REESE PREFACE. THIS book is made up of English lyrics which fall between the years 1625 and 1700. The first quarter of the seventeenth century is here unrepresented, because the lyrical poetry, like most other kinds of literature of that period, was produced under impulses and maintained by traditions almost wholly Elizabethan. The method pursued in the selection and arrangement of the poems constituting this book is much that of the editor's Elizabethan Lyrics. Some poems have been retained, the exclusion of which a standard of the highest literary and poetic worth might demand. This is justified by a recognition of the fact that a book such as this must be, to a certain extent, historically representative. The same requirement has prompted a rigid adherence to chronological order in the arrangement of material and to the rule that no poem shall appear except in its completeness and in that form in which it may reasonably be supposed to have had its author's maturest revision. The term lyric has necessarily been interpreted with some liberality in the consideration of a period which tended, towards its close, to the conscious exercise of artifice and wit in poetry rather than to the spontaneous expression of emotion. If Mr. Henley's recent enunciation of the essential antithesis between the lyric and the epigram is to be accepted in its rigor, many of the poems of this collection must fall under his ban.1 And 1 See the Introduction to Mr. Henley's collection of English Lyrics. V 82569 of the yet much might be said were this the place for it lyrical quality which frequently accompanies even the cynical gallantry and coxcombry of Suckling, Sedley, and Rochester. If poems such as many of theirs and of Dryden's be excluded from the category of the lyric on the score of artificiality or insincerity, they must assuredly be restored to their place for the power of music in them. The poems in this book have been selected, not only from the works of the individual poets represented, but from contemporary poetical miscellanies and from the incidental lyrical verse contained in dramas, romances, and other works of the time. Care has been taken to make the text as correct as possible by a collation with authoritative sources; and, wherever necessary, the sources of preferred readings will be found mentioned in the Notes. In the Introduction an attempt has been made to trace the course of English lyrical poetry during the period, to explain its relations to the previous age, and to trace the influences which determined its development and its final change of character. It is hoped that the Notes and Indexes may furnish the reader with such help as he may reasonably demand, and encourage the student to a deeper study of a rich and interesting period in one of its most distinctive forms of artistic expression. In conclusion, I wish to record my recognition of a few amongst many favors. My acknowledgments are due here, as ever, to Dr. Horace Howard Furness for the loan of books and for much kind encouragement; to Dr. Clarence G. Child, especially amongst my colleagues, for valuable suggestions and many services; and above all to Professor Kittredge, one of the general editors of this series, whose wide learning and untiring care have been generously bestowed to better this book. FELIX E. SCHELLING. JUNE 16, 1899. |