But on a copy of An Evening Walk (1793 edition) Wordsworth wrote:—"This is the first of my published poems, with the exception of a sonnet, written when I was a schoolboy, and published in the European Magazine in June or July 1786, and signed Axiologus." Even as to this date his memory was at fault. It was published in 1787, when he was seventeen years of age. Its full title may be given; although, for reasons already stated, it would be unjustifiable to republish the sonnet, except in an appendix to the poems, and mainly for its biographical interest. It was entitled, Sonnet, on seeing Miss Maria Williams weep at a Tale of Distress. But, fully ten years before the date mentioned by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Grasmere Journal—as the day on which she read Milton's sonnets to her brother, and on which he wrote the two on Buonaparte—he had written others, the existence of which he had evidently forgotten. On the 6th of May 1792, his sister wrote thus from Forncett Rectory in Norfolk to her friend, Miss Jane Pollard:—"I promised to transcribe some of William's compositions. As I made the promise, I will give you a little sonnet.... I take the first that offers. It is very valuable to me, because the cause which gave birth to it was the favourite evening walk of William and me.... I have not chosen this sonnet from any particular beauty it has. It was the first I laid my hands upon." From the clause I have italicised, it would almost seem that other sonnets belong to that period, viz. before 1793, when An Evening Walk appeared. She would hardly have spoken of it as she did, if this was the only sonnet her brother had then written. Though very inferior to his later work, this sonnet may be preserved as a specimen of Wordsworth's earlier manner, before he had broken away, by the force of his own imagination, from the trammels of the conventional style, which he inherited. It is printed in the Appendix to volume viii.
It will be seen that Wordsworth's memory cannot be always relied upon, in reference to dates, and similar details, in the Fenwick memoranda.—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1849.
... to me, 1807.
[2] 1827.
... short ... 1807.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Compare in Lovelace's poem, To Althea from Prison—