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

PREFACE.

THE purpose of this book is to comprise within the bounds of a single volume whatever is truly beautiful and admirable among the minor poems of the English language. In executing this design, it has been the constant endeavor of the Editor to exercise a catholic as well as a severe taste; and to judge every piece by its poetical merit solely, without regard to the name, nationality, or epoch of its author. Especial care has also been taken to give every poem entire and unmutilated, as well as in the most authentic form which could be procured; though the earliest edition of an author has sometimes been preferred to a later one, in which the alterations have not always seemed to be improvements.

The arrangement of the book will be seen to be somewhat novel; but it is hoped that it may be found convenient to the reader, and not altogether devoid of æsthetic congruity. The Editor also flatters himself that in classifying so many immortal productions of genius according to their own ideas and motives, rather than according to their chronology, the nativity and sex of their authors, or any other merely external order, he has exhibited the incomparable richness of our language in this department of literature, quite as successfully as if he had followed a method more usual in such collections.

That every reader should find in these pages every one of his favorite