We open the volume of Prefatory Lives, and to our astonishment the first name we find is that of Cowley!—­What Is become of the morning-star of English Poetry?  Where is the bright Elizabethan constellation?  Or, if names be more acceptable than images, where is the ever to-be-honoured Chaucer? where is Spenser? where Sidney? and, lastly, where he, whose rights as a poet, contra-distinguished from those which he is universally allowed to possess as a dramatist, we have vindicated,—­where Shakespeare?—­These, and a multitude of others not unworthy to be placed near them, their contemporaries and successors, we have not.  But in their stead, we have (could better be expected when precedence was to be settled by an abstract of reputation at any given period made, as in this case before us?) Roscommon, and Stepney, and Phillips, and Walsh, and Smith, and Duke, and King, and Spratt—­Halifax, Granville, Sheffield, Congreve, Broome, and other reputed Magnates—­metrical writers utterly worthless and useless, except for occasions like the present, when their productions are referred to as evidence what a small quantity of brain is necessary to procure a considerable stock of admiration, provided the aspirant will accommodate himself to the likings and fashions of his day.

As I do not mean to bring down this retrospect to our own times, it may with propriety be closed at the era of this distinguished event.  From the literature of other ages and countries, proofs equally cogent might have been adduced, that the opinions announced in the former part of this Essay are founded upon truth.  It was not an agreeable office, nor a prudent undertaking, to declare them; but their importance seemed to render it a duty.  It may still be asked, where lies the particular relation of what has been said to these Volumes?—­The question will be easily answered by the discerning Reader who is old enough to remember the taste that prevailed when some of these poems were first published, seventeen years ago; who has also observed to what degree the poetry of this Island has since that period been coloured by them; and who is further aware of the unremitting hostility with which, upon some principle or other, they have each and all been opposed.  A sketch of my own notion of the constitution of Fame has been given; and, as far as concerns myself, I have cause to be satisfied.  The love, the admiration, the indifference, the slight, the aversion, and even the contempt, with which these Poems have been received, knowing, as I do, the source within my own mind, from which they have proceeded, and the labour and pains, which, when labour and pains appeared needful, have been bestowed upon them, must all, if I think consistently, be received as pledges and tokens, bearing the same general impression, though widely different in value;—­they are all proofs that for the present time I have not laboured in vain; and afford assurances, more or less authentic, that the products of my industry will endure.