Excerpt from Seventeenth-Century Studies: A Contribution to the History of English Poetry The volume was begun in 1872, and, with meces sary intervals, has occupied me ever since. The first list of contents upon which I decided, ran thus Lodge, Webster, Dekker, Donne, Randolph, Herrick, Cowley, Orinda, Etheredge, Otway. In the second half of this list it has not seemed necessary to make any modification; in the first half three names occur which will not be found represented in this book. Perhaps I may be allowed to mention the reason of this alteration, as it helps me to explain the scope of my inquiry. Whether Dekker or a somewhat earlier name would best fit my purpose was still undecided when the Council of the Hunterian Club asked me to introduce to their subscribers their magnificent reprint of Samuel Rowlands. I was obliged, for this purpose, again to read through the entire works of that author, and I then saw that he was even a more typical figure than Dekker, his immediate successor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.