Excerpt from A Treasury of Seventeenth Century English Verse: From the Death of Shakespeare to the Restoration (1616-1660)For this collection of, in round numbers, four hundred poems, I have confined myself to the definite period of forty-four years and to an equally definite period of English poetry. My reason for thus restricting my range and scope to the seventeenth century, between the death of Shakespeare and the Restoration, is threefold. In the first place the yield is genuinely poetic, secondly, the period has a strong personal interest for me, and lastly, it is the most neglected of any in English literature. Not only are large tracts of it virgin soil to the lover of poetry, but it is the only period since the Renaissance which so remains. Some of its poets - Vaughan, Traherne, Joseph Beaumont - are fairly recent discovenes, the Romantic Revival passed it over for the Elizabethans, a large number of its poets are in their original editions or in expensive reprints of a limited number of copies, no critics except Mr. Saintsbury and Mr. Bullen have paid it any sustained and general attention, and except for the towering figures of Herrick and Milton and a few lyrical masterpieces of other poets, it still stays practically unquarried for and unknown to the ordinary reader of poetry.I have accordingly taken the liberty of leaving Herrick and Milton out altogether. In cheap reprints and in numerous anthologies, they are already sufficiently before the public notice.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.