ENTERED according to act of Congress, in the year 1899, by Robert Howard Russell, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

2-18-39

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The Preface

J'ay seulement faict icy un amas de fleurs, n'y ayant fourny du mien que le filet à les lier.

I

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE.

Tis singular,” writes Mr. Swinburne, "that the first great age of English lyric poetry should have been also the one great age of English dramatic poetry: but it is 8 hardly less singular that the lyric school should have advanced as steadily as the dramatic school declined from the promise of its dawn. Born with Marlowe, it rose at once with Shakespeare to heights inaccessible before and since and for ever, to sink through bright gradations of glorious decline to its final

and beautiful sunset in Shirley: but the lyrical record that begins with the author of Euphues' and Endymion' grows fuller if not brighter through a whole chain of

as sure

constellations till it culminates in the crowning star of Herrick. the greatest song-writer ly as Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist-ever born of English

race."

The reasons for this growth and decrease are not far to seek. During the greater portion of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the newly-awaked national self-consciousness had manifested itself in so many forms that the whole field

enriched. With the passing of years, however, and the aging of the Queen, the spirit of playful gallantry inseparable from a female court was gradually succeeded by a more cold and gloomy system of manners, and the poets concerned themselves more and more with subjects of an abstract or religious character. Under King James I.(who was anxious to pass as a sacred poet and has left, amongst other works, a metrical translation of the first thirtyone Psalms) lighter poetry found little encouragement and was, in general, overweighted by the growing spirit of puritanism. The theatres alone seem to have been