Author: William Knight

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-09

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9781331051282

Excerpt from The Life of William Wordsworth, Vol. 1 No reader of this Life of Wordsworth can regret, so much as the author does, the long delay that has occurred in its publication. Although the first of the three volumes has been printed for more than a year, the issue of the work has been postponed from causes too numerous to mention. When the edition of the Works of Wordsworth - to which this Life was to be an appendix - was projected, eight years ago, the first idea was that a single volume would suffice, both for a Biography of the poet, and for a critical Essay upon him. As soon as the work of research began, however, so much new material accumulated from many sources, that it was judged expedient, not only to extend the Biography from one volume to two, and ultimately to three, but to exclude the critical Essay, reserving it for a future occasion, and a different purpose. It can be of little consequence to any who read these volumes, to know what the writer thinks of Wordsworth, of his place as a poet in the great hierarchy of genius, and of his function as a teacher of mankind; but it matters a great deal that they should have authentic information as to the manner of man Wordsworth was - as to what he thought and said and did - and that they should know the relations he sustained toward the more distinguished of his contemporaries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.