h literature demands a complete
edition of all the works of Byron: and it may be safely predicted that,
for weightier reasons and with greater urgency, it will continue to call
for the collected works of Wordsworth.

It should also be noted that the fact of Wordsworth's having dictated to
Miss Fenwick (so late as 1843) a stanza from 'The Convict' in his note
to 'The Lament of Mary Queen of Scots' (1817), justifies the inclusion
of the whole of that (suppressed) poem in such an edition as this.

The fact that Wordsworth did not republish all his Poems, in his final
edition of 1849-50, is not conclusive evidence that he thought them
unworthy of preservation, and reproduction. It must be remembered that
'The Prelude' itself was a posthumous publication; and also that the
fragmentary canto of 'The Recluse', entitled "Home at Grasmere"--as well
as the other canto published in 1886, and entitled (most prosaically)
"Composed when a probability existed of our being obliged to quit Rydal
Mount as a residence"--were not published by the poet himself. I am of
opinion that his omission of the stanzas beginning:

Among all lovely things my Love had been,

and of the sonnet on his 'Voyage down the Rhine', was due to sheer
forgetfulness of their existence. Few poets remember all their past,
fugitive, productions. At the same time, there are other
fragments,--written when he was experimenting with his theme, and when
the inspiration of genius had forsaken him,--which it is unfortunate
that he did not himself destroy.

Among the Poems which Wordsworth suppressed, in his final edition, is
the Latin translation of 'The Somnambulist' by his son. This will be
republished, more especially as it was included by Wordsworth himself in
the second edition of his "Yarrow Revisited."

It may be well to mention the 'repetitions' which are inevitable in this
edition,

(1) As already explained, those fragments of 'The Recluse'--which were
issued in all the earlier volumes, and afterwards incorporated in 'The
Prelude'--are printed as they originally appeared.

(2) Short Notes are extracted from Dorothy Wordsworth's 'Recollections
of a Tour made in Scotland' (1803), which illustrate the Poems composed
during that Tour, while the whole text of that Tour will be printed in
full in subsequent volumes.

(3) Other fragments, including the lines beginning,

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe,

will be printed both by themselves in their chrono