[Footnote B: After the early poems just mentioned and the "Lyrical Ballads," 1798 to 1802, the chief editions to be consulted for the changes of text are the complete editions of 1807, 1815, and 1836, and the original issues of "The Excursion" (1814), of "The White Doe of Rylston" (1815), of "Peter Bell," and of "The Waggoner" (1819). Unfortunately I have not been able to get access to Mr. W. Johnston's useful collection of Wordsworth's "Earlier Poems" (London, 1857): it would have lightened the task of collecting the _variantes_, the more important of which, for the period covered by the collection, are given in it. But, having gone in nearly every case to the original texts, I need hardly say that I have been careful to quote them accurately in the present article.] The first question which we naturally ask about Wordsworth's corrections is this: Were they improvements? My readers will decide for themselves; for my own part, it seems to me that they generally were improvements; that Wordsworth bettered his text three times out of four when he changed it. Nor is this surprising; few admirers of Wordsworth's poetry will deny that there were many passages quite susceptible of amendment in it; for that task there was ample room. But on the other hand, it happened not infrequently, as we might expect, that when the poet returned, in the critical mood, to mend his first form of expression, he marred it instead. In the poem, for instance, beginning, "Strange fits of passion have I known," the second stanza as originally published ran thus: When she I loved was strong and gay, And like a rose in June, I to her cottage bent my way, Beneath the evening moon. --_Lyrical Ballads_, 1800. The passage stood thus for many years, and was finally altered to read: When she I loved looked every day Fresh as a rose in June, I to her cottage bent my way, Beneath an evening moon. Is there not some loss of vividness here? The later reading is perhaps the more graceful, and yet the picture seems to me brighter in the early version. This, too, seems a doubtful improvement; it occurs in "The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale." Wordsworth wrote at first: His staff is a sceptre--his gray hairs a crown: Erect as a sunflower he stands, and the streak Of the unfaded rose is expressed on his cheek. --1815. In later editions we read: His bright eyes look brighter, set off by the streak Of the unfaded rose that still blooms on his cheek. Here the last line is bettered; but I, for one, am sorry to lose the sunflower comparison; it is picturesque, and it aptly describes this hearty child of the earth. Look now at the poem "We are Seven," as it began in the "Lyrical Ballads": A simple child, dear brother Jim, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb-- What should it know of death?