1807.]

[Variant 3:

1815.

A perfect Woman; ... 1807.]

[Variant 4:

1845.

... of an angel light. 1807.

... angel-light. 1836.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: Compare two references to Mary Wordsworth in 'The Prelude':

'Another maid there was, who also shed
A gladness o'er that season, then to me,
By her exulting outside look of youth
And placid under-countenance, first endeared;'

(Book vi. l. 224).

'She came, no more a phantom to adorn
A moment, but an inmate of the heart,
And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined
To penetrate the lofty and the low;'

(Book xiv, l. 268).--Ed.]

It is not easy to say what were the "four lines composed as a part of
the verses on the 'Highland Girl'" which the Fenwick note tells us was
"the germ of this poem." They may be lines now incorporated in those 'To
a Highland Girl', vol. ii. p. 389, or they may be lines in the present
poem, which Wordsworth wrote at first for the 'Highland Girl', but
afterwards transferred to this one. They _may_ have been the first four
lines of the later poem. The two should be read consecutively, and
compared.

After Wordsworth's death, a writer in the 'Daily News', January
1859--then understood to be Miss Harriet Martineau--wrote thus:

"In the 'Memoirs', by the nephew of the poet, it is said that these
verses refer to Mrs. Wordsworth; but for half of Wordsworth's life it
was always understood that they referred to some other phantom which
'gleamed upon his sight' before Mary Hutchinson."

This statement is much more than improbable; it is, I think, disproved
by the Fenwick note. They cannot refer to the "Lucy" of the Goslar
poems; and Wordsworth indicates, as plainly as he chose, to whom they
actually do refer. Compare the Hon. Justice Coleridge's account of a
conversation with Wordsworth ('Memoirs', vol. ii. p. 306), in which the
poet expressly said that the lines were written on his wife. The
question was, however, set at rest in a conversation of Wordsworth with
Henry Crabb Robinson, who wrote in his 'Diary' on

"May 12 (1842).--Wordsworth said that the poems 'Our walk was far
among the ancient trees' [vol. ii. p. 167], then 'She was a Phantom of
delight,' [B] and finally the two sonnets 'To a Painter', should be
read in succession as exhibiting the different phases of his affection
to his wife."

('D