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THIS volume contains a collection of Songs from the English Dramatists, beginning with the writer of the first regular comedy, and ending with Sheridan. The want of such a collection has long been felt, and that it has never been supplied before must occasion surprise to all readers who are acquainted with the riches we possess in this branch of lyrical poetry.

The plan upon which the work is arranged furnishes the means of following the course of the drama historically, and tracing in its progress the revolutions of style, manners, and morals that marked successive periods. The songs of each dramatist are distributed under the titles of the plays from which they are taken; and the plays are given in the order of their production. Short biographical notices, and explanatory notes, have been introduced wherever they appeared necessary or desirable; but all superfluous annotation has been carefully avoided.

The orthography of the early songs has been modernized, in no instance, however, to the loss or injury of a phrase essential to the coloring of the age, or the structure of the verse. The old spelling is not sacred; nor can it be always fixed with certainty. It was generally left to the printers, who not only differed from each other, but sometimes from themselves. By adopting a uniform and familiar orthography, the enjoyment of the beauties of these poems, the most perfect of their class in any language, is materially facilitated. In the preparation of this volume, all known accessible sources have been explored and exhausted. The research bestowed upon it cannot be adequately estimated by its bulk. The labour which is not represented in the ensuing pages considerably exceeded the labour which has borne the fruit and flowers gathered into this little book. Many hundreds of plays have been examined without yielding any results, or such only as in their nature were unavailable. Some names will be missed from the catalogue of dramatic writers, and others will be found to contribute less than might be looked for from their celebrity; but in all such cases a satisfactory explanation can be given. Marlowe's plays, for example, do not contain a single song, and Greene's only one. Southerne abounds in songs, but they are furnished chiefly by other writers, and are of the most commonplace character. Etherege has several broken snatches of drinking rhymes and choruses dancing through his comedies, full of riotous animal spirits soaring to the height of all manner of extravagance, and admirably suited to ventilate the profligacy of the day; but for the most part they are either unfit for extract from their coarseness, or have not substance enough to stand alone. Wycherley's songs are simply gross, and Tom Killigrew's crude and artificial.