Page:An American anthology, 1787-1900; selections illustrating the editor's critical review of American poetry in the nineteenth century (IA anamericananthol00stedrich).pdf/25



reader will comprehend at once that this book was not designed as a Treasury of imperishable American poems. To make a rigidly eclectic volume would a diversion, and sometimes I have thought to spend a few evenings in obtaining two thirds of it from pieces named in the critical essays to which the present exhibit is supplementary. In fact, more than one projector of a handbook upon the lines of Palgrave's little classic has adopted the plan suggested, and has paid alike compliment to the texts revised by the editors of "A Library of American Literature."

But no "Treasury," however well conceived, would forestall the purpose of this compilation. It has been made, as indicated upon the title-page, in illustration of my review of the poets and poetry of our own land. It was undertaken after frequent suggestions from readers of "Poets of America," and bears to that volume the relation borne by "A Vietorian Anthology" to "Victorian Poets." The companion anthologies, British and American, are meant to contain the choicest and most typical examples of the poetry of the English tongue during the years which they cover. The effective rise of American poetry was coincident with that of the Anglo-Victorian. It has been easy to show a preliminary movement, by fairly representing the modicum of verse, that has more than a traditional value, earlier than Bryant's and not antedating the Republic. Again, as the foreign volume was enlarged by the inclusion of work produced since the "Jubilee Year," so this one extends beyond the course surveyed in 1885, and to the present time. This should make it, in a sense, the breviary of our national poetic legacies from the nineteenth century to the twentieth. Now that it is finished, if seems, to the compiler at least, to afford a view of the successive lyrical motives and results of our first hundred years of song, from which the critic or historian may derive conclusions and possibly extend his lines into the future.

When entering upon my task, I cheerfully assumed that it would be less difficult than the one preceding it; for I had traversed much of this home-field in prose essays, and onee again, — aided by the fine judgment of a colleague, —