But if Mr. Palgrave had not forestalled me, I certainly did not feel that any other had so done. Most of the collections which have fallen under my eye have failed to give me the impression of being the result of direct and immediate investigation on the part of the collector into the treasures of our English Poetry. There is so much there which invites citation, and which has never been cited yet in any of our popular anthologies, that it is difficult to think that any one who had himself wandered in this garden of riches would not have carried off some flowers and fruits of his own gathering; instead of offering to us again, as most do, though it may be in somewhat different combinations, what already has been offered by others. When I see, for example, ‘Queen and huntress chaste and fair,’ doubtless a very graceful lyric, with one or two other familiar poems, doing duty in one collection after another as the specimens of Ben Jonson’s verse, it is hard to suppose that his rich and pleasant _Underwood_ has been wandered through; since in that case something which others have not brought already would surely have been brought away from thence; while the specimens from other poets provoke a similar misgiving. Whatever merit or demerit this may imply, the volume here presented lays claim to a certain originality--or, if that word cannot in this matter be allowed,--to a certain independence of judgment. There has not, indeed, been any attempt, as certainly there has been no desire, to reverse the general judgment and decision about the great poems of the language. He who should offer to do this would merely betray his own presumption, and his unfitness for even so humble a task as that here attempted. But in poems of a very high merit, which yet do not attain to the highest rank of all, there is ample space for the play of such an independent judgment, and I have not hesitated to exercise this. Many, which almost all collections have hitherto contained, will be looked for in vain in this; not a few which, so far as I know, none have included, have found room in it. It is not always that I have considered what I bring forward _better_ than what to make place for it I set aside; but where I have only considered it as good, it has seemed a real gain to put new treasures within the reach of those who are little able, or, if able, are little likely, to go and discover such for themselves. But in very many instances I feel sure that what I have made room for is not merely as good, but better than that which to make room for it I have dismissed; nor has it been a little pleasure to draw from obscure retreats, or from retreats only familiar to those who have made English poetry more or less of a special study, and acquainted themselves with its bye ways no less than its high ways, poems which little merit the oblivion into which they had fallen.