Chapter V: Preface: To Notes (1)

AN editor of posthumous work is bounden to give some account of the authority for his text; and it is the purpose of the follow- ing notes to satisfy inquiry concerning matters whereof the present editor has the advantage of first-hand or particular knowledge.

_Sources_ The sources are four, and will be distinguished as A, B, D, and H, as here described.

_A_ is my own collection, a MS. book made up of Autographs--by which word I denote poems in the author's hand- Writing--pasted into it as they were received from him, and also of contemporary copies of other poems. These autographs and copies date from '67 to '89, the year of his death. Additions made by copying after that date are not reckoned or used. The first two items of the facsimiles at page 70 are cuttings from A.

_B_ is a MS. book, into which, in '83, I copied from _A_ certain poems of which the author had kept no copy. He was remiss in making fair copies of his work, and his autograph of The Deutsch- land having been (seemingly) lost, I copied that poem and others from _A_ at his request. After that date he entered more poems in this book as he completed them, and he also made both corrections of copy and emendations of the poems which had been copied into it by me. Thus, if a poem occur in both _A_ and _B_, then _B_ is the later and, except for overlooked errors of copyist, the better authority. The last entry written by G. M. H. into this book is of the date 1887.

_D_ is a collection of the author's letters to Canon Dixon, the only other friend who ever read his poems, with but few exceptions whether of persons or of poems. These letters are in my keep- ing; they contain autographs of a few poems with late corrections.

_H_ is the bundle of posthumous papers that came into my hands at the author's death. These were at the time examined, sorted, and indexed; and the more important pieces of which copies were taken were inserted into a scrap-book. That col- lection is the source of a series of his most mature sonnets, and of almost all the unfinished poems and fragments. Among these papers were also some early drafts. The facsimile after p. 92 is from _H_.

_Method_ The latest autographs and autographic corrections have Been preferred. In the very few instances in which this principle was overruled, as in Nos. _1_ and _27_, the justi- fication will be found in the note to the poem. The finished poems from _1_ to _51_ are ranged chronologically by the years, but in the section _52_-_74_ a fanciful grouping of the fragments was preferred to the inevitable misrepresentations of conjectural dating. G. M. H. dated his poems from their inception, and however much he revised a poem he would date his recast as his first draft. Thus _Handsome Heart_ was written and sent to me in '79; and the recast, which I reject, was not made before '83, while the final corrections may be some years later; and yet his last autograph is dated as the first 'Oxford '79'.

_Selection_ This edition purports to convey all the author's serious Mature poems; and he would probably not have wished any of his earlier poems nor so many or his fragments to have been included. Of the former class three specimens only are admitted--and these, which may be considered of exceptional merit or interest, had already been given to the public--but of the latter almost everything; because these scraps being of mature date, generally contain some special beauty of thought or diction, and are invariably of metrical or rhythmical interest: some of them are in this respect as remarkable as anything in the volume. As for exclusion, no translations of any kind are published here, whether into Greek or Latin from the English of which there are autographs and copies in _A_ or the Englishing of Latin hymns occurring in _H_: these last are not in my opinion of special merit; and with them I class a few religious pieces which will be noticed later.

_Author's Prosody_ Of the peculiar scheme of prosody invented and developed by the author a full account is out of the question. His own preface together with his description of the metrical scheme of each poem--which is always, wherever it exists, transcribed in the notes--may be a sufficient guide for practical purposes. Moreover, the intention of the rhythm, in places where it might seem doubtful, has been indicated by accents printed over the determining syllables: in the later poems these accents correspond generally with the author's own marks: in the earlier poems they do not, but are trustworthy translations.

_Marks_ It was at one time the author's practice to use a very elaborate system of marks, all indicating the speech-movement: the autograph (in _A_) of _Harry Ploughman_ carries seven different marks, each one defined at the foot. When reading through his letters for the purpose of determining dates, I noted a few sentences on this subject which will justify the method that I have followed in the text. In 1883 he wrote: 'You were right to leave out the marks: they were not consistent for one thing, and are always offensive. Stilt there must be some. Either I must invent a notation applied throughout as in music or else I must only mark where the reader is likely to mistake, and for the present this is what I shall do.' And again in '85: 'This is my difficulty, what marks to use and when to use them: they are so much needed and yet so objectionable. (_Punctuation_) About punctuation my mind is clear: I can give a rule for everything I write myself, and even for other people, though they might not agree with me perhaps.' In this last matter the autographs are rigidly respected, the rare intentional aberration being scrupulously noted. And so I have respected his indentation of the verse; but in the sonnets, while my indentation corresponds, as a rule, with some autograph, I have felt free to consider conveniences, following, however, his growing practice to eschew it altogether.

Apart from questions of taste--and if these poems were to be arraigned for errors of what may be called taste, they might be convicted of occasional affectation in metaphor, as where the hills are 'as a stallion stal- wart, very-violet-sweet', or of some perversion of human feeling, as, for instance, the 'nostrils' relish of incense along the sanctuary side ', or 'the Holy Ghost with warm breast and with ah! bright wings', these and a few such examples are mostly efforts to force emotion into theological or sectarian channels, as in 'the com- fortless unconfessed' and the unpoetic line 'His mystery must be instressed stressed', or, again, the exaggerated Marianism of some pieces, or the naked encounter of sensualism and asceticism which hurts the 'Golden Echo'.--

