The Complete Poems of Giles Fletcher Author:Giles Fletcher General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1876 Original Publisher: Chatto and Windus Subjects: History / General Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / General Poetry / American / General Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrati... more »ons and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: II. CRITICAL. /RDINARILY one might feel called on to apologize for coming between the Reader and his book with 'critical' remarks; but while to the necessarily select circle into which the Poetry of the Fletchers and their associates is likely to come, the works themselves should suffice -- each being left to search out what of rare and vivid, beautiful and memorable, is to be found therein, -- it nevertheless is my hope that some little service and help may be rendered to them -- as to others -- if from many- yeared loving and reverent familiarity with these fine old Singers, I illustrate successively their characteristics, estimate, or give materials for estimate, of their distinctive worth, and trace their influence, contemporary and later; and so guide, perchance, to a higher recognition than is common of their place in the lustrous roll of the Poets of England. With reference to all the Fletchers extant criticism has been based on the merest ' shreds and patches' -- ' purple patches' I allow -- of extracts, and second-and-third-hand traditionary common-places of quotation; e. g. we have -- and they are typical -- on the one hand Henry Headly (in his "Select Specimens") telling us that " Christ's Victorie" is a "rich and picturesque poem unenlivened by ImperSonation " -- the antithesis of the fact in so far as ' impersonation' is concerned, as will appear; and more recently even such-an-one as S. C. Hall (in his " Bo...« less