ON SOME OF THE OLD POETS. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. "Or, if I would delight my private hours MILTON LONDON: HENRY G. CLARKE, & CO., PUBLISHERS. 1845. ΤΟ MY FATHER, CHARLES LOWELL, D.D., WHOM, IF I HAD NOT THE HIGHER PRIVILEGE OF REVERING AS A PARENT, I SHOULD STILL HAVE HONOURED AS A MAN AND LOVED AS A FRIEND, "Hail, bards of mightier grasp! on you I chiefly call, the chosen few, Who cast not off the acknowledged guide, Who faltered not, nor turned aside; Whose lofty genius could survive Privation, under sorrow thrive." WORDSWORTH. TO THE READER. A PREFACE is always either an apology or an cxplanation; and a good book needs neither. That I write one, then, proves that I am diffident of the merit of this volume, to a greater degree, even, than an author must necessarily be. The Reader must be kind enough to excuse the too great length of the First Conversation which I should have divided, had I known in time how it would have grown under my hands. The substance of the two other conversations appeared more than two years ago in the “Boston Miscellany," a magazine conducted by my friend Hale, Jun. Esq. The articles, as then written met with some approbation, and I had often been urged to reprint them by friends with whose wishes it was my duty as well as my delight to comply. Yet I confess I felt strongly reluctant |