_Style_ Apart, I say, from such faults of taste, which few as they numerically are yet affect my liking and more repel my sympathy than do all the rude shocks of his purely artistic wantonness-- apart from these there are definite faults of style which a reader must have courage to face, and must in some measure condone before he can discover the great beauties. For these blemishes in the poet's style are of such quality and magnitude as to deny him even a hearing from those who love a continuous literary decorum and are grown to be intolerant of its absence. And it is well to be clear that there is no pretence to reverse the condemnation of those faults, for which the poet has duly suffered. The extravagances are and will remain what they were. Nor can credit be gained from pointing them out: yet, to put readers at their ease, I will here define them: they may be called Oddity and Obscurity; (_Oddity_) and since the first may provoke laughter when a writer serious (and this poet is always serious), while the latter must prevent him from being understood (and this poet has always something to say), it may be assumed that they were not a part of his intention. Something of what he thought on this subject may be seen in the following extracts from his letters. In Feb. 1879, he wrote: 'All therefore that I think of doing is to keep my verses together in one place-- at present I have not even correct copies--, that, if anyone should like, they might be published after my death. And that again is unlikely, as well as remote. . . . No doubt my poetry errs on the side of oddness. I hope in time to have a more balanced and Miltonic style. But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry. Now it is the virtue of design, pattern, or inscape to be distinctive and it is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. This vice I cannot have escaped.' And again two months later: 'Moreover the oddness may make them repulsive at first and yet Lang might have liked them on a second reading. Indeed when, on somebody returning me the _Eurydice_, I opened and read some lines, as one commonly reads whether prose or verse, with the eyes, so to say, only, it struck me aghast with a kind of raw nakedness and unmitigated violence I was unprepared for: but take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be read, and my verse becomes all right.'

_Obscurity_ As regards Oddity then, it is plain that the poet was Himself fully alive to it, but he was not sufficiently aware of obscurity, and he could not understand why his friends found his sentences so difficult: he would never have believed that, among all the ellipses and liberties of his grammar, the one chief cause is his habitual omission of the relative pronoun; and yet this is so, and the examination of a simple example or two may serve a general purpose:

_Omission of relative pronoun_ This grammatical liberty, though it is a common convenience in conversation and has therefore its proper place in good writing, is apt to confuse the parts of speech, and to reduce a normal sequence of words to mere jargon. Writers who carelessly rely on their elliptical speech-forms to govern the elaborate sentences of their literary composition little know what a conscious effort of interpretation they often impose on their readers. But it was not carelessness in Gerard Hopkins: he had full skill and practice and scholarship in conventional forms, and it is easy to see that he banished these purely constructional syllables from his verse because they took up room which he thought he could not afford them: he needed in his scheme all his space for his poetical words, and he wished those to crowd out every merely gram- matical colourless or toneless element; and so when he had got into the habit of doing without these relative pronouns--though he must, I suppose, have supplied them in his thought,--he abuses the licence beyond precedent, as when he writes (no. _17_) 'O Hero savest!' for 'O Hero that savest!'.

_Identical Forms_ Another example of this (from the 5th stanza of no. _23_) will discover another cause of obscurity; the line

'Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him'

means 'Scatter the ranks that sally to molest him': but since the words _squander_ and _sally_ occupy similar positions in the two sections of the verse, and are enforced by a similar accentuation, the second verb deprived of its pronoun will follow the first and appear as an imperative; and there is nothing to prevent its being so taken but the contradiction that it makes in the meaning; whereas the grammar should expose and enforce the meaning, not have to be determined by the meaning. More- over, there is no way of enunciating this line which will avoid the confusion; because if, knowing that _sally_ should not have the same intonation as _squander_, the reader mitigates the accent, and in doing so lessens or obliterates the caesural pause which exposes its accent, then _ranks_ becomes a genitive and _sally_ a substantive.

Here, then, is another source of the poet's obscurity; that in aiming at condensation he neglects the need that there is for care in the placing of words that are grammatically ambiguous. English swarms with words that have one identical form for substantive, adjective, and verb; and such a word should never be so placed as to allow of any doubt as to what part of speech it is used for; because such ambiguity or momentary uncertainty destroys the force of the sentence. Now our author not only neglects this essential propriety but he would seem even to welcome and seek artistic effect in the consequent confusion; and he will sometimes so arrange such words that a reader looking for a verb may find that he has two or three ambiguous monosyllables from which to select, and must be in doubt as to which promises best to give any meaning that he can welcome; and then, after his choice is made, he may be left with some homeless monosyllable still on his hands. (_Homophones_) Nor is our author apparently sensitive to the irrelevant suggestions that our numerous homophones cause; and he will provoke further ambiguities or obscurities by straining the meaning of these unfortunate words.

_Rhymes_ Finally, the rhymes where they are peculiar are often repellent, and so far from adding charm to the verse that they appear as obstacles. This must not blind one from recognizing that Gerard Hopkins, where he is simple and straightforward in his rhyme is a master of it--there are many instances,--but when he indulges in freaks, his childishness is incredible. His intention in such places is that the verses should be recited as running on without pause, and the rhyme occurring in their midst should be like a phonetic accident, merely satisfying the prescribed form. But his phonetic rhymes are often indefensible on his own principle. The rhyme to _communion_ in 'The Bugler' is hideous, and the suspicion that the poet thought it ingenious is appalling: _eternal_, in 'The Eurydice', does not correspond with _burn all_, and in 'Felix Randal' _and some_ and _handsome_ is as truly an eye-rhyme as the _love_ and _prove_ which he despised and abjured; and it is more distressing, because the old-fashioned conventional eye-rhymes are accepted as such without speech- adaptation, and to many ears are a pleasant relief from the fixed jingle of the perfect rhyme; whereas his false ear-rhymes ask to have their slight but indispensable differences obliterated in the reading, and thus they expose their defect, which is of a disagree- able and vulgar or even comic quality. He did not escape full criticism and ample ridicule for such things in his lifetime; and in '83 he wrote: 'Some of my rhymes I regret, but they are past changing, grubs in amber: there are only a few of these; others are unassailable; some others again there are which malignity may munch at but the Muses love.'

