's
Journal, that we can approximately reconstruct the true chronology. To
these sources of information must be added the internal evidence of the
Poems themselves, incidental references in letters to friends, and stray
hints gathered from various quarters.

Many new sources of information as to the date of the composition of the
Poems became known to me during the publication of my previous edition,
and after its issue; the most important being the Journals of Dorothy
Wordsworth. These discoveries showed that my chronological table of
1882--although then, relatively, "up to date"--was incomplete. The
tables constructed by Mr. Tutin and by Professor Dowden are both more
accurate than it was. It is impossible to attain to finality in such a
matter; and several facts, afterwards discovered, and mentioned in the
later volumes of my previous edition, have been used against the
conclusions come to in the earlier ones. I have thus supplied the
feathers for a few subsequent critical arrows. The shots have not been
unkindly ones; and I am glad of the result, viz. that our knowledge of
the dates--both as to the composition and first publication of the poems
--is now much more exact than before. When a conjectural one is given in
this edition, the fact is always mentioned.

This chronological method of arrangement, however, has its limits. It is
not possible always to adopt it: nor is it invariably 'necessary', even
in order to obtain a true view of the growth of Wordsworth's mind. In
this--as in so many other things--wisdom lies in the avoidance of
extremes; the extreme of rigid fidelity to the order of time on the one
hand, and the extreme of an irrational departure from it on the other.
While an effort has been made to discover the exact order of the
composition of the poems--and this is shown, not only in the
Chronological Table, but at the beginning of each separate poem--it has
been considered expedient to depart from that order in printing some of
the poems. In certain cases a poem was begun and laid aside, and again
resumed at intervals; and it is difficult to know to what year the
larger part of it should be assigned. When we know the date at which a
poem was commenced, and that it was finished "long afterwards," but have
no clue as to the year, it is assigned to the year in which it was
begun. For example, the 'Address to Kilchurn Castle' was begun in 1803,
but only the first three lines were written then. Wordsworth te