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MAINLY HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL

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·PART I.

Most copies of Cowper's poems contain an account of these hares, written in the exquisite prose of which he

was master.

9 The poetry which Blake, an artist of very high and rare powers, wrote during his youth, shows the same qualities as his art; simple yet often majestic imagination, spiritual insight, profound feeling for grace and colour. Like his art also, his verse is narrow in its range, and at times eccentric to the neighbourhood of madness. But, whatever he writes, his eye is always straight upon his subject. So many beautiful pieces in prose and verse have been written in the Scots or North Country language that a great source of pleasure is lost by readers who will not take the small pains required to master the peculiarities of spelling and vocabulary: it is hoped that the very numerous notes added here will tempt children to give themselves this pleasure.

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The original ballads by unknown poets appear generally to have taken their present form within the two hundred years before 1700.

16 Casabiana was son to a French Admiral commanding the flag-ship L'Orient at the battle of the Nile, 1798. The Birkenhead, steam troop-ship, struck near Simon's Bay, Cape of Good Hope, 25th of February, 1852. Four hundred and thirty-eight officers, soldiers, and seamen, were lost including the military commander, Colonel Seton of the 74th. For some alterations which make this fine poem more intelligible to children, readers are indebted to the author's kindness.

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19 These gallant lines are almost worthy of Campbell.
The Royal George, of 108 guns, commanded by Admiral
Kempenfelt, whilst undergoing a partial careening in
Portsmouth Harbour, was overset about 10 A. M. Aug. 29
1782. The total loss was believed to be near 1,000
souls. These lines were written (Sept. 1782) to the music
of the March in Handel's Scipio. For tenderness and
grandeur under the form of severe simplicity they have
few rivals. They are Greek after the manner in which a
modern English poet should be Greek:-Readers who
admire them are on the right way to high and lasting
pleasure.

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23

Burns justly named this 'one of the most beautiful songs in the Scots or any other language.'

'I never saw anything like this funeral dirge,' says Charles Lamb, except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve itself into the element which it contemplates.' 24 Alexander Selkirk's life of four years in the desolate

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island, Juan Fernandez, may have been in De Foe's mind when he wrote Robinson Crusoe.'

28 Line 66, Cockrood, unexplained, so far as the Editor can learn. It would seem to mean either a road or run, as we say, for woodcocks; or a wooden stage for them, by a vague use of rood.

29 A justly famous specimen of the allegorical style prevalent in Elizabeth's time: the Shepherd's life being poetically glorified and described as a type of life in general. This piece should be compared with the charming truthfulness of Herrick's country scenes in the preceding piece, or Wordsworth's following:-Marlowe's has much beauty: but how much more beautiful is Truth, in the hands of a genuine poet!

41

The tale of Lord Leicester's private marriage with Amy Robsart, her imprisonment and fearful death at Cumnor Hall, near Oxford, partially confirmed by history, has been made more real to us than most historical realities by Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth: the most. splendid of the three tragic romances left by that great writer.

47 This spirited poem, which blazes throughout with the highhearted patriotism of its distinguished author, should be read accompanied by some history of the period, and the map of England.

Line 10, Pinta; the Editor can find no Spanish vessel recorded under this name; nor does the word, in Spanish, bear any sense applicable to a ship. Medina Sidonia, who commanded the Armada, sailed in the Saint Martin.

Line 23, At Cressy, Picardy, the king of Bohemia, and a body of Genoese soldiers, fought in the army of Philip. Cæsar's eagle shield appears to be an allusion to some German troops who also served. The eagle is the ancient bearing of the empire.

Line 42, Mines of lead and zinc exist in the Mendip Hills.

Line 43, Longleat, Cranbourne; houses in Wilts and Dorset belonging to Lords Bath and Salisbury.

Line 71, Belvoir, house of the Duke of Rutland near Grantham.

Line 73,

Gaunt's embattled pile, Lancaster Castle, built by John of Gaunt about 1363.

