seems to have escaped the commentators, a short quotation must be given
here: 'Though you have scribled your eyes out, your works have never
been printed but for the company of Chandlers and Tobacco-Men, who are
your Stationers, and the onely men that vend your Labors' (pp. 4-5). 'He
[a member of the Rota] said that he himself reprieved the Whole _Defence
of the People of England_ for a groat, that was sentenced to vile
_Mundungus_, and had suffer'd inevitably (but for him), though it cost
you much oyle and the Rump 300_l._ a year,' &c. (ibid.). This of the
'Defence'!!!

P. 459, l. 7 onward. Horace, Ode iv. 2, 1; ibid. 2, 27.

P. 462, l. 15. 'Walter Scott is not a careful composer,' &c. This recurs
in Mr. Aubrey do Vere's 'Recollections' (p. 487 onward). I venture as a
Scot to observe that for this one slight misquotation by Scott, on which
so large a conclusion is built, the quotations by Wordsworth from others
would furnish twenty-fold. He was singularly inexact in quotation, as
even these Notes and Illustrations will satisfy in the places--scarcely
in a single instance being verbally accurate. 'Sweet' certainly was a
perfectly fitting word for the sequestered lake of St. Mary in its
serene summer beauty. Moreover, swans are not usually found singly, but
in pairs; and a pair surely differenced not greatly the symbol of
loneliness. The latter remark points to Wordsworth's further objection,
as stated to Mr. de Vere (as _supra_).

P. 492, l. 26. 'In the case of a certain poet since dead,' &c. I may
record what his own son has not felt free to do, that this was Sir
Aubrey de Vere, whose 'Song of Faith, and other Poems,' has not yet
gathered its ultimate renown. Wordsworth greatly admired the modest
little volume. See one of his Sonnets on page 495. Nor with the
Laureate's poem-play of 'Queen Mary' (Tudor) winning inevitable welcome
ought it to be forgotten--as even prominent critics of it are
sorrowfully forgetting--that Sir Aubrey de Vere, so long ago as 1847,
published _his_ drama of 'Mary Tudor.' I venture to affirm that it takes
its place--a lofty one--beside 'Philip van Artevelde,' and that it need
fear no comparison with 'Queen Mary.' Early and comparatively modern
supreme poetry somehow gets out of sight for long.

P. 497, 1. 15. Read 'no angel smiled.' I can only offer the plea of an
old Worthy, who said, 'Errata are inevitable, for we are human; and to
have none would imply eyes behind as well as before, or