referred to the same (or similar) subjects,
or which were supposed to be the product of the same (or a similar)
faculty, irrespective of the date of composition. Thus one group was
entitled "Poems of the Fancy," another "Poems of the Imagination," a
third "Poems proceeding from Sentiment and Reflection," a fourth
"Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces," again "Poems on the Naming of Places,"
"Memorials of Tours," "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," "Miscellaneous Sonnets,"
etc. The principle which guided him in this was obvious enough. It was,
in some respects, a most natural arrangement; and, in now adopting a
chronological order, the groups, which he constructed with so much care,
are broken up. Probably every author would attach more importance to a
classification of his Works, which brought them together under
appropriate headings, irrespective of date, than to a method of
arrangement which exhibited the growth of his own mind; and it may be
taken for granted that posterity would not think highly of any author
who attached special value to this latter element. None the less
posterity may wish to trace the gradual development of genius, in the
imaginative writers of the past, by the help of such a subsequent
rearrangement of their Works.

There are difficulties, however, in the way of such a rearrangement,
some of which, in Wordsworth's case, cannot be entirely surmounted. In
the case of itinerary Sonnets, referring to the same subject, the
dismemberment of a series--carefully arranged by their author--seems to
be specially unnatural. But Wordsworth himself sanctioned the principle.