English Poets of the Eighteenth Century by Selected and Edited With an Introduction

The text of this collection of poetry is authentic and not bowdlerized. The general reader will, I hope, be gratified to find that its pages display no pedantic or scholastic traits. His pleasure in the poetry itself will not be distracted by a marginal numbering of the lines; by index-figures and footnotes; or by antiquated peculiarities of spelling, capitalization, and elision. Except where literal conventions are essential to the poet’s purpose,—as in The Castle of Indolence, The Schoolmistress, or Chatterton’s poems,—I have followed modern usage.