Double‐letter (MS V)—See Editorial and Encoding Rationale and Methodology: Element, Attribute, and Value Usage—Handwriting and Special Characters; see also The Ruskin Family Handwriting: Ruskinʼs Handwriting—Early Print Lettering in Pencil.

“Thus” (Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—In MS II and MS V, the word is clearly “Then” (and retained as such in the Spiritual Times version), but the word was read as “Thus” by Collingwood, working from MS II. Collingwoodʼs reading was adopted by Cook and Wedderburn, although they ostensibly used as copytext MS V (i.e., “Battle of Waterloo, A Play, in Two Acts, with Other Small Poems, Dedicated to His Father”), which was unavailable to Collingwood.

“vain” (Poems [1891])—Collingwood is the sole editor to read this word as “vain”, a reasonable interpretation of the letters formed by the awkward cursive hand in MS II. In the MS V fair copy, which was unavailable to Collingwood, the word used is unquestionably “fair”—and indeed, in context, that choice is more consistent with the “fancyʼs play” that follows in subsequent lines. Ruskin rarely altered his initial word choices in fair copy, but it is possible that he did write “vain” initially, and then substituted the more logical “fair”.

“for tresses” (MS II)—Intended as a single word, fortresses, although divided here without a hyphen. Fair‐copied as a single word in “On Skiddaw and Derwent Water”, contained in MS V.

Pause‐period (MS II)—See Editorial and Encoding Rationale and Methodology: Element, Attribute, and Value Usage—Commas, Periods, and Other Punctuation.

Pause‐period (MS II; MS V)—In MS II, a pause period (see Editorial and Encoding Rationale and Methodology: Element, Attribute, and Value Usage—Commas, Periods, and Other Punctuation). In MS V, extra space indicates a terminus or pause, and the following phrase is capitalized. In the Library Edition transcription, Cook and Wedderburn supply a period.

“and towers battlements and all appear. / chasing the other off and in their turn / are chased by the others” (MS II; MS V; Spiritual Times; Bookman; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—In fair copy (MS V) of the second line, Ruskin maintained singular case “the other” from the draft, but altered “the other” to “each other” (“And towers battlements and all appear / Chasing each other off and in their turn / Are chased by the others”). For the Spiritual Times, the second line was retained from Ruskinʼs fair copy, but otherwise the lines were considerably revised. The illusory fortresses in the clouds are elaborated with additional military spectacle, and then the figure of cloud watching launches a new simile comparing the actions of an “urchin boy” (“Towers, banners, spears, and battlements appear, / Chasing each other off; and in their turn / Are vanquished too, dissolving like the mould / Thatʼs trampled by the foot of urchin boy”).

Collingwood—although following MS II, and not Ruskinʼs alteration in the fair copy—smoothes the grammar by changing the case to plural in the second line (“And towers, and battlements, and all appear / Chasing the others off, and in their turn / Are chasèd by the others”). In an example of Cook and Wedderburnʼs tendency to be influenced by Collingwoodʼs version, the editors fold this grammatical correction (“the others”) into their transcription of the Spiritual Times version, even though the latter adheres to Ruskinʼs fair‐copy “each other” (“Towers, banners, spears and battlements appear / Chasing the others off; and in their turn / Are vanquished too . . .”). (In their transcription of the MS V version, Cook and Wedderburn do follow Ruskinʼs fair‐copy choice, “each other”, faithfully.) The Bookman version transcribes this passage in the Spiritual Times copytext accurately (“each other”), without inserting the alteration originating in Collingwoodʼs text.

“But enough . . . skiddaw come” (MS II; MS V; Spiritual Times; Bookman; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—In Collingwoodʼs version, “Skiddaw”, although based on the MS II draft, the editor omits its transitional clause, “But enough / Ive treated of the clouds”; instead, he retains the end of the original line, but changes the verb tense—from the imperative, “skiddaw come”, to the indicative, “Skiddaw came”—and he runs this phrase into Ruskinʼs following line of MS II, “noble and grand and beutious clothed with green” (“Skiddaw came, / Noble, and grand, and beauteous, clothed with green”). While the omission was obviously Collingwoodʼs choice, it is possible that, working solely from MS II, he misread “come” as “came”.

