Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/13

 PREFACE

THIS edition of the Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea, is based on a small volume of verse published by her in 1713, on two unpublished manuscripts, and on poems scattered through various Miscellanies. These sources are more fully described in the Introduction, and the Table of Contents indicates in which of them each poem is found. In preparing the present text for publication the volume of 1713 has been considered authoritative for the poems it includes, but there has been incorporated into the text the list of Errata published in that volume. For poems occurring in both manuscripts the folio has been accepted as the best authority, inasmuch as it is later than the octavo and was apparently revised by the author or under her supervision.

There has been no modernization of the text, except that in some instances titles are not given with the original amplitude and variety of capitalization, and brackets are not used to mark triplets. Beyond these slight changes the various accepted texts are exactly followed. Some of the poems could doubtless have been made more pleasing to the eye and more easily intelligible by a series of editorial changes. It must be admitted that as the poems stand they show an orthography which, though often quaint and a valuable indication of contemporary pronunciation, is also often inconsistent and the outcome of carelessness or possibly of ignorance. The punctuation is sometimes so scanty, sometimes so elaborate, as to obscure the text. And there is an irritating excess of capitals and italics. But in spite of these facts, more seemed to be lost than gained by any attempt to make the poems conform to exact canons or to ix