mostly without any author's name, and the poems they contain, are frequently said to be written, "By a Person of Quality." As I knew that the family at Tixall, and their friends, were persons of quality, and that they were also writers of poetry, I saw no reason to suppose but that they might have been the authors of some of these poems. Such therefore I retained, but in the Notes, I have taken care to point out the volumes where they are to be found. I also discovered, that a few of these poems are extracted from some of our dramatic authors, from Beaumont, and Fletcher, Lee, Dryden, and others. I was induced to retain these, partly from a consideration of the following passage, with which Headley has concluded the preface to his "Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry." "Had I given way to the temptation of enriching my work with specimens from older dramatic authors, I must infallibly have enlarged my plan for their admission. They afford a field for selection, sufficiently wide of themselves, to form a complete work. I have therefore, with the exception of two or three instances, totally avoided them." Such a selection, as is here alluded to, has, I believe, never been attempted, and I therefore felt no reluctance to publish such pieces from dramatic authors, as I found in my folio manuscript. I considered, moreover, that the whole of these poems must, to the generality of readers, be perfectly new; and that besides, it would be a matter of some curiosity, to preserve entire a poetical miscellany, formed by a lady of rank, and fashion, in the 17th century.[1] "Catherine Gage's Booke" is written at the end of the manuscript, and the first poem
in it, is inscribed to her. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Gage,
- ↑ The growing, or rather, the confirmed taste for poetical antiquities, in this country, might alone be considered as a sufficient reason for the republication of these poems.
