to find—­as we do find—­that between the text of the “Lyrical Ballads” of 1800, and that of 1802, there are many important variations.  This is seen, for example, in the way in which he dealt with ‘The Female Vagrant’, which is altered throughout.  Its early redundance is pruned away; and, in many instances, the final text, sanctioned in 1845, had been adopted in 1803.  Without going into further detail, it is sufficient to remark that in the year 1803 Wordsworth’s critical faculty, the faculty of censorship, had developed almost step for step with the creative originality of his genius.  In that prolific year, when week by week, almost day by day, fresh poems were thrown off with marvellous facility—­as we see from his sister’s Journal—­he had become a severe, if not a fastidious, critic of his own earlier work.  A further explanation of the absence of critical revision, in the edition of 1800, may be found in the fact that during that year Wordsworth was engaged in writing the “Preface” to his Poems; which dealt, in so remarkable a manner, with the nature of Poetry in general, and with his own theory of it in particular.

A further reference to the ‘Evening Walk’ will illustrate Wordsworth’s way of dealing with his earlier text in his later editions.  This Poem showed from the first a minute observation of Nature—­not only in her external form and colour, but also in her suggestiveness—­though not in her symbolism; and we also find the same transition from Nature to Man, the same interest in rural life, and the same lingering over its incidents that we see in his maturer poems.  Nevertheless, there is much that is conventional in the first edition of ‘An Evening Walk’, published in 1793.  I need only mention, as a sample, the use of the phrase “silent tides” to describe the waters of a lake.  When this poem was revised, in the year 1815—­with a view to its insertion in the first edition of the collected works—­Wordsworth merely omitted large portions of it, and some of its best passages were struck out.  He scarcely amended the text at all.  In 1820, however, he pruned and improved it throughout; so that between this poem, as recast in 1820 (and reproduced almost ‘verbatim’ in the next two editions of 1827 and 1832), and his happiest descriptions of Nature in his most inspired moods, there is no great difference.  But, in 1836, he altered it still further in detail; and in that state practically left it, apparently not caring to revise it further.  In the edition of 1845, however, there are several changes.  So far as I can judge, there is one alteration for the worse, and one only.  The reading, in the edition of 1793,

  In these lone vales, if aught of faith may claim,
  Thin silver hairs, and ancient hamlet fame;
  When up the hills, as now, retreats the light,
  Strange apparitions mock the village sight,

is better than that finally adopted,

  In these secluded vales, if village fame,
  Confirmed by hoary hairs, belief may claim;
  When up the hills, as now, retired the light,
  Strange apparitions mocked the shepherd’s sight.