Excerpt from The Beauties of Ancient English Poetry The opinion of this writer upon literature in general, and especially on such a subject as poetry, may per haps be considered as the literary opinion of his own age, or of a preceding one, rather than the offspring of his own mind, for judgments on such subjects as these, can scarcely be conceived as emanating from a mind, in all its own habits of speculation so alien to them. Nor is it very probable that on subjects which he could not feel himself strong, he would, in a work, not of ingenious and speculative argument, but of grave history, have hazarded himself in opinions, in which he did not secretly feel some countenance from those judgments that he was accustomed to revere, and to consider as of para mount authority in literature. 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.