EDITOR'S PREFACE WITH this volume the annotated edition of the G Treasury (First Series) is complete; Book Second ha already been edited by Mr. W. Bell, and Books and Fourth by the present Editor. To readers of English poetry the First Book is prok less familiar, on the whole, than any of the later B As it is more remote from us in time, its language some ways more difficult; and its range of thoug certainly more limited. But it is the product of an in which Music and sweet Poetry agreed as they never done in England since; and if their long div is to be ended, it must be, one would think, by learning anew from the lips of the Elizabethans secret of their golden diction. For students into whose hands this book may com may not be superfluous to repeat here the cau already given in the prefaces to Books Third and F as to the proper function of notes; and to ask the remember that the value of these is wholly subsic o the text; that it is the text which they should irst and many times; and that the notes, if read at hould be read afterwards. Such literary criticism ttempted in the notes is meant to provoke thought o be committed to memory; and always the endea as been made to show, by illustrative quotations eference to parallel nag20202 that the noota |