I have attached a few notes to this volume. I had intended to add many more, but under the pressure of events which now claim, and for a long time to come are likely to claim, nearly all one’s thoughts and leisure, have been obliged to renounce the carrying of this intention out, and only to print those which were ready. If in them there is little or nothing with which professed students of English literature are not already familiar, I can only urge that this volume was not designed, and still less were the notes designed, for such; but for readers who, capable of an intelligent interest in the subject, have yet had neither time nor opportunity for special studies of their own in it, and who must therefore rely more or less on the hand-leading of others; nor I trust shall I be found fault with that I have sometimes taken upon me in these notes to indicate what seemed worthy of special admiration; or sought in other ways to plant the reader at that point of view from which the merits of some poem might be most deeply felt and best understood. If I am, I must plead in excuse that for myself in other regions of art, as in music or painting, where I have comparatively little or no confidence in my own judgment, I have been and often am most thankful to those, being persons whom I could trust, who have told me what to admire, and given me the reasons for so doing. If we set aside a few intuitive geniuses, it is only thus that any of us can ever hope to be educated into independence of judgment; and I am sure that some, acknowledging this, will be grateful for notes of admiration, by which I have sometimes called their attention to that which otherwise might not obtain it, or might not obtain it to the full of its deserts. LONDON: _May 8th, 1868_. A HOUSEHOLD BOOK OF ENGLISH POETRY. PART THE FIRST. I _A MEDITATION UPON THE FRAILTY OF THIS LIFE._ O trifling toys that toss the brains, While loathsome life doth last; O wishèd wealth, O sugared joys, O life when death is past; Who loaths exchange of loss with gain? 5 Yet loath we death as hell. What woeful wight would wish his woe? Yet wish we here to dwell. O Fancy frail, that feeds on earth, And stays on slippery joys; 10 O noble mind, O happy man, That can contemn such toys! Such toys as neither perfect are, And cannot long endure; Our greatest skill, our sweetest joy, 15 Uncertain and unsure. For life is short, and learning long, All pleasure mixt with woe; Sickness and sleep steal time unseen, And joys do come and go. 20 Thus learning is but learned by halves, And joy enjoyed no while; That serves to show thee what thou want’st, This helps thee to beguile.