I am happy in being conscious that I shall have one reader who will approach the conclusion of these few pages with regret.  You they must certainly interest, in reminding you of moments to which you can hardly look back without a pleasure not the less dear from a shade of melancholy.  You will meet with few images without recollecting the spot where we observed them together; consequently, whatever is feeble in my design, or spiritless in my colouring, will be amply supplied by your own memory.

With still greater propriety I might have inscribed to you a description of some of the features of your native mountains, through which we have wandered together, in the same manner, with so much pleasure.  But the sea-sunsets, which give such splendour to the vale of Clwyd, Snowdon, the chair of Idris, the quiet village of Bethgelert, Menai and her Druids, the Alpine steeps of the Conway, and the still more interesting windings of the wizard stream of the Dee, remain yet untouched.  Apprehensive that my pencil may never be exercised on these subjects, I cannot let slip this opportunity of thus publicly assuring you with how much affection and esteem

  I am, dear Sir,
  Most sincerely yours,
  W. Wordsworth.

  London, 1793.

[Much the greatest part of this poem was composed during my walks upon the banks of the Loire, in the years 1791, 1792.  I will only notice that the description of the valley filled with mist, beginning—­’In solemn shapes’—­was taken from that beautiful region of which the principal features are Lungarn and Sarnen.  Nothing that I ever saw in Nature left a more delightful impression on my mind than that which I have attempted, alas, how feebly! to convey to others in these lines.  Those two lakes have always interested me especially, from bearing in their size and other features, a resemblance to those of the North of England.  It is much to be deplored that a district so beautiful should be so unhealthy as it is.—­I.  F.]

As the original text of the ‘Descriptive Sketches’ is printed in Appendix I. (p. 309) to this volume—­with all the notes to that edition of 1793—­it is not quoted in the footnotes to the final text in the pages which follow, except in cases which will justify themselves.  Therefore the various readings which follow begin with the edition of 1815, which was, however, a mere fragment of the original text.  Almost the whole of the poem of 1793 was reproduced in 1820, but there were many alterations of the text in that edition, and in those of 1827, 1832, 1836 and 1845.  Wordsworth’s own footnotes here reproduced are those which he retained in the edition of 1849.

‘Descriptive Sketches’ was ranked among the “Juvenile Pieces” from 1815 onwards:  but in 1836 it was put in a class by itself along with the ‘Female Vagrant’. [D]—­Ed.