Elegant Extracts: Or, Useful and Entertaining Pieces of Poetry, Selected for ...

is the leaft fallible teft of merit in the fine arts, and particularly in Poetry. Whatever was found in previous collections, which experience had pronounced proper for fchools, has been freely taken and admitted: the stamp of experience gave it currency. The freedom of borrowing, it is hoped, will be pardoned, as the collectors, with whom it has been used, firft fet the example of it.

It is unneceffary, and perhaps might be deemed impertinent, to point out the mode of ufing the Collection to the beft advantage. It is evident that it may be used in schools, either in recitation, tranfcription, the exercife of the memory, or in imitation. It furnishes an abundance of models, which are the best means of exciting genius. Such Arts of Poetry as thofe of Gildon, Bysfhe, Newbery, and their imitators, effect but little in the dry method of technical precept; and the young Poet, like the Sculptor, will improve moft by working after a model. It is evident that this Collection may be usefully read at ENGLISH SCHOOLS, in the claffes, juft as the Latin and Greek authors are read at the grammar-schools, by explaining every thing grammatically, hiftorically, metrically, and critically; and then giving a portion to be learned by memory. The Book, it is hoped, will be particularly agreeable and useful in the private ftudies of the amiable young ftudent, whose first love is the love of the Mufe, and who courts her in his fummer's walk, and in the folitude of his winter retreat, or at the social domeftic fire-fide.

In the latter part many little pieces are admitted, mere lufus poetici, chiefly for the diverfion of the ftudent. They are, it must be confeffed, no more than flowerets at the bottom of Parnaffus; but it is hoped, that their admission will be approved, as they may gradually lead the scholar to ascend higher up the hill, who might have been deterred from approaching it if he had seen nothing in the first prospect, but the fublime, the folemn, and the fombrous.

The reader will have no caufe to complain, if, instead of Extracts, he often finds whole poems inferted. This has been done whenever it seemed consistent with the defign, and could be done without injuftice. In this matter, the opinion of those who must be supposed best qualified to give it, was asked, and followed. The wish was to take nothing but what feemed to lie on the common, relinquished or neglected by the lord of the manor.

Though the Book is divided into Four Parts, yet the formality of regular and fyftematical arrangement of the component pieces, has not been strictly obferved. Such compilations as these have not unfrequently been called garlands and nofegays: but in a garland or nofegay, who would place the tulips, the lilies, the pinks, and the roses in feparate compartments? In fo artificial a difpofition, their beauty and fragrance would be less pleafing than if they were carelessly A 4

mingled

mingled with all the ease and wildness of natural variety. I hope the analogy will hold if not, I must throw myself in this, as I do in all other circumstances of this Publication, upon my reader's indulgence. I expect not praise; but I confide in receiving pardon.

Perhaps the reader will be the more inclined to extend it towards me, if I do not weary him with apologies. I will then conclude my Preface with the ideas of Montaigne :—" I have here only made a nofegay of culled flowers, and have brought "nothing of my own but the thread that ties them."

In every fucceeding Edition a great variety of long and valuable Poems have been added, and the volume is confequently much enlarged.—If fome mistakes have infinuated themselves, in confequence of the Editor's distance from the prefs, it is hoped they will be confidered with candour, as they are certainly but trivial, and may be corrected by the Reader's own fagacity.

TO THE

PRESENT EDITION.

To the above general Preface the Editor has only to add, that in this new ImPression he has made very confiderable Improvements and Additions; particularly, by a new and copious Selection from Young's Night Thoughts, with appropriate Titles prefixed to each Extract; by the infertion of Poems and Extracts from Churchill, Soame Fenyns, Langhorne, Akenfide, and several recent Authors of diftinguished merit; and by the introduction of many ludicrous and ingenious Pieces of the Lyric and Epigrammatic kind, defigned to add to the Amusement of the Young Reader, after the Study of graver, longer, and more finished Compofitions.

The favourable Reception and long continued Approbation of this Collection cannot but give Satisfaction to the Editor, who, while he fees it placed, as it is, in the hands of ingenuous Youth, of both Sexes, throughout this extended Empire, has the happiness to reflect that he has been humbly inftrumental in foring, in the vernal feajon, the Seeds of Tafle, Knowledge and Virtue, wherever the English Language is cultivated.

He hopes also that he has contributed to mingle Rofes with the Thorns of Life, and to fweeten the Bitterness of the Cup, by infusing into it the Sweets of Poey.

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