_Euphony and emphasis_ Now these are bad faults, and, as I said, a reader, if he is to get any enjoyment from the author's genius, must be somewhat tolerant of them; and they have a real relation to the means whereby the very forcible and original effects of beauty are produced. There is nothing stranger in these poems than the mixture of passages of extreme delicacy and exquisite diction with passages where, in a jungle of rough root-words, emphasis seems to oust euphony; and both these qualities, emphasis and euphony, appear in their extreme forms. It was an idiosyncrasy of this student's mind to push everything to its logical extreme, and take pleasure in a paradoxical result; as may be seen in his prosody where a simple theory seems to be used only as a basis for unexampled liberty. He was flattered when I called him _perittutatos_, and saw the humour of it--and one would expect to find in his work the force of emphatic condensation and the magic of melodious expression, both in their extreme forms. Now since those who study style in itself must allow a proper place to the emphatic expression, this experiment, which supplies as novel examples of success as of failure, should be full of interest; and such interest will promote tolerance.

The fragment, of which a facsimile is given after page 92, is the draft of what appears to be an attempt to explain how an artist has not free-will in his creation. He works out his own nature instinctively as he happens to be made, and is irresponsible for the result. It is lamentable that Gerard Hopkins died when, to judge by his latest work, he was beginning to concentrate the force of all his luxuriant experiments in rhythm and diction, and castigate his art into a more reserved style. Few will read the terrible posthumous sonnets without such high admiration and respect for his poetical power as must lead them to search out the rare masterly beauties that distinguish his work.

NOTES

PAGE 1. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. This is from B, and must have been written in '83 or not much later. The punctuation has been exactly followed, except that I have added a comma after the word _language_ in the last line but one of page 5, where the omission seemed an oversight.

p.4, l. 21. _rove over_. This expression is used here to denote the running on of the sense and sound of the end of a verse into the beginning of the next; but this meaning is not easily to be found in the word.

The two words _reeve_ (pf. _rove_, which is also a pf. of _rive_) and _reave_ (pf. _reft_) are both used several times by G.M.H., but they are both spelt _reave_. In the present context _rove_ and _reaving_ occur in his letters, and the spelling _reeve_ in 'The Deutschland', xii. 8, is probably due to the copyists.

There is no doubt that G. M. H. had a wrong notion of the meaning of the nautical term _reeve_. No. 39 line 10 (the third passage where _reeve_, spelt _reave_, occurs, and a nautical meaning is required--see the note there--) would be satisfied by _splice_ (nautical); and if this notion were influenced by _weave_, _wove_, that would describe the inter- weaving of the verses. In the passage referred to in 'The Deutschland' _reeve_ is probably intended in its dialectal or common speech significance: see Wright's 'English Dialect Dictionary', where the first sense of the verb given is to bring together the 'gathers' of a dress: and in this sense _reeve_ is in common use.

p. 7. EARLY POEMS. Two school prize-poems exist; the date of the first, 'The Escorial', is Easter '60, which is before Poems G.M.H. was sixteen years old. It is in Spenserian stanza: the imperfect copy in another hand has the first 15 stanzas omitting the 9th, and the author has written on it his motto, _Batraxos de pot akridas os tis erisda_, with an accompanying gloss to explain his allusions. Though wholly lacking the Byronic flush it looks as if in- fluenced by the historical descriptions in 'Childe Harold', and might provide a quotation for a tourist's guide to Spain. The history seems competent, and the artistic knowledge precocious.

Here for a sample is the seventh stanza:

This was no classic temple order'd round With massy pillars of the Doric mood Broad-fluted, nor with shafts acanthus-crown'd, Pourtray'd along the frieze with Titan's brood That battled Gods for heaven; brilliant-hued, With golden fillets and rich blazonry, Wherein beneath the cornice, horsemen rode With form divine, a fiery chivalry-- Triumph of airy grace and perfect harmony.

The second prize-poem, 'A Vision of Mermaids', is dated Xmas '62. The autograph of this, which is preserved, is headed by a very elaborate circular pen-and-ink drawing, 6 inches in diameter,--a sunset sea-piece with rocks and formal groups of mermaidens, five or six together, singing as they stand (apparently) half-immersed in the shallows as described

'But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun,' &c.

This poem is in 143 lines of heroics. It betrays the in- fluence of Keats, and when I introduced the author to the public in Miles's book, I quoted from it, thinking it useful to show that his difficult later style was not due to in- ability to excel in established forms. The poem is alto- gether above the standard of school-prizes. I reprint the extract here:

Soon--as when Summer of his sister Spring Crushes and tears the rare enjewelling, And boasting 'I have fairer thing's than these' Plashes amidst the billowy apple-trees His lusty hands, in gusts of scented wind Swirling out bloom till all the air is blind With rosy foam and pelting blossom and mists Of driving vermeil-rain; and, as he lists, The dainty onyx-coronals deflowers, A glorious wanton;--all the wrecks in showers Crowd down upon a stream, and jostling thick With bubbles bugle-eyed, struggle and stick On.tangled shoals that bar the brook a crowd Of filmy globes and rosy floating cloud: So those Mermaidens crowded to my rock.

