knees and thank God that English publishers are not as other publishers.
At least, not always!




WORDSWORTH'S SINGLE LINES


[_30 May '08_]

I have had great joy in Mr. Nowell Charles Smith's new and comprehensive
edition of Wordsworth, published by Methuen in three volumes as majestic
as Wordsworth himself at his most pontifical. The price is fifteen
shillings net, and having regard to the immense labour involved in such an
edition, it is very cheap. I would sooner pay fifteen shillings for a real
book like this than a guinea for the memoirs of any tin god that ever sat
up at nights to keep a diary; yea, even though the average collection of
memoirs will furnish material to light seven hundred pipes. We have lately
been much favoured with first-rate editions of poets. I mention Mr. de
Sélincourt's Keats, and Mr. George Sampson's amazing and
not-to-be-sufficiently-lauded Blake. Mr. Smith's work is worthy to stand
on the same shelf with these. A shining virtue of Mr. Smith's edition is
that it embodies the main results of the researches and excavations not
only of Professor Knight, but, more important, of the wonderful Mr.
Hutchinson, whose contributions to the _Academy_, in days of yore, were
the delight of Wordsworthians.

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