Page:Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age (1896).djvu/11

 PREFACE.

N Elizabethan times the art of song-writing was carried to perfection. Composers were not then content to regard the words of a song as a mere peg on which to hang the music, but sought the services of true-born lyrists. The old song-books preserve many graceful and delightful poems that would otherwise have perished. Some of these collections are extant only in unique exemplars preserved in the library of the British Museum, the Bodleian, the library of the Royal College of Music, or in private libraries: for others I have had to go to MSS. in the British Museum or at Oxford. The object that I have kept in view is to make my anthology at once novel and interesting. Well-known poems, or poems that ought to be well known, I have avoided; and, on the other hand, no poem has been included merely on account of its rarity.

A book may be very rare and very worthless: that I admit. But an examination of the present volume will show that some choice lyrics have