In the MS V fair copy, Ruskin retained the transition as originally composed (as rendered also in the Library Edition transcription based on MS V). The Spiritual Times version, however, eliminates not only the transition but also the imperative (another invocation to the mountain occurs, after all, only seven lines later in Ruskinʼs original version). Instead, this version elides the speakerʼs cloud watching with a simile about the playful actions of the “urchin boy!” (see the textual gloss on “straggling . . . cliff”, below).

“and yet but scantily and in some parts” (MS II; MS V; Poems [1891])—The punctuation lacking in MS II is supplied in MS V: “yet but scantily. And in some parts”. This fair copy being unavailable to him, Collingwood misplaced the full stop, placing it at the line break: “And yet but scantily and in some parts.”

“straggling . . . cliff” (MS II; MS V; Spiritual Times; Bookman; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—The pencil draft of line 20 in MS II is barely legible, and the grammar strained, as the speaker changes perspective to lean into this detail: the “root” in line 19 is “straggling” in line 20 “as it push its branches from the cliff”. The revision overwritten in ink—the two lines, “a straggler. there as tho grow with stone for earth / and bare and scraggy as befit the cliff”—is scarcely clearer in its grammar, but one understands that Ruskin was shifting from the energy of “push” to the picturesque aspect of scragginess. Later in the draft, at line 37 (in the Derwent Water section of the poem), Ruskin returned to the overwritten line, recovering its energy in a more coherent version of the image: “A stragller pushes forth its branches stiff”.

In the fair‐copy poem (MS V), lines 20–21 present a clearer version of the two lines overwritten in ink in MS II: the “root” in line 19 of the draft has become a “bush”, described as “A straggler with its roots fixed in the stone / And bare and scraggy as befits the soil”. The draftʼs second occurence of the “straggler”—the line, “A stragller pushes forth its branches stiff”—no longer appears in the Derwent Water section or anywhere else in the fair copy. It is possible, therefore, that the lines overwritten in ink atop lines 20–21 of MS II represent Ruskin returning to revise this passage, after he composed line 37, “A stragller pushes forth its branches stiff”.

This possibility underpinned Collingwoodʼs interpretation: “line 19 of ‘Skiddaw’ in its final state [i.e., the state of text as prepared by Collingwood, “Skiddaw”] occurs among the lines of ‘Derwentwater’”; and so he followed what he believed to be evidence of “the authorʼs own after-thoughts” in MS II, unaware that Ruskin had omitted the line altogether in the MS V fair copy (Poems [4^o, 1891], 1:269, and Poems [8^o, 1891], 1:270). In brief, Collingwood retained Ruskinʼs initial pencil draft of lines 20–21 in MS II, rejecting the ink overwritten lines in favor of the version of the image at line 37: “A bare, terrific cliff precipitous / Descends, with only here and there a root, / A straggler, pushing forth its branches stiff”.

Collingwoodʼs interpretation does not appear in the Library Edition, since Cook and Wedderburn ignored his editing of the MS II draft, deeming it superceded by the MS V fair copy. In the revision made for the Spiritual Times, however, Ruskinʼs ideas seem adopted from both draft and fair copy. The word “straggler” does not appear at all, but the original image of tenacity (“a bush” or “root” “fixed” to the “bare terrific cliff preciptate”, surviving “in the stone / And bare and scraggy as befits the soil”) is developed as part of a simile that connects this image with the preceding observation of changing cloud shapes. In this revised version, the “dissolving” shapes of the clouds are like the friable “mould” that is loosened by a mischievous “urchin boy”, who tramples the soil that had been “bound” by the “roots tenacious”. The idea of the pushing branches seems also present, suggested by the image of a root that, in the figurative sense of a “spoiler” (i.e., despoiler), invades the hidden eagle nest. The pushing, however, has now become clandestine.

“a giant‐natureʼs work” (Works [1903])—The article a is used only in the Library Edition.

“and forms a white tomb for the careless swain” (MS II; MS V; Spiritual Times; Bookman; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—“and forms a white tomb for the careless swain” in MS II, Poems (1891); revised as “And form a frail memorial for the swain”, MS V, Works (1903) transcription of MS V; revised as “A mausoleum for the careless swain“, Spiritual Times, Bookman (where uniquely “Mausoleum” is capitalized), Works (1903) transcription of Spiritual Times. Notably, in the latter version, the retrieval of “careless“, which was omitted in fair copy, MS V, indicates a return to the draft, MS II, during the revision process for Spiritual Times.

