The Elizabethan Poetry, as it is rather vaguely termed, forms the
substance of this Book, which contains pieces from Wyat under Henry
VIII. to Shakespeare midway through the reign of James I., and Drummond
who carried on the early manner to a still later period. There is here a
wide range of style;--from simplicity expressed in a language hardly yet
broken in to verse,--through the pastoral fancies and Italian conceits
of the strictly Elizabethan time,--to the passionate reality of
Shakespeare: yet a general uniformity of tone prevails. Few readers can
fail to observe the natural sweetness of the verse, the single-hearted
straightforwardness of the thoughts:--nor less, the limitation of
subject to the many phases of one passion, which then characterised our
lyrical poetry,--unless when, as with Drummond and Shakespeare, the
"purple light of Love" is tempered by a spirit of sterner reflection.
It should be observed that this and the following Summaries apply in the
main to the Collection here presented, in which (besides its restriction
to Lyrical Poetry) a strictly representative or historical Anthology has
not been aimed at. Great Excellence, in human art as in human character,
has from the beginning of things been even more uniform than Mediocrity,
by virtue of the closeness of its approach to Nature:--and so far as the
standard of Excellence kept in view has been attained in this volume, a
comparative absence of extreme or temporary phases in style, a
similarity of tone and manner, will be found throughout:--something
neither modern nor ancient but true in all ages, and like the works of
Creation perfect as on the first day.