PREFACE. HIS little work is an attempt to bring together, on a plan which will be obvious to the attentive reader, specimens of the Poetry of Fashionable Life, from the time of Queen Anne to the present day. The mere "familiar verse," of a humorous or sentimental character, which is so often made to do duty as "Society verse," has been uniformly put aside, and the collection confined-on the principle laid down in the Introduction-to pieces dealing with "Society" in the literal and strict sense of the term. The word "Songs" in the title is not, however, to be taken quite so literally, some of the pieces in this volume not coming strictly under that description. My excuse must be that I found it difficult to discover an expression which would completely, and yet briefly, describe the nature of the book. The work consists about equally of copyright and non-copyright compositions, and for permission to reproduce the former, I have to thank very sincerely the authors, publishers, and others in whom the copyright is vested, and who have so courteously responded to my application. It is possible that pieces may be found included or omitted which the individual reader would have preferred to find absent or present, as 358176 |