48 This battle was fought December 2, 1800, between the
Austrians under Archduke John and the French under
Moreau, in a forest near Munich. Hohen Linden means
High Limetrees.

51 Belisarius, a Thracian peasant, became general of the
Roman Empire under Justinian. He fought against the
Vandals, Moors, Goths, Bulgarians, and other enemies;
but was finally dismissed ungratefully by the Emperor,
and died A.D. 565.

The writer of this rough, but truly noble and original poem, died soon after 1800. The version here given (from Plumtre's Songs,' 1806) differs from that published by Collins in his very rare little book, Scripscrapologia,' 1804.

53 Lines 22, 24, These places are in the S.W. promontory of

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Donegal, Ireland. Slieveleague is a mountain; Columbkill a glen between Slieveleague and the Rosses islands. 56 The poet professed that these fine, wildly musical lines came to him in his sleep, and that all he did on waking was to write them down. Coleridge, in his magic world, is the most imaginative and romantic of all our poets, Shakespeare (always exceptional) excepted. Seeing how little he wrote in this class, we must regret that he did not dream oftener.

59 In this one poem the Editor has ventured to make some changes, in order to simplify the language, which (in the original does not appear to him to do full justice to the admirable simplicity and pathos of the picture presented. 60 During the last three centuries, the poetry written in the North Country or Scots form of English has been so much more important than that written in other forms, as to obscure the peculiar merits which each of them possesses. But the series of poems from which this piece and the next are taken proves the pathos and picturesqueness which the Dorset dialect has when handled by a gifted countryman. 62 The death of a young man wandering on Helvellyn in the Lake country, in 1805, supplied Scott with his subject. In this poem the thoughts are much simpler than the language: a rare fault with Scott, or, indeed, with any really great poet.

70 An admirable specimen of the Allegorical style which, under the first two Stuart kings, took the place of the pastoral Elizabethan allegory represented by No. 29. Few poets, in C. Lamb's language, are more matterful' than Herbert, or express their thoughts with fewer words, introduced only for ornament or metre's sake.

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Remarkable for its close and scientific enumeration of natural phenomena.

73 An extract from the long poem said to have been written by poor Smart when confined as a madman. It is full of glorious wildness and intense imagination. Many of its strange phrases (as line 10 here) might probably be traced to, if not explained by, the writings of the 'mystical' theologians.

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It is remarkable how much Addison here anticipates the exquisite suavity and elegance of Cowper's style in similar pieces. 75 Wordsworth has left no more consummate specimen of the singular art by which he presents us with a thought which strikes the mind as, at once, perfectly original, and yet, perfectly familiar. The Cuckoo (No. 78), on the other hand, paints a fervour of imaginative delight which would be felt only by a highly poetical nature. 128 81 Arethusa, with the two poems which follow it, will probably be found difficult at first reading, and may give older children a glimpse into that world of poetry in general to which this book is meant as an introduction. Shelley has here put into verse, so brilliant that we easily forgive its occasional commonplace and carelessness of phrase, a Greek mythical legend.

Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice

Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse,

-a river rising near Mount Erymanthus m Arcadia,

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the ancient central province of Southern Greece,
is feigned to pursue the stream Arethusa; they pass
through a rent in Mount Erymanthus, cross under the
sea to Sicily (opposite to the coast of Greece), and now
form one stream in the harbour of Syracuse (Ortygia)..
Acroceraunia, a mountain tract in Northern Greece,
must have been named by Shelley inadvertently, or on
account of the resonance of the name. This poem is
a fine example of Shelley's singular power in personifica-
tion: he paints the rivers as vividly as if they had been
real human creatures.

