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 deta