Tour in Scotland of that year.  On a similar principle, ‘The Highland Girl’ is placed in the same series; although Dorothy Wordsworth tells us, in her Journal of the Tour, that it was composed “not long after our return from Scotland”; and ’Glen Almain’—­although written afterwards at Rydal—­retains its published place in the memorial group.  Again the ’Departure from the Vale of Grasmere, August 1803’, is prefixed to the same series; although it was not written till 1811, and first published in 1827.  To give symmetry to such a Series, it is necessary to depart from the exact chronological order—­the departure being duly indicated.

On the same principle I have followed the ’Address to the Scholars of the Village School of——­’, by its natural sequel—­’By the Side of the Grave some Years after’, the date of the composition of which is unknown:  and the ‘Epistle to Sir George Beaumont’ (1811) is followed by the later Lines, to which Wordsworth gave the most prosaic title—­he was often infelicitous in his titles—­’Upon perusing the foregoing Epistle thirty years after its composition’.  A like remark applies to the poem ‘Beggars’, which is followed by its own ‘Sequel’, although the order of date is disturbed; while all the “Epitaphs,” translated from Chiabrera, are printed together.

It is manifestly appropriate that the poems belonging to a series—­such as the “Ecclesiastical Sonnets,” or those referring to the “Duddon”—­should be brought together, as Wordsworth finally arranged them; even although we may be aware that some of them were written subsequently, and placed in the middle of the series.  The sonnets referring to “Aspects of Christianity in America”—­inserted in the 1845 and 1849-50 editions of the collected Works—­are found in no previous edition or version of the “Ecclesiastical Sonnets.”  These, along with some others on the Offices of the English Liturgy, were suggested to Wordsworth by an American prelate, Bishop Doane, and by Professor Henry Reed; [2] but we do not know in what year they were written.  The “Ecclesiastical Sonnets”—­first called “Ecclesiastical Sketches”—­were written in the years 1820-22.  The above additions to them appeared twenty-five years afterwards; but they ought manifestly to retain their place, as arranged by Wordsworth in the edition of 1845.  The case is much the same with regard to the “Duddon Sonnets.”  They were first published in 1820:  but No. xiv. beginning: 

  O mountain Stream! the Shepherd and his Cot,

was written in the year 1806, and appears in the edition of 1807.  This sonnet will be printed in the series to which it belongs, and not in its chronological place.  I think it would be equally unjust to remove it from the group—­in which it helps to form a unity—­and to print it twice over. [3] On the other hand, the series of “Poems composed during a Tour in Scotland, and on the English Border, in the Autumn of 1831”—­and first published in the year 1835, in the volume entitled