As the original text of the Descriptive Sketches is printed in [Appendix I.] (p. 309) to this volume—with all the notes to that edition of 1793—it is not quoted in the footnotes to the final text in the pages which follow, except in cases which will justify themselves. Therefore the various readings which follow begin with the edition of 1815, which was, however, a mere fragment of the original text. Almost the whole of the poem of 1793 was reproduced in 1820, but there were many alterations of the text in that edition, and in those of 1827, 1832, 1836 and 1845. Wordsworth's own footnotes here reproduced are those which he retained in the edition of 1849.
Descriptive Sketches [was] ranked among the "Juvenile Pieces" from 1815 onwards: but in 1836 it was put in a class by itself along with the Female Vagrant[D].—Ed.
'Happiness (if she had been to be found on earth) among the charms of Nature—
Pleasures of the pedestrian Traveller—
Author crosses France to the Alps—
Present state of the Grande Chartreuse—
Lake of Como—
Time, Sunset—
Same Scene, Twilight—
Same Scene, Morning; its voluptuous Character; Old man and forest-cottage music—