as a dramatist, he is, or ought to be, the critic himself. He is not, so to speak, at all implicated in what is going forward in the poem; but deals out the dialogue like an indifferent bystander, seeking only to adjust it to the necessities of the actors. He is above the struggle and turmoil of the battle below, and

'Sees, as from a tower, the end of all.'

It is, in fact, this power of forgetting himself, and of imagining and fashioning characters different from his own, which constitutes the dramatic quality. A man who can set aside his own idiosyncrasy, is half a dramatist."

The lyrics of what we rather loosely call the Elizabethan Poets, a classification which frequently embraces their successors in the reign of James the First,—are, it seems to me, the finest specimens of poetry, "pure and simple," in the whole range of English Literature. Their chief characteristic is naturalness,—real or apparent, it is not easy, in all cases, to decide which. What we call Art (which is often but another name for artifice), appears never to have crossed the minds of their singers, at least while they were singing; to listen to them is like listening to the song of the lark.

The poets of Charles the First's time-accomplished, courtly gentlemen that they were-delighted in the Lyric, which, however, had begun to lose its early simplicity: it

was graceful, it was elegant, but it was studied, mannered, affected.

"The hour

Of glory in the grass, of freshness in the flower,"

had passed away. What it was in the reign of Charles the Second, and later, the reader may see for himself, in the specimens of that period which I have given, and which are the best that I could find, indifferent as, I fear, many of them are.

The Eighteenth Century was almost destitute of Lyrics, though it abounded in what were by courtesy called Songs, most of which appear to have been composed by that celebrated Myth, "A Person of Quality," and his, or her, immediate connections

"The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.'

Peace to their ashes! I could not find it in my heart to disturb them, entombed as they are in the ponderous collections of JOHNSON, ANDERSON, and CHALMERS. Barren as the last century was in poetry of a high order, its close witnessed the revival of the Lyrical-element, which may be traced, I think, to two causes, the publication of Bishop PERCY'S “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," and the songs of BURNS-a born poet, if there ever was one, who ruled as supremely over his "scanty plot of ground" as SHAKESPEARE over his Universe.

What the lyrics of the present time are, the reader may be supposed to know. They will not compare with those of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, but they are genuine, as far as they go. The best of them, to my thinking, are BARRY CORNWALL'S's-a venerable name, which must soon pass from amongst us.

Where

The arrangement adopted here is that which should always obtain in works of this nature, viz., the chronological one. The lyrics of each poet are placed in the order in which they were written, so far as I could ascertain it, and the whole in strict succession of time. several are taken from one poet, as in the case of SHAKESPEARE and FLETCHER, the date of the earliest determines his place in the century. SHAKESPEARE, for instance, is placed in the year 1592, the date assigned by DYCE to "Love's Labour's Lost;" and FLETCHER in 1610, the date of the publication of his "Faithful Shepherdess.” Where an author's works were not published until after his death, the lyric, or lyrics, selected therefrom, are, of course, placed before his death. In such cases one can only approximate to correct chronology: certainty is impossible. The student of English Poetry will detect, in most cases, the reasons which have influenced me in assigning the conjectural dates. Had I made the collection for him alone, I would have added annotations of all sorts, which, by-the-way, I could hardly restrain myself from

doing. But, working for the general reader, who seldom cares for the laborious trifles of the scholar, however curious they may be, I have let the poets speak for themselves, without note or comment from me. The text is as pure as I could make it. I dare not flatter myself, however, that it is absolutely pure, so much have the old poets been tampered with by those who have edited them, and those who have quoted from them. In the matter of spelling, punctuation, etc., I have conformed to the usage of to-day, not being able to see the sacredness of the old style of typography, the phonographic spelling of the author, the whims of his printers, and the blunders of the press generally.

NEW YORK, November 1, 1865.

R. H. S.

The Paffionate Shepherd to his Love ......... CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 17