Letter from E.H. Cradock, Oxford, to William Angus Knight, 1882 October 14 : autograph manuscript signed.

Concerning Cradock's review of the proofs for Knight's first volumes of Wordsworth's poems; saying "I have gone once through the first & have made some few notes - as to your notes generally especially the historical, classical & geographical I think that you err on the side of excess. For example the leading facts of the Irish Revolution are too well known to people likely to read your edition to require explanation - everybody has read Carlyle & : pp 300-305 &c again I doubt the expediency of geographical notes when they are not necessary to the general understanding of the passage, e.g. 281 - no one understands the poem the better for knowing who Galesus is. Those who know Horace do not require information & those who do not are not made much the wiser...People do not want to be told that 'Adria' is the short form for Adriatic sea' - besides Horace, see Acts XXVII. 27. Unnecessary footnotes interrupt a reader & he is vexed when he looks down & finds what he knows or what he does not care to know. I s'd say whenever you doubt about the insertion of a note, omit...No doubt some of the critics will say that you have not put in notes enough - but you cannot please all tastes. There is reason for notes on the places mentioned in p. 315 &c because they mark the course of Wordsworths wanderings and are not merely incidentally mentioned as in 281 and 282...I will write again when I have gone through a second perusal & also have looked over the batch; " adding, in a postscript, "My eyes are weak, so that I cannot read much small print at a time."