Although it was reprinted from the second edition, there were numerous omissions of words, changes in the spelling, and other alterations of little importance.
In the present edition of the "Poems," the spelling and punctuation, and even the typographical mistakes, of the second edition have been retained. The headings to the pages are new, and the catch-words have been omitted. The paging of that edition is preserved in brackets in the margin. The corrections in the second edition were extensive. The spelling was, as a rule, modernized; although some words, especially proper names, have an older or more incorrect form of spelling in that than in the first edition. Grammatical mistakes were corrected; capitals were omitted from common nouns which had them in the first; the punctuation was improved; and a great many words, enclosed in brackets in the first edition, were without them in the second edition. But no rule is uniformly adhered to in any of these particulars. There is, in both editions, as Charles Lamb's old friend said of a black-letter text of Chaucer, "a deal of very indifferent spelling." A proper name is sometimes, on the same page, spelt in two different ways. I have marked the most important alterations in foot-notes. Mere transpositions of words, changes in punctuation and in the spelling of words other than proper names, and trifling corrections, not materially affecting the sense of a passage, have not been noted. I hope that I have let nothing pass which would have been of interest to any reader.
Some of these alterations may have been made by the publishers, after the author's death. In order to have shown all the changes, it would have been necessary to
