history is so eminently rich and varied, and at the same time, by the
fact of our insular position, so stamped with unity, that from days very
remote it has supplied matter for song. This, among Celts and Angles, at
first was lyrical. But poetry, for many centuries after the Conquest,
mainly took the annalistic form, and, despite the ability often shown,
was hence predoomed to failure. For a nation's history cannot but
present many dull or confused periods, many men and things intractable by
poetry, though, perhaps, politically effective and important, which
cannot be excluded from any narrative aiming at consecutiveness; and, by
the natural laws of art, these passages, when rendered in verse, in their
effect become more prosaic than they would be in a prose rendering.

My attempt has therefore been to revert to the earlier and more natural
conditions of poetry, and to offer,--not a continuous narrative; not
poems on every critical moment or conspicuous man in our long annals,--but
single lyrical pictures of such leading or typical characters and scenes
in English history, and only such, as have seemed amenable to a strictly
poetical treatment. Poetry, not History, has, hence, been my first and
last aim; or, perhaps I might define it, History for Poetry's sake. At
the same time, I have striven to keep throughout as closely to absolute
historical truth in the design and colouring of the pieces as the
exigencies of poetry permit:--the result aimed at being to unite the
actual tone and spirit of the time concerned, with the best estimate
which has been reached by the research and genius of modern
investigators. Our island story, freed from the 'falsehood of
extremes,'--exorcised, above all, from the seducing demon of
party-spirit, I have thus here done my best to set forth. And as this
line of endeavour has conducted and constrained me, especially when the
seventeenth century is concerned, to judgments--supported indeed by
historians conspicuous for research, ability, and fairness, but often
remote from the views popularized by the writers of our own day,--upon
these points a few justificatory notes have been added.

A double aim has hence governed and limited both the selection and the
treatment of my subjects. The choice has necessarily fallen, often, not
on simply picturesque incident or unfamiliar character, but on the men
and things that we think of first, when thinking of the long chronicle of
England,--or up