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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON, NEW YORK, AND TORONTO
1907

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PREFACE

In the thirty-five years that have elapsed since Canon Benham published the last one-volume edition of Cowper's poems, a certain number of new poems have appeared in various books, much new light has been thrown on Cowper's life, but little or no work has been done on the actual text of the poems. It seemed worth while therefore to collect these scattered poems and print them with the rest conveniently in one volume; to utilize the new facts by carefully testing thereby the dates hitherto accepted for the composition of the poems; and to examine the text afresh and if possible constitute it on scientific principles.

The poems first here collected do not, with two or three exceptions, add much to Cowper's poetic reputation; but the aim of this series is to provide complete texts, and readers of the OXFORD COWPER have before them every poem of his hitherto printed (besides a few from MS.), except the translations of Homer and Adamo. No modern edition has reprinted these; the translation of Homer is dead, that of Adamo was never alive.

The dates at which most of the poems were composed are fairly certain; nor have the new facts displayed by Mr. Wright in his Life of Cowper (1892) and Correspondence of Cowper (1904) much disturbed the traditional order. But a search through various magazines and periodicals of the time, especially The Gentleman's Magazine, has enabled me to give earlier dates than have hitherto been known for the first publication of many of the miscellaneous poems; and the first published version often shows a large number of variations from later versions. I cannot hope to have traced all these early versions; an exhaustive search through the files of the Northampton Mercury, General Evening Post, and other papers not easily accessible, would be necessary for this. But the copies disinterred by previous editors and by myself supply ample evidence of the constant minute alterations made by Cowper in his least important poems; and this is the main interest of the early versions and the variants they supply; for the various readings are often intrinsically of equal value: the alteration has produced no improvement.

Consideration of this point leads naturally to the question of the text. It is in the constitution and presentation of the text that I hope to have made some advance on my predecessors. I have not, of course, attempted to chronicle all the misprints of all the early editions, or all the aberrations of Hayley and other editors; such a chronicle would serve no useful purpose and would take up an intolerable deal of space. But in the editions of the poems printed in Cowper's lifetime all variants which indicate a difference of reading have been noted: where two editors-Croft and Hayley, or Johnson and Hayley-of equal or nearly equal authority, print different versions of posthumous poems, one version has been followed throughout the poem, the variants from the other being placed in the notes: and, as already stated, readings involving verbal changes from early printed or MS. copies are given either in the footnotes or at the end of the volume. Thus an attempt has for the first time been made to supply a sufficiently full critical apparatus1.

For the text of the poems contained in the two volumes published by Cowper himself I have followed the royal 8vo edition dated 1800. There were eleven editions of each volume before 1801: namely, 1782 and 1785 (first edition of each volume separately), 1786 (first two-volume edition), 1787, 1788, 1793, 1794-5, 1798 (2), 1799, 1800 (2)2. These fall into two main groups, those from 1782 (1785) to 1788 forming the first group, the remainder the second.

The second group differs from the first mainly by its adoption of a slightly more consistent and more modern spelling and a less haphazard punctuation; actual differences of text are very few, as may be seen by inspection of the critical notes. No doubt changes of spelling and punctuation were not definitely adopted by Cowper himself or even by his friends; at any rate there is no direct evidence that Cowper saw the proofs of any but the first edition of each volume, and we know that he gave away his copyright in them to Johnson the publisher", who doubtless produced editions as they were wanted, on his own responsibility. But the fresh poems added to several later editions (see pp. xx-xxii) can only have been obtained from one or other of Cowper's friends, probably Newton, Lady Hesketh, or John Johnson; and the list

1 Bruce gave a considerable number of variants; his notes, though incomplete and not always accurate, are valuable. 2 See p. xx-xxii for a further description of these editions. 3 See Letters (ed. Wright), ii. 419.

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