The Golden Poets.

“The Golden Treasury,” World Classic Series (University Press, Oxford, per Whitcombe and Tombs). This in another “new edition” of Palgrave's famous anthology, compiled exactly sixty-eight years ago. When first issued by Palgrave the work contained nearly four hundred lyrics representative of English, Irish and Scots poets down to the middle of last century. When the World Classics edition first appeared, a couple of decades ago, some eight dozen additional poems had been added, representative of writers between 1850 and 1900. Now a further addition has been made, representing the first quarter of the present century. The smallness of the number of later poets selected as worthy of a place in the book, and the small number of poems added are surprising when one considers that the years covered were very rich in poetic output, particularly so in lyric verse. Compared with former similar periods represented, a considerably larger space ought to have been given up to selections from our modern lyrists. Twenty-seven new names are represented by thirty-six new poems. The Poet Laureate and Rudyard Kipling are each represented by three poems, five poets by two page 39 poems each, and the rest by one each. But how came the modern compiler to leave out all mention of such worthy contemporary poets as Hilaire Belloc, Alfred Noyes, Robert Graves and Ralph Hodgson? And that is not the worst. The additional selection opens with two poems from—whom? Hardy? No! Sir William Watson? No! According to this erudite compiler neither of these two rhymers has produced anything worthy of a place beside the two lyrics by—ye gods!—Gerald Manley Hopkins! One trusts that, if another edition is called for, the Oxford Press will do justice to the poets mentioned, and also to itself and its patrons, by giving a selection from their best lyrical verse. One word more. Is it not about time that the errors in the Palgrave part were rectified? Every issue of the “Golden Treasury,” no matter by whom published, keeps perpetrating these afresh. Why?

Learning is more profound
When in few solid authors ‘t may be found;
A few good books, digested well, do feed
The mind; much clays, and doth ill humours breed.

—Robert Heath.