82 L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. It is a striking proof of
Milton's astonishing power, that these, the earliest pure
descriptive lyrics in our language, should still remain
the best in a style which so many great poets have since
attempted. The bright and the thoughtful aspects of
nature are their subjects; but each is preceded by a
mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and Italian
manner. The meaning of the first is that gaiety is the
child of nature and of spring; of the second, that pen-
siveness is the daughter of solitude and wisdom.
Line 36, Milton calls Liberty a mountain-nymph in
allusion to ancient Greece, Switzerland, and other similar
countries in which national freedom has been defended
by the hardy inhabitants. Wordsworth has a fine sonnet
on this subject.

Line 132, The sock was the low shoe worn by actors in
the ancient comedies; the buskin (line 102 of the
Penseroso, No. 83) the high shoe worn in tragedies, to
give the figure a more commanding air.

Line 133. Fancy: probably used for what we speak of as Imagination. Milton is here alluding to Shakespeare through the mouth of the Cheerful Man;' he hence refers to Shakespeare's lighter qualities.

Line 145, Orpheus in Greek story was a divine musician who redeemed his wife Eurydice from death (Pluto) by song; but lost her when on the boundary line of life by turning back to look on her before she had passed it. See also Penseroso, No. 83, line 105.

83 Line 46, Spare Fast: Milton elsewhere has expressed his belief that the mind is made clear and fit for high and divine thoughts by fasting.

Line 87, The Great Bear, in English latitudes being always above the horizon, is here used for Night.

Line 98, Sceptred pall: Ancient tragedies turned generally on the fortunes of heroic persons, kings, and gods; hence the actors appeared robed and with sceptres. Thebes, &c. are names referring to the great Athenian tragedies.

Line 110. Cambuscan, &c., these names occur in Chaucer's unfinished Squire's Tale.'

It

Line 116, Great bards; referring to such poets as the Italian Ariosto and Tasso, and to our own Spenser. 84 This fine poem, recently printed from manuscript, has been ascribed to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. does not appear whether the first of that name (beheaded 1600) or his son (with whom the peerage ended in 1646) be intended. The lines, at any rate, belong to the Elizabethan' period or a few years later.

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NOTES:

PART II.

MAINLY HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL

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This rough but spirited poem, with a very few more, give Drayton a claim to remembrance, which his long and laborious chronicles in rhyme have failed to secure.

Agincourt was fought October 25, 1415. A history of England, and Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth should be read with this poem.

Line 48, The lilies are the Fleur-de-Lys, long the arms
of France, as the Lions are of England.

2 Southey, like Drayton, has left little work vividly
penetrated with the spirit of poetry, in comparison with
his many pages of skilful and industrious manufacture.
This piece has something of the merit shown in Words-
worth's tales; but it wants Wordsworth's exquisiteness
3 Simple as Lucy Gray seems, a mere narrative of what
'has been and may be again,' yet every detail in it is
marked by the deepest and purest 'ideal' character.
Hence it is not strictly a pathetic poem, pathetic as the
situation is. So far as this element has a place, Words-
worth asks that we should feel for the parents, rather
than for the child: she is painted as a creature, made
one with Nature' in her death, not less than in her life.
5 This little poem, again, within, its sphere, in ideal per-
fection rivals the most perfect work of the world's greatest
lyrical poets.-Readers who smile, are invited to try to
'do likewise.'

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Within its range, the Ancient Mariner is alone in its glory'-but the crown must have been given to Christabel, had Coleridge completed that poem, and completed it in the style of the two parts which we have.

The Memoirs of Wordsworth give an interesting narrative of the mode in which the Ancient Mariner was written: The dream of a friend, according to Coleridge, was the foundation; but by far the greatest part of the story is due to the poet's mind. The introduction of the Albatross, and the working of the ship by the dead sailors, were motives suggested by Wordsworth, who also supplied a very few lines, as the friends walked together over the lovely Quantock Hills in the autumn of 1797.Such were the external circumstances under which this masterpiece was created: it is pleasant to know them; but all that made it such is the poet's secret. Line 5, It is not clear whether by fairy-flax the poet means graceful and fairylike, or whether it be a local name for some species of the plant.

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