Autograph letter signed : London, to [William Angus Knight], 1886 Feb. 24.

Discussing his difficulties in selecting twenty Wordsworth poems; musing on whether poets should write to appeal to the few or the many; noting that in any selection one is "dissatisfied with this unaccountable addition, that as inexplicable omission, -- in short, that the sole selector was not himself"; observing that he "treasure[s] as precious every poem written during about the first twenty years of [Wordsworth's] life: after these, the solution grows weaker, the crystals gleam more rarely, and the assiduous striving-ness of the mixture is too apparent and obtrusive"; stating that people should be their own selectors and the "poet's whole work" should be left "to operate in the world as it may."