the whole as it then stood; but the mariner’s fate appeared to me so tragical, as to require a treatment more subdued, and yet more strictly applicable in expression, than I had at first given to it.  This fault was corrected nearly sixty years afterwards, when I determined to publish the whole.  It may be worth while to remark, that, though the incidents of this attempt do only in a small degree produce each other, and it deviates accordingly from the general rule by which narrative pieces ought to be governed, it is not, therefore, wanting in continuous hold upon the mind, or in unity, which is effected by the identity of moral interest that places the two personages upon the same footing in the reader’s sympathies.  My ramble over many parts of Salisbury Plain put me, as mentioned in the preface, upon writing this poem, and left upon my mind imaginative impressions, the force of which I have felt to this day.  From that district I proceeded to Bath, Bristol, and so on to the banks of the Wye; where I took again to travelling on foot.  In remembrance of that part of my journey, which was in ’93, I began the verses,—­’Five years have passed,’ etc.—­I.  F.]

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The foregoing is the Fenwick note to ‘Guilt and Sorrow’.  The note to ’The Female Vagrant’,—­which was the title under which one-third of the longer poem appeared in all the complete editions prior to 1845—­is as follows.—­Ed.

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[I find the date of this is placed in 1792, in contradiction, by mistake, to what I have asserted in ‘Guilt and Sorrow’.  The correct date is 1793-4.  The chief incidents of it, more particularly her description of her feelings on the Atlantic, are taken from life.—­I.  F.]

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In 1798 there were thirty stanzas in this poem; in 1802, twenty-six; in 1815, fourteen; in 1820, twenty-five.  Stanzas I. to XXII., XXXV. to XXXVII., and LI. to LXXIV. occur only in the collected edition of 1842, vol. vii. (also published as “Poems, chiefly of Early and Late Years"), and in subsequent editions.  Wordsworth placed ‘The Female Vagrant’ among his “Juvenile Pieces” from 1815 to 1832.  In 1836, he included it along with ‘Descriptive Sketches’ in his Table of Contents; [B] but as he numbered it IV. in the text—­the other poems belonging to the “Juvenile Pieces” being numbered I. II. and III.—­it is clear that he meant it to remain in that class.  The “Poems written in Youth,” of the edition of 1845, include many others in addition to the “Juvenile Pieces” of editions 1815 to 1836.—­Ed.

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I