* * * * *

But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun; And a sweet sadness dwelt on every one; I knew not why,--but know that sadness dwells On Mermaids--whether that they ring the knells Of seamen whelm'd in chasms of the mid-main, As poets sing; or that it is a pain To know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea, The miles profound of solid green, and be With loath'd cold fishes, far from man--or what;-- I know the sadness but the cause know not. Then they, thus ranged, gan make full plaintively A piteous Siren sweetness on the sea, Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell, Or stretch'd chords tuneable on turtle's shell; Only with utterance of sweet breath they sung An antique chaunt and in an unknown tongue. Now melting upward through the sloping scale Swell'd the sweet strain to a melodious wail; Now ringing clarion-clear to whence it rose Slumber'd at last in one sweet, deep, heart-broken close.

_1862-1868_ After the relics of his school-poems follow the poems written when an undergraduate at Oxford, of which there are four in this book--Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 52, all dating about 1866. Of this period some ten or twelve autograph poems exist, the most successful being religious verses worked in Geo. Herbert's manner, and these, I think, have been printed: there are two sonnets in Italian form and Shakespearian mood (refused by 'Cornhill Magazine'); the rest are attempts at lyrical poems, mostly sentimental aspects of death: one of them 'Winter with the Gulf-stream' was published in 'Once a Week', and reprinted at least in part in some magazine: the autograph copy is dated Aug. 1871, but G. M. H. told me that he wrote it when he was at school; whence I guess that he altered it too much to allow of its early dating. The following is a specimen of his signature at this date.

Gerard M. Hopkins. July 24, 1866.

Transcriber's note: This signature and date is displayed as a handwritten image in the original.

_1868-1875_ After these last-mentioned poems there is a gap of Silence which may be accounted for in his own words from a letter to R. W. D. Oct. 5, '78: 'What (verses) I had written I burnt before I became a Jesuit (i.e. 1868) and re- solved to write no more, as not belonging to my profession, unless it were by the wish of my superiors; so for seven years I wrote nothing but two or three little presentation pieces which occasion called for. But when in the winter of '75 the Deutschland was wrecked in the mouth of the Thames and five Franciscan nuns, exiles from Germany by the Falck Laws, aboard of her were drowned I was affected by the account and happening to say so to my rector he said that he wished some one would write a poem on the subject. On this hint I set to work and, though my hand was out at first, produced one. I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now I realised on paper. ... I do not say the idea is altogether new . . . but no one has professedly used it and made it the principle throughout, that I know of. ... However I had to mark the stresses . . . and a great many more oddnesses could not but dismay an editor's eye, so that when I offered it to our magazine _The Month_ . . . they dared not print it.'

Of the _two or three presentation pieces_ here mentioned one is certainly the Marian verses 'Rosa mystica', published in the 'The Irish Monthly', May '98, and again in Orby Shipley's 'Carmina Mariana', 2nd series, p. 183: the autograph exists.

Another is supposed to be the 'Ad Mariam', printed in the 'Stonyhurst Magazine', Feb. '94. This is in five stanzas of eight lines, in direct and competent imitation of Swinburne: no autograph has been found; and, unless Fr. Hopkins's views of poetic form had been provisionally deranged or suspended, the verses can hardly be attributed to him without some impeachment of his sincerity; and that being altogether above suspicion, I would not yield to the rather strong presumption which their technical skill supplies in favour of his authorship. It is true that the 'Rosa mystica' is somewhat in the same light lilting man- ner; but that was probably common to most of these festal verses, and 'Rosa mystica' is not open to the positive objections of verbal criticism which would reject the 'Ad Mariam'. He never sent me any copy of either of these pieces, as he did of his severer Marian poems (Nos. 18 and 37), nor mentioned them as productions of his serious Muse. I do not find that in either class of these attempts he met with any appreciation at the time; it was after the publication of Miles's book in 1894 that his co-religionists began to recognize his possible merits, and their enthusiasm has not perhaps been always wise. It is natural that they should, as some of them openly state they do, prefer the poems that I am rejecting to those which I print; but this edition was undertaken in response to a demand that, both in England and America, has gradually grown up from the genuinely poetic interest felt in the poems which I have gradually introduced to the public:--that interest has been no doubt welcomed and accompanied by the applause of his particular religious associates, but since their purpose is alien to mine I regret that I am unable to indulge it; nor can I put aside the overruling objection that G. M. H. would not have wished these 'little presentation pieces' to be set among his more serious artistic work. I do not think that they would please any one who is likely to be pleased with this book.

1. ST. DOROTHEA. Written when an exhibitioner at Balliol College. Contemporary autograph in A, and another almost identical in H, both undated. Text from A. This poem was afterwards expanded, shedding its relative pro- nouns, to 48 lines divided among three speakers, 'an Angel, the protonotary Theophilus, (and) a Catechumen': the grace and charm of original lost:--there is an auto- graph in A and other copies exist. This was the first of the poems that I saw, and G. M. H. wrote it out for me (in 1866?).

2. HEAVEN HAVEN. Contemporary autograph, on same page with last, in H. Text is from a slightly later autograph undated in A. The different copies vary.

3. HABIT OF PERFECTION. Two autographs in A; the earlier dated Jan. 18, 19, 1866. The second, which is a good deal altered, is apparently of same date as text of No. 2. Text follows this later version. Published in Miles.

4. WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND. Text from B, title from A (see description of B on p. 94). In 'The Spirit of Man' the original first stanza is given from A, and varies; otherwise B was not much corrected. Another transcript, now at St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow, was made by Rev. F. Bacon after A but before the correction of B. This was collated for me by the Rev. Father Geoffrey Bliss, S.J., and gave one true reading. Its variants are distin- guished by G in the notes to the poem.

