Friday, 12th.-- ... "I re-copied 'The Pedlar'; but poor William all the
time at work.... We sate a long time with the window unclosed, and almost
finished writing 'The Pedlar,' but poor William wore himself out and me
with labour. Went to bed at 12 o'clock."
Saturday, 13th.--"It snowed a little. Still at work at 'The Pedlar,'
altering and re-fitting.... William read parts of his _Recluse_ aloud to
me."...
Sunday, 14th Feb.-- ... "William left me at work altering some passages
of 'The Pedlar,' and went into the orchard."
Sunday, Feb. 28.-- ... "William very ill; employed himself with 'The
Pedlar.'"
Friday morning.-- ... "I wrote 'The Pedlar,' and finished it."...
These extracts--which will recall the laborious way in which he toiled
over the poem _Michael_ (see vol. ii. p. 233)--all refer to the close of
the year 1801, and the beginning of the year 1802. It is impossible to
find out, with exactness, what were the parts of _The Excursion_ which
were then so carefully written, and so fastidiously altered--since "The
Pedlar" was the Wordsworth household name for the entire poem, until
it was recast for publication, at Allan Bank. But after February 1802
he turned to other subjects of composition, chiefly lyrical, and laid
aside "The Pedlar" for a time--his sister, at least, regarding it as
"finished." What was completed, however, did not, probably, extend beyond
the story of the Wanderer, and perhaps a part of that of the Solitary.
The person, whose character gave rise to the Solitary, came to reside
at Grasmere not long after the Wordsworths settled there; but as the
Fenwick note expressly says that the poem was written "_chiefly_ during
our residence at Allan Bank," I do not think that more than the first two
books belong to the Town-end period.
_The Excursion_ was originally published in quarto in 1814. The second
edition, octavo, appeared in 1820.[I]
_The Excursion_ was included in all the collected editions of 1827,
1832, 1836-7, 1840, 1845, 1849-50, in the Paris reprint of 1828, and in
the American edition by Henry Reed. It was also republished by itself
in 1836, 1844, and 1847. The textual changes in the several editions
were numerous and significant. The longest and most important passage in
the earlier ones, omitted after 1820, occurs at the close of the sixth
book. Another (shorter) fragment, near the beginning of book seventh,
refers to the Sympson household at the Wytheburn parsonage. No edition
of _The Excursion_ has as yet been issued with adequate notes, either
topographical or literary. The first book--"The Wanderer"--has, however,
been annotated, both by Mr. H. H. Turner (published in Rivington's
English School Classics), and also by the Rev. H. G. Robinson, Prebendary
of York, and published at Edinburgh, by Messrs. Oliver and Boyd.
The following letter from Charles Lamb to Wordsworth, after his first
perusal of _The Excursion_ has special interest:--
_August 14, 1814._
"DEAR WORDSWORTH--I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of
the great armful of poetry which you have sent me; and to get it before
the rest of the world too! I have gone quite through with it, and was
thinking to have accomplished that pleasure a second time before I wrote
to thank you, but M. Burney came in the night (while we were out) and
made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or two. It is
the noblest conversational poem I ever read--a day in Heaven. The part
(or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my memory (a
bad term for the remains of an impression so recent) is the Tales of the
Churchyard; the only girl among seven brethren, born out of due time, and
not duly taken away again,--the deaf man and the blind man; the Jacobite
and the Hanoverian, whom antipathies reconcile; the Scarron-entry of
the rusticating parson upon his solitude;--these were all new to me
too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the beginning), a very
old acquaintance, even as long back as when I saw you first at Stowey,
did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what to pick out
of this best of books upon the best subjects for partial naming. That
gorgeous sunset[J] is famous; I think it must have been the identical one
we saw on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that drew Phillips from the
card-table, where he had sat from rise of that luminary to its unequalled
set; but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common
things glorified, such as the prophets saw them in that sunset--the
wheel, the potter's clay, the wash-pot, the wine-press, the almond-tree
rod, the basket of figs, the fourfold visaged head, the throne, and Him
that sat thereon. One feeling I was particularly struck with, as what
I recognised so very lately at Harrow Church on entering in it after a
hot and secular day's pleasure, the instantaneous coolness and calming,
almost transforming properties of a country church just entered; a
certain fragrance which it has, either from its holiness, or being kept
shut all the week, or the air that is let in being pure country, exactly
what you have reduced into words; but I am feeling that which I can-not
express. Reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monument in
Harrow Church. Do you know it? with its fine long spire, white as washed
marble, to be seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salisbury
spire itself almost."
In a letter written in the same year, 1814, Lamb tells Wordsworth of the
spurious review of _The Excursion_, in _The Quarterly Review_, "which Mr.
Baviad Gifford has palmed upon it for mine," calls his own review "the
prettiest piece of prose I ever writ," and gives a specimen of it, viz.--
"The poet of the _Excursion_ 'walks through common forests as through
some Dodona or enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the
boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing
than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher love-lays.'" (_The
Letters of Charles Lamb_, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. pp. 271-281.)
In the Notes to the text I have confined myself chiefly to the
explanation of obscure allusions, topographical, historical, or
legendary.--ED.