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 mostly without any author's name, and the poems they contain, are frequently said to be written, "By a Person of Quality." As I knew that the family at Tixall, and their friends, were persons of quality, and that they were also writers of poetry, I saw no reason to suppose but that they might have been the authors of some of these poems. Such therefore I retained, but in the Notes, I have taken care to point out the volumes where they are to be found. I also discovered, that a few of these poems are extracted from some of our dramatic authors, from Beaumont, and Fletcher, Lee, Dryden, and others. I was induced to retain these, partly from a consideration of the following passage, with which Headley has concluded the preface to his "Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry." "Had I given way to the temptation of enriching my work with specimens from older dramatic authors, I must infallibly have enlarged my plan for their admission. They afford a field for selection, sufficiently wide of themselves, to form a complete work. I have therefore, with the exception of two or three instances, totally avoided them." Such a selection, as is here alluded to, has, I believe, never been attempted, and I therefore felt no reluctance to publish such pieces from dramatic authors, as I found in my folio manuscript. I considered, moreover, that the whole of these poems must, to the generality of readers, be perfectly new; and that besides, it would be a matter of some curiosity, to preserve entire a poetical miscellany, formed by a lady of rank, and fashion, in the 17th century. "Catherine Gage's Booke" is written at the end of the manuscript, and the first poem in it, is inscribed to her. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Gage,