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THE

COURSE OF TIME.

BY

ROBERT POLLOK, A. M.

WITH

CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS OF VARIOUS AUTHORS ON THE
GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF THE POET,

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES,

AND

NOTES, CRITICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE,

BY

JAMES R. BOYD,

EDITOR OF MIITON, THOMSON, COWPER, AND YOUNG,
WITH NOTES, ETC.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY A. S. BARNES & CO.,

No. 51 JOHN-STREET.

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
50*12

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854,

BY A. S. BARNES & CO.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.

CONCERNING the poetical excellence of the work before us, critics have expressed diverse, and even quite opposite opinions: some, rather unwisely, both for themselves and for the gifted author, have ranked it with "Paradise Lost"-the production of one of the maturest, most classical, and most opulent of modern minds; while others, no less unwisely and unfairly, have seemed to take a strange satisfaction in depreciating it, perhaps on this very account, far below its just rank in the literary scale. All admit, however, that it abounds in passages of uncommon excellence, both of matter and style, sufficient to commend the work, in its entireness, to continued popular favor and esteem.

That it has enjoyed, from its first publication to the present day, a most remarkable popularity, will be denied by none; that it deserves to retain it on account of its intrinsic worth-for the value of its thoughts, for the grandeur and comprehensiveness of its range of topics, and for the numberless poetic beauties which adorn its pages-we fully believe; and to render it, if possible, somewhat more attractive and useful to the popular and youthful mind, it is now first published with the impor tant accompaniment of Critical Observations, selected from respectable Reviews, and also with explanatory

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