Poems so local or cotemporary in subject or allusion, as not to be
readily understood by the modern American reader;

Poems which, from the freedom of expression allowed in the healthy
ages, can not now be read aloud in a company of men and women;

Poems that have become perfectly familiar to every body, from their
incessant reproduction in school-books and newspapers; and

Poems by living American authors, who have collected their humorous
pieces from the periodicals in which most of them originally appeared,
and given them to the world in their own names.

Holmes, Saxe, and Lowell are, therefore, only REPRESENTED in this
collection. To have done more than fairly represent them, had been to
infringe rights which are doubly sacred, because they are not
protected by law. To have done less would have deprived the reader of
a most convenient means of observing that, in a kind of composition
confessed to be among the most difficult, our native wits are not
excelled by foreign.

The editor expected to be embarrassed with a profusion of material for
his purpose. But, on a survey of the poetical literature of the two
countries, it was discovered that, of really excellent humorous
poetry, of the kinds universally interesting, untainted by obscenity,
not marred by coarseness of language, nor obscured by remote allusion,
the quantity in existence is not great. It is thought that this volume
contains a very large proportion of the best pieces that haveappeared.