The labour spent on this great metrical experiment must have served to establish the poet's prosody and perhaps his diction: therefore the poem stands logically as well as chronologically in the front of his book, like a great dragon folded in the gate to forbid all entrance, and confident in his strength from past success. This editor advises the reader to circumvent him and attack him later in the rear; for he was himself shamefully worsted in a brave frontal assault, the more easily perhaps because both subject and treatment were distasteful to him. A good method of approach is to read stanza 16 aloud to a chance company. To the metrist and rhythmist the poem will be of interest from the first, and throughout.

Stanza iv. 1. 7. Father Bliss tells me that the Voel is a mountain not far from St. Beuno's College in N. Wales, where the poem was written: and Dr. Henry Bradley that _moel_ is primarily an adj. meaning _bald_: it becomes a fem, subst. meaning _bare hill_, and preceded by the article _y_ becomes _voel_, in modern Welsh spelt _foel_. This accounts for its being written without initial capital, the word being used genetically; and the meaning, obscured by _roped_, is that the well is fed by the trickles of water within the flanks of the mountains.--Both A and B read _planks_ for _flanks_; G gives the correction.

St. xi. 5. Two of the required stresses are on _we dream_.

St. xii. 8. _reeve_, see note on Author's Preface, p. 101.

St. xiv. 8. _these_. G has _there_; but the words between _shock_ and _these_ are probably parenthetical.

St. xvi. 3. Landsmen may not observe the wrongness: see again No. 17, st. ix, and 39, line 10. I would have cor- rected this if the euphony had not accidentally forbidden the simplest correction.

St. xvi. 7. _foam-fleece_ followed by full stop in A and B, by a comma in G.

St. xix. 3. _hawling_ thus spelt in all three.

St. xxi. 2. G omits _the_.

St. xxvi. 5 and 6. The semicolon is autographic correction in B; the stop at _Way_ is uncertain in A and B, is a comma in G.

St. xxix. 3. _night_ (sic).
8. Two of the required stresses are on _Tarpeian_.

St. xxxiv. 8. _shire_. G has _shore_; but _shire_ is doubtless right; it is the special favoured landscape visited by the shower.

5. PENMAEN POOL. Early copy in A. Text, title, and punctu- ation from autograph in B, dated 'Barmouth, Merioneth- shire. Aug. 1876'. But that autograph writes _leisure_ for _pleasure_ in first line; _skulls_ in stanza 2; and in stanza 8, _month_ has a capital initial. Several copies exist, and vary.

St. iii. 2. _Cadair Idris_ is written as a note to _Giant's stool_.

St. viii. 4. Several variants. Two good copies read _dark- some danksome_; but the early copy in A has _darksome darksome_, which B returns to.

St. ix. 3. A has _But praise it_, and two good copies _But honour it_.

6. 'THE SILVER JUBILEE: in honour of the Most Reverend James first Bishop of Shrewsbury. St. Beuno's, Vale of Clwyd. 1876, I think.' A.--Text and title from autograph in B. It was published with somebody's sermon on the same occasion. Another copy in H.

7. 'GOD'S GRANDEUR. Standard rhythm counterpoised.' Two autographs, Feb. 23, 1877; and March 1877; in A.-- Text is from corrections in B. The second version in A has _lightning_ for _shining_ in line 2, explained in a letter of Jan. 4, '83. B returns to original word.

8. 'THE STARLIGHT NIGHT. Feb. 24, '77.' Autograph in A.-- 'Standard rhythm opened and counterpointed. March '77.' A.--Later corrected version 'St. Beuno's, Feb. 77' in B.--Text follows B. The second version in A was published in Miles's book 'Poets and Poetry of the Century'.

9. 'SPRING. (Standard rhythm, opening with sprung leadings), May 1877.' Autograph in A.--Text from corrections in B, but punctuation from A. Was published in Miles's book from incomplete correction of A.

10. 'THE LANTERN. (Standard rhythm, with one sprung lead- ing and one line counterpomted.)' Autograph in A.-- Text, title, and accents in lines 13 and 14, from corrections in B, where it is called 'companion to No. 26, St. Beuno's '77'.

11. 'WALKING BY THE SEA. Standard rhythm, in parts sprung and in others counterpomted, Rhyl, May '77.' A. This version deleted in B, and the revision given in text written in with new title.--G. M. H. was not pleased with this sonnet, and wrote the following explanation of it in a letter '82: '_Rash fresh more_ (it is dreadful to explain these things in cold blood) means a headlong and exciting new snatch of singing, resumption by the lark of his song, which by turns he gives over and takes up again all day long, and this goes on, the sonnet says, through all time, without ever losing its first freshness, being a thing both new and old. _Repair_ means the same thing, renewal, resumption. The _skein_ and _coil_ are the lark's song, which from his height gives the impression of some- thing falling to the earth and not vertically quite but tricklingly or wavingly, something as a skein of silk ribbed by having been tightly wound on a narrow card or a notched holder or as twine or fishing-tackle unwinding from a _reel_ or _winch_ or as pearls strung on a horsehair: the laps or folds are the notes or short measures and bars of them. The same is called a _score_ in the musical sense of score and this score is "writ upon a liquid sky trembling to welcome it", only not horizontally. The lark in wild glee _races the reel round_, paying or dealing out and down the turns of the skein or _coil_ right to the earth _floor_, the ground, where it lies in a heap, as it were, or rather is all wound off on to another winch, reel, bobbin or spool in Fancy's eye, by the moment the bird touches earth and so is ready for a fresh unwinding at the next flight. _Crisp_ means almost _crisped_, namely with notes.'

