Project Gutenberg Etext
Project Gutenberg Book of English Verse
TO
THE PRESIDENT
FELLOWS AND SCHOLARS
OF
TRINITY COLLEGE OXFORD
A HOUSE OF LEARNING
ANCIENT LIBERAL HUMANE
AND MY MOST KINDLY NURSE
PREFACE
FOR this Anthology I have tried to range over the whole field of
English Verse from the beginning, or from the Thirteenth Century
to this closing year of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best.
Nor have I sought in these Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse
has followed the tongue which among living tongues she most
delights to honour. To bring home and render so great a spoil
compendiously has been my capital difficulty. It is for the reader
to judge if I have so managed it as to serve those who already
love poetry and to implant that love in some young minds not yet
initiated.
My scheme is simple. I have arranged the poets as nearly as
possible in order of birth, with such groupings of anonymous
pieces as seemed convenient. For convenience, too, as well as to
avoid a dispute-royal, I have gathered the most of the Ballads
into the middle of the Seventeenth Century; where they fill a
languid interval between two winds of inspiration--the Italian
dying down with Milton and the French following at the heels of
the restored Royalists. For convenience, again, I have set myself
certain rules of spelling. In the very earliest poems inflection
and spelling are structural, and to modernize is to destroy. But
as old inflections fade into modern the old spelling becomes less
and less vital, and has been brought (not, I hope, too abruptly)
into line with that sanctioned by use and familiar. To do this
seemed wiser than to discourage many readers for the sake of
diverting others by a scent of ...
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