Dorothy Wordsworth wrote, in her Recollections of this tour, under date August 18th, 1803,
"William wrote long afterwards the following Address to the sons of the ill-fated poet."
Ed.
This explanatory note appears in every edition of the Poems from 1827 to 1850. It is taken (but not literally) from the Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland as published in 1875.—Ed.
From Burns's Epistle to James Smith, l. 53.—Ed.