l. 132: Observe the exquisite art with which Milton manages the

transition from the Christian to the heathen. He assumes that Alpheus and the Sicilian Muse had shrunk away ashamed while St. Peter was speaking. In bidding them now to return, he implies that he is coming down from the spiritual heights to which for a while he had been lifted up, and entering the region of pastoral poetry once more.--l. 159-164: These lines were for a long time very obscure. Dr. Todd in his learned notes, to which I must refer, has done much to dissipate the obscurity, though I cannot think all is clear even now.

P. 148, No. cxxvi.--These lines are the short answer to a very long question, or series of questions, which Davenant has called _The Philosopher’s Disquisition directed to the dying Christian_. This poem, than which I know few weightier with thought, unfortunately extends to nearly four hundred lines--its length, and the fact that it appeals but to a limited circle of readers, precluding me from finding room for more than a brief extract from it, and that in this note; but it literally abounds with lines notable as the following:

‘Tradition, Time’s suspected register, That wears out Truth’s best stories into tales.’

I am well aware of the evil report under which Davenant labours, and there are passages in his poems which seem to bear it out, as for example this, which appears to call into question the resurrection:

‘But ask not bodies doomed to die, To what abode they go: Since knowledge is but sorrow’s spy, It is not safe to know.’

At the same time ‘the Philosopher’ here does not so much deny that there is any truth for man as that he has any organ whereby, of himself, he may attain this truth. The poem--it is the dying Christian who is addressed--opens thus:

‘Before by death you nearer knowledge gain, (For to increase your knowledge you must die) Tell me if all that learning be not vain, On which we proudly in this life rely.

Is not the learning which we knowledge call, Our own but by opinion and in part? Not made entirely certain, nor to all, And is not knowledge but disputed art?

And though a bad, yet ’tis a froward guide, Who, vexing at the shortness of the day, Doth, to o’ertake swift time, still onward ride, While we still follow, and still doubt our way;

A guide, who every step proceeds with doubt, Who guessingly her progress doth begin; And brings us back where first she led us out, To meet dark midnight at our restless inn.

It is a plummet to so short a line, As sounds no deeper than the sounder’s eyes; The people’s meteor, which not long can shine, Nor far above the middle region rise.

This spy from Schools gets ill intelligence, Where art, imposing rules, oft gravely errs; She steals to nature’s closet, and from thence Brings nought but undecyphered characters.

She doth, like India’s last discoverers, boast Of adding to old maps; though she has bin But sailing by some clear and open coast, Where all is woody, wild, and dark within.

Of this forbidden fruit since we but gain A taste, by which we only hungry grow, We merely toil to find our studies vain, And trust to Schools for what they cannot know.’

P. 150, No. cxxviii.--This poem, apart from its proper beauty, which is very considerable, has a deeper interest, as containing in the germ Wordsworth’s still higher strain, namely his _Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood_. I do not mean that Wordsworth had ever seen this poem when he wrote his. The coincidences are so remarkable that it is certainly difficult to esteem them accidental; but Wordsworth was so little a reader of anything out of the way, and at the time when his Ode was composed, the _Silex Scintillans_ was altogether out of the way, a book of such excessive rarity, that an explanation of the points of contact between the poems must be sought for elsewhere. The complete forgetfulness into which poetry, which, though not of the very highest order of all, is yet of a very high one, may fall, is strikingly exemplified in the fact that as nearly as possible two centuries intervened between the first and second editions of Vaughan’s poems. The first edition of the first part of the _Silex Scintillans_ appeared in 1650, the second edition of the book in 1847. Oblivion overtook him from the first. Phillips in his _Theatrum Poetarum_, 1675, just mentions him and no more; and knows him only by his _Olor Iscanus_, a juvenile production, of comparatively little worth; yet seeing that it yields such lines as the following--they form part of a poem addressed to the unfortunate Elizabeth of Bohemia, our first James’ daughter--it cannot be affirmed to be of none:

Thou seem’st a rosebud born in snow; A flower of purpose sprung to bow To heedless tempests and the rage Of an incensèd stormy age:

And yet as balm-trees gently spend Their tears for those that do them rend, Thou didst nor murmur nor revile, But drank’st thy wormwood with a smile.’

As a divine Vaughan may be inferior, but as a poet he is certainly superior, to Herbert, who never wrote anything so purely poetical as _The Retreat_. Still Vaughan would probably never have written as he has, if Herbert, whom he gratefully owns as his master, had not shown him the way.

P. 154, No. cxxxii.--This poem, so little known, though the work of one so well known, opens very solemnly and grandly, but does not maintain itself altogether at the same height to the end. Even as I have given it, the two concluding strophes are inferior to the others; and this declension would be felt by the reader still more strongly, if I had not at once lightened the poem, and brought it within reasonable compass, by the omission of no less than six strophes which immediately precede these. It bears date January 14, 1682/3; and was written at season of great weakness and intense bodily suffering (see his _Life_ edited by Sylvester, Part III. p. 192); but the actual life of the great non-conformist divine was prolonged for some eight or nine years more.

P. 163, No. cxxxviii.--I have gladly found room in this volume, as often as I fairly could, for poems written by those who, strictly speaking, were not poets; or who, if poets, have only rarely penned their inspiration, and, either wanting the accomplishment of verse, or not caring to use it, have preferred to embody thoughts which might have claimed a metrical garb in other than metrical forms. Poems from such authors must always have a special interest for us. To the former of these classes the author of these manly and high-hearted lines belongs, and another whose epitaph on his companions left behind in the Arctic regions is earlier given (see No. cxix.). Bacon (for who can deny to him a poet’s gifts?) and, before all others as a poet in prose, Jeremy Taylor, belong to the second. It would be more difficult to affirm of Bishop Berkeley (see No. cxxxvii.), and of Sir Thomas Browne (see No. cxxxi.), to which of these classes they ought to be assigned.

