suggesting by your practice the plan which I have adopted."

Could anything show more explicitly than this that Wordsworth was not
perfectly satisfied with his own artificial groups? Professor Reed, in
his American edition of 1837, however, acted on Wordsworth's expressed
intention of distributing the contents of "Yarrow Revisited, and Other
Poems" amongst the classes. He tells us that he "interspersed the
contents of this volume among the Poems already arranged" by Wordsworth.
[6]

It may also be mentioned that not only members of his own household, but
many of Wordsworth's friends--notably Charles Lamb--expressed a
preference for a different arrangement of his Poems from that which he
had adopted.


SECOND The various Readings, or variations of text, made by Wordsworth
during his lifetime, or written by him on copies of his Poems, or
discovered in MS. letters, from himself, or his sister, or his wife, are
given in footnotes in this edition. Few English poets changed their text
more frequently, or with more fastidiousness, than Wordsworth did. He
did not always alter it for the better. Every alteration however, which
has been discovered by me, whether for the better or for the worse, is
here printed in full. We have thus a record of the fluctuations of his
own mind as to the form in which he wished his Poems to appear; and this
record casts considerable light on the development of his genius. [7]

A knowledge of these changes of text can only be obtained in one or
other of two ways. Either the reader must have access to all the
thirty-two editions of Poems, the publication of which Wordsworth