Arthur Quiller-Couch on English poetry

“I have gathered the most of the Ballads into the middle of the Seventeenth Century; where they fill a languid interval between two winds of inspiration — the Italian dying down with Milton and the French following at the heels of the restored Royalists.”

“For this Anthology I have tried to range over the whole field of English Verse from the beginning, or from the Thirteenth Century to this closing year of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best. Nor have I sought in these Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse has followed the tongue which among living tongues she most delights to honour.”

“The Muses' house has many mansions: their hospitality has outlived many policies of State, more than a few religions, countless heresies — tamen usque recurret Apollo — and it were profane to misdoubt the Nine as having forsaken these so long favoured Islands. Of experiment I still hold myself fairly competent to judge. But, writing in 1939, I am at a loss what to do with a fashion of morose disparagement; of sneering at things long by catholic consent accounted beautiful; of scorning at 'Man's unconquerable mind' and hanging up (without benefit of laundry) our common humanity as a rag on a clothes-line. Be it allowed that these present times are dark. Yet what are our poets of use-what are they for if they can-not hearten the crew with auspices of daylight? In a time no less perilous Wordsworth could write:           In our halls is hung    Armoury of the invincible knights of old. — 'armoury', not museum-pieces, still less tear-bottles. 'Agincourt, Agincourt, know ye not Agincourt?'. The reader, turning the pages of this book, will find this this note of valiancy of the old Roman 'virtue' mated with cheerfulness — dominant throughout, if in many curious moods. He may trace it back, if he care, far behind Chaucer to the rudest beginnings of English Song. It is indigenous, proper to our native spirit, and it will endure.”