The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw (Complete‪)‬

I have at last the pleasure of seeing half-fulfilled a long-cherished wish and intention, by the issue of the present Volume, being Vol. I. of the first really worthy edition of the complete Poetry of Richard Crashaw, while Vol. II. is so well advanced that it may be counted on for Midsummer (Deo favente).


This Volume contains the whole of the previously-published English Poems, with the exception of the Epigrams scattered among the others, which more fittingly find their place in Vol. II., along with the Latin and Greek originals, and our translation of all hitherto untranslated. Here also will be found important, and peculiarly interesting as characteristic, additions of unprinted and inedited poems by Crashaw from Archbishop Sancroft's mss., among the Tanner mss. in the Bodleian. These I have named 'Airelles,' after the little Alpine flowers that are dug out beneath the mountain masses of snow and ice, with abiding touches of beauty and perfume, as though they had been sheltered within walls and glass. The formerly printed Poems have been collated and recollated anxiously with the original and other early and authoritative editions, the results of which are shown in Notes and Illustrations at the close of each poem.