And few things, perhaps, deserve more careful guardianship. The _Lyrical Ballads_, as the world now knows, were a starting-point in the new English Literature, which addressed itself to study in the field of Nature more than in academies, and which taught us the beauty and interest of common life and of everyday incident; and it is a delight to me to see the pages of these simple lyrics and pastorals as Wordsworth’s own eye was content with them when Cottle, the Bristol bookseller, passed them through the press, and printed them, as well as might be, on pleasantly toned paper, bearing here and there on its water-mark the date of its making, ‘1795.’ On the whole, it is a well-printed book; two hundred and ten pages, tastefully arranged, and of _errata_ there are but five. Those were days when centralisation had not brought the best work all to London, and even concentrated it in certain quarters of London; and of what is sometimes called provincial, but of what there is better reason to define as suburban, clumsiness--for nothing is done so ill in the world as what is done in London suburbs--there is only a trace in the gross inequality of the size of the figures in the table of contents: they are taken, it appears, from different founts. But generally the book is printed with smoothness and precision, and, even apart from the high literature which it enshrines, is worthy of its good green coat, joyful of hue, pleasant of smell, and grateful of touch to the fingers that pass over it. And nothing that comes now, even from the Chiswick Press, or from Jouaust or whoever may be the fashionable printing man to-day in Paris, can be much neater than its title-page; the mention of which brings me to a point of interest to the bibliophile.