In MS II, the verb tense is governed by the noun “snow” in “the snow / the fleecy locks of winter falls around / and forms”. In revision for MS V, the verb tense is governed by the appositional phrase, “the fleecy locks of winter”, which “fall” and “form”. In Poems (1891), based on MS II, Collingwood resolved the ambiguity by enclosing the appositional phrase in parentheses: “the snow / (The fleecy locks of winter) falls around / And forms”. The Spiritual Times adopts the solution in MS V, but the second verb was eliminated by making “memorial” another apposition: “the snow / The fleecy locks of winter fall around, / A mausoleum for the careless swain”. In their version of the Spiritual Times text, Cook and Wedderburn continued to address the problem by inserting, like Collingwood, editorial punctuation, in this case an em‐dash: “the snow— / The fleecy locks of winter fall around, / A mausoleum for the careless swain”.

“Play . . . arretez” (MS II)—The text of the poem is interrupted by a fragment of text, “Play”, which could be interpreted as a metamark, a commentary on the act of composition of the poem, although forming no part of the text of the poem (see Editorial and Encoding Rationale and Methodology: Element, Attribute, and Value Usage—Metamarks). Since the word “Play” is capitalized and roughly centered at the top of a page, however, the word can also be interpreted, and perhaps more persuasively, as a title. As such, it may represent Ruskinʼs first attempt at composing what became “Battle of Waterloo, A Play, in Two Acts”. The solitary and deleted line below the title is not attributed to a speaker, and it does not appear in the Waterloo play as fair‐copied; however, the line might represent a start on dialogue spoken by one of the French characters in the play. The fair copy of the play appears along with the fair copy of the poem, “On Skiddaw and Derwent Water”, in the handmade pamphlet, “Battle of Waterloo, A Play, in Two Acts, with Other Small Poems, Dedicated to His Father”. See “On Skiddaw and Derwent Water”: Composition and Publication.

“For less” (MS II)—It appears that a different hand than Ruskinʼs, using a darker ink than Ruskin did for his overwriting in the draft, scored through “lower” and substituted “For less” above the line, and also scored through “pyrenees / are”. While the insertion is too brief to draw a definitive conclusion, the capital letter in “For” is formed in John Jamesʼs manner. Since these deletions and substitution are not reflected in the MS V fair copy, one can infer that the revision postdated that version; and while the line as published in the Spiritual Times version of “On Skiddaw and Derwent‐Water” is not identical to the line as revised in MS II, its variant mirrors that revision closely enough (“Though less”, rather than “For less”) to argue that this scribal intervention in MS II represents the stage of revising the poem for publication.

“but no more . . . happy day” (MS II; MS V; Spiritual Times; Bookman; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—In his version, “Skiddaw”, although based on the MS II draft, Collingwood omits Ruskinʼs reference to his fatherʼs birthday, “but no more . . . / on this sad subject on this happy day”. The omission is in keeping with the policy that, as Collingwood remarks concerning another birthday ode, “Birthday Addresses usually need lopping to be presentable as ‘poems’” (Poems [4^o, 1891], 1:269; Poems [8^o, 1891], 1:270). In the MS V fair copy (and in the Library Edition transcription based on it), Ruskin of course retained this indicator of the poemʼs original purpose and occasion. The Spiritual Times version, in keeping with its religious program, wholly replaces the “happy day” with lines on the dreadful Day of Judgment.

“Now Derwentwater comes” (Bookman)—Indicative verb, rather than imperative, used only in Bookman.

“Hollo papa . . . you” and text of sermon notes on “christs intercession” (MS II)—Again, Ruskin interrupted composition of his poem to scribble fragments of other works. First, what appears to be the salutation of a letter to his father, “Hollo papa”, closely resembles the beginning of a 13 February 1829 letter (see Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 174). This fragment is followed by the text of brief notes on a sermon, Sermon Notes [“christs intercession”].

“skiddaw derwent water” (MS II)—The phrase is not part of the poem but a metadiscursive signal that Ruskin here resumes the text of the poem, having interrupted composition to inscribe two other texts on the preceding verso.

