From the accident of my having tried long ago--at Principal Shairp's request--to do what he told me he wished to do, but had failed to carry out, I have been supposed, quite erroneously, to be an 'authority' on the subject of "The English Lake District, as interpreted in the Poems of Wordsworth." The latter, it is true, is the title of one of the books which I have written about Wordsworth: but, although I visited the Lakes in 1860,--"as a pilgrim resolute"--and have re-visited the district nearly every year for more than a quarter of a century, I may say that I have only a partial knowledge of it. Others, such as Canon Rawnsley, Mr. Harry Goodwin, and Mr. Rix, for example, know many parts of it much better than I do; but, as I have often had to compare my own judgment with that of such experts as the late Dr. Cradock, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, and others, I may add that, when I differ from them, it has been only after a re-examination of their evidence, at the localities themselves. SIXTH. Several Poems, and fragments of poems, hitherto unpublished--or published in stray quarters, and in desultory fashion--will find a place in this edition; but I reserve these fragments, and place them all together, in an Appendix to the last volume of the "Poetical Works." If it is desirable to print these poems, in such an edition as this, it is equally desirable to separate them from those which Wordsworth himself sanctioned in his final edition of 1849-50. Every great author in the Literature of the World--whether he lives to old age (when his judgment may possibly be less critical) or dies young (when it may be relatively more accurate)--should himself determine what portions of his work ought, and what ought not to survive. At the same time,--while I do not presume to judge in the case of writers whom I know less fully than I happen to know Wordsworth and his contemporaries,--it seems clear that the very greatest men have occasionally erred as to what parts of their writings might, with most advantage, survive; and that they have even more frequently erred as to what MS. letters, etc.,--casting light on their contemporaries--should, or should not, be preserved. I am convinced, for example, that if the Wordsworth household had not destroyed all the letters which Coleridge sent to them, in the first decade of this century, the world would now possess much important knowledge which is for ever lost. It may have been wise, for reasons now unknown, to burn those letters, written by Coleridge: but the students of the literature of the period would gladly have them now.