Fent vock note expressly say that the poem was wonen - chiefy ending our residence at Allin Bank." I be not think that more than the first two books belong to the Town-end period. Tu Excertise was originally published quarto in 1814The second edition, octavo, appeared in 1820.+ The Excrtion was included in all the oriented editions of 1827. 1832, 1856-7. 1840, 1845, 1849-50, in the Faris reprint of 1923, and in the American edition by Henry Reed. It was also repeated by itself in 1835, 1844. and 1847. The textual changes in the several editions were numerous and significant. The longest and most important passage in the earlier ones, omitted after 1820, occurs at the close of the sixth book. Another Shorter, fragment, near the beginning of book seventh, refers to the Sympson household at the Wytheburn parsonage. No edition of The Excursion has as yet been issued with adequate notes, either topographical or literary. The first book-"The Wanderer "-has, however, been annotated, both by Mr. H. H. Turner (published in Rivington's English School Classics), and also by the Rev. H. G. Robinson, Frebendary of York, and published at Edinburgh, by Messrs. Oliver and Boyd The following letter from Charles Lamb to Wordsworth, after his first perusal of The Excursion has special interest :--August 14, 1814. "DEAR WORDSWORTH-I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of the great armful of poetry which you have sent me; and to get it before the rest of the world too! I have gone quite through with it, and was thinking to have accomplished that pleasure a second time before I wrote to thank you, but M. Burney came in the night (while we were out) and made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or two. It is the noblest conversational poem I ever read-a day in Heaven. The part (or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my memory (a bad term * The following note from Wordsworth to Mr. Dyce, shews his estimation of the text of the first octavo edition, as compared with that of the earlier quarto edition. "MY DEAR SIR,--When you read The Excursion do not read the quarto. It is improved in the 8vo E. :-but I thought the quarto might have its value with you as a collector.-Believe me, faithfully yours, "W. WORDSWORTH." In 1820 there are very few departures from the text of 1814.-ED. for the remains of an impression so recent) is the Tales of the Churchyard; the only girl among seven brethren, born out of due time, and not duly taken away again,-the deaf man and the blind man; the Jacobite and the Hanoverian, whom antipathies reconcile; the Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson upon his solitude ;-these were all new to me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as long back as when I saw you first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this best of books upon the best subjects for partial naming. That gorgeous sunset is famous; I think it must have been the identical one we saw on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that drew Phillips from the card-table, where he had sat from rise of that luminary to its unequalled set; but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things glorified, such as the prophets saw them in that sunset-the wheel, the potter's clay, the wash-pot, the wine-press, the almond-tree rod, the basket of figs, the fourfold visaged head, the throne, and Him that sat thereon. One feeling I was particularly struck with, as what I recognised so very lately at Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot and secular day's pleasure, the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost transforming properties of a country church just entered; a certain fragrance which it has, either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or the air that is let in being pure country, exactly what you have reduced into words; but I am feeling that which I cannot express. Reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monument in Harrow Church. Do you know it? with its fine long spire, white as washed marble, to be seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salisbury spire itself almost. In a letter written in the same year, 1814, Lamb tells Wordsworth of the spurious review of The Excursion, in The Quarterly Review, "which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palmed upon it for mine," calls his own review "the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ," and gives a specimen of it, viz. "The poet of the Excursion 'walks through common forests as through some Dodona or enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, * In a subsequent letter (August 29th) he corrects this, and calls it "that celestial splendour of the mist going off."-ED. reveals to him far higher love-lays.’ (The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. pp. 271-281.) In the Notes to the text I have confined myself chiefly to the explanation of obscure allusions, topographical, historical, or legendary.-Ed. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF LONSDALE, K.G., ETC. ETC. OFT, through thy fair domains,* illustrious Peer! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. RYDAL MOUnt, WestmorELAND, July 29, 1814. PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814 THE Title-page announces that this is only a portion of a poem; and the Reader must be here apprised that * The grounds of Lowther Castle. Compare the sonnet in "Poems, composed or suggested during a Tour, in the Summer of 1833," beginningLowther! in thy majestic Pile are seen. The Lowther stream, rising among the Shap Fells, joins the Emont at Brougham Castle.-ED. ED. it belongs to the second part of a long and laborious Work, which is to consist of three parts.—The Author will candidly acknowledge that, if the first of these had been completed, and in such a manner as to satisfy his own mind, he should have preferred the natural order of publication, and have given that to the world first; but, as the second division of the Work was designed to refer more to passing events, and to an existing state of things, than the others were meant to do, more continuous exertion was naturally bestowed upon it, and greater progress made here than in the rest of the poem; and as this part does not depend upon the preceding, to a degree which will materially injure its own peculiar interest, the Author, complying with the earnest entreaties of some valued Friends, presents the following pages to the Public. It may be proper to state whence the poem, of which The Excursion is a part, derives its Title of THE RECLUSE.-Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary Work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far Nature and Education had qualified him for such employment. As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them. That Work,* addressed to a dear Friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the Author's Intellect is deeply indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the investigation which gave rise to it was a determination to compose a philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society; and to be entitled, The Recluse; as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.-The preparatory poem is biographical, and conducts the * *The Prelude.-ED. What follows in the discourse of the Wanderer, upon the changes he had witnessed in rural life by the introduction of machinery, is truly described from what I myself saw during my boyhood and early youth, and from what was often told me by persons of this humble calling. Happily, most happily, for these mountains, the mischief was diverted from the banks of their beautiful streams, and transferred to open and flat counties abounding in coal, where the agency of steam was found much more effectual for carrying on those demoralising works. Had it not been for this invention, long before the present time, every torrent and river in this district would have had its factory, large and populous in proportion to the power of the water that could there be commanded. Parliament has interfered to prevent the night-work which was once carried on in these mills as actively as during the day-time, and by necessity, still more perniciously; a sad disgrace to the proprietors and to the nation which could so long tolerate such unnatural proceedings. Reviewing, at this late period, 1843, what I put into the mouths of my interlocutors a few years after the commencement of the century, I grieve that so little progress has been made in diminishing the evils deplored, or promoting the benefits of education which the Wanderer anticipates. The results of Lord Ashley's labours to defer the time when children might legally be allowed to work in factories, and his endeavours to limit still further the hours of permitted labour, have fallen far short of his own humane wishes, and of those of every benevolent and right-minded man who has carefully attended to this subject; and in the present session of Parliament (1843) Sir James Graham's attempt to establish a course of religious education among the children employed in factories has been abandoned, in consequence of what might easily be foreseen, the vehement and turbulent opposition of the Dissenters; so that for many years to come it may be thought expedient to leave the religious instruction of children entirely in the hands of the several denominations of Christians in the Island, each body to work according to its own means and in its own way. Such is my own confidence, a confidence I share with many others of my most valued friends, in the superior advantages, both religious and social, which attend a course of instruction presided over and guided by the clergy of the Church of England, that I have no doubt, that if but once its members, lay and clerical, were duly sensible of those benefits, their |