I must also record thanks to those authors and publishers who have courteously given permission for the reproduction of their publications: to Mr. John Lane, for permission to quote from the works of Mr. William Watson and Mr. Stephen Phillips; to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, for permission to make extracts from the poems of Mr. William Vaughn Moody and from Mr. Stedman's _Nature and Elements of Poetry_; to Macmillan and Company, Limited, of London, for permission to make extracts from Professor Butcher's _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry_ and from Mr. Courthope's _Life in Poetry and Law in Taste_; to Professor F. B. Gummere and The Macmillan Company of New York, for permission to quote from the former's _Beginnings of Poetry_; to the Lothrop Publishing Company of Boston, for permission to reprint Mr. Clinton Scollard's villanelle, "Spring Knocks at Winter's Frosty Door," from the volume entitled _With Reed and Lyre_; to Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, for permission to reprint her rondeau, "A Man must Live," from the volume entitled _On This Our World_ (published by Small, Maynard and Company); to Dr. Samuel Minturn Peck, for permission to reprint one of the triolets called "Under the Rose," from his volume entitled _Cap and Bells_; to the Frederick A. Stokes Company, for permission to reprint Mr. Frank D. Sherman's "Ballade to Austin Dobson," from the volume entitled _Madrigals and Catches_. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Mr. W. E. Henley, and Mr. Edmund Gosse have given generous permission to quote freely from their poems. Mr. Henley was also good enough to suggest the choice of the rondeau from his "Bric-à-Brac"; and Mr. Gosse, whose unfailing courtesy follows up his numerous published aids to students of English poetry, has also added some personal notes on the history of the heroic couplet. Finally, it should be said that a considerable part of the studies resulting in this book was carried on while the editor held the Senior Fellowship in English on the Harrison Foundation in the University of Pennsylvania. If, therefore, the book should prove of service to any, the fact will be a single additional tribute to the munificence of that foundation. R. M. A. STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA, November, 1902. CONTENTS PART ONE