PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIV. COLL. LOND. SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1869. HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY* 1875, Aug. 5. CHISWICK PRESS-PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. HIS little pleasure-book of English verse attempts to blend the voices of true poets who lived in the time of Charles I. and the Commonwealth, into a genuine expression of the manner of their music and the spirit of their time. During the first seven years of the reign of Charles I. all the poets who are here to be heard singing were alive together. In the next year George Herbert passed away; then Randolph; then, in the middle of the reign, Ben Jonson; Carew next; and in its latter years, besides Quarles and Ford, three died in early manhood-Suckling, Cartwright, and Habington. Drummond's death followed close upon the King's; Crashaw lived only into the next year; Lovelace and Cleveland did not survive the Commonwealth; while Milton and Andrew Marvell, Waller, Davenant, Butler, Denham, Cowley, with George Wither, whose age was sixty at the end of the reign of Charles I., lived on into the time of Charles II. The poems are meant to be so arranged, that while they show the love of song for its own sake, and have for a light background the every-day characters of country life and b |