The Golden Treasury

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ORIGINÁL PREFACE By F. T. PALGRAVE This little Collection differs, it is believed, from others in the attempt made to include in it all the best originál Lvrical pieces and Songs in our language, by writers not living-and none beside the best. Many familiar verses will hence be met with; many alsó which should be familiar :-the Editor will regard as his fittest readers those who love Poetry so well, that he can offer them nothing not already known and valued. For those who take up the book in a serious and scholarly spirit, the following remarks on the plan and the execution are added. The Editor is acquainted with no strict and exhaustive definition of Lyrical Poetry; but he has found the task of practical decision increase in clearness and in facility as he advanced with the work, whilst keeping in view a few simple principles. Lyrical has been here held essentially to imply that each Poem shall turn on somé single thought, feeling, or situation. In accordance with this, narrative, descriptive, and didactic poems-unless accompanied by rapidity of movement, brevity, and the colouring of humán passión-have been excluded. Hurnorous poetry, except in the very unfrequent instances whére a truly poeticái tone pervades the whole, with what is strictly personal, occasional, and religious, has been considered foreign to the idea of the book. Blank verse and the ten-syllable couplet, with all pieces markedly dramatic, have been rejected as alien from what is commonly understood by Song, and rarefy conforming to Lyrical conditions in treatment. But it is not anticipated, nor is it possible, that all readers shall think the line accurately drawn. Somé poems, as Gray's Elegy, the Allegro and Penseroso, Wordsworth's Ruth or Campbell's Lord Ullin, might be claimed with perhaps equal justice for a narrative or descriptive selection : whilst with reference especialiy to Ballads and ionnets, the Editor can only state that he has taken his Utr^t pa*ns.to decidé without caprice or partiality. lhis alsó is all he can plead in regard to a point even more liable to question;-what degree of merit should 5 Vissza