lished, in seventy volumes, small 18mo.; extending only from Milton to Cowper; and containing the biographies of Johnson, which are presented together in the first three volumes. This has formed the basis of our own undertaking; though we have made some material alterations in the plan.

It was, at first, determined to print the complete works of all the poets, from Chaucer to the present time, in an hundred miniature volumes, of four hundred pages each: but the publishers were soon convinced, that a more select edition, while it would be less onerous to themselves, might prove more acceptable to the reader; and the design was, therefore, changed, so as to include the same number of authors in half the number of volumes; giving the complete works of the more celebrated, and select poems of the more obscure.

It was originally intended, also, to furnish each author with merely a concise biographical notice. To this plan the editor has, for the most part, adhered; and in some few instances he has adopted implicitly the notices which Mr. Campbell has given in his late work of Specimens. But, in composing accounts of the most celebrated authors, a desire of removing error, of supplying information, or of refuting ill-founded criticism, has enticed him to treat the subjects somewhat more in detail. The Lives of Johnson will stand as monuments of classical biography, so long as elegance of diction, acuteness of criticism, or depth of moral reflection are esteemed among men: but Johnson has no claim to extent or accuracy of research: his facts and dates are not always numerous, nor always exact; and, though he seldom fails to supply the gaps of information, by

the sagacity of his conjectures, he has often drawn conclusions, that have no foundation, and supposed motives, that had no existence. Whether these considerations were sufficient to warrant the composition of new lives, the reader is to judge.

There is, also, another part of the editor's task, which will demand the liberality of the reader. By the plan adopted, the edition was to be comprised in fifty volumes; each volume to contain four hundred pages, and the order of chronology to be observed, not only in the arrangement of the different poets, --but in that of the works of each particular poet, It may be supposed, that the execution of such a plan was not easy; but let no man pretend to estimate the difficulty, until he has made the experiment. The editor soon discovered, that no principle, but that of Proctustes, would enable him to fulfil it completely. Had the order of time been rigorously pursued, not only the works of many authors would have been awkwardly distributed in different volumes,-but he must have printed many single poems, a part in one volume, and a part in another. To avoid these incongruities, it has, in some instances, been thought expedient to violate chronology; and, in the case of Milton's works, the disarrangement has been such as, perhaps, the reader will be little inclined to excuse. One volume of his poems had been printed as a specimen, before the plan of the edition was reduced from an hundred to fifty volumes, and before the editor had resolved to extend his biographies of the more illustrious authors. It was necessary to adapt the remainder of the edition to that volume; and this it

was impracticable to effect, without the disarrangement here alluded to.

It may not be impertinent to suggest, in conclusion, that, while the reduction of our plan from one hundred to fifty volumes has diminished the cost of subscription one half, the reader will probably experience no real loss of pleasure in the absence of the poetry, which has been necessarily excluded. A century ago, the English paid no regard to their earlier poets; and, when once the revulsion of taste began, they seemed to think it their duty to compensate unusual neglect by overrunning admiration. Poets, who had long slumbered in the oblivion of black-letter, were dragged to light with antiquarian zeal; and whatever author had written any thing in the shape of verse, was deemed worthy of a name and a place in the temple of the British Apollo. An immense mass of vapid poetry is thus foisted into the later collections on the other side of the water. In this country, however, we do not feel the necessity of sustaining the national character by a superstitious reverence of English authors, merely because they are old; and all that is excellent in English poetry, may, we think, be easily included in the compass of fifty volumes.