LATE FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, oxford COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME London MACMILLAN AND CO. 1876 RV THIS selection is planned for children between nine or ten, and fifteen or sixteen years of age; the pleasure and advantage of the older students in Elementary, and the younger in Grammar and Public Schools, being especially kept in view. As it is meant for their own possession and study, not less than for use as a class-book in the teacher's hand, sufficient notes (it is thought) have been added to render the volume by itself fairly comprehensible to children of average intelligence and the editor hopes that this object may be his excuse with those who may consider the annotations too numerous. The scheme of choice followed has produced a... selection different from any known to the editor. Suitability to childhood is, of course, the common principle of all. But, this quality secured (so far as individual judgment can), nothing has been here admitted which does not reach a high rank in poetical merit; and the available stores of English poetry have been carefully reviewed for the purpose. The editor's wish has been to collect all songs, narratives, descriptions, or reflective pieces of a lyrical quality, fit to give pleasure, -high, pure, manly, (and therefore lasting)— to children in the stage between early childhood and early youth and no pieces which are not of this character. Poetry, for poetry's sake, is what |