12 'THE WINDHOVER. (Falling paeonic rhythm, sprung and outriding.)' Two contemporary autographs in A.--Text and dedication from corrected B, dated St. Beuno's, May 30, 1877. In a letter June 22, '79: 'I shall shortly send you an amended copy of The Windhover: the amendment only touches a single line, I think, but as that is the best thing I ever wrote I should like you to have it in its best form.'

13 'PIED BEAUTY. Curtal Sonnet: sprung paeonic rhythm. St. Beuno's, Tremeirchion. Summer '77.' Autograph in A.--B agrees.

14 'HURRAHING IN HARVEST: Sonnet (sprung and outriding rhythm. Take notice that the outriding feet are not to be confused with dactyls or paeons, though sometimes the line might be scanned either way. The strong syllable in an outriding foot has always a great stress and after the outrider follows a short pause. The paeon is easier and more flowing). Vale of Clwyd, Sept. 1, 1877.' Auto- graph in A. Text is from corrected B, punctuation of original A. In a letter '78 he wrote: 'The Hurrahing sonnet was the outcome of half an hour of extreme en- thusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the Elwy.' A also notes 'no counterpoint'.

15 'THE CAGED SKYLARK. (Falling paeonic rhythm, sprung and outriding.)' Autograph in A. Text from corrected B which dates St. Beuno's, 1877. In line 13 B writes _úncúmberèd_.

16. 'IN THE VALLEY OF THE ELWY. (Standard rhythm, sprung and counterpointed.)' Autograph in A. Text is from corrected B, which dates as contemporary with No. 15, adding 'for the companion to this see No.' 35.

17. THE LOSS OF THE EURYDICE. A contemporary copy in A has this note: 'Written in sprung rhythm, the third line has 3 beats, the rest 4. The scanning runs on without break to the end of the stanza, so that each stanza is rather one long line rhymed in passage than four lines with rhymes at the ends.'--B has an autograph of the poem as it came to be corrected ('83 or after), without the above note and dated 'Mount St. Mary, Derbyshire, Apr. '78'.--Text follows B.--The injurious rhymes are partly explained in the old note.

St. 9. _Shorten sail_. The seamanship at fault: but this ex- pression may be glossed by supposing the boatswain to have sounded that call on his whistle.

St. 12. _Cheer's death_, i.e. despair.

St, 14. _It is even seen_. In a letter May 30, '78, he ex- plains: 'You mistake the sense of this as I feared it would be mistaken. I believed Hare to be a brave and con- scientious man, what I say is that _even_ those who seem unconscientious will act the right part at a great push. . . . About _mortholes_ I wince a little.'

St. 26. _A starlight-wender_, i.e. The island was so Marian that the folk supposed the Milky Way was a fingerpost to guide pilgrims to the shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham. _And one_, that is Duns Scotus the champion of the Im- maculate Conception. See Sonnet No. 20.

St. 27. _Well wept_. Grammar is as in 'Well hit! well run!' &c. The meaning 'You do well to weep'.

St. 28. _O Hero savest_. Omission of relative pronoun at its worst. = _O Hero that savest_. The prayer is in a mourner's mouth, who prays that Christ will have saved her hero, and in stanza 29 the grammar triumphs.

18. 'THE MAY MAGNIFICAT. (Sprung rhythm, four stresses in each line of the first couplet, three in each of the second. Stonyhurst, May '78.') Autograph in A.--Text from later autograph in B. He wrote to me: 'A Maypiece in which I see little good but the freedom of the rhythm.' In penult stanza _cuckoo-call_ has its hyphen deleted in B, leaving the words separate.

19. 'BINSEY POPLARS, felled 1879. Oxford, March 1879.' Auto- graph in A. Text from B, which alters four places. l. 8 _weed-winding_: an early draft has _weed-wounden_.

20. 'DUNS SCOTUS'S OXFORD. Oxford, March 1879.' Auto- graph in A. Copy in B agrees but dates 1878.

21. 'HENRY PURCELL. (Alexandrine: six stresses to the line. Oxford, April 1879.)' Autograph in A with argument as printed. Copy in B is uncorrected except that it adds the word _fresh_ in last line.

'"Have fair fallen." _Have_ is the sing, imperative (or optative if you like) of the past, a thing possible and actual both in logic and grammar, but naturally a rare one. As in the 2nd pers. we say "Have done" or in mak- ing appointments "Have had your dinner beforehand", so one can say in the 3rd pers. not only "Fair fall" of what is present or future but also "Have fair fallen" of what is past. The same thought (which plays a great part in my own mind and action) is more clearly expressed in the last stanza but one of the _Eurydice_, where you remarked it.' Letter to R. B., Feb. 3, '83.

'The sestet of the Purcell sonnet is not so clearly worked out as I could wish. The thought is that as the seabird opening his wings with a whiff of wind in your face means the whirr of the motion, but also unaware gives you a whiff of knowledge about his plumage, the marking of which stamps his species, that he does not mean, so Purcell, seemingly intent only on the thought or feeling he is to express or call out, incidentally lets you remark the individualising marks of his own genius.

'_Sake_ is a word I find it convenient to use ... it is the _sake_ of "for the sake of ", _forsake_, _namesake_, _keepsake_. I mean by it the being a thing has outside itself, as a voice by its echo, a face by its reflection, a body by its shadow, a man by his name, fame, or memory, _and also_ that in the thing by virtue of which especially it has this being abroad, and that is something distinctive, marked, speci- fically or individually speaking, as for a voice and echo clearness; for a reflected image light, brightness; for a shadow-casting body bulk; for a man genius, great achievements, amiability, and so on. In this case it is, as the sonnet says, distinctive quality in genius. ... By _moonmarks_ I mean crescent-shaped markings on the quill- feathers, either in the colouring of the feather or made by the overlapping of one on another.' Letter to R. B., May 26, '79.

