Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

THE ATHENÆUM PRESS SERIES

G. L. KITTREDGE AND C. T. WINCHESTER

GENERAL EDITORS

The

Athenæum Press Series.

This series is intended to furnish a

library of the best English literature

from Chaucer to the present time in a

form adapted to the needs of both the

student and the general reader. The

works selected are carefully edited, with biographical and critical introductions,

full explanatory notes, and other neces

sary apparatus.

[blocks in formation]

BOSTON, U.S.A., AND LONDON

GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

1896

+88-5556

Harvard University,
Dept. of Education Library

TRANSFERRED TO

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

1932

COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
ARLO BATES

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE.

IN the making up of this volume certain liberties have been taken which may seem to call for a word of explanation. The common arrangement of the poems has been discarded, and spelling and punctuation have been to some extent modified. Hitherto the poems have usually been printed according to the contents of the three volumes published in Keats's lifetime, the posthumous work following in the order which has seemed good in the eyes of particular editors. The only conceivable objections to a departure from this plan are that it had in parts the sanction of the author and that it is impossible to know how Keats would have arranged the poems had he lived to edit a complete edition. On the other hand it is evident that he could not have retained an order so ineffective and so little calculated to give to the general reader a just impression. There is much in the first volume-especially the Epistles—which is of little value save to the special student of the development of Keats's genius, and equally there is among the posthumous work a good deal which the poet would probably never have printed. It does not seem to me that one shows intelligent admiration for a poet by dragging forward all the experiments in verse by which the bard learned his technique; and I have ventured to omit certain verse which I feel entire

« ZurückWeiter »