---

Contents. Index of Authors. Index of First Lines. (etext transcriber's note)

{i}

The
Oxford Book
Of English Verse

1250-1900

Impression of 1931
First edition, 1900

The
Oxford Book
Of English Verse
1250-1900

Chosen & Edited by

Arthur Quiller-Couch

Oxford
At the Clarendon Press

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN



TO

THE PRESIDENT

FELLOWS AND SCHOLARS

OF

TRINITY COLLEGE OXFORD

A HOUSE OF LEARNING

ANCIENT LIBERAL HUMANE

AND MY MOST KINDLY NURSE

PREFACE

For this Anthology I have tried to range over the whole field of EnglishVerse from the beginning, or from the Thirteenth Century to this closingyear of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best. Nor have I sought inthese Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse has followed the tonguewhich among living tongues she most delights to honour. To bring homeand render so great a spoil compendiously has been my capitaldifficulty. It is for the reader to judge if I have so managed it as toserve those who already love poetry and to implant that love in someyoung minds not yet initiated.

My scheme is simple. I have arranged the poets as nearly as possible inorder of birth, with such groupings of anonymous pieces as seemedconvenient. For convenience, too, as well as to avoid a dispute-royal, Ihave gathered the most of the Ballads into the middle of the SeventeenthCentury; where they fill a languid interval between two winds ofinspiration—the Italian dying down with Milton and the French followingat the heels of the restored Royalists. For convenience, again, I haveset myself certain rules of spelling. In the very earliest poemsinflection and spelling are structural, and to modernize is to destroy.{viii}But as old inflections fade into modern the old spelling becomes lessand less vital, and has been brought (not, I hope, too abruptly) intoline with that sanctioned by use and familiar. To do this seemed wiserthan to discourage many readers for the sake of diverting others by ascent of antiquity which—to be essential—should breathe of somethingrarer than an odd arrangement of type. But there are scholars whom Icannot expect to agree with me; and to conciliate them I have exceptedSpenser and Milton from the rule.

Glosses of archaic and otherwise difficult words are given at the footof the page: but the text has not been disfigured with reference-marks.And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewednotes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to askfor a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was tocriticize or ‘appreciate.’ For the function of the anthologist includescriticizing in silence.

Care has been taken with the texts. But I have sometimes thought itconsistent with the aim of the book t

BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!

Sitemize Üyelik ÜCRETSİZDİR!