A HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY FROM THE ESTATE OF MRS. CHARLES RODERT SANGER Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by EPES SARGENT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PREFACE. In pursuing the plan of an edition of the Standard British Poets, that should be, at the same time, so elegant as to be generally desirable, and so cheap as to be within the most moderate means, we have collected, in a single volume, the Complete Poetical Works of Collins, Gray, and Goldsmith, with notes, memoirs, and engraved portraits of the authors. The memoirs are believed to be sufficiently full for a work of this kind. Nothing important in the lives, or in relation to the poetical works of the authors, has been designedly omitted. The original notes of all have been given, without omission or abbreviation, and from various sources such others have been added as in the editor's judgment were desirable in the way of explanation or commentary. In settling the text of Collins, we have carefully collated the best editions; and the biographical sketch has been chiefly prepared from the materials collected by Mr. Dyce, with occasional reference to other sources of authentic information. We have omitted, without much reluctance, the crit ical dissertations of Dr. Langhorne, with which the editions of Collins have usually been swelled to the dimensions of a profitable book. At first they were, to some extent, useful in advertising the unacknowledged merits of the poet; but even then they were condemned as mere devices to enhance the size and price of the volume. For the first-named purpose they are no longer necessary, and it is therefore not uncharitable to believe that the extra "shilling" is the only inducement to their republication in late editions. With regard to Gray, we have consulted the publications of Mason and Matthias, and have been much indebted to the editorial labors and researches of Mr. Mitford, as displayed, not only in the five volumes of the Aldine issue of Gray's writings, but more recently in the Eton edition of his poems, supervised by the Rev. Mr. Moultrie. The biographical sketch prefixed to the last-named volume is from the pen of Mr. Mitford, and is enriched with his latest gleanings in a field to which he has devoted himself with wellrewarded diligence. We have transferred to an appendix a few trifling productions attributed to Gray, which do not appear in the volume of the Aldine edition assigned to the poems. They may be found, however, in one of the later volumes, which have never been reprinted in this country. We reprint all the poems of Goldsmith that are contained in any approved edition of his works; following chiefly the text adopted by Mr. Bolton Corney in the volume so beautifully illustrated by the Etching Club. This text we have |