Wordsworth dated the former of these poems 1786, but I do not believe that he wrote that poem, and still less that he wrote “Calm is all nature,” etc., _as we now have it_, in that year. Doubtless he wrote verses on these two subjects; but the best evidence against the notion that the text, as we now have it, was written in 1786, is this 1787 sonnet on Miss Maria Williams. It is not only dated authoritatively, but it was _published_ in 1787; and therefore serves (as nothing else can until we come to 1793) as evidence in regard to the development of his poetic power. The translation of Francis Wrangham’s lines--which he called _The Birth of Love_--in 1795, is further evidence in the same direction. No doubt there were many poor poetic utterances by Wordsworth later in life--failures in his manhood, as dismal as the “Walford Tragedy” was in his youth--but I think that the _Lines written in very early Youth_, and the _Extract from the Poem composed in anticipation of leaving School_, were rehandled by him, and the text greatly improved before they were first published. The late Mr. J. Dykes Campbell wrote to me in 1892: “Poets tell dreadful fibs about their early verses--as witness S.T.C. who declared he wrote _The Advent of Love_ at fifteen! I _know_ he didn’t, and am going to print one or two of his prize school verses of that age, which I have found in his own fifteen-year-old fist.”--ED. [338] I should add, in a footnote, that I have no knowledge of the source whence Mr. Campbell derived this; but I am sure that it must have reached him from an authentic one.--ED. LINES WRITTEN BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AS A SCHOOL EXERCISE AT HAWKSHEAD, ANNO ÆTATIS 14 In the “Autobiographical Memoranda”--dictated at Rydal Mount in 1847--Wordsworth said, “The first verses which I wrote were a task imposed by my master: the subject _The Summer Vacation_, and of my own accord I added others upon _Return to School_. There was nothing remarkable in either poem; but I was called upon, among other scholars, to write verses upon the completion of the second century from the foundation of the school in 1585, by Archbishop Sandys. These verses were much admired, far more than they deserved, for they were but a tame imitation of Pope’s versification, and a little in his style. This exercise, however, put it into my head to compose verses from the impulse of my own mind; and I wrote, while yet a schoolboy, a long poem running upon my own adventures, and the scenery of the county in which I was brought up.” The _Summer Vacation_, and the _Return to School_, were destroyed by Wordsworth.--ED.