Every great author in the Literature of the World—­whether he lives to old age (when his judgment may possibly be less critical) or dies young (when it may be relatively more accurate)—­should himself determine what portions of his work ought, and what ought not to survive.  At the same time,—­while I do not presume to judge in the case of writers whom I know less fully than I happen to know Wordsworth and his contemporaries,—­it seems clear that the very greatest men have occasionally erred as to what parts of their writings might, with most advantage, survive; and that they have even more frequently erred as to what Ms. letters, etc.,—­casting light on their contemporaries—­should, or should not, be preserved.  I am convinced, for example, that if the Wordsworth household had not destroyed all the letters which Coleridge sent to them, in the first decade of this century, the world would now possess much important knowledge which is for ever lost.  It may have been wise, for reasons now unknown, to burn those letters, written by Coleridge:  but the students of the literature of the period would gladly have them now.

Passing from the question of the preservation of Letters, it is evident that Wordsworth was very careful in distinguishing between the Verses which he sent to Newspapers and Magazines, and those Poems which he included in his published volumes.  His anxiety on this point may be inferred from the way in which he more than once emphasised the fact of republication, e.g. in ‘Peter Bell’ (1819) he put the following prefatory note to four sonnets, which had previously appeared in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’, and which afterwards (1828) appeared in the ‘Poetical Album’ of Alaric Watts, “The following Sonnets having lately appeared in Periodical Publications are here reprinted.”

Some of the poems (or fragments of poems), included in the ‘addenda’ to Volume viii. of this edition, I would willingly have left out (especially the sonnet addressed to Miss Maria Williams); but, since they have appeared elsewhere, I feel justified in now reprinting even that trivial youthful effusion, signed “Axiologus.”  I rejoice, however, that there is no likelihood that the “Somersetshire Tragedy” will ever see the light.  When I told Wordsworth’s successor in the Laureateship that I had burned a copy of that poem, sent to me by one to whom it had been confided, his delight was great.  It is the chronicle of a revolting crime, with nothing in the verse to warrant its publication.  The only curious thing about it is that Wordsworth wrote it.  With this exception, there is no reason why the fragments which he did not himself republish, and others which he published but afterwards suppressed, should not now be printed.  The suppression of some of these by the poet himself is as unaccountable, as is his omission of certain stanzas in the earlier poems from their later versions.  Even the Cambridge ‘Installation Ode’, which is so feeble,