George Croly, The Beauties of the British Poets (London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1828)

Information about the Collection:  The frontispiece is an engraving of Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, titled "The Beauties of the British Poets. With a few introductory remarks by the Rev. Geo. Croly"; poem titles are indented about 1/2" in the TOC, like in a contemporary bibliographic entry. There are no headnotes in the text for the authors. The volume contains 10 engravings by Branston and Wright for poems by Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton, Goldsmith, Cowper, Crabbe, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron.

From the Preface: "on the grave of Byron there can be but one inscription – that living long enough for fame, he died too soon for his country. All hostility should be sacrificed on the spot where the remains of the great poet sleep; and no man worthy to tread the ground will approach it but with homage for his genius, and sorrow that such genius should have been sent to darkness, in the hour when it might have begun to fulfill its course, and, freed form the mists and obliquities of its rising, run its high career among the enlighteners of mankind. The object of this volume is to give such a selection from our eminent writers, as may best exhibit their styles of thought and language. All their beauties it would be impossible to give. But the following pages contain many of those passages on which their authors would perhaps be most content to be tried at the tribunal of popularity. There are other Authors from whom this volume would gladly have adduced extracts, but its size was previously restricted; and such is the opulence of English poetry, that to comprehend all, many volumes must have been formed, instead of one" (xiv-xv)

Table of Contents:

CONTENTS.

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