P. 166, No. cxxxix.--These lines, in their wit worthy of Lucian, and with a moral purpose which oftentimes Lucian is wholly without, are called A Fable, but manifestly have no right to the name. I have omitted six lines, but with reluctance, being as in fact they are among the most moral lines in the whole poem.

P. 169, No. cxli.--This is a party ballad, and, rightly to understand it, we must understand the circumstances of which it assumes on our part a knowledge. In 1727 Admiral Hosier blockaded Porto-Bello with twenty ships; but was not allowed to attack it, war not having actually broken out with Spain, and, a peace being patched up, his squadron was withdrawn. In 1740 Admiral Vernon took Porto-Bello with six ships. It was apparently a very creditable exploit; but Vernon being an enemy of Walpole’s, and a member of the Opposition, it was glorified by them beyond its merits. When they boasted that he with six ships had effected what Hosier had not been allowed to attempt with twenty, the statement was a perfectly true one, but in nothing dishonourable to him or to his employers. Glover is here the mouthpiece of the Opposition, who, while they exalted Vernon, affected to pity Hosier, who had died, as they declared, of a broken heart; and of whose losses by disease during the blockade they did not fail to make the most. It is a fine ballad, and will do for Glover what his _Leonidas_ would altogether have failed to do. This we may confidently affirm, whether we quite agree with Lord Stanhope or not, that it is ‘the noblest song perhaps ever called forth by any British victory, except Mr. Campbell’s _Battle of the Baltic_.’

P. 172, No. cxlii.--This poem was for a while supposed to be old, and an old line has been worked up into it. This was probably the refrain of an older as it is of the more modern poem, which has Miss Elliott, (1727-1805), an accomplished lady of the Minto family, for its author.--l. 1: ‘lilting,’ singing cheerfully.--l. 3: ‘loaning,’ broad lane.--l. 5: ‘scorning,’ rallying.--l. 6: ‘dowie’ dreary.--l. 8: ‘leglin,’ milkpail.--l. 9: ‘shearing’ reaping.--l. 10: ‘bandsters,’ sheaf-binders.--‘lyart,’ inclining to gray.--‘runkled,’ wrinkled.--l. 11: ‘fleeching,’ coaxing.--l. 14: ‘bogle,’ ghost.

P. 176, No. cxlvi.--One who listens very attentively may catch in these pretty lines a faint prelude of Wordsworth’s immortal poem addressed to the same bird.

P. 177, No. cxlvii.--There can scarcely be a severer trial of the poet’s power of musical expression, of his command of the arts by which melody is produced, than the unrhymed lyric, which very seldom perfectly satisfies the ear. That Collins has so completely succeeded here is itself a sufficient answer to Gray’s assertion that he ‘had a bad ear,’ to Johnson’s complaint, ‘his lines commonly are of slow motion; clogged and impeded with a cluster of consonants.’ Collins, in whom those lines of Wordsworth found only too literal a fulfilment,

‘We poets do begin our lives in gladness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness,’

has falsified the prediction of Gray. Writing of him and of Warton, who both had lately died, Gray passes this judgment upon them, ‘They both deserve to live some years, but will not.’ Half of this prophecy has come true; and Warton cannot be said to have lasted to our time; but Collins has now won a position so assured that instead of the ‘some years’ which were all that Gray would have allotted to him, we may confidently affirm that he will live as long as any love for English poetry survives.

P. 181, No. cl.--This and the following poem are of the court, courtly. At the same time a truly poetical treatment may raise _vers de Société_ such as these are, into a higher sphere than their own; and if I do not mistake, it has done so here; and may justly claim for these poems that they be drawn from the absolute oblivion into which they have fallen. Ambrose Philips, it is true, has a niche in _Johnson’s Poets_; but so much which is stupid, and so much which is worse than stupid, finds its place there, that for a minor poet, for all except those mighty ones to whom admission or exclusion would be a matter of absolute indifference, who are strong enough to burst any cerements, that collection is rather a mausoleum of the dead than a temple of the living. These poems with two or three others of like kind--a singularly beautiful one is quoted in Palgrave’s _Golden Treasury_--earned for Philips the title of Namby Pamby, so little were his contemporaries able to appreciate even the partial return to nature which they display. For a clever travesty of his style by Isaac Hawkins Browne, beginning,

‘Little tube of mighty power, Charmer of an idle hour,’

see Campbell’s _Specimens_, vol. v. p. 361.

P. 186, No. cliii.--This admirable poem has this in common with another of scarcely inferior merit,

‘And ye shall walk in silk attire,’

that they both first appeared as broad-sheets sold in the streets of Edinburgh; and, justly popular as they both from the first have been, no one has ever cared to challenge either of them as his own. This, however, though not claimed by Mickle, nor included by him in an edition of his poems published by himself, was after his death claimed _for_ him, and Allan Cunningham thinks the claim to be fairly made out. It mainly rests on the fact that a copy of the poem with alterations marking the text as in process of formation was found among his papers and in his handwriting. Without inspection of the document, it is impossible to say what value as evidence it possesses. Certainly everything else which we know of Mickle’s is rather evidence against his authorship of this exquisite domestic lyric than for it. Still I have not felt myself at liberty to disturb the ascription of it to him.

