Probably every man who makes an anthology finds that at some stage it begins to take its own shape, and that the final form was not foreseen. His own favourites are his first choice. He has then to consider the favourites of the public, for he must not forget the pronouncement of the wisest of eighteenth-century critics that by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours'. Friends, or Chance, may direct him to pieces that he has missed, or open his eyes to beauties that he has not seen. So far his only standard of choice may be intrinsic merit. But in time other claims demand a hearing. A piece may have an historical interest, or popular associations; another may be quoted in a famous work, or one of its lines may be widely familiar; another, though nowhere excelling, may be representative. Once these claims are conceded, the collection ceases to be strictly an anthology. The florist has begun to develop, or to degenerate, into the botanist. When the field from which he gathers is limited, the change may be desirable, if not inevitable. All will be well so long as he does not become a curator of dried specimens.

As in other Oxford Books, the arrangement is in the main chronological, and all the poems

by the same author are printed together; but the authors are not placed in the order of their birth, nor-as in Campbell's Specimens-of their death. By the one method Cowper would come before Chatterton; by the other, Churchill before Young. They are placed by a central date in their career, or by the date of their most important work-Pope by his Iliad, Young by his Night Thoughts, Cowper by The Task. But even this method has its faults; while it aims at a truer chronology, it permits and invites the exercise of no little whim, and occasionally-but rarely it is hoped-it may fail of its purpose. There may be whim, for instance, in the wide separation of the brothers Warton, though it can be defended, for Joseph, who was born earlier and died later, wrote his best poems as a young man in his twenties, and Thomas, who was only six years his junior, did not come to his full power till middle age; but if Pope is rightly placed before Young, we can only regret that their Characters of Women cannot be given in their proper sequence. The insurmountable difficulty in chronological arrangement is that a book requires contemporaries who moved abreast to find their place in single file. When the order in this collection appears to be unsatisfactory, a corrective will be found in the brief note appended to each poem giving the date of first publication, or of

composition, and sometimes of the earliest print known to the editor. The text of the poem is often taken from a later and revised edition.

Our attitude to the century is still in process of readjustment. We do not now feel the need of a new point of view for earlier periods. We may have, we must have, our personal likes or dislikes of the Elizabethans and Carolines, but from the judgement which has been passed on them as a whole there is no demand for an appeal. No such judgement has yet been given on the poetry of the eighteenth century. The verdict of the nineteenth century is now before the twentieth for revision. The critics speak as counsel engaged on one side or the other, or show a conscious air of impartiality. Of the friendly critics, the most judicial find some misunderstanding to correct, or some prejudice to combat; all tend to assume an attitude of defence. What is reasonably certain is that a new verdict, favourable or unfavourable, will be given by the twentieth century, and that in time we ourselves, or more probably our successors, will speak of the eighteenth century with as little sense of contention as we now speak of the seventeenth and the age of Elizabeth.

When that time comes we shall have ceased to look upon the poetry of this century as the battle-ground of forces ranged somehow

under the standards of the classical' and the 'romantic', and shall have little use for the flimsy mottoes with which both standards are marked. If we are disposed to search in this volume for the explanation of such catchwords as 'the poetry of the Town', the tyranny of Pope', the domination of the heroic couplet', we are likely to be disappointed. The introduction into English criticism, from French and German criticism, of the terms 'classical' and 'romantic' has not helped us to a truer appreciation of our literature. Sooner or later we have to enlarge or qualify the meaning which we attach to them if they are to fit all the facts; they tempt us to manipulate the facts to fit our definitions, and they ask us to find distinction where separation may not be natural or even possible. We should do well to forget them when we consider the poetry of the eighteenth century. So long as we continue to employ them we must think of the century as, from one point of view, a period of decadence, and, from another, a period of preparation. It was much more. It was a period of definite

achievement.

The nature of this achievement does not concern us here. The whole duty of an anthologist is to select and arrange. But the evidence from which we can come to our own just conclusions is provided in this volume, if it is as

representative as the editor has tried to make it. Those who are interested in poetic movements and fashions may find in it what they want; others, too, who prefer to think of this century, as they may of every century, as an age of transition. Its poetry is rich in conscious. echoes; but it is richer in anticipations. Who was it that wrote these lines?

O ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook
The rocky pavement and the mossy falls
Of solitary Wensbeck's limpid stream;
How gladly I recall your well-known seats
Belov'd of old, and that delightful time
When all alone, for many a summer's day,
I wander'd through your calm recesses, led
In silence by some powerful hand unseen.

Nor will I e'er forget you nor shall e'er
The graver tasks of manhood, or the advice
Of vulgar wisdom, move me to disclaim
These studies which possess'd me in the dawn
Of life, and fix'd the colour of my mind
For every future year.

Not Wordsworth, but Akenside; who elsewhere in his clean-cut phrasing sometimes reminds us of Landor. Or again, who wrote these lines describing a forsaken woman who has lost her reason?

When thirst and hunger griev'd her most,
If any food she took,

It was the berry from the thorn,

The water from the brook.