Gay, frolic verse for idle hours, Light as the foam whence Venus sprang; Strains heard of old in courtly bowers, When Nelly danced and Durfey sang. PRI193 NOTE.-Two Hundred and Twenty-five Copies printed, each numbered as issued. No. ff. LIEGA RIES CHICAGO, ILL Frederic Jres Commenter Mua.o.. Coloction 1199007 PREFACE. HE poems in my anthology Speculum Amantis TH belonged, with few exceptions, to the first half of the seventeenth century. In the present volume I have attempted to deal with the lovepoetry of the Restoration and Revolution. Manners were loose in the days of "old Rowley," and poets too frequently indulged in ribaldry.1 No sensible reader will tolerate the foul and tedious grossness of the abandoned Rochester; and the obscenities of Restoration Drolleries have no place in honest literature. Who would care to watch a crew of goldfinders dancing round the shrine of Venus Cloacina? By all means let us shun such unedifying spectacles; but we need not wrap a thick cloak of prudishness about us and put on 1 Professor Alexandre Beljame, in the early chapters of his learned and valuable work Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au Dix-huitième Siècle, discusses this subject very fully. |