poets of their own generation, and that therefore the compliment paid to the lesser lights of our day was not very extravagant. There may be plenty of Scotts and Moores among us, but assuredly we do not boast of many Wordsworths and Byrons, or Shelleys and Keats! But nevertheless there is in these last days an astonishing undercurrent of poetry welling constantly on, and working its way towards the light."
There is a poet for every palate, and, while we revere the memories and praise the works of those whose names are written on the Scroll of Fame, what have we to say about the many gems that have been written throughout all these poetic eras; gems whose sterling merit has found them a place in many a standard class-book; gems whose genuineness finds them an undeniable place in many a high-class magazine; gems whose worth entitles them to creep into the vagrant corner of a newspaper to enjoy light for, alas! only a day; gems, bearing the signature—Anonymous.
It has been our design, therefore, to make a selection from these leaves that have been drifting on the stream of Time, kept afloat by their own intrinsic merit, not because they emanated from the pen of a Shakspeare, a Scott, a Burns, a Byron, a Tupper, a Tennyson, or any other of our known or acknowledged authors. Doubtless, a number of fugitive effusions have been sunk in the waters, while the sparkling beauty of many has been the means of their preservation or rescue from oblivion. These fugitive writings may be called, "Bread cast on the waters, found after many days."
Our Ballad Literature, much of which is anonymous, is but meagrely represented in the present collection, as it was not our intention to encroach on a field already gleaned, and whose "gipsy children of song" have been presented in many collected forms. To men such as Percy, Herd, Scott, Motherwell, Buchan, Whitelaw, Roberts, and others, we owe a debt of gratitude for their labours. When we have so many volumes of Ballad Literature, and more especially "The Legendary Ballads of England and Scotland," in present series, it is not within our province to reproduce any examples from the same.
So far as we are aware no such collection as the present has as yet been made, and feeling that a Selection from the many fugitive poems that have been floating about so long in the literature of the past and present, presented in a collected form, would be a something to be desired, a something called for, and, as we shall trust, something that will prove acceptable to all lovers of poesy; we set ourselves with "fear and trembling," yet hopefully to the work, which has been to us one of pleasant research along "the hedgerows and leafy lanes of literature."
