that, contentedness and even cheerfulness of mind, and all that the Wanderer and Pastor by their several effusions and addresses had been unable to effect. An issue like this was in my intentions. But alas ! -'mid the wreck of is and was, Things incomplete and purposes betrayed Make sadder transits o'er thought's optic glass RYDAL MOUNT, June 24, 1843. St. John Baptist Day.-I. F.] Although the Fenwick note to The Excursion has been printed here in full, extracts from it will be introduced as footnotes, in explanation of certain passages of the poem. The Excursion was written at intervals between 1795 and 1814. The story of Margaret, in the first book, was begun at Racedown in 1795, and continued at Alfoxden in 1797-8. But only two short fragments of the poem-the former in book first and the latter in book fourth (as indicated in the Fenwick note)-were written before Wordsworth's arrival at Grasmere. There the poem was thought out, arranged, written down, altered, and re-arranged; the first part during his residence at Dove Cottage, the second and longer part at Allan Bank. The following extracts from Miss Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal show how laboriously her brother worked at this poem :— Tuesday, Dec. 22, 1801."Went to Rydal for letters. The road was covered with snow. We walked home almost without speaking. William composed a few lines of 'The Pedlar.' We talked about Lamb's tragedy. Wednesday, Dec. 23. ... "Mary wrote out the Tales from Chaucer for Coleridge. William worked at 'The Ruined Cottage,' and made himself very ill." Tuesday, Jan. 26, 1802. "We sate till we were both tired, for William wrote out part of his poem, and endeavoured to alter it, and so made himself ill. I copied out the rest for him." * Compare the sonnet Malham Cove in volume vi., to which these lines belong.-ED. Friday, 5th. "William thought a little about 'The "Sate up late at 'The Pedlar.' Sunday, 7th.- "William had a bad night, and was working at his poem. We sate by the fire, and did not walk, but read 'The Pedlar,' thinking it done; but lo! . . . could find fault with no one part of it-it was uninteresting, and must be altered. Poor William !" Wednesday, 10th Feb. "We read the first part of the poem, and were delighted with it, but William afterwards got to some ugly place, and went to bed tired out.' Thursday, 11th. at The Pedlar."" Friday, 12th. "William sadly tired, and working 66 I re-copied The Pedlar'; but poor 6 William all the time at work. . . . We sate a long time with the window unclosed, and almost finished writing The Pedlar,' but poor William wore himself out and me with labour. to bed at 12 o'clock." Went Saturday, 13th.-"It snowed a little. Still at work at 'The Pedlar,' altering and re-fitting. of his Recluse aloud to me." Sunday, 14th Feb. William read parts "William left me at work altering some passages of 'The Pedlar,' and went into the orchard." Sunday, Feb. 28. himself with The Pedlar.'" Friday morning. finished it." "William very ill; employed "I wrote "The Pedlar,' and These extracts-which will recall the laborious way in which he toiled over the poem Michael (see vol. ii. p. 233)—all refer to the close of the year 1801, and the beginning of the year 1802. It is impossible to find out, with exactness, what were the parts of The Excursion which were then so carefully written, and so fastidiously altered-since "The Pedlar" was the Wordsworth household name for the entire poem, until it was recast for publication, at Allan Bank. But after February 1802 he turned to other subjects of composition, chiefly lyrical, and laid aside "The Pedlar" for a time-his sister, at least, regarding it as "finished." What was completed, however, did not, probably, extend beyond the story of the Wanderer, and perhaps a part of that of the Solitary. The person, whose character gave rise to the Solitary, came to reside at Grasmere not long after the Wordsworths settled there; but as the VOL. V C Fenwick note expressly says that the poem was written "chiefly during our residence at Allan Bank," I do not think that more than the first two books belong to the Town-end period. The Excursion was originally published in quarto in 1814. The second edition, octavo, appeared in 1820.* The Excursion was included in all the collected editions of 1827, 1832, 1836-7, 1840, 1845, 1849-50, in the Paris reprint of 1828, and in the American edition by Henry Reed. It was also republished by itself in 1836, 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, Prebendary 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 -a day in Heaven. The part (or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my memory (a bad term read * 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, 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," beginning ED. Lowther! in thy majestic Pile are seen. The Lowther stream, rising among the Shap Fells, joins the Emont at Brougham Castle.-ED. |