P. 189, No. clv.--The immense superiority of this poem over every other in the little volume of Hamilton of Bangour’s poems, which was published at Edinburgh in 1760, some six years after his death, is not easy to account for. This poem has its faults; that it is a modern seeking to write in an ancient manner is sometimes too evident; but it is a tragic story tragically told, the situation boldly conceived, and the treatment marked by strength and passion throughout. Nothing else in the volume contains a trace of passion or of power, or is of the slightest value whatever. The fact that the poet has here come within the circle of the inspirations of Yarrow cannot of itself be accepted as sufficient to explain a fact which is certainly a curious one. It is plain from more than one citation or allusion that Wordsworth, in his _Yarrow Unvisited_ and _Yarrow Visited_, had this poem quite as much in his eye as the earlier ballads whose scene is laid on the banks of the same stream.

P. 199, No. clx.--I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of quoting Mr. Palgrave’s beautiful criticism of this sonnet, in its own kind of a beauty so peerless:--‘The Editor knows no sonnet more remarkable than this which records Cowper’s gratitude to the Lady whose affectionate care for many years gave what sweetness he could enjoy to a life radically wretched. Petrarch’s sonnets have a more ethereal grace and a more perfect finish, Shakespeare’s more passion, Milton’s stand supreme in stateliness, Wordsworth’s in depth and delicacy. But Cowper’s unites with an exquisiteness in the turn of thought which the ancients would have called irony, an intensity of pathetic tenderness peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature.’

P. 201, No. clxii.--Gray, who esteemed Tickell ‘a poor short-winded imitator of Addison,’ qualifies his contempt so far that he adds, ‘His ballad, however, of Colin and Lucy I always thought the prettiest in the world.’ After some hesitation I have not thought it pretty enough for a place in this volume. It is otherwise with the poem for which I have found room. Johnson’s censure of poems, whether praise or blame, carries no great weight with it; and when he says of this one, ‘nor is a more sublime or more elegant funeral poem to be found in the whole compass of English literature,’ the praise is extravagant. Still it has real merits, and sounds like the genuine utterance of a true regret for one who had been the poet’s effectual patron and friend.

P. 204, No. clxiii.--There have been many guesses who the ‘Unfortunate Lady’ commemorated in these pathetic, but thoroughly pagan, lines may have been; but the mystery which wraps her story has never been dispersed. With the ten first lines before us nothing can be idler than to deny that she was one who had laid violent hands on her own life.

P. 207, No. clxiv.--Robert Levet lived above twenty years under Johnson’s roof, a dependant and humble friend, and when under it he died in 1782, Johnson commemorated his genuine worth in these admirable lines. He is mentioned several times in Boswell’s _Life_.

P. 209, No. clxvi.--This is the last original piece which Cowper wrote; and, as Southey has truly observed, ‘all circumstances considered, one of the most affecting that ever was composed.’ The incident on which it rests is related in Anson’s _Voyage round the World_, fifth edition, p. 79.

P. 212, No. clxviii.--This noblest elegy has a point of contact with an illustrious event in English history. As the boats were advancing in silence to that night-assault upon the lines of Quebec which should give Canada to the English crown, Wolfe repeated these lines in a low voice to the other officers in his boat, adding at the close of the recitation, ‘Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec.’ For himself within a few hours that line was to find its fulfilment,

‘The paths of glory lead but to the grave.’

We owe to Lord Stanhope (_History of England from the Peace of Utrecht_, c. 35) this interesting anecdote.--l. 45-72: Gray, who had read almost everything, may have here had in his eye a remarkable passage in Philo, _De Sobriet_. § 9. Having spoken of the many who were inwardly equipped with the highest gifts and faculties, he goes on: τὀ δἐ κάλλος τῶν ἐν ταῖς διανοίαις ἀγαλμάτων οὐκ ίσχυσαν ἐπιδείξασθαι δ’ἀ πενίαν ἠ ἀδοξίαν, ἠ νόσον σώματος, ἠ τἀς αλλας κῆρας, όσαι τὀν ἀνθρώπινον περιπολοῦσι βίον. And then he goes on, exactly as Gray does, to point out how these outward hindrances have circumscribed not merely the virtues of some but the crimes of others: πάλιν τοίνυν κατἀ τἀ ἐναντία μυρίους ἐστἰν ἰδιῖν ἀνάνδρούς, ἀκολάστους, ἀφρονας, ἀδίκους, ἀσεβεῖς ἐν ταῖς διανοίαις ὑπάρχοντας, τὀ δἐ κακίας ἐκάστης αίσχος ἀδυνατοῦντας ἐπιδεικνυσθαι δἰ ἀκαιμίαν τῶν εἰς τὀ ἁμαρτάνειν καιρῶν.

P. 216, No. clxix.--I have not included hymns in this collection, save only in rare instances when a high poetical treatment of their theme has given them a value quite independent of that which they derive from adequately fulfilling the special objects for which they were composed. It is thus with this noble poem, which, though not eminently adapted for liturgic use, is yet to my mind quite the noblest among Charles Wesley’s hymns. It need hardly be said that the key to it, so far as a key can be found from without and not from within, lies in the study of Gen. xxxii. 24-32.--l. 59: The attempt to break down in English the distinction between the perfect and the past participle, and because they are identical in some instances to regard them as identical in all, has happily been defeated, at least for the present; but it has left its mark on much of the poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and Wesley, who here writes ‘strove’ for ‘striven,’ and l. 68, ‘rose’ for ‘risen,’ only does what Shakespeare and Milton have done before him.

P. 241, No. cxci.--Campbell’s _Lord Ullin’s Daughter_ is a poem of considerable merit, but a comparison of it with this of Shelley (the motive of the two compositions is identical) at once reveals the distinction between a poet of first-rate eminence, of ‘imagination all compact,’ and one of the second order. Both poems are narrative; but the imagination in one has fused and absorbed the whole action of the story into itself in a way which is not so much as attempted in the other.

