with a modern composition. In every other case where the old spelling was not essential to the author's measure, and differed but little from that of the present day, it has been modernised. The following lines of Spenser,

Bring with you all the nymphes that you can heare,

Both of the Rivers and the Forrests greene,

And of the Sea that neighbours to her neare;

All with gay girlands goodly wel beseene,

lose nothing, either in meaning or melody, by being printed thus:

Bring with you all the nymphs that you can hear,

Both of the rivers and the forests green,

And of the sea that to her neighbours near;

All with gay garlands goodly well-beseen:

And those of Habington,

From fruitlesse palmes shall honey flow,

And barren winter harvest show,

While lillies in his bosome grow,

sustain no injury by being modernised thus :

From fruitless palms shall honey flow,

And barren winter harvest show,

While lilies in his bosom grow.

It is needless to enlarge upon the interest of the subject of which the following poems are illustrative-Love; the inexhaustible source of poetry since beauty first inspired the youthful lover's song. In the following pages will be found many of the best pieces of love poetry in the English language, from the reign of Henry the Eighth to the present

time. Certain periods have been more productive of Love's flowers than others; but the reign of Queen Anne, which has been called the Augustan Age of English Literature, is, in this respect, amongst the most barren. Pope, in his Epistle from Eloise to Abelard, has, indeed, most forcibly described the effect of disappointed passion; but nowhere has he expressed the language of delicate, yet manly, love. His Eloise appears to have been the seducer, and not the seduced. Addison, writing in verse, is generally cold and unimpassioned; and Swift, in his Cadenus and Vanessa, has plainly enough shown that he could be vain of a beautiful and accomplished woman's admiration, but that he could not return her love. Prior and Gay appear to have written with more feeling than the rest of their contemporaries, but even their love-poems are not of the first class.

The hopes, the fears, the pleasures, and the pains of love are here sung by Shakspeare and Byron, Spenser and Wordsworth, Carew and Moore, Herrick and Coleridge, Dryden and Burns; and by many others whose works will endure as long as their country's language: each and all acknowledging, even when they rebel, the irresistible power of love, which in the following pages will be found pourtrayed in all its variety:

"Sweet Love, that hast sweet beauty for thine object;

Kind Love, that knits in one two several hearts;

Great Love, to whom the greatest king is subject;

Pure Love, that sublimates our earthly parts,

And makes them airy by ingenious arts!"