INTRODUCTION.

THE subject of this Volume is LOVE,-the one great affection of the heart, that binds the human family together, irrespective of age, sex, or condition; that links the child to the parent, and the parent to the child; that glows in the breast of youth, irradiates the countenance of age, and sheds a divine light on the pathway of man's life, from the cradle to the grave. In the Literature of every nation, ancient or modern, whether called by the name of Love or by that of Domestic Affection, this passion plays a prominent part. Whether its examples be drawn from the cottage or the palace, from the forests and wilds of the savage, or from the cities of civilized man, Love is the inner spirit of Romance and Poetry, both of which combine to invest it with every charm of Fancy and Imagination; and either in its joys or its sorrows, its hopes or its fears, its struggles or its triumphs, to exalt it as the one great feeling and incident of life.

To Poetry more especially belongs the duty of celebrating the beauty and the purity of Affection, and of linking together the two great principles of Love to God and Love to Man.

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INTRODUCTION.

In the poetry of no language have the freshness, and it may be said the holiness, of this sentiment, and the paramount beauty of the Home Affections, been more exquisitely pourtrayed than in that of England; and the poets of the last sixty or seventy years may be truly said to have surpassed all their predecessors Shakspeare and Milton alone excepted—in the tenderness and beauty of their illustrations of this great passion, and the multifarious incidents of joy and sorrow which mark its progress. In the less advanced period of literature which intervened between the days of Milton and those of Wordsworth and his great contemporaries, Love was too commonly treated by the rhymers and versifiers, and even by those worthy of the higher name of poets, in a Greek and Roman, and consequently a Heathen spirit. Cupid, Venus, and Hymen were as pertinaciously and unwarrantably introduced, as if Christian readers believed in these names, or could be moved in the most infinitesimal degree by them; and the poetry of Love, or that single exemplification of the feeling which may be best described by the word amatory, became a mere play of the fancy. As it did not spring from the hearts of the writers, it could not touch the hearts of the readers. But as the public taste improved, and new and great poets arose, (as they did so plentifully at the end of the last and beginning of the present century,) these inane compositions fell into well-merited contempt; and Love in its widest and most universal acceptation, -the Love of Home, of Country, and of Kind,-Love in innocent childhood, Love in courtship and youth, Love in matrimony and middle age, and Love on the confines of the tomb,-embracing as these do all possible varieties of human relationship, -found poets worthy to celebrate the name.

INTRODUCTION.

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From the works of these poets, living or dead, the following volume has been compiled. The selections have been made in one spirit and with one object,-the exaltation of the Domestic Affections, not alone in the one development which is the favourite theme of the romance-writer and the lyrist, but in all its manifestations, both as a passion and as a sentiment, as a pleasure and as a duty.

Every composition which might give offence to the pureminded, however beautiful in its language and imaginative in its structure, has been rigidly excluded. It will perhaps be discovered that there is a large preponderance of pieces of a mournful character scattered throughout these pages: but "the course of true love never did run smooth;" and there would be little tragedy in life or literature were it not for this all-pervading passion. Love and Sorrow, as has often been said, are near akin; and the Lyre of Affection yields not only its sweetest but its most constantly-recurring tones to the hand of Affliction.

I have not observed any chronological order as regards the authorship of the pieces selected, but have arranged the poems in such a manner as to give the greatest possible unity to the one subject of which the volume is an illustration, beginning with the Love felt by and excited for Childhood, and carrying it onwards, through all its varying phases and fortunes, to Youth, Maturity, and Age. I hope it will be found worthy to be the GIFT-BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE; and that the purity of sentiment which it inculcates and pourtrays, and the beauty of the pictorial illustrations with which it is adorned, will

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INTRODUCTION.

recommend it to the most refined and fastidious, as well as to the simple tastes of those who are not critical, provided their hearts be touched and their generous sentiments aroused.

To the living Authors, English and American, and to the various Publishers, proprietors of the copyrights of Authors but recently removed from amongst us, I have to return my best acknowledgments for the permission so liberally given to lay their works under contribution for this volume. In every case, where it was practicable, permission has been asked; and if there be a few poems inserted without the authority of their authors, it is either in cases where the poem is anonymous, or where it has been impossible to discover the address of the writer or the proprietor of the copyright.

LONDON,

September 14th, 1857.

CHARLES MACKAY.