The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 51

(_c_) _Poetry as a study_.

P. 112, ll. 6-7. Quotation from Spenser, 'Fairy Queen,' b.i.c.i. st. 9, l. 1.

P. 113, footnote. Hakewill. The work intended is 'An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of G.o.d in the Government of the World.' Oxford, 1627 (folio), and later editions. He was George Hakewill, D.D., Archdeacon of Surrey. Died 1649.

P. 115, ll. 36-7. '1623 to 1664 ... only two editions of the Works of Shakspeare.' The second folio of 1632 and that of 1663 (same as 1664) are here forgotten, and also the abundant separate reprints of the separate Plays and Poems.

P. 123, l. 6. Mr. Malcom Laing, a historian of Scotland 'from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms in the Reign of Queen Anne'

(4th edition, 1819, 4 vols.), who, in an exhaustive and drastic style, disposed of the notorious 'Ossian' fictions of Macpherson.

P. 130, ll. 12-14. Verse-quotation. From the 'Prelude.'

(_d_) _Of Poetry as Observation and Description_.

P. 134, ll. 3-4 (at bottom). Verse-quotation. From 'A Poet's Epitaph'

(VIII. 'Poems of Sentiment and Reflection').

P. 136, ll. 7-8. Verse-quotation. From Shakspeare, 'Lear,' iv. 6.

P. 136, ll. 17-24. Verse-quotation. From Milton, 'Paradise Lost,' book ii. ll. 636-43.

P. 139, ll. 10-11. Verse-quotation. Ibid. book vi. ll. 767-8.

P. 140, ll. 10-11. Verse-quotation. From Shakspeare, 'Lear,' iii. 2.

P. 141, ll. 1-2. Verse-quotation. Ibid. 'Romeo and Juliet,' i. 4.

P. 142, ll. 7-8. 12-13. Verse-quotation. From Milton, 'Paradise Lost,'

book ix. 1002-3.

P. 143. Long verse-quotation. Charles Cotton, the a.s.sociate 'Angler' of Walton 'for all time,' and of whom, as a Poet, Abp. Trench, in his 'Household Book of English Poetry,' has recently spoken highly yet measuredly.

P. 152, footnote *. _Various Readings_. (1) 'Sonnet composed at--.' Such is the current heading of this Sonnet in the Poems (Rossetti, p. 177).

In the MS. it runs, 'Written at Needpath (near Peebles), Mansion of the Duke of Queensbury' (_sic_); and thus opens:

'Now, as I live, I pity that great lord!

Whom pure despite of heart,' &c.;

instead of,

'Degenerate Douglas! oh, the unworthy lord!

Whom mere,' &c.

(2) To the Men of Kent, October 1803. In l. 3, the MS. reads:

'Her haughty forehead 'gainst the coast of France,'

for 'brow against.' Line 7, 'can' for 'may.' (3) 'Antic.i.p.ation,' October 1803. Line 12 in MS. reads:

'The loss and the sore prospect of the slain,'

for,

'And even the prospect of our brethren slain.'

In l. 14:

'True glory, everlasting sanct.i.ty,'

for,

'In glory will they sleep and endless sanct.i.ty.'

P. 161, l. 22. 'Milton compares,' &c. In 'Paradise Lost,' ii. 636-7.

P. 163, l. 2. 'Duppa is publishing a Life of Michael Angelo,' &c. It appeared in 1806 (4to); reprinted in Bohn's 'Ill.u.s.trated Library.'

P. 163, footnote A. Alexander Wilson, who became the renowned 'Ornithologist' of America, was for years a 'pedlar,' both at home and in the United States. His intellectual ability and genius would alone have given sanction to Wordsworth's conception; but as simple matter-of-fact, the cla.s.s was a peculiarly thoughtful and observant one, as the Biographies of Scotland show.

P. 167, ll. 30-1. 'A tale told,' &c. From Shakspeare, 'Macbeth,' v. 5.

P. 170, l. 34. 'Houbraken,' &c. Reissued from the old copper-plates.

P. 171, l. 30. 'I have never seen the works,' &c. In the Fuller Worthies' Library I have collected the complete Poems of Sir John Beaumont, 1 vol.

Pp. 178-9. Quotation (bottom). From Milton, 'Paradise Lost,' book iv.

ll. 604-9; but 'How' is inadvertently subst.i.tuted for 'Now.'

P. 196, l. 35. John Dyer. Wordsworth's repeated recognition and lofty estimate of Dyer recalls the fact that a collection of his many-sided Writings is still a _desideratum_ that the present Editor of Wordsworth's Prose hopes some day to supply--invited to the task of love by a lineal descendant.

(_b_) _Of the Principles of Poetry and his own Poems_.

P. 211, ll. 24-5. Verse-quotation from Cowper: more accurately it reads:

'The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.'

('The Task,' b. i. ll. 205-6.)

IV. DESCRIPTIVE.

(_a_) _A Guide through the District of the Lakes_.

P. 217. It seems somewhat remarkable that Wordsworth nowhere mentions the following work: 'Remarks made in a Tour from London to the Lakes of Westmoreland and c.u.mberland in the Summer of MDCCXCI., originally published in the _Whitehall Evening Post_, and now reprinted with additions and corrections.... By A. Walker, Lecturer,' &c. 1792, 8vo.

Wordsworth could not have failed to be interested in the descriptions of this overlooked book. They are open-eyed, open-eared, and vivid. I would refer especially to the Letters on Windermere, pp. 58-60, and indeed all on the Lakes. s.p.a.ce can only be found for a short quotation on Ambleside (Letter xiii., August 18, 1791): 'We now leave Low Wood, and along the verge of the Lake have a pleasing couple of miles to Ambleside. This is a straggling little market-town, made up of rough-cast white houses, but charmingly situated in the centre of three radiant vallies, _i.e._ all issuing from the town as from a centre. This shows the propriety of the Roman station situated near the west end of this place, called Amboglana, commanding one of the most difficult pa.s.ses in England....

Beautiful woods rise half-way up the sides of the mountains from Ambleside, and seem wishful to cover the naked asperities of the country; but the Iron Works calling for them in the character of charcoal every fourteen or fifteen years, exposes the nakedness of the country. Among these woods and mountains are many frightful precipices and roaring cascades. In a still evening several are heard at once, in various keys, forming a kind of savage music; one, half a mile above the town in a wood, seems upwards of a hundred feet fall.--About as much water as is in the New River precipitates itself over a perpendicular rock into a natural bason, where it seems to recover from its fall before it takes a second and a third tumble over huge stones that break it into a number of streams. It suffers not this outrage quietly, for it grumbles through hollow glens and stone cavities all the way, till it meets the Rothay, when it quietly enters the Lake' (pp. 71-3). It is odd that a book so matterful, and containing many descriptions equal to this of Ambleside, should be so absolutely gone out of sight. It is a considerable volume, and pp. 1-114 are devoted to the Lake region.

Walker, in 1787, issued anonymously 'An Hasty Sketch of a Tour through Part of the Austrian Netherlands, &c.... By an English Gentleman.'