Letter from Aubrey de Vere, London, to William Angus Knight, 1886? July 28 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying Knight's new edition of Wordsworth's works should keep to Wordsworth's first edition; saying "I should much prefer the first to the last : but I should think you will be able to find some tolerably early edition which is better than either; for some of his early poems certainly gained by the changes he made in comparatively early times; though most of the later changes were for the worse - some of them strangely for the worse. - If your edition were to be one selected out of the various readings of the different editions, a thing in the abstract desirable, I think it would be difficult to do this on the responsibility of any one person. You would need to put each altered passage to the vote of come of our best Poets, such as Tennyson, Browning, & Sir H. Taylor : & I doubt whether this would be practicable & whether, when done, it would be generally approved. - One thing I am confident about, viz. that if the new Edition is to be satisfactory to readers, as well as curious & of historical interest, the various versions must be compared, not at the foot of each page, but apart, either at the end of the work, or at the end of each vol. If the reader compares the different readings while himself reading the poems for the sake of the poetry, he will be so puzzled that the effect of the poetry will be all but lost. It certainly would be so with me at least. A tentative Faith in the poet is necessary while we read him for poetic enjoyment : & the critical spirit must work wholy apart at a later time."