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CONSISTING OF

THE MOST APPROVED PIECES OF OUR BEST

British Poets,

EXCELLENT SPECIMENS OF
FUGITIVE POETRY,

AND SOME

ORIGINAL PIECES,
By Cowper, Darwin, and others that have never before

been published ;
Classically arranged under the following Titles:-

MARTIAL,

1 ELEGIAC,
RURAL & DESCRIPTIVE, HUMOUROUS,
LEGENDARY,

|| SENTIMENTAL & PATHETIC,

Including
THE POPULAR NEW POEMS

OF
THE BATTLES OF TALAVERA,
The Statue of the Dying Gladiator, a Prize Poem,
THE DEVILS WHO CATCH MEN,

&c.&c.

Birmingham:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED
BY THOMSON AND WRIGHTSON, 73, NEW-STREET,
AND SOLD BY LONGMAN AND CO. J,MAWMAN, VERNOR AND

HOOD, AND R. SCHOLEY, LONDON, AND

ALL OTHER BOOKSELLERS.

PREFACE.

THE nature and Genius of Poetry is so various and diffuse, comprehending within its range the awful grandeur of sublimity and the most familiar display of ludicrous description, to whose influences, also, the human heart presents an instrument, the diapason of which requires only to be touched to produce the most perfect and harmonious accordance of feeling, that any volume, which can embrace within its limits specimens of such beautiful.varieties, compiled with taste and judgment, must ever be a desideratum in literature. Under this impression, the editor has formed his selection from the whole circle of poetic science, with the pieces arranged according to their evident nature, conceiving that, by a classification of this kind, they would form a volume more readily referred to, and which might be taken up to suit the present temper of every reader.

The editor, in the course of his work, has laboured under many disadvantages, from the almost exclusive occupation of his time in the more active engagements of life, and though his attempt, as a