ems of my own composition; not only for the reasons there assigned, but from an anxious desire to prove that the Heliconian maids still love to linger among the hills, the streams, and the groves of Tixall.
XII. Of the merit of this collection in general, and of the judgement which I have shown in publishing it to the world, it is not for me to deliver an opinion. I shall, however, declare, that having always felt an enthusiastic predilection for poetry, and having now consumed many years in a constant perusal of our English poets, I feel, that were I divested of all partiality for the authors, or collectors of these poems, and for the place where they were preserved and discovered, I could still take up this volume with as much pleasure, and return to it with as eager delight, as to any poetical miscellany in our language. And, with respect to those readers, who occasionally look into a collection of poems, for the purpose of amusing their leisure, or of recreating their fancy, I shall add, that unless my partial judgment greatly misleads me, I believe they will find as many fragrant flowers, and well-flavoured fruits, in these borders, as in any other garden of the muses, in which they have hitherto delighted.
At the same time, I am very far from flattering myself, that this work will be considered, as any valuable addition to our stock of ancient poetry, or that it will ever become extensively popular. I consider it, myself, rather as an object of curiosity. The poems of which it consists, were accidentally discovered; they were snatched from the very jaws of destruction; in a few years more, they would perhaps have sunk, with their authors, into the dark abyss of overwhelming oblivion: they would most probably have perished. Under these circumstances, it was to me a sort of religious feeling, a sacred duty, to attempt to give them a "habitation and a name."
