As to the place which Notes to a poet’s works should occupy, there is no doubt that numerous and lengthy ones—­however valuable, or even necessary, by way of illustration,—­disfigure the printed page; and some prefer that they should be thrown all together at the end of each volume, or at the close of a series; such as—­in Wordsworth’s case—­“The River Duddon,” “Ecclesiastical Sonnets,” ‘The Prelude’, ’The White Doe of Rylstone’, etc.  I do not think, however, that many care to turn repeatedly to the close of a series of poems, or the end of a volume, to find an explanatory note, helped only by an index number, and when perhaps even that does not meet his eye at the foot of the page.  I do not find that even ardent Wordsworth students like to search for notes in “appendices”; and perhaps the more ardent they are the less desirable is it for them thus “to hunt the waterfalls.”

I have the greatest admiration for the work which Professor Dowden has done in his edition of Wordsworth; but the ‘plan’ which he has followed, in his Aldine edition, of giving not only the Fenwick Notes, but all the changes of text introduced by Wordsworth into his successive editions, in additional editorial notes at the end of each volume—­to understand which the reader must turn the pages repeatedly, from text to note and note to text, forwards and backwards, at times distractingly—­is for practical purposes almost unworkable.  The reader who examines Notes ‘critically’ is ever “one among a thousand,” even if they are printed at the foot of the page, and meet the eye readily.  If they are consigned to the realm of ‘addenda’ they will be read by very few, and studied by fewer.

To those who object to Notes being “thrust into view” (as it must be admitted that they are in this edition)—­because it disturbs the pleasure of the reader who cares for the poetry of Wordsworth, and for the poetry alone—­I may ask how many persons have read the Fenwick Notes, given together in a series, and mixed up heterogeneously with Wordsworth’s own Notes to his poems, in comparison with those who have read and enjoyed them in the editions of 1857 and 1863?  Professor Dowden justifies his plan of relegating the Fenwick and other notes to the end of each volume of his edition, on the ground that students of the Poet ‘must’ take the trouble of hunting to and fro for such things.  I greatly doubt if many who have read and profited—­for they could not but profit—­by a perusal of Professor Dowden’s work, ‘have’ taken that trouble, or that future readers of the Aldine edition will take it.

To refer, somewhat more in detail, to the features of this edition.

First. As to the ‘Chronological Order’ of the Poems.