This little Collection differs, it is believed, from others in the
attempt made to include in it all the best original Lyrical pieces and
Songs in our language, by writers not living,--and none beside the best.
Many familiar verses will hence be met with; many also 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 some 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 human passion,--have been excluded.
Humorous poetry, except in the very unfrequent instances where a truly
poetical 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 rarely conforming to Lyrical conditions in
treatment. But it is not anticipated, nor is it possible, that all
readers shall think the line accurately drawn. Some 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 especially
to Ballads and Sonnets, the Editor can only state that he has taken his
utmost pains to decide without caprice or partiality.
This also is all he can plead in regard to a point even more liable to
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