narrative structure which were too long to be given complete, such as Paradise Lost or Marmion, had to be reluctantly omitted. Our literature is so rich in poetry that the chief perplexity which confronts the compiler of an English anthology is not what to put in, but what to leave out. In the present instance my task has been greatly simplified by the distinct object I had in view. That object was to provide a general introduction to the study of English poetry, and I felt that this end. could be gained only by complying as far as possible with two distinct and sometimes conflicting requirements-that of individual excellence and of historic importance. The poems selected must have an intrinsic interest or beauty, and they must have also an independent value as illustrations of the history of English poetry, or as examples of the various poetic forms. As my primary object was not simply to bring together the poems that I personally admired, I have invariably preferred to follow the settled judgment of time rather than my individual preference. As a rule, however, my personal liking has been in accord with this general judgment, and I have been persuaded that the opinion which has been held by successive generations of critics and readers is, in a large majority of cases, the right one. Certain poems (such as "Go, Lovely Rose" or "Shall I wasting in despair") have come to be generally accepted as representative, and the probabilities are that in such cases we may look in vain through the works of their authors for anything that will repre sent them better. But even if this were not the case, the taste of an individual ought not to take precedence of the general verdict in a selection of this character; such poems should still be included, because by common consent they are poems with which every fairly cultivated person is expected to be familiar. So far, therefore, from hesitating to include a poem because it was famous and popular, its assured place in the literature has been a powerful argument for its admission. I could not, of course, give all the poems which a person of average cultivation should know, but I have at least tried to give nothing but those poems which are, or ought to be, indispensable. The first requirement-that each poem should have an independent, intrinsic value-had to be reconciled with the second-that the poems should have a value as a whole by virtue of their historic continuity or their representative character. In some cases choice became a compromise between the conflicting claims of these two requirements, and a work of superior intrinsic merit had to be excluded, because it threw the book out of proportion, or because it had to make way for some work inferior in purely poetic value, but indispensable from the historic point of view. On the same principle the best example of an inferior class of verse might present claims for admission that could not be safely ignored. My endeavor has been to make the book useful to the student of poetry not only by a chronological arrangement, but also by an intelligent division and grouping of the poems. The strongly marked historic periods are indicated by the main divisions of the book: within these divisions the selections have been grouped under the various authors of the period or under an especial poetic form, as the case seemed to require. So far as this arrangement allowed, the selections are given in their chronological order as nearly as it could be ascertained. The historical side. has also been emphasized by giving with the text of each poem the name and dates of its author, and the date, or approximate date, of its composition or first publication, with the name, in the latter case, of the book in which it first appeared. This has been supplemented by briefly indicating in the notes the general relation which the poem and its auther hold to literary history. Formal biography has been kept within the briefest limits or dispensed with altogether, as the outward events of an author's life can be readily found elsewhere, and as there was no space for anything beyond the driest summary. In a few cases, where I had treated the matter in my Introduction to English Literature, I have referred to what I had already said rather than repeat it in an abbreviated form. In the annotations I have tried to give such help as an average reader would be likely to require. The ideal note-maker-if there be any such-avoids no difficulty on the one hand, and intrudes nothing irrelevant or superfluous on the other, but I am fully sensible that to do this is to steer an almost impossible course. Frankly, while I regard notes as a necessity |