Page:Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918.djvu/118

Rh 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.

The latest autographs and autographic corrections have been preferred. In the very few instances in which this Method principle was overruled, as in Nos. 1 and 27, the justification 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'.

This edition purports to convey all the author's serious mature poems; and he would probably not have wished any Selection of his earlier poems nor so many of 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.

Of the peculiar scheme of prosody invented and developed by the author a full account is out of the question. His Author's prosody 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