"The Musical Basis of Verse," Josephine P. Dabney (London and New York: Longmans, 1901); "Essays on Blank Verse," John Addington Symonds (New York: Scribner, 1895); "Sonnets of this Century," William Sharp (London: Scott, 1886); "Hexameter Verse,' P. Cummings (Cambridge, Mass: 1900); "History of Epic Poetry (post Virgilian)," John Clark (Edinburgh, 1900); "Old English Ballads," F. B. Gummere (Boston: Ginn, 1904); and many others. Dr. Gummere's work contains a valuable introduction and helpful notes. See also the standard encyclopedias for both special and general articles on versification. The "Reader's Guide," "Poole's Index to Periodical Literature," and similar cumulative reference devices, will furnish titles to all articles on the general and specific subjects desired which have appeared in periodicals for a number of years.

APPENDIX C

HELPS IN THE STUDY OF POETRY

The first requisite for the study of poetry is poetry. But in what form shall one buy or borrow it?

The complete poetic works of any one writer will be valuable chiefly to those who are instructed as to which are his best poems. Besides, to own the complete works of the many authors whose poetry should be examined means a large expenditure of money, book-space, and time for reading. To most students, therefore, collections are invaluable. Of these there are many-even many good ones. In the following greatly condensed lists, only poetry in English is considered.

1. General Collections

"A Library of the World's Best Literature," edited by Charles Dudley Warner and a corps of litterateurs (a subscription work, in 31 and 46 volumes), contains two wellselected volumes of "Songs, Hymns, and Lyrics," besides extended (mostly signed) articles on, and abundant examples from, the poets of all lands. "The World's Best Poetry" (also a subscription work, in 5 and 10 volumes), edited by Bliss Carman and others, contains a good general collection of poems classified according to themes,

together with a number of popular signed essays on poetry subjects. Edmund Clarence Stedman's "Victorian Anthology" and "American Anthology" (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1895 and 1900) form, combined, an excellent general collection of limited scope.

2. British Anthologies

Frances T. Palgrave's "Golden Treasury" (London and New York: Macmillans, 1861-1891) is a good inexpensive collection, comprising 339 poems. "The Oxford Book of English Verse," edited by A. T. Quiller-Couch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900) is also good. Two carefully edited volumes, which together constitute the best low-priced collection of annotated British poems, are "Standard English Poems," edited by Henry S. Pancoast (New York: Holt, 1899), and "Early English Poems," edited by Henry S. Pancoast and John Duncan Spaeth (New York: Holt, 1911). The most adequate, because the most extended, British annotated anthology issued in America is "English Poems," edited by Walter C. Bronson (University of Chicago Press, 1907-1910), in four volumes (averaging over 500 pp. each), comprising: "Old English and Middle English Periods," "Elizabethan Age and Puritan Period," "Restoration and Eighteenth Century," and "Nineteenth Century." The arrangement of the profuse selections shows the rise and decline of successive schools of poetry, the several hundred pages of notes are illuminating, and the indexes, glossaries and bibliographies are very full. Three well selected volumes of British verse

have been edited with discriminating notes and biographical data by William Stanley Braithwaite. "The Book of Elizabethan Verse" (Boston: Turner & Co., 1907); "The Book of Restoration Verse" (New York: Brentano, 1909); and "The Book of Georgian Verse" (New York: Brentano, 1908).

3. American Anthologies

Dr. Bronson has issued (1912) a volume of "American Poems," on the same excellent plan as his "English Poems," and published by the same Press. Admirable as this anthology is, it must share its eminence with the "Yale Book of American Verse," edited by Thomas R. Lounsbury (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912). Both are full, varied, and represent the selections of ripe scholarship.

4. The Theory of Poetry

Aristotle's "Poetics," Sir Philip Sidney's "An Apologie for Poetics," and the three long poems by Horace, Vida, and Boileau, each entitled "The Art of Poetry," are still interesting and illuminating as examples of former-day theory. (For annotated editions of all except Aristotle, see Ginn's catalogue, Boston.) For a study of origins, see "The Evolution of Literature," A. S. MacKenzie (New York: Crowell, 1911), and "The Beginnings of Poetry," F. B. Gummere (New York and London: Macmillan, 1901). An exhaustive treatise is "The History of English Poetry," Thomas Wharton (London: Ward, Lock & Co.,

1778 et seq). "What is Poetry," Leigh Hunt, edited by Albert S. Cook (Boston: Ginn, 1893), is not only a charming essay in itself but cites largely the opinions of distinguished men of letters. Edmund Clarence Stedman's "The Nature and Elements of Poetry" (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892) is a sound, though somewhat oratorical presentment of the subject (the lectures were delivered at Johns Hopkins University). A scholarly and clear-sighted treatise is "Introduction to Poetry," Raymond M. Alden (New York: Holt, 1909). There are also in general literature many accessible essays bearing on the nature of poetry; some of the best of these are: Shelley's "Defense of Poesy;" Emerson's essays on "The Poet" and "Poetry and Imagination;" Wordsworth's introduction to the "Lyrical Ballads;" Matthew Arnold's essays "On Translating Homer," introduction to the "Poetry of Wordsworth," "Celtic Poetry," etc.; Lowell's "Essay on Dryden;" Macaulay's "Essay on Milton," etc.; and Poe's essays on "The Rationale of Verse," "The Poetic Principle," and "The Philosophy of Composition."