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Ellis,

SPECIMENS

OF THE

Early English Poets.

LONDON, PRINTED FOR EDWARDS, PALL-MALL.

13=

1790.

MD

NOX LIBRAR

LENCY

NEW YORK

PREFACE.

THE poetical mifcellany now offered to the public was originally intended to comprize, within the compafs of one volume, all the most beautiful small poems which had been published in this country during the fixteenth and feventeenth centuries; and it was conceived that, by classing the several authors under the reigns in which they flourished, the collection would unite the advantages of a poetical common-place book with those of a history of English poetry. Perhaps these purposes may be in some measure answered even by the present imperfect collection; but the completion of the publisher's plan has been prevented by the difficulty of procuring a fufficient stock of materials.

THE regularity and harmony of style, and the minute attention to the artifice of compofition which were introduced by the au

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