One is that he bequeathed to us the result of his labours in a shape too cumbrous for popularity. Were he living to-day, he would find that brevity is as necessary to success as boldness. We are a generation intolerant of prolixity; we have condensed and curtailed the works of our best authors as we clip our terriers' ears and shorten their tails in a vain-glorious effort to improve on nature's perfectness: we have expurgated editions of Shakespeare: we have (O shade of Richardson forgive us) reduced Clarissa to a three-volume edition! The base treatment long suffered by that matchless heroine has culminated in the indignity offered her by an impatient and unappreciative age, and the "divine Clarissa" reposes on railway book-stalls between a treatise on Turf frauds and an essay on "The Horse, and how to

hold him."

If, like the Spirit in Lord Lytton's beautiful fable, Richardson could revisit earth, and witness the alteration in all he held most precious, he would probably sympathise with the unhappy Ida in thinking lightly of any added penance after such a glimpse of changed mortality.

In another case, we have carried our audacity to the extent of abridging the words of Holy Writ. It is difficult to understand why the Book which has helped to fashion so many noble ages, should be subjected to the indignity of expurgation. Are our children to be taught a one-sided truth; to be shewn the good, but be blinded to the evil; be told of the garden, but not warned of the serpent ? "Give chastity its head," says Sterne, and it "becomes a ramping and a roaring lion." Give the desire of abbreviation no check, and the finest written works in our language will be sacrificed to a mania for portable convenience.

It is probable, however, that the failure of Mr. Dodsley's and of many contemporaneous works of a similar description need not be wholly ascribed to prolixity. There are poems included in such collections, (and among these we find the fluent elegance of Gray, the sonorous wealth of Johnson's diction, and the chaste tenderness of Lyttelton), which are a grace to our language, and a pleasure to all who possess refined minds. But with these and some few other exceptions, the volumes are ordinarily encumbered with a mass of inferior matter.

Dulness and affectation were the besetting sins of the poets of the last century. Delighting in ornate metaphors and high-sounding tropes, they appeared to be ignorant of the power of simple expression; their love verses especially were pervaded with a tone of sickly unreality. These are generally replete with irrelevant allusions to the Muses and Parnassus ; or feigning an air of pastoral simplicity, the poet invokes his unkind mistress as Phyllis, and terms himself Damon. With Arcadian names for his heroes and heroines, and a few references to hills, valleys, and shepherds' crooks, he gives a Dresden china representation of nature, which bears as little resemblance to the truth as a feeble-faced doll does to the vivid life of the human countenance.

The amatory poems of to-day err in the opposite direction. Realistic to a fault, they treat eloquently of the darker phases of the passion of love, and with these the pastoral is superseded by the sensual. It is pleasant to reflect that this generation can boast of at least one great poet who knows the value of restrained power; who never forgets, " in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion, to acquire and beget a temperance that may give it

smoothness," and who, possessing an exquisite ear for the harmony of diction, does not permit elegance to degenerate into a mere succession of musical sounds.

The Publishers have done their best to ensure one element of popularity for this little book by issuing it in a convenient and attractive form. But notwithstanding its miniature size, it contains (with a few specified exceptions) extracts from the works of nearly every poet of note who has written in our language since the days of Byron.

The extracts have been selected with great care ; and if the tone of them is more often pathetic than gay, it is because I have thought, that while many volumes of selection have lately been made in which domestic themes and vers de société preponderate, it is more rare to meet with compilations from those graver utterances of the poet's mind in which are contained the grandest and most subtle phases of his genius.

am much indebted to Lord Lytton, Mr. R. Browning, Mr. R. Lytton, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. George Meredith, Mr. Procter, Mr. Tennyson, (and the other living authors who have permitted me to

quote from their works), for the prompt courtesy with which they acknowledged and acceded to my request.

I am also greatly obliged to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, Mr. Ellis, Mr. R. Bentley, Mr. Macmillan, and Messrs. Bell and Daldy, for having kindly allowed me to make extracts from the poems of Mrs. Browning, Mr. Morris, Mr. Barham, Miss Rossetti, and Miss Adelaide Procter.

I regret that circumstances on which it is unnecessary to enlarge cause Mr. Swinburne to decline to allow me to insert in this volume any of the beauties of "Atalanta in Calydon."

I may as well state that I was willing to include in the collection two stanzas of Miss Jean Ingelow's ("When Sparrows build"), and one, if not more, of Mrs. Norton's graceful little poems; but in the former case the authoress objected, while from the last-named lady I have not been able to obtain a reply to my application.

I am content, however, that the living poets of my own sex should be represented by Miss Christina Rossetti, who has permitted me to insert here one or two exquisite little poems, which, in