“Now Derwentwater come!—a looking glass” (Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—In the Library Edition version based on the Spiritual Times text, the editors depart from that copytext to insert a stanza break where Collingwood divides the text into two poems, and they follow Collingwoodʼs punctuation in this first line of the new stanza (although not his spelling of the proper name).

“all” (MS II)—While the word can be read as an adverbial intensifier (i.e., “all as in”), it is superfluous to the meter of the lines preceding and following it, and its position at the left margin suggests neither a runover of the preceding line nor an addition to the start of the following line. The word may be a relic of an abandoned line.

Runover lines (MS II)—Although Ruskinʼs scrawl across the full width of the page suggests four separate lines—“so upon thee there is / a seeming mount / a seeming tree a / seeming rivulet”—the meter is satisfied by treating the second and fourth as runover lines.

“And when heʼs made it knocks it down again” (MS II; MS V; Spiritual Times; Bookman; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Ruskin confirmed his use of “it” twice in the object position by fair‐copying the MS II line without alteration in MS V, and Collingwood let the line stand (except by adding punctuation) in his version based on MS II. In the Spiritual Times version, the first “it” is omitted; rather than a mere error, however, the omission is supported by other alterations in the line that shift the referent of the first “he” from the boy to the snowman: “And when heʼs made, he strikes it into ruin” (i.e., “And when [the snowman]ʼs made, [the boy] strikes it into ruin”).

Nicoll transcribed the line from the Spiritual Times accurately for the Bookman. Cook and Wedderburn, however, reinserted Ruskinʼs first “it” into the Spiritual Times version of the line: “Ane when heʼs made it, he strikes it into ruin”. Thus, they shifted the referent of both instances of “he” back to the boy, while making the referent of the instances of “it” (now, again, two instances, as in Ruskinʼs original) refer to the snowman.

“first seeming to be calm then turning rough / . . . / and thus deceiving as penelope” (MS II; Poems [1891])—This final couplet of the strophe in draft was eliminated in fair copy, presumably because it is redundant. Collingwood retained the couplet, since Ruskin clearly preferred it over the lines he deleted to end the stophe.

“love” (Spiritual Times; Bookman)—In “Lines Written at the Lakes in Cumberland | Derwentwater”, “love” replaces “like” found in draft and fair copy.

“Which . . . doth fall” (MS II; MS V; Spiritual Times; Bookman; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—As originally conceived, the line probably read: “Which from thy highest mountain falls”, which was octosyllabic, but provided an imperfect rhyme of “falls” for “call” in the following line. Ruskin therefore revised the line to the version found in the fair copy, “Which from thy mountain head doth fall”, which is also correctly octosyllabic, but the line appears confused in the draft. Ruskin deleted “highest” and substituted “head” above, appearing to create the nonsense phrase, “head mountain”, but in fact intending “head” to follow “mountain” as an above‐the‐line runover, forming “mountain head”. Finally, at the end of the line, he deleted the s on “falls” and squeezed “doth” in front of “fall”.

In Spiritual Times version of the conclusion, “Lines Written at the Lakes in Cumberland | Derwentwater”, “mountain head” is altered to “rocky head”.

“While from Helvellyn thunders break” (Spiritual Times; Bookman)—In “Lines Written at the Lakes in Cumberland | Derwentwater”, the line is thus altered from draft and fair copy (“While on Helvellyn thunder roars”).

“from old” (MS II; MS V; Spiritual Times; Bookman; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—In MS II draft, “from old”; in MS V fair copy, “by all”. In the Spiritual Times version of the conclusion, “Lines Written at the Lakes in Cumberland | Derwentwater”, the phrase “from old” is adopted from the draft, but the end‐rhyme word is altered: “Re‐echoed from Old Derwentʼs lake”.

“And while” (Poems [1891])—In draft and fair copy, the line begins “And where”. Collingwood altered to “And while”, perhpas accidentally, but likely preferring a parallel to “While on Helvellyn” two lines above.

“And where the lightningʼs flaming dart, / . . . / Can never satiate the grasping soul!” (Spiritual Times; Bookman)—In the most radical departure from Ruskinʼs draft and fair copy, the Spiritual Times version of the conclusion, “Lines Written at the Lakes in Cumberland | Derwentwater”, transforms the original closing couplet from the picturesque mode to the visionary, and also adds a new closing couplet, which ends the poem with a statement of otherworldly piety. See “On Skiddaw and Derwent Water”: Revision and First Publication.