the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford, for Naples

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The Trossachs

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PREFACE.

Those who have long known the poetry of Wordsworth will be no strangers to the existence of this Journal of his sister, which is now for the first time published entire.  They will have by heart those few wonderful sentences from it which here and there stand at the head of the Poet’s ‘Memorials of a Tour in Scotland in 1803.’  Especially they will remember that ‘Extract from the Journal of my Companion’ which preludes the ‘Address to Kilchurn Castle upon Loch Awe,’ and they may sometimes have asked themselves whether the prose of the sister is not as truly poetic and as memorable as her brother’s verse.  If they have read the Memoirs of the Poet published by his nephew the Bishop of Lincoln, they will have found there fuller extracts from the Journal, which quite maintain the impression made by the first brief sentences.  All true Wordsworthians then will welcome, I believe, the present publication.  They will find in it not only new and illustrative light on those Scottish poems which they have so long known, but a faithful commentary on the character of the poet, his mode of life, and the manner of his poetry.  Those who from close study of Wordsworth’s poetry know both the poet and his sister, and what they were to each other, will need nothing more than the Journal itself.  If

it were likely to fall only into their hands, it might be left without one word of comment or illustration.  But as it may reach some who have never read Wordsworth, and others who having read do not relish him, for the information of these something more must be said.  The Journal now published does not borrow all its worth from its bearing on the great poet.  It has merit and value of its own, which may commend it to some who have no heart for Wordsworth’s poetry.  For the writer of it was in herself no common woman, and might have secured for herself an independent reputation, had she not chosen rather that other part, to forget and merge herself entirely in the work and reputation of her brother.