P. 256, No. ccviii.--In Beattie’s _Life and Letters of Campbell_, vol. ii. p. 42, we have the original sketch of this poem. It is very instructive, revealing as it does how one chief secret of success in poetry may be the daring to omit. As it is there sketched out, extending as it does to twenty stanzas of six lines each, that is to more than twice its present length, many of these stanzas being but of secondary merit, it would have passed as a spirited ballad, and would have presently been forgotten, instead of taking as it has now done its place among the noblest lyrics, the trumpet-notes in the language. But indeed this willingness to sacrifice parts to the interests of the whole is a condition without which no great poem, least of all a great lyric poem, which is absolutely dependent for its effects on rapidity of movement, can be written; and those who would fain escape the inevitable doom of oblivion which awaits almost all verse will do well to keep ever in remembrance how immeasurably more in poetry the half will sometimes be than the whole.

P. 265, No. ccxiv.--There is a mistake here, into which it is curious that one who had watched so closely as Scott had done the struggle with Republican and Imperial France should have fallen. It was not Marengo (1800) but Austerlitz (1805) which did so much to kill Pitt, and with which is connected the anecdote of his last days here referred to, and thus related by Lord Stanhope: ‘On leaving his carriage, as he passed along the passage to his bedroom [at Putney, which he never left], he observed a map of Europe which had been drawn down from the wall; upon which he turned to his niece, and mournfully said, “Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years.”’ (_Life of Pitt_, vol. iv. p. 369.)

P. 266, No. ccxv.--After the battle of Novara, which had virtually decided the conflict for a time, but before peace was signed between Austria and Piedmont, the inhabitants of Brescia rose against their Austrian garrison, March 21, 1849. They were crushed after a gallant struggle, but one which had been hopeless from the first.

P. 277, No. ccxix.--This poem is full of allusions to the tragical issues of Shelley’s first rash and ill-considered marriage--issues which must have filled him ever after with very deep self-reproach. Far too slight as the expression of this is here--indeed it is hardly here at all--we know from other sources that the retrospect was one which went far to darken his whole after life. This serious fault has not hindered me from quoting these lines, in many respects of an exquisite tenderness and beauty, and possessing that deep interest which autobiography must always possess. One stanza has been omitted.

P. 291, No. ccxxiv.--These lines, written in Greece, and only three months before his death, are the last which Byron wrote, and, in their earlier stanzas at least, about the truest. In many of his smaller poems of passion, and in _Childe Harold_ itself, there is a _falsetto_ which strikes painfully on the ear of the mind. But it is quite otherwise with these deeply pathetic lines, in which the spoiled child of this world passes judgment on that whole life of self-pleasing which he had laid out for himself, and declares what had been the mournful end of it all.

P. 315, No. ccxlvii.--This, if I mistake not, is the only poem by Herbert Knowles which survives. It appeared first in _The Quarterly Review_, vol. ii. p. 396, with this account of the writer: ‘His life had been eventful and unfortunate, till his extraordinary merits were discovered by persons capable of appreciating and willing and able to assist him. He was then placed under a kind and able instructor, and arrangements had been made for supporting him at the University; but he had not enjoyed that prospect many weeks before it pleased God to remove him to a better world. The reader will remember that they are the verses of a schoolboy, who had not long been taken from one of the lowest stations of life, and he will then judge what might have been expected from one who was capable of writing with such strength and originality upon the tritest of all subjects.’ It was Southey, I believe, who wrote thus, in whose estimate of these verses I entirely concur; as it was he who was prepared to befriend the youthful poet, if he had not passed so soon beyond the reach and need of human help.

P. 326, No. cclvii.--It is not a little remarkable that one to whom English was an acquired language, who can have had little or no experience in the mechanism of English verse, should yet have left us what Coleridge does not hesitate to call, ‘the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language’--words, it is true, which he slightly modifies by adding, ‘at least it is only in Milton and in Wordsworth that I remember any rival.’

P. 352, No. cclxxii.--This poem is drawn from a small volume with the title, _David and Samuel, with other Poems_, published in the year 1859. Much in the volume has no right to claim exemption from the doom which before very long awaits all verse except the very best. Yet one or two poems have caught excellently well the tone, half serious, half ironical, of Goethe’s lighter pieces; while more than one of the more uniformly serious, this above all, seem to me to have remarkable merit. It finds its motive, as I need hardly say, in the resolution of the Dutch, when their struggle with the overwhelming might of Louis XIV. and his satellite Charles II. seemed hopeless, to leave in mass their old home, and to found another Holland among their possessions in the Eastern world.

P. 354, No. cclxxiii.--During the last Chinese war the following passage occurred in a letter of the Correspondent of _The Times_: ‘Some Seiks, and a private of the Buffs, having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning, they were brought before the authorities, and commanded to perform the kotou. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head, and his body thrown on a dunghill.’

P. 356, No. cclxxiv.--Turner’s fine picture of the Téméraire, a grand old man-of-war (it had been, as its name indicates, taken from the French) towed into port by a little ugly steamer, that so, after all its noble toils, it might there be broken up, is itself a poem of a very high order, which has here been finely transferred into verse.

P. 359, No. cclxxviii.--A selection of Walt Whitman’s poetry has very lately been published in England, the editor of this declaring that in him American poetry properly so-called begins. I must entirely dissent from this statement. What he has got to say is a very old story indeed, and no one would have attended to his version of it, if he had not put it more uncouthly than others before him. That there is no contradiction between higher and lower, that there is no holy and no profane, that the flesh has just as good rights as the spirit--this has never wanted prophets to preach it, nor people to act upon it; and this is the sum-total of his message to America and to the world. I was glad to find in his _Drum-taps_ one little poem which I could quote with real pleasure.

