Note 403:1 — TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH[403:1]
Reading edition
First published in Sibylline Leaves, 1817: included in 1828, 1829, 1834. The poem was sent in a Letter to Sir G. Beaumont dated January, 1807, and in this shape was first printed by Professor Knight in Coleorton Letters, 1887, i. 213-18; and as Appendix H, pp. 525-6, of P. W., 1893 (MS. B.). An earlier version of about the same date was given to Wordsworth, and is now in the possession of his grandson, Mr. Gordon Wordsworth (MS. W.). The text of Sibylline Leaves differs widely from that of the original MSS. Lines 11-47 are quoted in a Letter to Wordsworth, dated May 30, 1815 (Letters of S. T. C., 1895, i. 646-7), and lines 65-75 at the end of Chapter X of the Biographia Literaria, 1817, i. 220.