VFrom MS. 18 a, the note-book containing MS. D of "The Ruined Cottage" etc. (v. p. 404)

• Editor’s Notei
•    There are who tell us that in recent times
• We have been great discoverers, that by dint
• Of nice experience we have lately given
• To education principles as fixed
• And plain as those of a mechanic trade;
• Fair books and pure have been composed, that act
• Upon the infant mind as does the sun
• Upon a flower. In the corrected scheme
• Of modern days all error is block'd out
• So jealously, that wisdom thrives apace,
• And in our very boyhood we become
• Familiar friends with cause and consequence.
• Great feats have been performed, a smooth high-way,
• So they assert, has lately overbridged
• The random chaos of futurity,
• Hence all our steps are firm, and we are made
• Strong in the power of knowledge. Ample cause
• Why we, now living in this happy age,
• Should bless ourselves. For, briefly, 'tis maintained
• We now have rules and theories so precise
• That by the inspection of unwearied eyes
• We can secure infallible results.
• But if the shepherd to his flock should point
• The herb which each should feed on, were it not
• pg 346Service redundant and ridiculous?
• And they, the tutors of our youth, our guides
• And Masters, Wardens of our faculties,
• And stewards of our labour, watchful men
• And skilful in the usury of time,
• Sages who in their prescience would coerce
• All accidents, and tracing in their map
• The way we ought to tread, would chain us down
• Like engines, etc. as Prelude (1805), V. 383–8.
• My playmates! brothers! nurs'd by the same years,
• And fellow-children of the self-same hills,
• Though we are moulded now by various fates
• To various characters, I do not think
• That there is one of us who cannot tell
• How manifold the expedients, how intense
• The unwearied passion with which nature toils
• To win us to herself, and to impress
• Our careless hearts with beauty and with love.
• There was a Boy etc. as Prelude (1805), V. 389 et seq.

• ii Fragment with heading "Redundance"
•                            Not the more
• Failed I to lengthen out my watch. I stood
• Within the area of the frozen vale,
• Mine eye subdued and quiet as the ear
• Of one that listens, for even yet the scene,
• Its fluctuating hues and surfaces,
• And the decaying vestiges of forms,
• Did to the dispossessing power of night
• Impart a feeble visionary sense
• Of movement and creation doubly felt