P. 379, No. ccxcviii.--_Tithonus_ is a noble variation on Juvenal’s noble line in the 10th Satire, where, enumerating the things which a wise man may fitly pray for, he includes among these the mind and temper,

Qui spatium vitæ extremum inter munera ponat Naturæ:

words which, grand as they are, reappear in still grander form, even as they are brought into a more intimate connection with this poem in Dryden’s translation,

‘And count it nature’s privilege to die.’

P. 386, No. ccciv.--Few readers of this and other choice specimens of American poetry--some of which have now for the first time found their way into any English anthology--but will share the admiration which I cannot refuse to express for many among them. It is true that they are not always racy of the soil, that sometimes they only do what has been as well done, though scarcely better, in the old land; but whether we regard the perfect mechanism of the verse, the purity and harmony of the diction, the gracious thoughts so gracefully embodied, these poems, by Whittier, by Bryant, by Holmes, by Emerson and by others, do, so far as they reach, leave nothing to be desired.

INDEX OF AUTHORS.

NO.

ALDRICH, James (1810-1856), CCXCVII

ALFORD, Henry, _b._ 1810, CCC

ARNOLD, Edwin, _b._ 1831, CCLXXXVII

ARNOLD, Matthew, _b._ 1822, CCLVIII

AYTOUN, Sir Robert (1570-1638), XIV

BACON, Lord (1561-1616), IV

BAILLIE, Joanna (1762-1851), CLXXXVII

BAXTER, Richard (1615-1691), CXXXII

BEAUMONT (1586-1616) and FLETCHER (1576-1625), XXIV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XLIII

BEAUMONT, Francis (1586-1616), LV

BEAUMONT, Sir John (1582-1628), LIII

BEDDOES, Thomas Lovell (1803-1849), CCXXXI

BERKELEY, George (1684-1753), CXXXVII

BLACKSTONE, Sir William (1723-1780), CXXXVIII

BLAKE, William (1757-1828), CLXXV, CLXXXIII, CXCIV, CCXXXVI, CCXXXIX

BOWLES, William L., (1762-1850), CLXXVIII

BROWNE, Sir Thomas (1605-1682), CXXXI

BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett (1809-1861), CCXL, CCLIV

BROWNING, Robert, _b._ 1812, CCLIX, CCLXXXVIII, CCLXXXIX

BRYANT, William Cullen, _b._ 1794, CCLX, CCLXIII

BUCHANAN, Robert, _b._ 1841, CCXCIV

BURBIDGE, Thomas, _b._ 1816, CCLXI, CCLXIV

BURNS, Robert (1759-1796), CXLVIII, CLIV, CLXV

BYRON, Lord (1788-1824), CLXXXVI, CCIII, CCXIII, CCXXIV

CAMPBELL, Thomas (1777-1844), CLXXI, CCVII, CCVIII, CCL

CAMPION, Thomas, XXII

CAREW, Thomas (1589-1639), LXV, LXXX, CXX

CHARLES I. (1600-1649), CII

CLARE, John (1793-1864), CLXXVII

CLEVELAND, John (1613-1659), XLVI

CLOUGH, Arthur Hugh (1819-1861), CCXXV, CCXXIX, CCXXXV

COLERIDGE, Hartley (1796-1849), CLXXXVIII, CXCV, CXCVI

COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834), CLXXIX, CLXXXV, CCXVI, CCXX

COLLINS, William (1720-1756), CXLV, CXLVII

COTTON, Charles (1630-1687), LXXXVII

COWLEY, Abraham (1618-1677), LXXXVIII, CV, CVI

COWPER, William (1731-1800), CLX, CLXI, CLXVI

CRASHAW, Richard (1600-1650), CXVII

CROLY, George (1780-1860), CLXXXIV

CUNNINGHAM, Allan (1784-1842), CCLII

DAVENANT, Sir William (1605-1668), C, CVII, CXXVI, CLII

DE VERE, Aubrey, _b._ 1814, CCLXXXI

DONNE, John (1573-1631), LXIV, CXXIII, CXXIV

DOUBLEDAY, Thomas, CLXXXI, CLXXXII

DOYLE, Sir Francis Hastings, _b._ 1810, CCLXXIII

DRAYTON, Michael (1563-1631), XXXV, XLI

DRUMMOND, William (1585-1649), XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, LI

