[Footnote 11:  It is unfortunate that the ‘Memoirs’ do not tell us to what poem the remark applies, or to whom the letter containing it was addressed.]

[Footnote 12:  It is important to note that the printed text in several of the editions is occasionally cancelled in the list of ‘errata’, at the beginning or the end of the volume:  also that many copies of the early editions (notably those of 1800), were bound up without the full ‘errata’ list.  In this edition there were two such lists, one of them very brief.  But the cancelled words in these ‘errata’ lists, must be taken into account, in determining the text of each edition.]

[Footnote 13:  I. F. note.  See vol. i. p. 5.]

[Footnote 14:  I. F. note.  See vol. i. p. 32.]

[Footnote 15:  Advertisement.  See vol. i. p. 78.]

[Footnote 16:  How much of this poem was Wordsworth’s own has not been definitely ascertained.  I am of opinion that very little, if any of it, was his.  It has been said that his nephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln, wrote most of it; but more recent evidence tends to show that it was the work of his son-in-law, Edward Quillinan.]

[Footnote 17:  In a letter to the writer in 1882.]

[Footnote 18:  ’The Poetry of Byron, chosen and arranged by Matthew Arnold’.  London:  Macmillan and Co.]

[Footnote 19:  It may not be too trivial a fact to mention that Wordsworth numbered the lines of his earliest publication, ’An Evening Walk, in 1793.—­Ed.]

[Footnote 20:  Another fact, not too trivial to mention, is that in the original Ms. of the ‘Lines composed at Grasmere’, etc., Wordsworth sent it to the printer “Lines written,” but changed it in proof to “Lines composed.”—­Ed.]

* * * * *

EXTRACT FROM THE CONCLUSION OF A POEM, COMPOSED IN ANTICIPATION OF LEAVING SCHOOL

Composed 1786.—­Published 1815

This poem was placed by Wordsworth among his “Juvenile Pieces.”  The following note was prefixed to that Series, from 1820 to 1832: 

“Of the Poems in this class, “The evening walk” and “Descriptive sketches” were first published in 1793.  They are reprinted with some unimportant alterations that were chiefly made very soon after their publication.  It would have been easy to amend them, in many passages, both as to sentiment and expression, and I have not been altogether able to resist the temptation:  but attempts of this kind are made at the risk of injuring those characteristic features, which, after all, will be regarded as the principal recommendation of juvenile poems.”

In 1836 “unimportant” was erased before “alterations”; and after “temptation” the following was added, “as will be obvious to the attentive reader, in some instances:  these are few, for I am aware that attempts of this kind,” etc.