of Little Langdale, immortalised in ‘The Excursion’; the upper end of Ullswater, and Kirkstone Pass; and all the mountain tracks and paths round Grasmere and Rydal, especially the old upper road between them, under Nab Scar, his favourite walk during his later years, where he “composed hundreds of verses.”  There is scarcely a rock or mountain summit, a stream or tarn, or even a well, a grove, or forest-side in all that neighbourhood, which is not imperishably identified with this poet, who at once interpreted them as they had never been interpreted before, and added

                  the gleam,
  The light that never was, on sea or land,
  The consecration, and the Poet’s dream.

It may be worthy of note that Wordsworth himself sanctioned the principle of tracing out local allusions both by dictating the Fenwick notes, and by republishing his Essay on the topography of the Lakes, along with the Duddon Sonnets, in 1820—­and also, by itself, in 1822—­“from a belief that it would tend materially to illustrate” his poems.

In this edition the topographical Notes usually follow the Poems to which they refer.  But in the case of the longer Poems, such as ’The Prelude’, ‘The Excursion’, and others, it seems more convenient to print them at the foot of the page, than to oblige the reader to turn to the end of the volume.

From the accident of my having tried long ago—­at Principal Shairp’s request—­to do what he told me he wished to do, but had failed to carry out, I have been supposed, quite erroneously, to be an ‘authority’ on the subject of “The English Lake District, as interpreted in the Poems of Wordsworth.”  The latter, it is true, is the title of one of the books which I have written about Wordsworth:  but, although I visited the Lakes in 1860,—­“as a pilgrim resolute”—­and have re-visited the district nearly every year for more than a quarter of a century, I may say that I have only a partial knowledge of it.  Others, such as Canon Rawnsley, Mr. Harry Goodwin, and Mr. Rix, for example, know many parts of it much better than I do; but, as I have often had to compare my own judgment with that of such experts as the late Dr. Cradock, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, and others, I may add that, when I differ from them, it has been only after a re-examination of their evidence, at the localities themselves.

Sixth.  Several Poems, and fragments of poems, hitherto unpublished—­or published in stray quarters, and in desultory fashion—­will find a place in this edition; but I reserve these fragments, and place them all together, in an Appendix to the last volume of the “Poetical Works.”  If it is desirable to print these poems, in such an edition as this, it is equally desirable to separate them from those which Wordsworth himself sanctioned in his final edition of 1849-50.