Page:The Collected Poems of Dora Sigerson Shorter.djvu/8



N Introduction to a book wears the sad aspect of an advocate addressing a frigid jury. The foreword should be an afterword, and find its place in an appendix, if anywhere. When we have an Introduction to a volume of poems, reviewers, even modern reviewers, might take it as a plea in apology or for favour. But modern reviewers are indulgent. How great the difference between them and those of the old order is brought to my mind by a criticism in an aged Quarterly Review (not the Quarterly nor the Edinburgh though they had their merits) of Coleridge's "Christabel," in which there was the quotation— “'Tis a month before the month of May, And the Spring comes slowly up this way.”

Upon this was the comment, “Why could not Mr. Coleridge tell us plainly that it was the month