22. 'PEACE: Oxford, 1879.' Autograph in B, where a comma after _daunting_ is due to following a deletion. _To own my heart_ = _to my own heart_. _Reaving Peace_, i.e. when he reaves or takes Peace away, as No. 35, l. 12. An early draft dated Oct. 2, '79, has _taking_ for _reaving_.

23. 'THE BUGLER'S FIRST COMMUNION. (Sprung rhythm, overrove, an outride between the 3rd and 4th foot of the 4th line in each stanza.) Oxford, July 27,(?) 1879.' A.-- My copy of this in B shows three emendations. First draft exists in H. Text is A with the corrections from B. At nine lines from end, _Though this_, A has _Now this_, and _Now_ is deliberately preferred in H.--B has some un- corrected miscopyings of A. _O for, now, charms of_ A is already a correction in H. I should like a comma at end of first line of 5th stanza and an interjection-mark at end of that stanza.

24. 'MORNING MIDDAY AND EVENING SACRIFICE. Oxford, Aug. '79.' Autograph in A. The first stanza reproduced after p. 70. Copied by me into B, where it received cor- rection. Text follows B except in lines 19 and 20, where the correction reads _What Death half lifts the latch of, What hell hopes soon the snatch of_. And punctuation is not all followed: original has comma after the second _this_ in lines 5 and 6. On June 30, '86, G. M. H. wrote to Canon Dixon, who wished to print the first stanza alone in some anthology, and made _ad hoc_ alterations which I do not follow. The original 17th line was _Silk-ashed but core not cooling_, and was altered because of its obscurity. 'I meant (he wrote) to compare grey hairs to the flakes of silky ash which may be seen round wood embers . . . and covering a core of heat. . . .' _Your offer- ing, with despatch, of_ is said like 'your ticket', 'your reasons', 'your money or your life . . .' It is: 'Come, your offer of all this (the matured mind), and without delay either!'

25. 'ANDROMEDA. Oxford, Aug. 12, '79.' A--which B cor- rects in two places only. Text rejects the first, in line 4 _dragon_ for _dragon's_: but follows B in line 10, where A had _Air, pillowy air_. There is no comma at _barebill_ in any MS., but a gap and sort of caesural mark in A. In a letter Aug. 14, '79, G. M. H. writes: 'I enclose a sonnet on which I invite minute criticism. I endeavoured in it at a more Miltonic plainness and severity than I have any- where else. I cannot say it has turned out severe, still less plain, but it seems almost free from quaintness and in aiming at one excellence I may have hit another.'

26. 'THE CANDLE INDOORS. (Common rhythm, counter- pointed.) Oxford, '79.' A. Text takes corrections of B, which adds 'companion to No.' 10. A has in line 2 _With a yellowy_, and 5 _At that_.

27. 'THE HANDSOME HEART. (Common rhythm counter- pointed.) Oxford, '79.' A1.--In Aug. of the same year he wrote that he was surprised at my liking it, and in deference to my criticism sent a revise, A2.--Subsequently he recast the sonnet mostly in the longer 6-stress lines, and wrote that into B.--In that final version the charm and freshness have disappeared: and his emendation in evading the clash of _ply_ and _reply_ is awkward; also the fourteen lines now contain seven _whats_. I have therefore taken A1 for the text, and have ventured, in line 8, to restore _how to_, in the place of _what_, from the original version which exists in H. In 'The Spirit of Man' I gave a mixture of A1 and A2. In line 5 the word _soul_ is in H and A1: but A2 and B have _heart_. _Father_ in second line was the Rev. Father Gerard himself. He tells the whole story in a letter to me.

28. 'AT A WEDDING. (Sprung rhythm.) Bedford, Lancashire, Oct. 21, '79.' A. Autograph uncorrected in B, but title changed to that in text.

29. 'FELIX RANDAL. (Sonnet: sprung and outriding rhythm; six-foot lines.) Liverpool, Apr. 28, '80.' A. Text from A with the two corrections of B. The comma in line 5 after _impatient_ is omitted in copy in B.

30. 'BROTHERS. (Sprung rhythm; three feet to the line; lines free-ended and not overrove; and reversed or counter- pointed rhythm allowed in the first foot.) Hampstead, Aug. 1880.' Five various drafts exist. A1 and A2 both of Aug. '80. B was copied by me from A1, and author's emendations of it overlook those in A2. Text therefore is from A 2 except that the first seven lines, being rewritten in margin afresh (and confirmed in letter of Ap. '81 to Canon Dixon), as also corrections in lines 15-18, these are taken. But the B corrections of lines 22, 23, almost certainly imply forgetfulness of A^. In last line B has correction _Dearly thou canst be kind_; but the intention of _I'll cry_ was original, and has four MSS. in its favour.

31. 'SPRING AND FALL. (Sprung rhythm.) Lydiate, Lan- cashire, Sept. 7, 1880.' A. Text and title from B, which corrects four lines, and misdates '81. There is also a copy in D, Jan. '81, and see again Apr. 6, '81. In line 2 the last word is _unleafing_ in most of the MSS. An attempt to amend the second rhyme was unsuccessful.

