It may have been noticed that in this description of the principal kinds of poetry, only three of the poems included in this book have been mentioned. This is because the other three--_The Traveller_, _The Deserted Village_, and _The Cotter's Saturday Night_--do not fit exactly into any of the divisions. One would class them with the epics rather than with the lyrics or the dramas, but they are not properly narratives, because they tell no story; they are really descriptive and reflective poems. One often comes upon a difficulty of this kind when attempting to classify a poem, and the truth is that several smaller divisions are necessary if every production is to be placed where it belongs. But while it is desirable to know whether one is reading a lyric, an epic, or a drama, it is far more important to enjoy a beautiful poem than to be able properly to classify it. The following list may prove useful to those who wish to know more of the poets represented in this volume than can be learned from the short sketches of their lives which it includes: J. R. Green: _Short History of the English People_; Stopford Brooke: _English Literature_; Frederick Ryland: _Chronological Outlines of English Literature_; Edmund Gosse: _A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature_; _Dictionary of National Biography_ (British); G. Saintsbury: _Dryden_ (English Men of Letters Series); James Russell Lowell: essay on Dryden in _Among my Books_, vol. i; W. L. Phelps: _Gray_ (Athenaeum Press Series); Matthew Arnold: essay on Gray in _Essays in Criticism_, second series; James Russell Lowell: essay on Gray in _Latest Literary Essays_; Austin Dobson: _Life of Goldsmith_ (Great Writers Series), William Black: _Goldsmith_ (E. M. L. Series); J. C. Shairp: _Burns_ (E. M. L. Series); Thomas Carlyle: essay on Burns in _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_, and [Burns] "The Hero as Man of Letters" in _Heroes and Hero Worship_; H. D. Traill: _Coleridge_ (E. M. L. Series); T. Hall Caine: _Life of Coleridge_ (Great Writers Series); J. C. Shairp: "Coleridge as Poet and Philosopher" in _Studies in Poetry and Philosophy_; James Russell Lowell: "Address in Westminster Abbey, 7th May, 1885" [Coleridge], in _Democracy and Other Essays_; A. C. Swinburne; _Essays and Studies_; Walter Pater: "Coleridge," in _Appreciations_. FIVE ENGLISH POETS JOHN DRYDEN 1631-1700