HIS volume makes no pretension to anti quarian research, though it commences. with a short extract from the poet-herdsman of the seventh century; nor does it profess to give specimens from all the poets with whom our country has been so richly dowered. It simply offers-in accordance with its title "gleams" from the divine light which has shone on our race now for twelve cen turies-waxing and waning with the passing years, but never extinct; and though differing in glory in its several manifestations, always a light in which we rejoice. The selections, though kept together in centuries, are not arranged in strict chronological order, as greater variety was PREFACE. obtained by occasional deviations from it; and moreover, the greater poets seemed better placed when dividing the minor ones. The spelling of DUNBAR'S poetry has been slightly modernized (as SPENSER'S has been of late), in order to make his really beautiful poem intelligible. Bedford Street, Strand. |