32. 'SPELT FROM SIBYL'S LEAVES. (Sonnet: sprung rhythm: a rest of one stress in the first line.)' Autograph in A-- another later in B, which is taken for text. Date unre- corded, lines 5, 6, _astray_ thus divided to show the rhyme.--6. _throughther_, an adj., now confined to dialect. It is the speech form of _through-other_, in which shape it eludes pursuit in the Oxford dictionary. Dr. Murray compares Ger. _durch einander_. Mr. Craigie tells me that the classical quotation for it is from Burns's 'Halloween', st. 5, _They roar an cry a' throughther_.--line 8. _With_, i.e. I suppose, _with your warning that_, &c.: the heart is speaking. 9. _beak-leaved_ is not hyphened in MS.-- 11. _part, pen, pack_, imperatives of the verbs, in the sense of sorting 'the sheep from the goats'.--12. A has _wrong right_, but the correction to _right wrong_ in B is intentional. 14.--_sheathe-_ in both MSS., but I can only make sense of _sheath-_, i.e. 'sheathless and shelterless'. The accents in this poem are a selection from A and B.

33. 'INVERSNAID. Sept. 28, 1881.' Autograph in H. I have found no other trace of this poem.

34. _As kingfishers_. Text from undated autograph in H, a draft with corrections and variants. In lines 3 and 4 _hung_ and _to fling out broad_ are corrections in same later pencilling as line 5, which occurs only thus with them. In sestet the first three lines have alternatives of regular rhythm, thus:

Then I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace and that keeps all his goings graces;
In God's eye acts, &c.

Of these lines, in 9 and 10 the version given in text is later than the regular lines just quoted, and probably pre- ferred: in l. 11 the alternatives apparently of same date.

35. 'RIBBLESDALE. Stonyhurst, 1882.' Autograph in A. Text from later autograph in B, which adds 'companion to No. 10' (= 16). There is a third autograph in D, June '83 with different punctuation which gives the comma between _to_ and _with_ in line 3. The dash after _man_ is from A and D, both of which quote 'Nam expectatio creaturae ', &c. from Romans viii. 19. In the letter to R. W. D. he writes: '_Louched_ is a coinage of mine, and is to mean much the same as slouched, slouching, and I mean _throng_ for an adjective as we use it in Lancashire'. But _louch_ has ample authority, see the 'English Dialect Dictionary'.

36. 'THE LEADEN ECHO AND THE GOLDEN ECHO. Stony- hurst, Oct. 13, '82.' Autograph in A. Copy of this with autograph corrections dated Hampstead '81 (_sic_) in B.--Text takes all B's corrections, but respects punctuation of A, except that I have added the comma after _God_ in last line of p. 56. For the drama of Winefred, see among posthumous fragments, No. 58. In Nov. 1882 he wrote to me: 'I am somewhat dismayed about that piece and have laid it aside for a while. I cannot satisfy myself about the first line. You must know that words like _charm_ and _enchantment_ will not do: the thought is of beauty as of something that can be physically kept and lost and by physical things only, like keys; then the things must come from the _mundus muliebris_; and thirdly they must not be markedly oldfashioned. You will sec that this limits the choice of words very much indeed. However I shall make some changes. _Back_ is not pretty, but it gives that feeling of physical constraint which I want.' And in Oct. '86 to R. W. D., 'I never did anything more musical'.

37. 'MARY MOTHER OF DIVINE GRACE COMPARED TO THE AIR WE BREATHE. Stonyhurst, May '83.' Autograph in A.--Text and title from later autograph in B. Taken by Dean Beeching into 'A Book of Christmas Verse' 1895 and thence, incorrectly, by Orby Shipley in 'Carmina Mariana'. Stated in a letter to R. W. D. June 25, '83, to have been written to 'hang up among the verse com- positions in the tongues. ... I did a piece in the same metre as _Blue in the mists all day_.' Note Chaucer's account of the physical properties of the air, 'House of Fame', ii. 256, seq.

38. 'To WHAT SERVES MORTAL BEAUTY? (Common rhythm highly stressed: sonnet.) Aug. 23, '85.' Autograph in A.--Another autograph in B with a few variants from which A was chosen, the deletion of alternatives incom- plete. Thirdly a copy sent to R. W. D., apparently later than A, but with errors of copy. The text given is guided by this version in D, and _needs_ in line 9 is substituted there for the _once_ in A and B, probably because of _once_ in line 6.--Original draft exists in H, on same page with 39 and 40. The following is his signature at this date:

Your affectionate friend Gerard M. Hopkins S.J. May 29 1885

Transcriber's note: This signature and date is displayed as a handwritten image in the original.

39. SOLDIER. 'Clongower, Aug. 1885.' Autograph in H, with a few corrections which I have taken for lines 6 and 7, of which the first draft runs:

It fancies; it deems; dears the artist after his art;
So feigns it finds as, &c.

The MS. marks the caesural place in ten of the lines in line 2, between _Both_ and _these_. l 3, at the full stop. l. 6, _fancies_, _feigns_, _deems_, take three stresses. l. 11, after _man_. In line 7 I have added a comma at _smart_. In l. 10 I have substituted _handle_ for _reave_ of MS.: see note on _reave_, p. 101; and in l. 13, have hyphened _God made flesh_. No title in MS.

40. CARRION COMFORT. Autograph in H, in three versions. 1st, deleted draft. 2nd, a complete version, both on same page with 38 and 39. 3rd, with 41 on another sheet, final (?) revision carried only to end of 1. 12 (two detached lines on reverse). Text is this last with last two lines from the 2nd version. Date must be 1885, and this is probably the sonnet 'written in blood', of which he wrote in May of that year.--I have added the title and the hyphen in _heaven-handling_.

41. _No worst_. Autograph in H, on same page as third draft of 40. One undated draft with corrections embodied in the text here.--l. 5, at end are some marks which look like a hyphen and a comma: no title.