DRYDEN, John (1631-1700), LXXXIX, XC, CXIII, CXXIV

EASTMAN, Charles Gammage, CCXCVI

ELLIOT, Ebenezer (1781-1841), CC

ELLIOTT, Jane (1727-1805), CXLII, CC

EMERSON, Ralph Waldo, _b._ 1803, CCLXII, CCLXXV

FALKLAND, Lord (1610-1643), CXIV

FANSHAWE, Sir Richard (1608-1666), LXIX

FORSTER, John, _b._ 1812, CCLXXX

GAY, John (1688-1732), CXXXIX

GLEN, William, CXLIII

GLOVER, Richard (1712-1785), CXLI

GRAY, David (1838-1861), CCXXXIII, CCXXXIV, CCXXXV

GRAY, Thomas (1716-1771), CXLIX, CLVII, CLXVIII

GREENE, Robert (1560-1592), XXI

HABINGTON, William (1605-1645), LXX, LXXI

HALE, Sir Matthew (1609-1676), CIX

HALLAM, Arthur Henry (1811-1834), CCII

HAMILTON, William (1704-1754), CLV

HERBERT, George (1593-1632), LXXXI, CXXVII

HERRICK, Robert (1591-1674), LXVI, LXXXII

HOLMES, Oliver Wendell, _b._ 1809, CCCI

HOLYDAY, Barten (1593-1661), XCI

HOOD, Thomas (1798-1845), CCXLVI

HOUGHTON, Lord, _b._ 1809, CCLXV, CCLXXIV

HUME, Alexander (1560-1607), VIII

HUNNIS, William, XIII

HUNT, Leigh (1784-1859), CXCVII

IRVING, Edward (1792-1834), CCLV

JAMES, Thomas (17th Century), CXIX

JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784), CLXIV

JONES, Sir William (1746-1794), CXLIV

JONSON, Ben (1574-1637), XXIII, XL, XLII, XLV

KEATS, John (1795-1821), CXCIII, CCI, CCXXII, CCXXVII

KEBLE, John (1792-1866), CCXLIV, CCLIII

KING, Henry (1591-1669), LXXII, CVIII, CXXI

KINGSLEY, Charles, _b._ 1819, CCLXXXII, CCXCV

KNOWLES, Herbert (1798-1817), CCXLVII

LAMB, Charles (1775-1835), CCXXXII, CCXLII

LANDOR, Walter Savage (1775-1864), CCXLIII, CCLI

LINDSAY, Lady Anne (1750-1825), CLVI

LOGAN, John (1748-1788), CXLVI

LONGFELLOW, Henry Wadsworth, _b._ 1807, CCLXXVI, CCLXXXIII

LOVELACE, Richard (1618-1658), XCVII, XCVIII

LUSHINGTON, Henry (1812-1855), CCXV

MACAULAY, Lord (1800-1859), CCV

MACDONALD, George, _b._ 1824, CCLXXXIV

MARLOWE, Christopher (1562-1593), XIX

MARVELL, Andrew (1620-1678), LXXIX, CIII, CXXIX

MICKLE, William Julius (1734-1788), CLIII

MILTON, John (1608-1674), LXXVIII, LXXXIII, LXXXV, LXXXVI, CIV, CXVI, CXXV, CCXLIX

MONTGOMERY, James (1771-1854), CLXXII

MONTROSE, Marquis of (1612-1651), XCVI

MOORE, Thomas (1780-1852), CCXXX, CCXLIX

NAIRN, Lady (1766-1845), CLXVII

NEWCASTLE, Duchess of (1624-1673), XCII

NEWMAN, John Henry, _b._ 1801, CCXC, CCCII

OXFORD, Earl of (1534-1604), XI

PALMER, John Williamson, CCXCIII

PATMORE, Coventry, _b._ 1823, CCLXIX, CCLXX

PHILIPS, Ambrose (1671-1749), CL, CLI

POPE, Alexander (1688-1744), CXXXV, CLXIII

QUARLES, Francis (1592-1644), CXII

RALEIGH, Sir Walter (1552-1618), III, XVIII, LIX

ROBERTSON, John, CCLXXII

SCOTT, Sir Walter (1771-1832), CLXXXIX, CXC, CCVI, CCXIV, CCXXVIII

SEWARD, Anna (1747-1809), CLXXVI

SHAKESPEARE, William (1594-1616), XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XLVIII, XLIX, LIV

SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822), CXCI, CCXIX, CCXXI, CCXXIII, CCXXXVII, CCXLVIII

SHEPHERD, Nathaniel G., CCLXVI

SHIRLEY, James (1596-1666), LVI, LVII

SIDNEY, Sir Philip (1554-1586), XXV, XXVI

SOUTHEY, Robert (1774-1843), CLXXIII

SOUTHWELL, Robert (1560-1593), XLIV, L

SPENSER, Edmund (1553-1598), XVI, XVII, LX

STILLINGFLEET, Benjamin, CLVIII

STIRLING, Earl of (1580-1640), XXVII

STODDARD, Richard Henry, _b._ 1825, CCLXXIX

STORY, William, _b._ 1819, CCLXVIII

STRONG, Charles, CCIV

SURREY, Earl of (1520-1546), IX, XII

SWIFT, Jonathan (1667-1745), CXXXVI

SYLVESTER, Joshua (1563-1618), VII, XLVII

TAYLOR, Henry, _b._ 1805, CCXCII

TAYLOR, Jane (1783-1823), CLXXIV

TAYLOR, Jeremy (1613-1667), CXXXIII

TENNYSON, Alfred, _b._ 1809, CCLXVII, CCXCI, CCXCVIII, CCXCIX

TENNYSON, Charles, CCLXXXV, CCLXXXVI

TERRY, Rose, CCLXXI

THACKERAY, William Makepeace (1811-1863), CCXLI

THOMSON, James (1699-1748), CXL

THURLOW, Lord (1781-1829), CXCVIII, CXCIX

TICKELL, Thomas (1686-1720), CLXII

TRENCH, Melesina (1767-1827), CCXLV

TYCHBORN, Chidiock ( -1586), LVIII

VAUGHAN, Henry (1621-1695), LXXXIV, CXXVIII, CXXX, CXXXIV

WALLER, Edmund (1605-1687), LXVIII

WARTON, Thomas (1728-1790), CLIX

WASTELL, Simon, LII

WESLEY, Charles (1708-1788), CLXIX

WHITE, Blanco (1773-1840), CCLVII

WHITMAN, Walter, _b._ 1819, CCLXXVIII

WHITTIER, John Greenleaf, _b._ 1808, CCLXXVII, CCCIV

WILD, Robert, CXVIII

WILSON, John (1785-1854), CCLVI

WITHER, George (1588-1667), XCIII, CX

WOLFE, Charles (1791-1823), CCXII, CCXXXVIII

WORDSWORTH, William (1770-1850), CLXX, CLXXX, CXCII, CCIX, CCX, CCXI, CCXVII, CCXVIII, CCXXVI

WOTTON, Sir Henry (1568-1639), LXII, XCIV

WYAT, Sir Thomas (1503-1542), X

ANONYMOUS, I, II, V, VI, XV, XX, XXXIX, LXI, LXIII, LXVII, LXXIII, LXXIV, LXXV, LXXVI, LXXVII, XCV, XCIX, CI, CXI, CXV, CXXII, CCIV, CCCIII

INDEX OF FIRST LINES.

PAGE

Accept, thou shrine of my dead saint, 137

A cloud lay cradled near the setting sun, 326

Again the violet of our early days, 248

A good that never satisfies the mind, 30

A grace though melancholy, manly too, 369

A heavenly Night! methinks to me, 341

Ah Sunflower! weary of time, 245

A hundred wings are dropt as soft as one, 365

Ah! what a weary race my feet have run, 198

Ah! what avails the sceptred race, 320

A juggler long through all the town, 166

Alexis, here she stayed; among these pines, 31

All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 234

All travellers at first incline, 160

All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom, 318

Although I enter not, 308

And are ye sure the news is true?, 186

An hour with thee!--When earliest day, 240

Another year!--another deadly blow!, 259

Art thou pale for weariness, 305

As, by some tyrant’s stern command, 163

As due by many titles, I resign, 141

As I lay asleep, as I lay asleep, 374

Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea, 349

Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 60

Ask me why I send you here, 60

A slanting ray of evening light, 225

As near Porto-Bello lying, 169

A steed, a steed of matchless speed, 108

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones, 117

Awake, Æolian lyre, awake, 194

Away, let nought to love displeasing, 58

A wee bird came to our ha’ door, 173

Beat on, proud billows; Boreas, blow, 109

Beneath an Indian palm a girl, 346

Beside the covered grave, 266

Between two sister moorland rills, 270

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven’s joy, 81

Bloom of beauty, early flower, 181

Blossom of the almond trees, 366

Burly, dozing humble-bee, 342

Busk ye, busk ye, my bonnie, bonnie bride, 189

Can I see another’s woe, 306

Can I, who have for others oft compiled, 49

Child of a day, thou knowest not, 311

Come, dear children, let us away, 327

Come live with me, and be my love, 22

Come, O Thou traveller unknown, 216

Come, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving, 33

Come Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 28

Come up from the fields, father; here’s a letter from our Pete, 359

Conceit, begotten by the eyes, 3

Condemned to Hope’s delusive mine, 207

Dear Love, let me this evening die, 184

Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee, 142

Die down, O dismal day, and let me live, 303

E’en such is time; which takes on trust, 53

Ere, in the northern gale, 340

Fair maid, had I not heard thy baby cries, 246

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore, 368

Fair Star of Evening; Splendour of the West, 258

Fair stood the wind for France, 35

False world, good night, since thou hast brought, 42

False world, thou liest; thou canst not lend, 131

Fare well man’s dark last journey o’er the deep, 325

Farewell, too little and too lately known, 132

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, 49

First-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come, 117

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length, 272

Forget not yet the tried intent, 15

Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white, 301

Friend faber, cast me a round hollow ball, 9

From you have I been absent in the spring, 29

Genius and its rewards are briefly told, 362

Give place, ye lovers, here before, 16

Go, empty joys, 103

Go, lovely Rose!, 62

Gone were but the winter cold, 321

Go, silly worm, drudge, trudge, and travel, 9

Go, Soul, the body’s guest, 6

Great Monarch of the world, from whose power springs, 112

Green little vaulter on the sunny grass, 247

Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!, 176

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit, 283

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick, 331

Happy the man, whose wish and care, 160

Happy those early days, when I, 150

Hardly we breathe, although the air be free, 232

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star, 268

Heaven, what an age is this! what race, 92

Hence, all you vain delights, 40

Hence, loathèd Melancholy, 83

Hence, vain deluding Joys, 87

Here lies a piece of Christ; a star in dust, 135

Her sufferings ended with the day!, 378

He safely walks in darkest ways, 351

Hope, of all ills that men endure, 95

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean, 79

How happy is he born and taught, 57

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, 175

How soon doth man decay!, 149

How wisely Nature did decree, 76

I do confess thou ’rt smooth and fair, 18

If all the world and Love were young, 23

If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, 177

If, dumb too long, the drooping Muse hath stayed, 201

If I had thought thou could’st have died, 305

If the base violence of wicked men, 352

If thou wilt ease thine heart, 301

If to be absent were to be, 107

If women could be fair, and yet not fond, 16

I give thee treasures hour by hour, 351

I hear no more the locust beat, 347

I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light, 229

I mourn no more my vanished years, 386

I’m wearing awa’, John, 211

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 356

In this marble buried lies, 134

In this marble casket lies, 130

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, 180

I press not to the choir, nor dare I greet, 78

I saw where in the shroud did lurk, 309

Is this the spot where Rome’s eternal foe, 251

I stood within the grave’s o’er-shadowing vault, 384

I thought to meet no more, so dreary seemed, 321

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, 231

It is not beauty I demand, 61

It is not growing like a tree, 35

I’ve heard them lilting at our ewe-milking, 172

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile, 294

I weigh not fortune’s frown or smile, 45

I were unkind unless that I did shed, 136

I will not praise the often-flattered rose, 231

I wish I were where Helen lies, 67

Jerusalem, my happy home, 54

Joy for the promise of our loftier homes, 345

Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome, 249

Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth, 76

Last night, among his fellow roughs, 354

Lay a garland on my hearse, 34

Let him that will, ascend the tottering seat, 129

Like as a huntsman after weary chase, 21

Like as the damask rose you see, 48

Like to Diana in her summer weed, 24

Little charm of placid mien, 183

Look how the flower which lingeringly doth fade, 31

Lord, come away, 158

Lord, in this dust thy sovereign voice, 383

Mary! I want a lyre with other strings, 199

Methinks it is good to be here, 315

Methought his royal person did foretell, 101

Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay, 21

Misdeeming eye! that stoopeth to the lure, 41

Mortality, behold and fear!, 50

Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day, 53

My dear and only Love, I pray, 105

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains, 285

My once dear Love! hapless that I no more, 65

My parents bow, and lead them forth, 363

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, 52

My soul, there is a country, 152

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew, 326

Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the North-west died away, 367

