A HARVARD COLLEGE June 26, 1930 From the library of william C. White Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, By BUNCE AND HUNTINGTON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern PREFACE, F I have accomplished the object I had in view, this volume is a faithful representation of the late Poets of England. Not of the greatest, as Tennyson and the Brownings, whose works are in the hands of all, and whose fame is fixed for the present, however it may fluctuate in future; but of their younger brothers and sisters, to whom fame is not yet assured, although they have already won reputations of greater or lesser worth. Who among their number are likely to rank with the Immortals, Time alone can decide. My business with, my duty to, them, is to present all at their best, giving each the place he seems entitled to, so far as it can be done in a volume of this size. No recent poet, with whose works I am acquainted, has been overlooked, but several not so widely known as they should be are brought to the notice of American readers. The chief of these are the two brothers of the Laureate, Frederick Tennyson and Charles Turner (why the latter has changed his name I have not learned, but doubtless for family reasons, such as obtain in England,—possibly the inheritance of an estate), Edwin Arnold, a brother of Matthew Arnold, William Morris, George W. Thornbury, George Meredith (better known as a novelist than a poet), Thomas Westwood, and Frederick Locker. Robert Buchanan and Algernon Charles Swinburne are largely quoted from, because they appear to me the most promising, as they are certainly the most prominent, of the later Poets of England. As regards the last, I have departed from the rule which I laid down at the start, and which was rigidly observed until he was reached,—not to make extracts from poems, but to give entire poems: in his case the rule was not practicable-his writings, so far as I know them, consisting of productions of considerable length, viz., the tragedies of Rosamond and The Queen Mother, and Atalanta in Calydon. From the last named I have selected six Choruses, which in a certain sense are complete in themselves, enough so, at least, to be read as separate poems, without doing violence to their sense. NEW YORK, November 18, 1865. R. H. S. |