INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY.

Once more our readers are indebted to a living poet for wide
circulation of a volume of delightful verse. The name of Aubrey de
Vere is the more pleasantly familiar because its association with
our highest literature has descended from father to son. In 1822,
sixty-seven years ago, Sir Aubrey de Vere, of Curragh Chase, by
Adare, in the county of Limerick--then thirty-four years old--first
made his mark with a dramatic poem upon "Julian the Apostate." In
1842 Sir Aubrey published Sonnets, which his friend Wordsworth
described as "the most perfect of our age;" and in the year of his
death he completed a dramatic poem upon "Mary Tudor," published in
the next year, 1847, with the "Lamentation of Ireland, and other
Poems." Sir Aubrey de Vere's "Mary Tudor" should be read by all who
have read Tennyson's play on the same subject.

The gift of genius passed from Sir Aubrey to his third son, Aubrey
Thomas de Vere, who was born in 1814, and through a long life has
put into music only noble thoughts associated with the love of God
and man, and of his native land. His first work, published forty-
seven years ago, was a lyrical piece, in which he gave his sympathy
to devout and persecuted men whose ways of thought were not his own.
Aubrey de Vere's poems have been from time to time revised by
himself, and they were in 1884 finally collected into three volumes,
published by Messrs. Kegan Paul. Left free to choose from among
their various contents, I have taken this little book of "Legends of
St. Patrick," first published in 1872, but in so doing I have