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 259

No victor that in battle spent, 125

O blithe new-comer! I have heard, 220

Obscurest night involved the sky, 209

October’s gold is dim--the forests rot, 302

O dread was the time, and more dreadful the omen, 265

Of all the thoughts of God that are, 323

Of Nelson and the North, 254

Oft in the stilly night, 300

O Goddess, hear these tuneless numbers, wrung, 243

Oh faint, delicious, spring-time violet, 350

Oh how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, 30

Oh, it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, 230

Oh, lead me not in Pleasure’s train, 313

Oh to be in England, 366

Oh welcome, bat and owlet gray, 238

Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North, 251

‘O lady, thy lover is dead,’ they cried, 364

O little feet! that such long years, 363

O Mary, go and call the cattle home, 377

O melancholy bird!--A winter’s day, 247

Once a dream did weave a shade, 228

Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee, 258

Once, in the flight of ages past, 223

On Linden, when the sun was low, 256

O perfect Light, which shaid away, 10

O Reader! hast thou ever stood to see, 224

O Rose, who dares to name thee?, 307

O Time! who know’st a lenient hand to lay, 230

O trifling toys that toss the brains, 1

Our life is only death! time that ensu’th, 141

Over the mountains, 69

O waly, waly up the bank, 66

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, 283

O Winter, wilt thou never, never go?, 303

Philosophy! the great and only heir, 120

Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, 46

Praised be Diana’s fair and harmless light, 34

Preserve thy sighs, unthrifty girl, 108

Proud Maisie is in the wood, 240

Rise, said the Master, come unto the feast, 382

River is time in water; as it came, 99

Rose-cheeked Laura, come, 24

Roses, their sharp spines being gone, 26

Rudely thou wrongest my dear heart’s desire, 20

Sad is our youth, for it is ever going, 362

Say not, the struggle nought availeth, 299

See how the orient dew, 151

See how the small concentrate fiery force, 355

See the chariot at hand here of Love, 25

Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green, 14

She dwells by great Kenhawa’s side, 357

She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 243

She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, 317

She walks in beauty, like the night, 237

She was a queen of noble Nature’s crowning, 233

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part, 32

Softly! she is lying, 378

So now my summer-task is ended, Mary, 277

Stand still, and I will read to thee, 59

Still young and fine! but what is still in view, 82

Sweet Maiden, for so calm a life, 312

Sweet order hath its draught of bliss, 350

Sweet spring, thou turn’st with all thy goodly train, 32

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 381

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 250

The chief perfection of both sexes joined, 133

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 212

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame, 46

The fairest pearls that northern seas do breed, 2

The flags of war like storm-birds fly, 358

The forward youth that would appear, 113

The glories of our blood and state, 51

The good in graves as heavenly seed are sown, 148

The Lady Mary Villiers lies, 137

The loppèd tree in time may grow again, 47

The lowest trees have tops; the ant her gall, 5

The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime, 162

The Muses’ fairest light in no dark time, 44

The night is come, like to the day, 153

The night is late, the house is still, 371

The Ocean at the bidding of the Moon, 365

The poetry of earth is never dead, 249

The sun is warm, the sky is clear, 298

The twentieth year is well nigh past, 199

The voice which I did more esteem, 130

The waters are flashing, 241

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, 379

The World and Death one day them cross-disguisèd, 10

The world’s a bubble, and the life of man, 4

There’s none should places have in Fame’s high court, 101

There were twa brothers at the scule, 70

There were twa sisters lived in a bouir, 73

They are all gone into the world of light, 158

This Life, which seems so fair, 47

This was the ruler of the land, 233

Thou art returned, great light, to that blest hour, 64

Thou blushing rose, within whose virgin leaves, 63

Though actors cannot much of learning boast, 98

Thou still unravished bride of quietness, 296

Through the night, through the night, 361

’Tis done--but yesterday a King!, 260

’Tis time this heart should be unmoved, 291

Too true it is, my time of power was spent, 246

To these, whom death again did wed, 135

To yield to those I cannot but disdain, 28

Triumphal arch that fill’st the sky, 221

’Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, 232

Two brothers freely cast their lot, 368

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, 317

Vain world, what is in thee?, 154

Victorious men of earth, no more, 51

We count the broken lyres that rest, 382

Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flower, 178

Weep no more, nor sigh, nor groan, 33

Weigh me the fire; or canst thou find, 81

We saw and wooed each other’s eyes, 63

We watched her breathing through the night, 315

What beckoning ghost, along the moonlight shade, 204

What constitutes a State?, 174

What Greece, when learning flourished, only knew, 96

What is the existence of man’s life, 128

What is the world? tell, worldling, if thou know it, 8

What voice did on my spirit fall, 293

When Britain first at Heaven’s command, 168

When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, 134

When first mine eyes did view and mark, 17

When I behold thee, blameless Williamson, 198

When in the woods I wander all alone, 248

When Love with unconfinèd wings, 106

When my mother died I was very young, 304

When the sheep are in the fauld, and the kye at hame, 193

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, 29

Where dost thou careless lie, 39

Where, where are now the great reports, 9

While that the sun with his beams hot, 19

While the dawn on the mountain was misty and gray, 253

Whither, midst falling dew, 344

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush, 229

Ye banks and braes and streams around, 208

Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon, 188

Ye clouds! that far above me float and pause, 280

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 142

You meaner beauties of the night, 102

You that do search for every purling spring, 27

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