will be reprinted. [16] ‘The Glowworm’, which only appeared in the edition of 1807, will be republished in full.  ’Andrew Jones’,—­also suppressed after appearing in “Lyrical Ballads” of 1800, 1802, and 1805,—­will be replaced, in like manner.  The youthful ’School Exercise’ written at Hawkshead, the translation from the ‘Georgics’ of Virgil, the poem addressed ‘To the Queen’ in 1846, will appear in their chronological place in vol. viii.  There are also a translation of some French stanzas by Francis Wrangham on ’The Birth of Love’-a poem entitled ‘The Eagle and the Dove’, which was privately printed in a volume, consisting chiefly of French fragments, and called ’La petite Chouannerie, ou Historie d’un College Breton sous l’Empire’—­a sonnet on the rebuilding of a church at Cardiff—­an Election Squib written during the Lowther and Brougham contest for the representation of the county of Cumberland in 1818—­some stanzas written in the Visitors’ Book at the Ferry, Windermere, and other fragments.  Then, since Wordsworth published some verses by his sister Dorothy in his own volumes, other unpublished fragments by Miss Wordsworth may find a place in this edition.  I do not attach much importance, however, to the recovery of these unpublished poems.  The truth is, as Sir Henry Taylor—­himself a poet and critic of no mean order—­remarked [17],

“In these days, when a great man’s path to posterity is likely to be more and more crowded, there is a tendency to create an obstruction, in the desire to give an impulse.  To gather about a man’s work all the details that can be found out about it is, in my opinion, to put a drag upon it; and, as of the Works, so of the Life.”

The industrious labour of some editors in disinterring the trivial works of great men is not a commendable industry.  All great writers have occasionally written trifles—­this is true even of Shakespeare—­and if they wished them to perish, why should we seek to resuscitate them?  Besides, this labour—­whether due to the industry of admiring friends, or to the ambition of the literary resurrectionist—­is futile; because the verdict of Time is sure, and posterity is certain to consign the recovered trivialities to kindly oblivion.  The question which should invariably present itself to the editor of the fragments of a great writer is, “Can these bones live?” If they cannot, they had better never see the light.  Indeed the only good reason for reprinting the fragments which have been lost (because the author himself attached no value to them), is that, in a complete collection of the works of a great man, some of them may have a biographic or psychological value.  But have we any right to reproduce, from an antiquarian motive, what—­in a literary sense—­is either trivial, or feeble, or sterile?

We must, however, distinguish between what is suitable for an edition meant either to popularise an author, or to interpret him, and an edition intended to bring together all that is worthy of preservation for posterity.  There is great truth in what Mr. Arnold has lately said of Byron: